Hey all!
I have come into possession of an original Google Pixel phone and am looking for an OS that I could put on it. The phone was only $80 and I bought it with the intent of finally trying out some Linux-based phone OSs. Still pretty new to the post-Windows world, but I’ve noticed that most of the mobile OSs are for Pixel 3as and later…
By OS to put on it I’m assuming you mean non-android OS(edit: I just reread the post, though FWIW I think android technically counts as a Linux distribution, it’s just not GNU/Linux for lack of a better distinction)The processor in the Pixel 1 is the Snapdragon 821, which has not been officially supported since a decade ago. Qualcomm are notorious for not providing open drivers for their chipsets, so getting it to run anything that isn’t binary compatible with the driver blob it comes with, is a huge undertaking. From my reading, no one ever completed that reverse engineering work for the pixel 1 before development effort dried up.
I believe you might find some lineage OS releases got the phone through a few extra versions of Android, but there’s very little chance you’re going to run anything that isn’t android on it, unless you’re a particularly talented engineer with a lot of free time
I have a Pixel 1. I run LineageOS on it.
If I was you I’d advertise it for sale for a load of money for the fact that it has free full res google photos uploads for life.