Try using just Termux. You can actually do a lot with it, even without installing a distro. If you want Debian though, one approach would be through proot-distro which installs a traditional distro in the Termux environment. It has some limitations, check the wiki page.
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Termux, proot-distro, and termux-x11 is the way. I got debian with xfce on my tablet
I'm gonna do that too, would gnome be OK on my hardware? About 4 GB ram
I would recommend xfce or other lightweight de/wm. Dont expect to game. I just use it for searx and ssh
Probably best with a light weight DE
Termux from fdroid plus Andronix (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=studio.com.techriz.andronix)
Anlinux from app store
If by Linux you mean GNU (insert interjection here) then yeah, Termux is your best bet.
Think you can install a desktop environment on termux, there are guides online for that
Termux isn't an emulator though, afaik it's an actual distro that runs on your phone's existing Linux kernel alongside android
It runs a lot like a container
No it doesn't, Termux is just a set of Linux packages which are compiled to use the Android Termux application data directory as the base install path. There is no separation from the host system like a container does with Linux kernel namespaces. The only permission in Termux is what Android itself enforces.
You got me there, like a container without containing it?
But I suppose most like a privellaged container (as much as the android user is privellaged).
The most important connection in my analogy though was it runs its 'root'/those packages separately from the android operating system, cause we can't install our own packages there