Here's which Samsung Galaxy S26 phones support Android's Linux terminal

For a certain class of particularly geeky smartphone enthusiast, there’s probably nothing cooler than having a functional Linux terminal in your pocket. Last year, Google gave us just that for Pixel phones, and ever since we’ve been curious about which other smartphones might pick up support. A few weeks back we uncovered evidence suggesting that the Galaxy S26 Ultra might be getting Linux terminal support, and today we’re finally starting to get some confirmation about what Samsung’s support here looks like.

Samsung just went official with its Galaxy S26 lineup last week, and as expected, this year the company returned to offering the phones in two main configurations: Qualcomm Snapdragon chips in the US, and Samsung Exynos chips in most international markets. At least, that’s the case for the two smaller S26 handsets, while the S26 Ultra is set to use a Snapdragon chip wherever you find it.

But what does that mean for Linux terminal support? Well, despite what we saw earlier that made it seem like the S26 Ultra could work with it, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 that powers the phone is a chip that doesn’t support non-protected virtual machines — and that just happens to be a requirement for Android’s Linux terminal. And sure enough, information shared with Android Authority by a tipster appears to confirm that the Linux terminal is only working on Exynos-based Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus hardware. (Thanks: Dylan H)

The screen above is supposed to be from an S26 Plus. Trying to access the terminal from an S26 Ultra with its Qualcomm chip, meanwhile, only results in the expected error message:

Honestly, none of this should really be that surprising, and it was probably premature to get our hopes up about that S26U log-file find before sorting out our expectations around Qualcomm- and Exynos-based S26 handsets.

That said, this could still be good news for a lot of new Galaxy S26 owners, especially since you don’t have to drop full price on the top-of-the-line Ultra to try out the Linux terminal on the Exynos versions of the S26 and S26 Plus.