[HN Gopher] Android 13 virtualization lets Pixel 6 run Windows 1...
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Android 13 virtualization lets Pixel 6 run Windows 11, Linux
distributions
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 434 points
Date : 2022-02-14 05:31 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnx-software.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnx-software.com)
| WaxProlix wrote:
| A few things I didn't see an answer to in my skim of the article
|
| - is this hardware or bios locked, or will there be the ability
| to get this functionality on eg older phones
|
| - what are the performance characteristics here, I wonder?
|
| I'm keen because we produce a ton of e-waste in the form of
| mostly useful cell phones, and it'd be cool to turn them into
| useful devices again. This might help enable that.
| kdrag0n wrote:
| There's _very_ little chance of enabling KVM on Qualcomm
| devices: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30322404.
| Theoretically, it's always been possible on other SoCs, but now
| it basically works out-of-the-box on the Pixel 6.
|
| This and the videos below it should give you an idea of the
| performance:
| https://twitter.com/kdrag0n/status/1493082399520919552
| judge2020 wrote:
| > Currently, no Android devices on the market ship with the
| Virtualization module -- not even Google's own Pixel 6 -- but
| this is set to change with the upcoming Android 13 release. In
| fact, Google is currently testing its new virtualization tools
| on the Pixel 6; if you build AOSP with the target
| aosp_oriole_pkvm, you'll find that com.android.virt will be
| automatically inherited. I don't know if Google will enable
| pKVM on the Pixel 6 series with the Android 13 update, but
| there is evidence that Google plans for Android 13 to include
| the first release of the pKVM hypervisor and virtual machine
| framework.
|
| Original blog: https://blog.esper.io/android-dessert-
| bites-5-virtualization...
| overflyer wrote:
| So now we can run Windows 11 on Android that then can run Android
| that then runs Windows 11 which runs Android that can run Windows
| 11 where we install WSL2 in which we utilize wine/proton to play
| the newest AAA titles....
| allisdust wrote:
| May be it will finally let Linux distros have a teeny tiny
| foothold on mobile ? May be the stuff that is difficult today -
| interfacing with the hardware can be delegated to the native OS
| and guest OS can focus on providing more features.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Cool, I guess, but I don't want Google or Microsoft to the layer
| between me and my computers hardware. This will just continue the
| e-waste problem as bad actors would still control the hardware.
|
| I wonder if this is because the Linux phones are really starting
| to shape up?
| zoom6628 wrote:
| So cool! A serious replacement for termux which is awesome. Being
| able to run a full vm, if can have a personalised "desktop" will
| make using a mobile phone and tablet vastly more productive for
| everything. Hope this comes to more than just the Pixel line.
| bsd44 wrote:
| So a VM inside a VM inside a physical container. Sounds great.
| grishka wrote:
| Is this specific to Pixel 6, or will this be available on all
| Pixel phones?
|
| And an aside: since Apple's SoCs are now much better understood
| thanks to the M1 and Asahi Linux project, how long until someone
| manages to virtualize iOS on an Android device? (though I'd
| rather have Android running on an iPhone tbh)
| toastal wrote:
| I can virtualized other operating systems but I can't have root
| access and a banking app. The world we live in....
| Iolaum wrote:
| This effect has been talked about 10 years ago:
| https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html
| f6v wrote:
| > What that means is that it is now possible to run virtually any
| operating system including Windows 11, Linux distributions such
| as Ubuntu or Arch Linux Arm on the Google Tensor-powered phone,
| and do so at near-native speed.
|
| Native as in Windows on ARM native? I held Surface Pro X in a
| shop and man was it disappointing.
| qalmakka wrote:
| Well, obviously it has to be AArch64 Windows, running x86_64
| OSes on ARM requires emulation which has always been possible.
| KVM simply allows the Linux kernel to act as an hypervisor.
| TheMode wrote:
| Would this allow me to plug an Android phone into a monitor and
| have it boot windows/linux like DeX? (so keeping android on the
| phone, but the desktop on the external display)
|
| This would be a pretty strong argument for me to move away from
| iOS.
| fsflover wrote:
| This one allows that: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5.
| TheMode wrote:
| Is it really usable as a phone? Seems like it would be a step
| back for any modern ios/android device user.
| fsflover wrote:
| Depends on your use case. Yes, it's a step back in
| convenience (yet) but many steps forward in privacy and
| security.
| TheMode wrote:
| I'll have to wait for those to get flagship specs before
| considering it.
|
| Though honestly I'd probably prefer an android/ios device
| able to run a different operating system on the external
| display in all cases.
| xpuente wrote:
| This opens the opportunity to run virtualized iOS inside Android?
| xvector wrote:
| This is actually amazing!
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| Last time I checked, the only meaningful feature of Windows 11
| when compared to Windows 10 was advertised as the ability to run
| Android apps at some point in the future. Well, it looks like
| Microsoft got behind again.
| udbhavs wrote:
| They have a chance to get ahead if they add full blown Windows
| in docked mode for their new surface phones since they're
| running android anyway. Yes, DeX and co exist but no one wants
| to use them because for the mass majority Desktop = Mac or
| Windows and not full screen android with a taskbar slapped on
| it. Having a _proper_ desktop with the same documents and files
| from your phone with a single USB C connection could finally
| lower the friction enough for docking phones to become a
| mainstream thing. Combine that with natively passing through
| the _actual_ android apps from the device into the VM, you can
| potentially get a no-compromise experience. But who knows,
| maybe I 'm the only one who gets too excited about tinkering
| with weird setups like this and it's not actually ergonomic for
| everyday use
| bhouston wrote:
| Does it offer accelerated 2D and 3D graphics?
| kdrag0n wrote:
| No. It should be possible to get gfxstream or virgl working
| with Linux guests, but I'm not aware of any way to provide
| acceleration for Windows guests.
| tmikaeld wrote:
| I'd assume that it doesn't, while passthrough exist on KVM, it
| still requires the actual drivers to be installed on the
| emulated OS and mobile handset drivers are usually proprietary
| blobs. The APIs could be translated to a generic driver that
| works on the OSs though, something like
| https://virgil3d.github.io/
| teleforce wrote:
| Just yesterday I was wondering what's the point of the new Galaxy
| S8 Ultra Tablet with its glorious 14.6" display and 16GB RAM. Now
| with the new Android 13 you can potentially install any Linux
| distro VM, then it will be the most lightweight if not the best
| Linux desktop with the supplied keyboard + cover.
| hulitu wrote:
| You could run linux before. With qemu. It was a crappy
| experience. Even writing on a touchscreen is bad and when the
| window is tiny and you barely see the letters is even worse. Of
| course you can hook a wireless keyboard and mouse but then better
| go to the PC which has even a bigger screen.
|
| I really don't see what this brings. Is google so lost that the
| only "innovation" they can bring in android is descovering that
| the linux kernel has support for virtualization ?
| karlkloss wrote:
| Think bigger. Big tablets with detachable keyboards that can
| now run Android and Windows.
|
| Also there are Android based VR headsets, anh their resolutions
| are getting better. Think of working in a connected virtual
| office, running Windows applications.
| RamRodification wrote:
| I kinda want my phone to be a portable PC in my pocket. At
| least I think I do... If I could dock my phone in at work and
| have it boot up a Windows VM (I work on a Windows PC) that
| would be neat.
|
| I know there are some options for this, like Samsung Dex, but
| with this there is at least some potential for having a Windows
| PC in your pocket. Like Microsoft tried to do with those older
| Windows phones.
| dagi3d wrote:
| The article explains the most plausible rationale for that and
| it seems it's not necessary to run other OS's...
| dachryn wrote:
| We are probably focusing on the wrong use case here.
|
| Yes this virtualization allows us to run windows/linux. Thats
| not the main goal probably. Its more to reuse packages from
| those stacks on your android phone, kinda like the VMware
| Fusion mode on a Mac, to run applications side by side, or to
| run things in a secure virtualized container.
|
| Why recompile to android, when you can virtualize?
| anthk wrote:
| Why Linux when you have Termux?
| zekrioca wrote:
| > Why recompile to android, when you can virtualize?
|
| Performance?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Even writing on a touchscreen is bad and when the window is
| tiny and you barely see the letters is even worse.
|
| We need to bring back gestural writing, with simplified letter
| forms. The basic tech was in production use in the mid-1990s,
| and there are clearly unencumbered alphabets that could be
| easily used for this, such as the 19th century Moon Script.
| Recent UI work has made Linux quite usable on touchscreens and
| smaller devices, but text input is way harder than it could be.
| pinephoneguy wrote:
| You could just chroot into normal GNU based user spaces before
| they screwed it up between all the namespace stuff and then
| later restricting exec. I even ran X11 apps on my Android a
| _long_ time ago with zero virtualization overhead.
| monocasa wrote:
| It seems like they're taking Android in a Qubes-like direction.
|
| https://blog.esper.io/android-dessert-bites-5-virtualization...
| mateuszf wrote:
| Yes, please. I'd love to separate Facebook, Google, Amazon,
| etc. apps into separate domains. As I'm doing with web apps
| via Firefox containers.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I don't think Google is doing this to give you more
| privacy. They have every incentive to do the exact
| opposite.
|
| Ps Firefox containers are great indeed and I use them for
| the same reasons. But I doubt this is the intended usecase
| for this. I don't see Google investing a ton of money to
| build something that will hurt their bottom line.
| mateuszf wrote:
| You're probably right, but the fact that underlying
| technology will be present may be used by someone to
| implement it.
|
| Like in the case of the Shelter app.
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.typeblo
| g.s...
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| Linux has had KVM, sure, but mobile ARM CPUs have not had the
| necessary virtualization extensions for "native" speed
| hypervisors up until very recently.
| thomond wrote:
| you could also run Win 9x through Dosbox on Android although
| again not very well.
| kstenerud wrote:
| > I really don't see what this brings. Is google so lost that
| the only "innovation" they can bring in android is descovering
| that the linux kernel has support for virtualization ?
|
| When talking about the strategy of a successful multibillion
| dollar company, the most likely answer is "no".
|
| The very short article explains at a high level:
|
| "they're used for things like enhancing the security of the
| kernel (or at least trying to) and running miscellaneous code
| (such as third-party code for DRM, cryptography, and other
| closed-source binaries) outside of the Android OS."
| bumblebritches5 wrote:
| This is about Fuchsia.
|
| First Google is gonna run Fuchsia on Linux, then linux will
| be removed entirely.
|
| that's what this laying the groundwork for.
| y4mi wrote:
| Well, imagine your next work laptop to be a phone. It connects
| wirelessly to a display, which is paired to a keyboard and
| mouse.
|
| Still not seeing the point?
|
| People are either gonna love or hate it. Love because of how
| little space it requires or hate because the performance is
| gonna be worse then even the non pro versions of the surface.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Like Windows Phone and Samsung DEX.
| oblio wrote:
| This was the dream for a long time (sans the wireless part,
| but that's not a blocker), see Ubuntu Phone and several other
| attempts.
|
| I wonder when we'll be there. For sure we're not there for
| wireless, yet. It's unreliable, especially if you have a lot
| of wireless devices around.
| [deleted]
| nine_k wrote:
| If it could work in a pinch, that already would be valuable
| for some users.
| Hjfrf wrote:
| If people are spending 1500 on a phone rather than 750 each
| on laptop/phone, the performance isn't necessarily worse.
|
| That's the real killer feature.
| rbanffy wrote:
| OTOH, if you spend 750 on each and one breaks, it's only
| 750 to replace it.
| fsflover wrote:
| Why use a virtualized Linux on proprietary Android if you can
| use native Linux phone with all free drivers and desktop OS?
| https://puri.sm/products/librem-5
| rbanffy wrote:
| You can have a good phone with a good virtualized OS you
| you can have a not-that-good phone with a good OS.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| to be blunt because the librem is an awful phone. The
| battery life is miserable, the UI is terrible, and the
| performance isn't great either. It feels five years behind
| at the price that's higher than the pixel 6.
|
| A mid-range Xiaomi phone is better than the Librem 5 and
| costs four times less.
| fsflover wrote:
| These are all software issues, which are being worked on:
| https://teddit.net/r/Purism/comments/sqbml6/is_librem_5_g
| ood...
|
| Also, it will receive software updates forever unlike any
| other phone.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| It's not just software issues. It's a 1200$ phone with 30
| gigs of drive space, 3 gigs of ram and a 720x1440 screen.
|
| not to mention, from the thread you linked:
|
| _" About 2600 L5's have been delivered, so everyone who
| ordered before October 2017 should have gotten their
| phones. Purism reportedly just got in another 1100 L5's
| from the factory, so when those get shipped out, that
| should cover the orders up to mid-2018._"
|
| I mean you can't be serious. People paid almost a grand
| to wait four years for a phone?
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| It was cheaper then, about $600. (still expensive and
| worth it, but not "almost a grand")
| fsflover wrote:
| The delays are real (waiting for mine too), but IMHO
| there were good reasons for that:
| https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-
| wiki/-/wikis/Freque...
|
| But this tiny company with no experience in smartphones
| did finally produce the product respecting users unlike
| Google or Apple. The current problems with CPU supply is
| not Purism's fault.
|
| Also, the phone supports microSD up to 2 TB.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| If making a good phone OS was that easy we would have
| more options besides Android or iOS.
| modo_mario wrote:
| How does it compare to the pinephone nowadays?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Especially, how does it compare to the pinephone pro
| [deleted]
| rbanffy wrote:
| > It connects wirelessly to a display, which is paired to a
| keyboard and mouse.
|
| When you add the display, battery, keyboard and mouse, it's
| really cheap to add brains and storage and build a full
| laptop that can share data with your phone.
|
| This is why most lapdocks fail - they aren't that much less
| expensive than a cheap laptop. This is also why, at some
| point, nobody was making dedicated terminals for large
| computers - they were as expensive to build as PCs.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| That is what I want. In addition to a docking station in my
| office, I would like iPhone <--> iTV style interop in the
| living room, and compatible kiosk style support in public
| areas like airports, airlines, office buildings, etc.
| resonious wrote:
| Forgive me for regurgitating trendy HN counter arguments, but:
| this comment seems very similar to the early dismissals of
| Dropbox.
|
| "I can already achieve this with FTP/samba/whatever." Sometimes
| taking existing, established technology and making it easier to
| use is all it takes to "innovate".
|
| Of course I have no idea how killer this particular Android
| feature will be. I'm just criticizing the "this is not new"
| argument.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| For every Dropbox, there are a thousand companies and
| products that similar criticisms could be made against that
| don't actually succeed, sometimes for the reasons stated in
| those criticisms.
| resonious wrote:
| I think it's fair to say that for those failed
| products/companies, the reason for them failing is a bit
| more nuanced than "because the core service already exists
| elsewhere". Competition always exists so you're almost
| never the sole provider of a particular type of service. If
| you fail, you were likely out-competed, even if it's in a
| non-core area like marketing or popularity.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| You act like Dropbox is successful when they are not. A
| company paying other companies to advertise and push their
| products and burning through cash to appear successful is not
| success.
| gjvc wrote:
| https://dropbox.gcs-web.com/news-releases/news-release-
| detai...
|
| They appear to be in the black.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Nothing about that indicates that they are making more
| than they spend. Look at their assets vs liabilities.
| Their negative keeps increasing.
| gzer0 wrote:
| The liabilities increased significantly only because
| Dropbox (as with nearly every other company in the United
| States) wanted to take advantage of the 0% interest rates
| that the federal reserve has kept.
| 1,369.3 (bln) Convertible senior notes, net, non-current
|
| Who _wouldn 't_ want to borrow $1.3 billion USD interest
| free or close to it? We need to take a close look and try
| to understand these numbers instead of just seeing
| "negative" = "bad"; more often than not it much more
| nuanced than that.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Sounds like a terrible idea right now. I think they are
| only popular here because of their association with YC. I
| honestly find Dropbox to be terrible and overpriced.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| For simply keeping files synced between two computers, I
| thought Dropbox was the best.
|
| Microsoft OneDrive is fuckin' awful in how long it takes
| for a file on one system to be synced to another, even
| when both systems are online at the same time. It also
| has a habit of completely pausing syncing entirely if it
| reaches a file it can't read (such as a lock file).
|
| Google Drive works well, but I find its desktop client to
| be resource-heavy, especially on startup. I like its
| integration with my Android, though.
| tehbeard wrote:
| Dropbox was successful.
|
| Its current financial state is more a case of bigger
| vendors bundling a good enough alternative with their
| products AND dropbox not adding much beyond "easy to use";
| than HN insight of "lol just rsync/bash/perl instead" being
| right all along.
| chx wrote:
| As an aside: this is exactly what tech bros do not get about
| the AirTags when we try to get the message across about how
| bad they are for stalking. Every time I try to bring this up,
| I am told that Tile, GPS trackers, Samsung I-do-not-even-
| know-what already exists. _Who cares_ -- the AirTags work,
| alas they work exceptionally well (precision and battery life
| wise especially), easily accessible, their existence easily
| discoverable. They are _devastating_ in this field. Problem
| is, vulnerable people will use public transit where it 's
| practically guaranteed within a ten meter radius there _will_
| be an iPhone, especially so in North America where the iPhone
| is so prevalent. Meanwhile, the victim might not have an
| iPhone, just some scuffed Android 'cos that's all they can
| afford. That Apple released (or didn't recall) them is a
| blow, that Congress didn't ban them is not really because
| it's not like we expect Congress to be functional, to protect
| poor people especially women. But watch a stalking case
| involving one going bad (= rape, murder) in, say, Germany and
| then watch the EU bringing down the banhammmer.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| I don't want to live in a world full of objects that can't
| be misused. Maybe you do.
| allisdust wrote:
| There are cheap trackers from aliexpress that can be used
| in place of airtags. Most include GPS and use mobile
| internet for sending location updates. May be the airtags
| made tech based stalking more popular but will it reverse
| just because Apple takes it back. Also its not like finding
| where someone lives is a particularly difficult task given
| the ridiculous amount of information there is online. And
| as for the public transit example, may be all they have to
| do is wait till the victim gets down the from the bus to
| find out where they live ? (I mean it is public transit
| after all).
| shard wrote:
| The caveat is that in the general population, I would
| expect that there are vastly more people who can figure
| out how to configure a AirTag versus buy and configure a
| tracker off of AliExpress, similar to how the graphical
| user interface enabled vastly more users than the command
| line.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Dropbox was a _different_ tech from FTP /Samba/whatever.
|
| This one, it's not the first VM on smartphones at all.
| Running a desktop OS is possible for years with comparable
| solutions. What makes this different from Samsung's DeX, for
| example?
| j16sdiz wrote:
| This can run windows application. DeX is ChromeOS-like
| squiffsquiff wrote:
| It's a formal capability of the device and a design goal- see
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/11/android-12-the-ars-t...
|
| Private Compute Core--Running AI code in a virtual machine?
| sneak wrote:
| I'm looking forward to the future we have envisioned for a long
| time, where you carry your main computer around with you and
| simply drop it into a standardized i/o dock when you sit at a
| desk and it runs the big high res displays and accepts
| keyboard/mouse input, and you use it like a phone the rest of the
| time. (Basically, a phone that is also a laptop replacement - I
| know there are dockable phones now that can run a monitor and
| kb/mouse, but they're not really "laptop replacement" level.)
|
| I could even imagine such a system having two different CPUs (or,
| more likely, different cpu performance cores in a single package)
| that power up/down based on wired power availability, basically
| just automatically getting many times faster when connected to
| power and not having to conserve juice on battery. Storage and
| memory are already fairly low power these days, and tiny. Mobile
| (i.e. handheld) GPUs are now powerful/efficient enough to run
| high-res handheld displays with all day battery life, which while
| probably not 4k gaming level, are more than enough to run a
| multimonitor desktop setup when not gaming, especially if you
| make the quite safe assumption that they'll have wall power to
| crank up the GPU whenever asked to run external displays.
|
| I'm really excited about mobile computing over the next ten
| years. The Nintendo Switch and M1 iPad Pro are little glimpses
| into this future. I look forward to replacing the dozen computers
| in my lab with a single handheld device that can simultaneously
| virtualize many of them and conveniently multiplex several big
| displays between them, and come with me in my pocket when I
| leave.
| goodpoint wrote:
| PinePhone does that.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Even cheap commercial phones are far more powerful though. I
| have a pinephone because I want a linux native phone, but
| it's not really useable still as a phone; it works ok as a
| very low powered Linux system though.
| NotPractical wrote:
| This use case would be possible if Google didn't explicitly
| disable USB-C video output:
| https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/11/03/pixel-4-has-usb-vid...
|
| (As far as I'm aware, they still do this on Pixel 6.)
|
| I already use my laptop as a desktop when I'm at home by
| connecting it to a USB-C hub, which in turn connects it to my
| monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc. I think the smartphone as a
| "single device which can be used for everything" is a cool
| concept and definitely possible considering how powerful modern
| smartphones are. The limitation is software.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| This idea is cool, but I already have a seamless experience
| of moving to different devices through my day and having
| access to everything I need.
|
| It is stuff like O365, Github, OneDrive, AWS etc that enable
| that. No plugging in, no reconfiguring devices. Moving
| between windows 11, android and debian everything I want is
| right there.
|
| I can't see the advantage, yet, of trying to consoldate down
| to one device.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| You wouldn't even _need_ centralized services to do this
| properly. Just bring back the old "My Briefcase" UI for
| device syncing, now additionally backed by a git repository
| for history, "fork" and "merge" support.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| We already had that, e.g. maru OS, ubuntu touch, Linux on Dex,
| whatever windows called their version, ... . It pretty much
| flopped.
|
| So it is "the future" in the same way 3D TVs were: Much hype
| and then kinda neat, but not great.
| 72deluxe wrote:
| And I even used a Motorola Atrix with the Lapdock - that was
| underpowered and disappointing too. Great idea for the time
| but a few years too early.
|
| The hardware was nice though.
| wolpoli wrote:
| In a perfect world, it would work great. A world where hotels
| and workplaces have available phone docking stations that
| allow the travelling business people to plug their phones in,
| and their phones boot up an OS where we could have access to
| the full power of our personal computers on the provided
| monitors/keyboard/mouse.
|
| The world doesn't exist. And it's not that much more
| expensive for the workplace to add the computer, and it's
| much more convenient to just carry our own ultraportable
| laptops so that we could work at coffee shops and on the
| planes.
|
| But perhaps there is an use case out for parents with
| multiple kids who don't want to use low-powered or hand-me-
| down computers...
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| > have available phone docking stations
|
| For that you want something that is ubiquitous anyways and
| works with everything. For samsung that was HDMI and usb
| (kinda works, but too many cables) a few years ago and
| nowadays is just a single usb c cable. Works with laptops,
| tablets and phones.
|
| Counter question: Why aren't docking stations for laptops
| common in hotels/coffee shops/wherever? Or am just not
| staying in the "right" hotels? To me it just seems that the
| demand is pretty tiny.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > Counter question: Why aren't docking stations for
| laptops common in hotels/coffee shops/wherever? Or am
| just not staying in the "right" hotels? To me it just
| seems that the demand is pretty tiny.
|
| Well, there is an attack called the "evil maid" attack.
| This attack can happen whenever your hardware is
| unattended for some period of time. A hotel where maids
| enter the room every day unattended is quite literally
| the scenario for this attack. Imagine the surface area
| for attack, where a dock gets modified, then an
| unsuspecting user plugs into the dock.
|
| Not only is the demand tiny, but the liability is
| incredibly high for hotels.
| pinephoneguy wrote:
| I've had this for a year and a half with a PinePhone. I just
| don't use the docking ability that much because:
|
| 1) Forwarding X11 to a desktop is easier (and all the apps run
| on X anyway)
|
| 2) Since it's just Linux all the apps can run on a desktop just
| like the phone, all my stuff is synced with git or rsync, and
| if there's something I need outside the usual folders it's just
| an scp away. There's absolutely no reason to use one particular
| machine over the other other than form factor and computing
| resources.
|
| It just makes a lot of sense to have a decent desktop
| permanently plugged in that you can use without any hassle.
| Devices like that will kill laptops though, I know it did for
| me. Of course I don't think this will happen with Android.
| Google is _way_ too greedy and they'll find a way to make it
| unusable.
| sneak wrote:
| My laptop has more than 20x the memory of the PinePhone's
| maximum, and can run 3x external 4K displays, so the
| PinePhone would not even remotely approximate laptop-
| replacement level for me.
|
| The hardware in mobile phones needs to improve substantially
| for the scenario I described to be practical; there's no
| hardware that supports it today, but the software in TFA is a
| step in the direction.
| reshie wrote:
| have to also figure out cooling at that level as well. hell
| even my laptop can get pretty hot. its definitely is a good
| step in that direction though.
| lmm wrote:
| My experience with a Surface Book (which I use in at least 3
| different ways - as a tablet, as a laptop, and connected to a
| monitor/keyboard/etc. on my desk via Surface Dock) makes me
| think that's coming eventually, but it'll take longer than you
| think:
|
| - External GPUs are still pretty bad
|
| - Tablets with cellular connectivity are if anything less well
| supported than before. I think this is mainly because carriers
| aren't really supporting the idea of one person/account having
| multiple "phones". Smartwatches have the same problem - I
| remember going to a Samsung store and they were showing off a
| smartwatch that had its own SIM card and cellular modem, but
| the staff couldn't tell me what kind of phone contract you had
| to have to make it work
|
| - Small devices still mean a noticeable compromise in power.
| I've tried using Samsung Dex as well and it's... ok, but
| appreciably worse than even a netbook, even if on paper the
| processor/memory/etc. ought to be catching up. Laptop as
| primary computer only really took off once you genuinely
| couldn't notice any performance disadvantage compared to a
| desktop, at least in my friend group; I think it'll be the same
| with tablet and (eventually) phone/watch/ring form factors
| izacus wrote:
| > Smartwatches have the same problem - I remember going to a
| Samsung store and they were showing off a smartwatch that had
| its own SIM card and cellular modem, but the staff couldn't
| tell me what kind of phone contract you had to have to make
| it work
|
| I might be missing something about cultural differences
| but... why would you expect an electronics store to tell you
| what kind of plans your telco has?
|
| Here in Switzerland pretty much every telco offers an
| additional SIM for tablets and watches, but you need to talk
| to the mobile operator not the electronics store ^^
| NavinF wrote:
| Most smart watches don't have a physical SIM card slot
| since that would be way too big. The software used to load
| an eSIM onto the watch often has a whitelist for carriers.
|
| Another issue is that both the watch and the phone need to
| share a phone number if you want to leave your phone at
| home and answer calls and receive SMS on the watch. This
| isn't standardized and only works with each watch's
| supported carriers.
| pinephoneguy wrote:
| The solution to the SMS problem is to use VOIP. I
| personally very much like JMP.chat.
| NavinF wrote:
| That would be ideal, but VOIP numbers are blocked in many
| situations. Most 2fa providers and bank transaction
| verification comes to mind.
| pinephoneguy wrote:
| >Most 2fa IME: banks and such are fine with it. Coinbase
| definitely works.
| lmm wrote:
| I'd expect the person selling me a product to be able to
| tell me what I need to use the product. Like if I was
| buying a car that runs off LPG or something, I'd expect the
| salesperson to be able to tell me where I can buy that fuel
| and roughly how much it costs, even if the car company
| doesn't actually sell it themselves.
| vinay427 wrote:
| Many of those telco plans in Switzerland that just add a
| data eSIM don't actually work with something like an Apple
| Watch, which is why I assume the GP asked at the store. At
| least the Apple Watch requires a mobile network to offer a
| special shared-number add-on and support Apple's GUI for
| provisioning this plan with an eSIM on the watch.
| Unfortunately, this usually means sticking with more
| expensive first-party networks rather than MVNOs and paying
| whatever fees they require.
|
| It's quite possible the Samsung watches don't rely on this
| system, but I'm not sure and may have also assumed it was
| worth asking like the GP.
| usr1106 wrote:
| I guess the OP was from the US. Most US providers still
| seem to live in the mental world of selling SIM-locked
| phones, they are no smooth experience for customers
| bringing their own device.
|
| Prices for just a SIM without buying a phone seem to be
| pretty high.
|
| Here selling SIM-locked phones is not even legal. In most
| European countries it is legal, but still less common than
| in the US. So operators have to serve customers not buying
| a device from them on competitive terms.
| vinay427 wrote:
| > Most US providers still seem to live in the mental
| world of selling SIM-locked phones, they are no smooth
| experience for customers bringing their own device.
|
| This was true 5-10 years ago. Nowadays, nearly every
| mobile network regularly has offers to entice users to
| bring their device from a different network in exchange
| for a cheaper monthly plan or similar.
| rale00 wrote:
| > Tablets with cellular connectivity are if anything less
| well supported than before.
|
| Not my experience. I'm sure it depends a bit on your carrier,
| but on T-Mobile it was easy to order a data sim for a tablet
| from their website. Setting up a smart watch was even easier
| with eSIM, it just sets up everything for you when you pair
| with your phone.
| usr1106 wrote:
| You seem to be talking about the US. T-Mobile seems to be
| the only operator not having custom firmware for modems.
| Maybe a small remainder of the European influence in the
| company. In Europe national and international
| interoperability between any SIM and device (1) has been a
| thing since 1992 when GSM came. In the US operator business
| models were based on technical incompatibility and complete
| lock-in for decades.
|
| (1) SIM locks exist in some countries. But they are
| commercial practices, not technical incompatibility.
| vinay427 wrote:
| I don't see how the history of GSM is very pertinent to
| the present scenario. At least in the last several years
| I've used phones from Europe or Asia or other networks in
| North America and they all just work with first-party or
| MVNO SIM cards in The US, from T-Mobile, AT&T, Tracfone,
| Mint, and others, assuming the device supports the
| appropriate bands (which varies a bit by region,
| especially for LTE).
| rjzzleep wrote:
| What's the problem with eGPUs? The most problematic thing I
| see is that they only work with intel CPUs for now and that
| all enclosures are tb3.
|
| Also Samsung is really good at adding features and then
| locking them down in weird ways, breaking basic features or
| just providing horrible user experience.
| lmm wrote:
| > What's the problem with eGPUs? The most problematic thing
| I see is that they only work with intel CPUs for now and
| that all enclosures are tb3.
|
| Maybe they've gotten better, but the last time I looked at
| reviews they were generally flaky (driver issues or
| incompatibilities with particular games) and had
| performance issues, to the point that a lower-model built-
| in card would often outperform a higher-model in an
| external enclosure. I'm sure they're coming eventually, but
| I haven't heard of anyone having an actually polished
| experience with one in day-to-day use yet.
| chaos_a wrote:
| Windows phone used to have this and it was called Continuum.
| Although it couldn't actually run proper desktop apps, only a
| few office apps made for it. The promo page for it is still up
| despite windows phone being dead for a few years now.
|
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/continuum
| shmde wrote:
| I feel you should get a Steam Deck then. It has almost
| everything you described you wanted in a pocket computer.
|
| 1.) Run windows/linux distro on the go.
|
| 2.) Can play graphically demanding titles in 720P.
|
| 3.) Has a dock which supports ethernet, Mouse/Keebs, HDMI out.
|
| 4.) Can have upto 4TB internal SSD with tweaks.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Then I still have to carry 2 devices though. I am not very
| interested at gaming at this moment.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Isn't this the Samsung Dex experience?
| dainiusse wrote:
| Probably yes, but we haven't had a decent product like that.
| Now if it can decently run a linux distro (with external
| display, etc) I might ditch my iPhone....
| izacus wrote:
| What's not decent about Samsung DeX?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| It's also what Ubuntu Touch aimed to do. Not sure if that's a
| use case that UBports still tackles, though.
| MrYellowP wrote:
| Except that you will not be able to own a "main computer". It
| will be rented. And it also will be nothing more than a
| slightly less stupid terminal connecting into a cloud which
| offers you to rent the software you want to use, because you
| can't actually install your own thanks to everything being
| locked down behind VMs preventing the execution of unsigned
| code.
|
| Want to execute your own code? Fine! _Buy a license!_
|
| That's what you're looking forward to.
| fsflover wrote:
| There are companies which provide the freedom, e.g. Purism
| Librem 5.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Too bad that it is almost impossible to actually purchase
| one.
| fsflover wrote:
| Hopefully the CPUs will be available soon.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Now I wonder, if this is also possible on Pixel 5's SoC too.
| selimnairb wrote:
| Apple needs to open up is newish virtualization framework on
| iPadOS. The M1 iPad Pros with Magic Keyboard are great, but
| basically useless for development work. I want to use mine as a
| separate, stripped down environment to learn new technologies in.
| The only way I have found is to use it as an SSH terminal.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I don't disagree with you, I have a new iPad 13 Pro and a three
| year old iPad 11 Pro that would be great to have better dev
| tools on. Pythonista and Juno are fairly good for Python
| development, LispPad is a nice Scheme dev environment, Raskell
| used to be pretty good for Haskell but no longer runs or is
| supported, etc.
|
| I have a new M1 MacBook Pro with a large monitor for
| programming, but since I usually write using an iPad, having
| first class development tools for all popular langauges would
| be very nice.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > The M1 iPad Pros with Magic Keyboard are great, but basically
| useless for development work.
|
| I think that's the point.
|
| There's a nontrivial % of Mac Mini / MacBook / iMac sales
| entirely because of the need to have Mac to publish anything,
| even PhoneGap/Cordova projects and Safari Extensions to the
| Apple App Store.
| selimnairb wrote:
| I already have a MBP for that. I want something with no/less
| windows and less distractions so that I can learn in a
| stripped down environment. Also, an iPad Pro+Magic Keyboard
| costs as much or more than many/most MacBook Airs.
| hughrr wrote:
| I'm not sure why you'd want to use it as a development device
| when there is a not much heavier MacBook Air available with the
| same brain in it. I actually ran from September 2021 to January
| 2022 with just my iPad Pro as a computer for all personal
| tasks, which include programming, and decided that I was
| artificially limiting what I was doing for the sake of a
| minimalist ideal. iOS is just not the right tool for the job.
|
| Each Apple device has a very nice overlapping niche and a lot
| of consistency between them but some devices are intentionally
| not designed to do some tasks. iOS is fine for non power user
| tasks and simple automation but nothing more. For 80% of what I
| do that is fine so I usually go to the iPad first always. But
| if I want to sit down and do full on keyboard based
| productivity it's the MBP every time.
|
| The iPad Pro has a very special place in my heart though. It's
| the most reliable and efficient machine and with the Apple
| Pencil it's a game changer. I love to take it with me when I go
| out for a weekend and will sit in a hotel, do spreadsheet,
| organise tasks, do some drawing, watch some streams, casual
| messaging and emails and even video and photo editing. But not
| programming!
| mhh__ wrote:
| Because I already own an iPad
| pjmlp wrote:
| An idea that is very bad explored is using handwriting for
| programming.
|
| Naturally it is somehow still a PhD topic, but imagine using
| Swift playgrounds with the pencil as if it was paper
| notebook.
| rodgerd wrote:
| A mentor of mine got her start working with a Big Giant
| Brain as his assistant - he only programmed by reading
| fanfold paper output and writing his code down. She would
| type it up, run it, and then bring the output back for him
| to analyse.
|
| I can imagine such a person finding this idea gratifying,
| albeit perhaps too much of a REPL for his tastes.
| pjmlp wrote:
| When I started at technical school writing pseudo code in
| paper before coding into a 512 KB PC with 8" floppies was
| common, like doing diagrams of data structures, so maybe
| I am biased.
| emsy wrote:
| 5 people on earth would dominate humanity with handwritten
| APL.
| hughrr wrote:
| That would be horrible. My handwriting is terrible.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Hence why it is still a PhD issue, however I think it
| would be quite cool instead of trying always to fit a
| keyboard into portable screens.
| emsy wrote:
| That's a circular explanation. The iPad isn't suitable for
| programming because it isn't suitable for programming. The
| limitation is completely arbitrary because Apple thinks they
| can tell users what they should use their devices for. It's
| "Your holding it wrong" applied to software.
| hughrr wrote:
| Actually that's not it. It's not suitable because of the
| modality, window management and state and data management
| concepts which are all compromises required for high
| efficiency touch driven mobile devices.
| _ph_ wrote:
| First of all, just having a full-blown shell with a text
| terminal would make the iPad much more usefull for small
| programming tasks. Then I can't see a reason why it
| couldn't run an X or Wayland desktop full-screen in a VM
| app, providing a standard GUI desktop just inside that
| app. It would make an iPad Pro much more useful when you
| can't justify to buy or just bring a dedicated laptop.
| hughrr wrote:
| Macbook air isn't a lot larger or heavier, especially
| when you add a keyboard case to it. In fact my MBA weighs
| less than my MBP with the logitech case on it.
| alexvoda wrote:
| 1. People already use remote desktop software in order to
| interact with desktop OSs from the iPad.
|
| 2. The iPad Pro already has keyboard and mouse support
|
| 3. The iPad Pro is already powerfull enough to run
| virtual machines via emulation, see UTM
|
| 4. The formfactor is already prooven by the success of
| Microsoft Surface and copies.
|
| 5. The virtualization APIs created by Apple already exist
|
| This is just a matter of Apple having an enforced
| monopoly on app distribution and using that power to
| dictate what you should be able to use each device for.
| hughrr wrote:
| 1. Yes. Remotely
|
| 2. Sort of. It has good keyboard support and completely
| different mouse support to most platforms.
|
| 3. It probably isn't within the thermal envelope
| specified and the storage available.
|
| 4. Surface is horrible so I'm not sure why that's
| comparable.
|
| 5. Yes they do and are exposed by macOS only.
|
| I agree with apple. One of the reason iPads are so damn
| good is that they put some constraints on them to stop
| people doing horrible things. Virtualisation is one of
| those horrible things.
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| > Surface is horrible so I'm not sure why that's
| comparable.
|
| The Surface Go with type cover is an amazing janky
| device. It weighs almost nothing and has the CPU power to
| match, but I can toss it in my backpack and have a
| lightweight dev environment with me all the time.
|
| It's great _because_ it 's has no software constraints,
| despite all the hardware compromises. I'd ditch it in a
| second if the iPad could run full macOS.
| emsy wrote:
| >I agree with apple. One of the reason iPads are so damn
| good is that they put some constraints on them to stop
| people doing horrible things. Virtualisation is one of
| those horrible things.
|
| The iPhone was originally planned not to have any apps. I
| guess that would've been even better (and less horrible)?
| hughrr wrote:
| No there's a happy medium in the middle. They took the
| approach of starting with a bowl and adding holes as
| required rather than start with a sieve and try and fill
| all the bad holes up.
| alexvoda wrote:
| 1. I matters not that it is remotely. Wether remotely or
| as a local VM, it prooves that your claim that "It's not
| suitable because of the modality, window management and
| state and data management concepts which are all
| compromises required for high efficiency touch driven
| mobile devices." is FALSE.
|
| 2. A keyboard is a keyboard and a mouse is a mouse.
| Remotely or inside a VM they behave as you expect the
| remote/guest to behave.
|
| 3. Bullshit, the Macbook Air has the same thermal
| envelope
|
| 4. Horrible or not, it prooves the formfactor is viable
| and desired by people.
|
| 5. An arbitrary decision designed to protect market
| segmentation.
|
| That is a rather emotional response. What did the
| horrible virtualization ever do to you?
| hughrr wrote:
| 1. It's pretty terrible doing it remotely as well. I ran
| off iOS for a whole three months only for personal stuff.
| It's wearing gloves when you don't have to.
|
| 2. Yes and no. It uses finger emulation on iOS. There is
| precision control if you need it but the UI is designed
| for fingers not pointers and switching between one and
| the other is jarring to say the least.
|
| 3. No it doesn't. I have one. The MBA has a much lower
| thermal resistance than the iPad Pro does and doesn't
| even get remotely as hot.
|
| 4. It proves it was sold to people, not that it is
| desirable for any particular tasks. You can't draw than
| conclusion without more data which you have not
| presented.
|
| 5. Not at all.
|
| As for virtualization it is a pretty bad solution for
| most problem domains. It adds overhead, inefficiency,
| latency. At that point it is illogical to use it for
| devices which require low overhead, efficiency and low
| latency i.e. most mobile devices out there. Taking the
| initial post into consideration, in what insane world
| does it even make sense to run a full windows stack on a
| mobile device when the only thing that matters is the
| applications?
|
| It's an insane proposition really. I don't do it on any
| laptops either. Same set of compromises. It barely even
| makes sense in the cloud either where we end up gaining
| cost and reduction in performance. Containers are as far
| as virtualization should go at this point.
| cma wrote:
| The funny thing is you can code redistributable stuff on
| iPad/iphone, just only within Roblox who made a special
| deal with Apple to avoid the normal dev license cost and
| Mac requirement, to enable child-labor entreprenuerers
| and where the cut is more like 70% instead of 30%.
| hughrr wrote:
| This is hilarious and spot on.
| emsy wrote:
| Of course you're going to get a different experience than
| on a desktop OS, and you're not going to satisfy every
| programming environment. But between "virtually none" and
| "every" there is a huge space that iOS would be able to
| fill with its current OS design. I'd argue that a lot of
| developers could do their job on the iPad, if there was
| VS Code available for it. Right now this isn't even
| possible, because alternative browser engines aren't
| allowed on iOS. Why not allow the software on the device?
| There's no need to change the OS in the slightest. It's
| easy to dismiss the concept, when it hasn't even had the
| chance to prove itself.
| hughrr wrote:
| You can actually build code in swift playgrounds on iOS.
| emsy wrote:
| That's why I wrote "virtually". Others suggested
| virtualization, which I think would be a good tradeoff
| that doesn't require usability changes to the underlying
| OS (and would finally put the processor to good use).
| Other than that, the inability to code on iOS is due to
| artificial gatekeeping by Apple, not due to design
| decisions. There are many ways coding (and probably other
| types of apps!) on iOS would be possible, if it wasn't
| for Apple.
| MrYellowP wrote:
| > But why did Google enable virtualization in Android?
|
| They had no idea it was for locking things down. Sure, it allows
| running VMs, but that doesn't change anything about it.
|
| "I'll force A on you, but you'll get B so don't be mad."
|
| ... but this only really applies on the surface. Locking things
| down is the road forward in the industry anyway. That's why the
| Desktop OS war is long over, too. Everything will, eventually,
| run on everything.
|
| We're being sold digital lockdowns as features which supposedly
| provide us with more freedom. In the end we'll have downloadable
| programs we'll rent to use, which run in a cut-for-the-purpose
| container, without any ability to tinker, hack, or modify. Rent
| or die. Don't want any of this? Fine, but you're locked out of
| the eco-system. Have fun enjoying what's left for you to do/use.
|
| I wish more people knew what's coming. I don't know why they
| don't. I'm sure the information is out there, but apparently
| nobody is talking about it, thus nobody knows about it. My guess
| is simply that it wouldn't actually be particularly popular if
| people actually understood that they're just being misled.
|
| For those rolling their eyes, considering that nowadays it's the
| norm to sell _safety /security_ as beneficial, because of
| _reasons based on fear_.
|
| Benjamin Franklin would probably be really angry about how
| normalized it has become to give up liberties for some false
| sense of security.
|
| The unintentionally worst people are the ones who think this is
| all a great idea. Because security. Fact of the matter is,
| though, that if people had to actually know and understand what
| they're using and doing, we'd not be in the mess we are today.
|
| What I mean by that is that the world apparently has this deep
| issue with fear of pretty much everything and humanity tries hard
| to make the fears less worse instead of getting rid of them by
| using education and getting rid of the fearmongers.
|
| This reminds me of my friend. He insists on having his AV and
| cookie blocker running. He thinks that's super important. Every
| new site he manually blocks everything. This same guy also
| insists on continuously installing all kinds of stuff, and after
| just two months his new notebook took 20 seconds to boot. When he
| got it, it were two.
|
| The worst part about this is that he's so brainwashed into
| believing that he really needs this, despite me being living
| evidence that he doesn't, that there is actually no way of
| educating him. The fear machine has dug too hard into him and,
| unless they stop, there's actually no way of getting rid of it.
|
| Not gonna lie, I actually think this is amazing. On one hand he's
| extremely cautious about security, which is not unreasonable per
| se, on the other hand he installs all kinds of shit because he's
| an idiot who doesn't actually know what he's doing.
|
| He's just doing what he's being told to do.
|
| Amazing.
| exikyut wrote:
| > _Benjamin Franklin would probably be really angry about how
| normalized it has become to give up liberties for some false
| sense of security._
|
| I honestly think it's even worse than that, because the status
| quo has made it so we don't even have the courtesy of knowing
| we're giving up as much as we are.
|
| IMHO, the substance quantity of what is being lost is on the
| order of an entire _language_. "Privacy" means something
| totally different today than what it used to :(, and we've all
| but lost the very element of * _pause, consider_ * that would
| be our way back to where we used to be.
|
| I have to admit I'm looking at Europe with a bit of a wobbly
| mentality these days; the EU is not a panacea but the GDPR has
| had some really interesting ramifications, and France's
| position to ban GA recently (if that's what it actually was)
| was... well it'll be interesting to see how that goes down...
|
| ---
|
| > _The unintentionally worst people are the ones who think this
| is all a great idea. Because security. Fact of the matter is,
| though, that if people had to actually know and understand what
| they 're using and doing, we'd not be in the mess we are
| today._
|
| I wrote something a while back about end-to-end encryption that
| also touches on the danger of cargo-culting a "yay! security!
| awesome"-by-default ideology:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25522220
|
| It's not really a first-class substantial "oooh, _thing_ "
| perspective, more just unimpressed grumbling about the status
| quo. But it's a bit of anecdata that does agree with your
| position.
|
| ---
|
| > _This reminds me of my friend. He insists on having his AV
| and cookie blocker running. He thinks that 's super important.
| Every new site he manually blocks everything. This same guy
| also insists on continuously installing all kinds of stuff, and
| after just two months his new notebook took 20 seconds to boot.
| When he got it, it were two._
|
| (This sort of thing is really interesting to me but I'm
| _really_ bad at talking about it concisely. Apologies.)
|
| A contributory perspective:
|
| The moment I saw " _Every new site he manually blocks
| everything._ " I immediately jumped to a mental reference point
| that might be called the "manual drive fallacy". If you give
| someone a bunch of knobs and settings to tweak, and the knobs
| and settings induce ideological changes that are not
| mechanically/concretely measurable, and all this happens within
| the context of "control" and "freedom"... in certain people, I
| think the brain can start going very very loopy, in a very
| specific way. It never gets into a state that would ever be
| classified as "unhinged", but it's like the brain "discovers"
| this alternate pathway that satisfies both our intrinsic desire
| for control while short-circuiting past the "proof of work"
| feedback loops of self-reflection, critical thinking,
| engagement in depth, etc that keeps that control harmonically
| resonant with its environment, in that unexplainable way that
| makes the influence meaningfully productive at both the micro
| and macro scale.
|
| It's kind of like if bikeshedding were put in an infinite
| feedback loop and left indefinitely. Stuff just folds in on
| itself. Perpetual motion machine meets black hole. Meep.
|
| I call this a "manual drive fallacy" because I personally
| equate the mindset you describe with having a pathological
| affection for "manual drive" processes.
|
| I read a while back that the Air Force crashes many more UAVs
| and drones than the Army and Navy do (or at least they did a
| little while back) because the latter depend very heavily on
| autopilot, whereas the incumbent Air Force has always justified
| its existence by performing those processes manually. At the
| micro scale both approaches make sense - the Air Force exists
| predominantly to train amazing pilots, who are going to make
| mistakes; the Army/Navy exist to defend land and sea, and need
| unspecialized local air superiority as part of their own bigger
| pictures. Insights like "computers are actually way better
| pilots than humans" can only emerge when when a macro scale
| focus is introduced that is able to laterally make comparisons
| across verticals while maintaining sight of a bigger picture.
| (Reproducibly coordinating such focuses is of course the
| billion dollar question...)
|
| In a similar sort of way I've come to think that there are a
| similar organization of internal processes and balances that
| happen in the individual brain that influence the "functional
| level" or "watermark" of insightful impact and control a given
| human can have. We all fundamentally want to control, and
| organize, and achieve cohesion. But the underlying mechanics we
| use to achieve that can involuntarily affect how efficient we
| can be overall. If mental functioning is very high, these
| mechanics can integrate a _lot_ of input, and our control
| /organization/cohesion will be very efficient, cohesive, and
| resonant. If mental functioning is low, significantly less
| input can be integrated into executive output, and the result
| will be very fragmented and micromanaged.
|
| A person that can only model the effects of control in their
| environment to a low level may constantly be in a state of
| disorientation as they continually send their mental models of
| their environment back to the drawing board to start again as
| their attempts to summarize the world around them do not
| integrate sufficient substance to be useful. I'm reminded of
| mental health advice that generally recommends to patiently
| remind a person having a panic attack about their environment
| and what's going on around them, in the hope this encourages
| distraction from painful mental feedback loops.
|
| I wonder if there's a correlation between fragmented
| integration and an obsession with mechanical, concrete, "manual
| drive" processes and procedures. In much the same way there are
| unexplored knock-on effects from poor social engagement, I
| think a similar magnitude of impact may result from poor
| executive engagement, and perhaps one of those effects is a
| strong affection for tinkering with stuff that has things you
| can open and shut at a surface or aesthetic level.
|
| Broadly speaking, creative coordination almost seems like a
| human mental attribute or quality that we imbue into the things
| we create. We design things according to some intrinsic sense
| we don't even realize we're following half the time as we
| simply concentrate on getting stuff done. _Good_ design -
| perhaps the epitome of "10x senior engineering" we all strive
| to reach for - is to recognize the need to weave a sort of
| structured permeability into the things our ambition creates,
| so our creations can bend and stretch with the wind, and let
| others' influence in. It's really sad to see this dynamic fall
| apart. There really seems to be something critical about our
| brains' ability to "slice and dice" the input we receive, and
| the functioning of that underlying capacity is what sets the
| pace.
|
| I've seen a couple of really bad Windows 9x/XP simulators out
| there that barely let you do anything beyond opening the Start
| menu. I've long noodled over the idea that the core motivation
| driving these sorts of projects stems from a sort of focus-
| affinity that sadly bottoms out at that predominantly
| aesthetic, surface-depth level of coordination, potentially
| coupled with nostalgia from a time when these executive
| handicaps had less of a perceived impact. Maybe the person
| wants to remember that time, but emotional processing issues
| make it hard to recall the memory with sufficient fidelity to
| achieve nostalgic closure, and some frustrated consideration
| about what might nip this in the bud leads to the conclusion
| that remaking Windows might fix the problem (coming solely from
| a surface or aesthetic position - not even _remotely_ close to
| considering the kernel design or hardware targets). And then
| maybe the person realizes soon after commencing the project
| that even just cloning the UI is too much work and will not
| help them get closer to closure, and they soon give up.
|
| I think everyone wants to express their coordinational capacity
| and style; and because the brain's comprehension cannot extend
| beyond its own limits, this capacity and style is never
| intrinsically wrong.
|
| As a form of human expression and communication, I think
| coordination's significance is woefully undocumented. We imbue
| how we see the world, and the fidelity of the mesh we use to
| integrate our perceptions, into how we express coordination.
|
| (Incidentally, accomplishing this in the digital realm, where
| we have absolutely nothing to cue off of ("here's the
| instruction set manual for your 5GHz calculator"), making the
| inventions all around us the byproduct of an ideological
| collective sensory deprivation tank: we cue off of our brains.
| This is both terrifying and inordinately interesting IMO.)
|
| ---
|
| > _The worst part about this is that he 's so brainwashed into
| believing that he really needs this, despite me being living
| evidence that he doesn't, that there is actually no way of
| educating him. The fear machine has dug too hard into him and,
| unless they stop, there's actually no way of getting rid of
| it._
|
| Alternative possible perspective (I could be wrong): you
| operate and exist outside of the scope of his cognizance of
| control. You don't exist. You're like the syllables of a brand
| name or jingle his brain just memoizes without considering.
|
| > _Not gonna lie, I actually think this is amazing. On one hand
| he 's extremely cautious about security, which is not
| unreasonable per se, on the other hand he installs all kinds of
| shit because he's an idiot who doesn't actually know what he's
| doing._
|
| (Continuing above theme) Or there just might be some totally
| concidental "miraculous" overlap between his actions and best
| practice :( and his perception of security might be uselessly
| broken.
|
| > _He 's just doing what he's being told to do._
|
| I actually agree here, with the caveat that "understanding is
| in the eye of the beholder" :v
| r3muxd wrote:
| This is why Microsoft is pushing the TPM so hard as well.
| You'll own nothing, and you'll be happy.
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| It's been pretty clearly established over the last 13 years
| that TPM isn't some evil plot to prevent ~2% of users from
| installing Linux. Even hardcore free software distros like
| Debian aren't pushing this narrative anymore.
|
| https://wiki.debian.org/SecureBoot
| kdrag0n wrote:
| I've also uploaded videos of Windows 11 in action:
|
| Booting, logging in, simple usage:
| https://twitter.com/kdrag0n/status/1493088558676017152
|
| Playing Doom (via x86 emulation):
| https://twitter.com/kdrag0n/status/1493089098944237568
|
| And Linux:
|
| Booting various distros:
| https://twitter.com/kdrag0n/status/1492832966640222210
|
| Compiling Linux 5.17-rc3 allnoconfig for arm64, on Arch:
| https://twitter.com/kdrag0n/status/1492833078410047488
| scoutt wrote:
| Partly joke, partly true... the question that really matters
| for every AOSP developer out there: how much time did it take
| to _" make clean/make dist"_?
|
| I'm still working with Android 11 and compile times are driving
| me insane. The ritual to compile, pack and flash _super.img_
| into the device is absurd.
|
| Do you know if there is any improvement on that side?
| kdrag0n wrote:
| New versions of Android aren't open-source until their stable
| release, so I don't know. I've been running these VMs on the
| stock ROM.
|
| I don't feel like incremental AOSP builds are _that_ slow,
| and I don 't think it's changed much from Android 11 to 12.
| It's highly dependent on good hardware though, and it
| probably also helps that I flash individual partition images
| instead of building dist or target-files.
| VVVExobyte wrote:
| Dude, this is awesome! Huge kudos to you!
| WithinReason wrote:
| I was wondering why Windows is not on more ARM devices since
| Windows on ARM exists and Windows was ported manually to so
| many ARM devices now (Raspberry Pi for example). Turns out
| Qualcomm has an exclusivity deal for Windows on Arm licenses
| (which might soon expire).
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/23/22798231/microsoft-qualc...
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| You might want to check out the Renegade Project:
| https://github.com/edk2-porting
| ignoramous wrote:
| Thanks. Have you written up a long-form post on how you went
| about doing this?
|
| I am also excited to see what booting multiple OSes means for
| the ecosystem around phh's (treble) builds, too.
| kdrag0n wrote:
| Possibly, I might write a post and/or release tools to do it
| in the future.
| exikyut wrote:
| Now that Windows 11 has 32- and 64-bit x86 emulation this has
| the potential to do some interesting things in the long tail of
| the market.
|
| I honestly wonder if there's a monetary opportunity here?
|
| (This used to read a little differently
| (https://i.imgur.com/yp95XxR.png - thought it would be funny)
| but it quickly became apparent some editing was in order. This
| comment will likely remain stuck at the bottom of this
| subthread... woops.)
| exikyut wrote:
| Unexpected update: the parent comment has been downvoted
| _further_ since being edited. I am officially lost.
| ourmandave wrote:
| Does Doom have it's own ISO Committee yet?
|
| Because I swear _Does It Run Doom?_ is becoming a requirement
| checkbox for any new project.
| iqanq wrote:
| Sure, the standard is called ISO 666.
| dakra wrote:
| There is a popular subreddit for it:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/itrunsdoom/
| exikyut wrote:
| Be careful. Down this path lies "the ISO is asking us to
| formally specify the mechanics of DOOM" and then the only
| resulting end game of _that_ is "we got DOOM running on the
| ISO committee!"
|
| Naturally I agree with you though. (Because we need DOOM
| running on more platforms~)
|
| And I'd suggest Bad Apple also needs similar treatment.
| boondaburrah wrote:
| If it's capable of representing a two-dimensional array
| where each element can have at least 2 values, we will get
| Bad Apple playing on it.
| layer8 wrote:
| Sound output would be a bonus.
| rodgerd wrote:
| Then you can't implement Doom without paying a few grand
| for a spec.
| gbil wrote:
| > they're used for things like enhancing the security of the
| kernel (or at least trying to) and running miscellaneous code
| (such as third-party code for DRM, cryptography, and other
| closed-source binaries) outside of the Android OS
|
| long shot here, does this make it more possible for production
| releases to be closer to AOSP and then run the rest on the
| hypervisor ? Also the future of project tremble, meaning better
| upgrade paths for all devices (outside of manufacturer will which
| is still the main issue) ?
| CyberShadow wrote:
| Since Android uses the Linux kernel, if you have full access to
| the device, you can already generally sideload a distribution of
| your choice onto the filesystem. The Linux userspace can run and
| coexist alongside the Android userspace. Though some applications
| may require kernel features which are not enabled in typical
| Android kernels, GPL forces manufacturers to release the kernel
| source code, which makes it fairly easy to enable more features
| and use that kernel.
|
| The advantage of this approach over running Linux in a sandbox /
| VM is that you can administer your Android device from the Linux
| side, which means that you can use your existing backup strategy
| or other automation tools. With a USB/bluetooth keyboard, it can
| also work as a small PC in your pocket.
| [deleted]
| m-p-3 wrote:
| > GPL forces manufacturers to release the kernel source code
|
| I wish that was true in the real world, looking at you Onyx.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23735962
| CyberShadow wrote:
| I found it to be true in most cases, and when it is not...
| well, we can vote with our wallet.
|
| Case in point: I had never heard about Onyx. Coincidence or
| causation?
| neatze wrote:
| By any chance, do happen to know HowTo's for configuring phone
| to run Android and Linux side by side ?
| CyberShadow wrote:
| Have a look at Linux Deploy, it is essentially an
| installation wizard and launcher.
|
| I no longer use it, and instead use Magisk startup scripts to
| start the Linux userspace, but it remains useful as an
| installer.
| tomjonesey wrote:
| kyaghmour wrote:
| One of the primary uses-cases for VMs in Android seems to be a
| desire to replace the Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs)
| permitted by things like TrustZone. There have been several
| presentations about this by Google:
|
| - LPC 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54q6RzS9BpQ&t=10862s
| and https://lpc.events/event/7/contributions/780/
|
| - KVM Forum 2020:
| https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/will...
|
| From the KVM Forum presentation: "We need a way to de-privilege
| third party code and provide a portable environment in which to
| isolate services from each other and also from the rest of
| Android."
|
| From the LPC presentation:
|
| "What do we need? We need a hypervisor that is:
|
| 1. open source
|
| 2. easy to ship and update
|
| 3. supports guest memory protection
|
| 4. trustworthy
|
| KVM as part of GKI is a very good fit with the right extensions."
| azalemeth wrote:
| > 4. trustworthy
|
| What does this _actually mean_? Trustworthy under which
| circumstances, in what security model?
|
| I'm terrified it means "unbreakable DRM in a way that is harder
| still for consumers to use or bypass" rather than "the code is
| not vulnerable to side-channel malware attacks". A _lot_ of
| this could either be brilliant -- applications can 't look at
| each other at all, unless one of a few trusted utilities such
| as screen-readers or keyboards, for example -- or utterly
| horrific from a user point of view. "Attestation" is mentioned
| in one of the end goals of that KVM Forum pdf, but it's unclear
| whether or not they mean a Qubes-like OS with the user as the
| hypervisor, or the user completely and utterly locked out of
| being the hypervisor, ever. One of these I think could be quite
| interesting -- especially without hardware attestation. One I
| think would be awful.
|
| Part of the reason I (thoroughly break) Android's security
| model and run a rooted image is to have knowledge that _I have
| control over everything_ in my device. It 's important to me
| and I worry that these efforts will ultimately take that way
| from me.
| kdrag0n wrote:
| Modern phones already have DRM running in TrustZone, even if
| you flash a custom Android build. pKVM is actually _better_
| in that regard as the DRM will be moved to a protected VM
| under Android 's control, so you could choose to disable it
| on a custom OS.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| I think development of mobile OS heads into a completely wrong
| direction. The "curation" effect of proprietary stores is only
| good for censorship and mobile OS have the most aggressive
| applications that border on malware. At least you don't have
| the browser toolbar classical systems were infected with?
|
| For productivity I don't want iron curtains between my
| applications or between application and system. Hell, it would
| actually be nice to be able to directly interface the hardware
| without all the loops.
|
| We have a deeply flawed security model for mobile OS that
| relies on dogma that won't lead to additional safety. As safety
| issue is data exfiltration and by that standard a mobile
| devices are vastly more dangerous than the average work
| station. Comes with the nature of the device to a significant
| degree, but I think mobile OS have ridden of a cliff somewhere.
|
| And now they want to push apps into a VM? Why not just buy a
| device per app at this point...
| kllrnohj wrote:
| This has nothing to do with apps. It's instead about things
| like the biometrics or DRM handling code. The stuff that
| regularly runs on its own dedicated CPU or in specialized
| sandboxes like ARM's TrustZone. This is about moving that to
| instead be in a VM on the "primary" CPU, implemented in open
| source Linux kernel code instead of who-knows-what ARM
| microcode.
|
| Or to compare against an ecosystem that has more love around
| here, imagine if everything that Apple runs on the T2 was
| instead run in a VM with an equivalent level of security.
| That's the goal.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Anybody making money off of phone apps should not be trusted,
| they can and still take every piece of data they can to
| figure out how to monetize it. I want and need phone app
| security to protect me from the companies that want me as a
| product to be sold.
| withinboredom wrote:
| I think where they are going with that is that this sounds
| suspiciously like a "people problem" and not a technical
| one though it is attempting to solve it via technology. For
| some reason desktops let software do whatever and they
| don't seem to have near as much an issue as mobile OSes.
|
| IMHO, it's the fact that there's a (basically, by default)
| a single market driven by (basically, by default) a single
| search engine to locate software. The desktop market, is
| largely NOT driven by a single market or search engine.
| With the "single market" if a malicious actor can game the
| search engine for even a day, they can install on
| (potentially) millions of devices. However, with the 'ole
| distribution model, it's much harder to game.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| > For some reason desktops let software do whatever and
| they don't seem to have near as much an issue as mobile
| OSes.
|
| I think this may be a case of rose-colored glasses. How
| many PCs were and are a complete mess because Windows
| both is a free-for-all and is (or was) the largest attack
| target? Sure, _we_ know how to keep our desktop systems
| sane, but most people don 't.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| Then you also need to look at the average persons phone.
| If you activate any network connection, it supplies the
| contents of your latest stool sample and sends it to 5
| unclosed apps at least. The data exfiltration is not
| comparable and exposure of personal information also
| extends to contacts this person has in their phone. It is
| a much more hostile environment and not really clean at
| all.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| There's reasons to be suspicious but it's also important
| to remember that mobile phones see _much_ deeper
| penetration. About 84% of the world 's population has a
| smartphone. Annually, ~1.6 billion phones are shipped vs
| 275 million PCs.
|
| With scale comes new challenges and attack vectors.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| This sounds awfully similar to Microsoft anti open source
| textbook that no one can be trusted besides them, you
| always need their platform and services between. The only
| difference is that now people are shilling Apples fake
| corpo security propaganda talking points and sadly they are
| often developers themselves.
| McWobbleston wrote:
| I've definitely been surprised by the sentiment here
| lately that iOS devices are more secure. I don't know
| enough about iOS to evaluate that claim, but my
| impression of phone security is to basically assume it's
| been unlocked by someone even if most apps are successful
| sandboxed
| kdrag0n wrote:
| Indeed, that's one of Google's official use cases:
| https://twitter.com/salt___doll/status/1492865396692586497
|
| Recently, they've also focused on using VMs to isolate parts of
| the system and apps:
| https://twitter.com/salt___doll/status/1492872311652765700
|
| Mishaal Rahman has written a detailed post about virtualization
| on Android: https://blog.esper.io/android-dessert-
| bites-5-virtualization...
| ugjka wrote:
| I hope this saves Termux
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| It's unlikely to save it, per se; it might, hopefully,
| _obsolete_ Termux for most uses (why recompiled debs when you
| can just _install Debian_?), but won 't help with Android API
| surface that Google keeps breaking (if they didn't give a
| native app raw filesystem access or let it run in the
| background, will they let a VM do so?).
| cosmaioan wrote:
| Many of the comments are from the point of view treating the
| phone as a desktop to use directly with is not very nice
| experience.
|
| I want to treat the "old" phone as a server: 8 cores , 6 GB Ram,
| UPS, plenty of storage(expandable), Low power consumption , small
| form factor, redundant network 4/5G+Wifi, has built in screen and
| "keyboard" for time when you need to do debugging.
|
| Does others experience with this kind of setup? What services are
| you running ?
| throw8932894 wrote:
| I use phone as a wifi hotspot and file server with Termux
| (sshd, ftpd). Works pretty well.
| MayeulC wrote:
| PostmarketOS gets you pretty close to this: boot alpine Linux,
| with more or less everything working. Even if the screen and/or
| GPU acceleration do not work on that phone, that would be
| plenty to replace a Raspberrypi.
|
| I've been thinking about this quite seriously, and for now I
| see a few pain points:
|
| - Some phones (looking at my daily driver, a Galaxy S4) do seem
| to allow disconnecting the battery from the charging circuit,
| which could lead to issues in the long run
|
| - Ideally, you'd want to connect a USB hub over USB OTG (wired
| Ethernet, USB storage, real keyboard). I have yet to try
| charging the phone at the same time, although I think some
| cables enable this.
| pishpash wrote:
| I/O is too bottlenecked to "serve" anything serious. It's the
| problem with most SoC including Raspberry Pi.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| What's "serious" here?
|
| Even ignoring USB 3, most servers should work fine when
| capped to 100 or 200Mbps.
| freemint wrote:
| USB 3.1 over a USB port shouldn't be a bottleneck. You just
| need an adapter that suits the need.
| pishpash wrote:
| What phones have USB 3? Almost all phones still do USB 2.
| It's not about the port (USB-C), it's what the host I/O is
| capable of.
| sirius87 wrote:
| I set up an old phone to run a torrent client (qbittorrent). It
| was a Debian 8 chroot [1] that I could ssh into.
|
| In the end, it really wasn't worth the hassle. Networking ports
| would go unresponsive when the mobile CPU on the phone would go
| into "deep sleep". The battery began expanding after a few
| months.
|
| CPU was more than capable to do the actual processing work. I/O
| with the SD card was passable.
|
| I really wish someone would invent some sort of generic battery
| adapter that could transform any device requiring a battery
| into something that can run on direct power. I really adore
| that old Sony Ericsson Xperia android device.
|
| [1] https://wiki.debian.org/ChrootOnAndroid
| cute_boi wrote:
| Till this date, I don't understand why phones don't work on
| direct power without battery. There should be some
| engineering problem...
| derkades wrote:
| It might be because of brief spikes in power draw that a
| battery usually "smoothes out" but USB power can't handle.
| For the same reason, some laptops cannot run without a
| battery (most can).
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Yup, this is it, IMO.
|
| On my OG Motorola Droid, I once tethered my laptop to it
| and downloaded a torrent.
|
| In 15 minutes, I drained 25% of the battery. IIRC, it had
| a ~2,000 mAh battery. That meant I was pulling 2 amps
| from it. This was back in 2010, when most phone chargers
| and USB ports were still only 500 mA.
|
| If I had relied on USB power, it wouldn't have been able
| to power it.
|
| Oh, and yes, the phone got incredibly hot during this
| time. I thought I was going to burn my hand when I picked
| it up.
| sirius87 wrote:
| You're likely right. Some stable power feeder does need
| to exist, but could it skip the chemical energy storage
| parts?
|
| The charge-discharge cycles needlessly put a lifespan on
| that component when I'd like to have it left on 24x7.
|
| Same for always-powered laptops. With WFH, for 1+ year
| I've used my Thinkpad as a desktop, not bothering to
| unplug when fully charged, and now the battery doesn't
| hold charge for 10+ mins.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| The answer is that phones really need a user setting to
| enable a charge limit.
|
| About 4 months after COVID hit and I started to WFH, the
| battery in my Pixel 3 started to swell because I had
| allowed it to basically live on the charger all day,
| constantly at 100% battery. Also, by that point, a 100%
| battery would only give me about 2 hours of screen time.
|
| A few months ago, I got a Pixel 6 Pro, and I'm basically
| just charging it from a weak 500 mA USB port a couple
| hours each day, keeping the battery between 50-80%. I'd
| really like to set an 80% charge limit and just forget
| about it.
| happycube wrote:
| I think some Thinkpads (P51 at least) can be set to not
| exceed 80ish%, but I don't know if that can be done from
| Linux.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| I don't think that's normal. I have an old cheap Lenovo
| from 2012 that sees 4-12 hours of active use daily. It's
| almost always plugged in without any limits on the
| battery charge (which as a result is always at 100%). The
| battery still has around 3/4 of the original capacity (it
| ran for ~4 hrs of light use back in 2012, and gives
| around 3 hours now).
| zozbot234 wrote:
| I don't think it can. UPS's store energy too, and stop
| holding charge after a while. It would be nice to bring
| back easily replaceable batteries, since they're
| basically a consumable these days.
| pooper wrote:
| > I don't think it can. UPS's store energy too, and stop
| holding charge after a while. It would be nice to bring
| back easily replaceable batteries, since they're
| basically a consumable these days.
|
| I don't know anything about how much "oomph" a dashcam
| needs as opposed to a smart phone or an uninterruptible
| power supply but I kno0w one of the bullet points in the
| marketing of the dashcam on my car was it uses a small
| capacitor as opposed to a battery and therefore it is
| safer to use it in a hot car.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Yeah, but how much can that capacitor do?
|
| I had a dash cam years ago that had a capacitor, and all
| it really was for was to make sure the camera could
| finish a write operation and close the video file
| gracefully to avoid corrupting the last segment. Cameras
| with batteries often can support recording even while the
| car is off without draining the car's battery.
|
| IMO, the solution to the battery-in-a-hot-car problem is
| to have the battery be an in-line part of the power cable
| that can be placed in the glove box, outside the direct
| sunlight, rather than building it into the camera itself.
| sandos wrote:
| Its possible to replace the battery with a DC/DC adapter, I
| did it with a Samsung tablet. It does require a "beefy"
| power supply at a an odd voltage (4.2V or so) since
| batteries can provide more current than most power
| supplies. Also required a resistor to fool the tablet into
| thinking the battery was not drained.
| prettyStandard wrote:
| Please sandos
| sirius87 wrote:
| Please manufacture at commercial scale. Consumers like me
| would be greatly indebted : )
| codetrotter wrote:
| Probably some phones do work on direct power without
| battery.
|
| But anyways in the general case the user wants the battery
| to charge when they connect their phone. Not allowing the
| phone to run without a battery will show more clearly that
| there is an issue with battery connection or battery
| itself, than if the phone would run when connected to power
| without battery.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Not allowing the phone to run without a battery will
| show more clearly that there is an issue with battery
| connection
|
| This is a non-issue since battery status (or lack
| thereof) is clearly shown in the UI. A more likely issue
| is that the battery is commonly relied on to deal with
| peaks in power draw, beyond what can be supplied via the
| USB port. This can even be an issue in many laptops.
| robotnikman wrote:
| I recall some older android devices with replaceable
| batteries did. If your battery was almost dead, you could
| plug it into a charger and swap out the battery for a
| fresh one.
| pooper wrote:
| > If your battery was almost dead, you could plug it into
| a charger and swap out the battery for a fresh one.
|
| Yes, it does the same thing on my old ZTE z959. However,
| the phone boot loops if I try to boot it without a
| battery.
| felixding wrote:
| I had a small Ruby (Sinatra) website running on a Linux vm on a
| spare Android phone (Sony Xperia X Compact). Turns out the CPU
| is quite capable. It actually compiles Nginx faster than a low
| end Google Cloud vm.
|
| It sounds nothing, but looking at Nginx logs scrolling on a
| tiny phone screen is so unbelievable.
| sbayeta wrote:
| Plus built-in UPS
| dotancohen wrote:
| And a bunch of sensors. Things like GPS, accelerator,
| microphone, camera, are pretty much standard even on
| inexpensive smartphones going back half a decade.
| chakkepolja wrote:
| For that you shouldn't need virtualization though. With termux
| you can run lot of programs. There are termux packages for few
| server software. You should be able to compile some more
| yourself.
|
| I remember being able to run a rootless debian chroot (using
| utility called proot) on Android 9 device, but things might
| have changed in meantime and I don't know if it's still
| straightforward.
|
| If you're looking for serious performance, though, it may not
| be practical.
| cosmaioan wrote:
| In terms of performance my expectations is to be comparable
| to the vm/vps from cloud providers where IOs are also
| limited, and with plenty of RAM for many workloads this will
| not be a big issues.
| awoimbee wrote:
| It would be best to create a kubernetes cluster of phones
| (reliability, scalability,...). To run containers on Android
| you currently need to build a custom kernel (1), I hope this
| feature removes this need.
|
| (1)https://gist.github.com/FreddieOliveira/efe850df7ff3951cb6
| 2d...
| shakna wrote:
| The permission policy changes introduced by Android Q broke
| Termux's ability to peacefully coexist with the Play Store.
| [0]
|
| [0] https://github.com/termux/termux-app/issues/2155
| querez wrote:
| I ran an odroids ( https://www.hardkernel.com/ ) as my home
| server some years back. It worked nicely for what it was, but
| in the end the lack of good storage options (I ended up
| attaching USB harddrives) was what doomed it. For what it's
| worth, a RasPi is exactly what you're describing, minus the
| screen/keyboard (but with much better cooling, which is what
| would be the bottleneck otherwise).
| loudmax wrote:
| Odroid N2s can use EMMC storage which has worked out pretty
| well in my experience. For larger data sets I use a network
| filesystem anyway.
| anderspitman wrote:
| This is basically my vision of how to bring self-hosting to the
| masses.
|
| Upcycle an old Android phone. Install apps for Nextcloud,
| Jellyfin, etc. Do a quick OAuth2 flow with your domain name
| provider to tunnel a subdomain directly to the app, and you
| have an end-to-end encrypted private cloud.
|
| For this to work we need:
|
| * Simpler domain name providers targeted at consumers instead
| of IT professionals. You shouldn't need to understand DNS
| records to use a domain.
|
| * An open protocol for setting up tunnels[0].
|
| * Nextcloud et al need to implement the protocol on their end.
| For open source projects 3rd parties can make wrappers.
|
| [0]: https://forum.indiebits.io/t/toward-an-open-tunneling-
| protoc...
| ghoul2 wrote:
| I did this a while back with a Pixel 2. I decided it wasn't
| worth the trouble.
|
| Phones are not designed for continuous power draw (and
| consequent heat dissipation) - contant-use power dissipation
| limits are very low. The performance dips dramatically, and the
| constant high temperature kills the onboard flash prematurely.
| Same thing applies to the radios - wifi and cellular. Sustained
| data transfer on either of those interfaces causes issues -
| dropouts/disconnects/thermal reboots.
|
| This is in addition to the fact that phones just don't have
| great I/O.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| The heat isn't too hard to deal with, there are solutions
| (including the weird ones like water cooling cases
| https://www.ebay.com/itm/175003613243 ). Simply adding
| airflow tends to get you pretty far by itself, even. Device
| test labs are a common-enough thing and handle running phones
| like servers at scale without too much difficulty.
|
| But there's more nasty lurking problems in this area, like
| that phones aren't designed to be continuously powered. They
| will naively try to keep the battery at or near 100% charge,
| which will destroy it relatively quickly, and not uncommonly
| in the "it's bulging and increasingly likely to burst into
| flames" variety. 2 years is considered a "decent run" for
| things like device test labs as a result (see eg the FAQ on
| https://github.com/DeviceFarmer/stf )
| neatze wrote:
| Open phone case and put phone board into oil tank :)
| jayd16 wrote:
| The Pixel 2 era 820s-830s especially seemed fairly throttle
| heavy. There's better APIs for sustained power modes now,
| although I'm not sure VM would use them.
| pooper wrote:
| > Phones are not designed for continuous power draw (and
| consequent heat dissipation) - contant-use power dissipation
| limits are very low.
|
| Maybe someone here can help me understand how power draw
| works on Android.
|
| I have a ZTE Z959, a Cricket device. I use the phone to take
| photos with Open Camera every few seconds and stitch them
| together to make a video with ffmpeg. (Someone told me that
| YouTube has no practical limit on storage and I wanted to
| prove that they will cap me at some point but that is a topic
| for another day. Basically, the tl;dr here is for my casual
| use, YouTube has unlimited storage).
|
| But I digress. The point is at some point the phone's battery
| started swelling up which became a fire hazard. I wanted to
| power the phone without battery. I have a Thinkpad 65W USB
| type-C charger. The first challenge was easy to work around.
| The phone just goes on a boot loop but if I add the battery
| and plug in the charger, the phone boots up ok. After the
| phone boots, I can remove the battery and the phone stays on
| (provided I don't do things like use flash, my guess is flash
| needs more power than my charger can provide.
|
| Can someone shed more light into this process? How does all
| of this work? Does all of this mean my phone is technically
| running from battery even when it is connected to the wall?
| hawski wrote:
| Maybe a solution to the problem would be a case that would
| provide cooling and would hide cables and adapters. The
| result could still be somewhat smaller than a NUC. Then you
| would only replace the phone once in a while and would have
| to cut a new screen cover. For better cooling depending on
| the phone you could remove the back cover.
| ghoul2 wrote:
| Yes, and that can improve the situation a bit, but it
| quickly becomes a tail-wagging-the-dog situation. A
| heatsink requires very good thermal contact with the main
| heat-dissipating elements - the SoC, the DRAM, the flash,
| and the radios to be effective. None of those are easily
| accessible on a phone unless you are willing to
| dissassemble it entirely. And even then the contact with
| the heat sink will be poor due to the package and the other
| components.
|
| An external case can help to a very limited extent. I tried
| attaching a large PC heatsink, and it did help, but not to
| the extent that made the "server" any good. I just switched
| it out for a 50$ RPI4 and its vastly better in pretty much
| every way.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| Which doesn't need any cooling. But to be fair I expect
| the screen to be worse than any component. Maybe not as
| much as the CPU at times which has a higher frequency
| than it should.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| "Gaming" phones do this, actually. Most of them though have
| poor software support compared to "thin" flagship models
| with far more problematic thermals.
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