[HN Gopher] Transform your Android device into a Linux desktop
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Transform your Android device into a Linux desktop
Author : mikece
Score : 63 points
Date : 2023-08-01 21:24 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mrs-t.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mrs-t.medium.com)
| a-dub wrote:
| i've often wondered if my phone could drive large external
| displays and become a thin client.
|
| would be pretty cool!
| indymike wrote:
| Samsung, Huawei, LG (well, they exited the phone biz) and
| Motorola all have a desktop mode on many of their Android
| devices. You plug in a USB-HDMI adapter (I've plugged in a ton
| of USBC docks to my phone and they just work most of the time),
| a keyboard and mouse and you have an Android desktop. It's not
| terrible, and I've used it in a pinch when I don't have my
| laptop and have work to do.
|
| There's also a way to turn on the desktop mode in developer
| settings, but I've never tried it in anger.
| helf wrote:
| [dead]
| DANmode wrote:
| Convergent desktop.
|
| Manufacturers being, frankly, shit, is the only reason we don't
| already ubiquitously have this.
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| Always thought Microsoft's Continuum would have been the wave
| of the future at some point had windows phones survived. Just
| uses your Windows phone as your Windows desktop.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Samsung Dex is actually pretty flexible in comparison. It's
| not a terrible desktop environment, and it can "cast" to
| smart TV's, output via usb > HDMI adapter, or you can plug
| it into your laptop and bring up the phone desktop
| environment with the Dex app.
|
| I leave my work laptop at home now, and just take my
| personal laptop and work phone when I am on vacation now.
| Dex is good enough to get into 70%+ of the cloud tools I
| might need when remotely working because stuff is burning
| down.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Exactly... modern phones are crazy powerful and would work as
| desktops for 99% of users if they weren't locked down in
| software. I have an older $100 iPhone SE2 and it has more cpu
| power than many new $1k laptops.
| fsflover wrote:
| We have Librem 5 and Pinephone which can work as convergent
| desktops.
| phh wrote:
| For people who want to go down rabbit holes, you can get very far
| with this. I ended up with UT2004 [2] (Windows version) running
| on my smartphone (complete stack was Termux => proot => ubuntu =>
| box 86 => wine => Zink (Android-side, with virglrenderer to pass
| through to proot-side) => OEM Vulkan driver [1])
|
| I even attempted to make it into a generic ROM, so that you could
| flash any Android with a Boot2UT2004 ROM, but the Zink part was
| hard to make generic enough.
|
| [1] I mention OEM Vulkan driver, because many people are using
| Zink over a modified Turnip that works on original OEM kernel
|
| [2] I don't even appreciate UT2004, that was to troll a colleague
| stavros wrote:
| Wait, how do you run Ubuntu on the phone? I'd love an Ubuntu
| shell on the phone itself.
| sublinear wrote:
| > Setting up a Desktop Environment: We'll use VNC...
|
| Noooo!
|
| > if you prefer to set up an XServer, you can find instructions
| on the Termux Wiki
|
| (clicks link)
|
| > GraphicalEnvironment There is currently no text in this page.
| You can search for this page title in other pages, or search the
| related logs, but you do not have permission to create this page.
|
| ...
|
| bad vibes man
| moron4hire wrote:
| Apparently the URL is wrong. There should be an underscore
| between Graphical and Environment
|
| https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Graphical_Environment
|
| Also, the x11 setup instruction is wrong. Instead of `pkg
| install x11-repository` it should be `pkg install x11-repo`.
| waithuh wrote:
| Have you checked https://archive.org
| moondev wrote:
| Another way to get a similar experience is by enabling the
| following options from the android developer menu:
| * enable freeform windows * force desktop mode on
| secondary displays * enable non-resizable in multi-
| window
|
| Then choose "simulate secondary displays" and choose the size
| (720p, 1080p, 4k)
|
| Using https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy from your desktop and
| connecting to your phone allows you to choose the virtual display
| to connect to instead of your main phone display with the
| --display flag. It's similar to a chromeos feel and very
| performant
| tysam_and wrote:
| Honestly, what I usually use these environments for requires
| pulling and using someone else's container in some way, or
| something similar.
|
| I have not gone too far in depth, but UserLAnd seems a bit more
| promising for this, due to how it's structured, if I understand
| correctly.
| [deleted]
| jsight wrote:
| I tried this with a Pixel 5. Performance was much better than
| expected! Even big apps like Intellij were usable for small
| projects.
|
| But the big downfall was memory management. It is really easy to
| get too close to running out of RAM and have the whole
| environment spontaneously killed.
| pacifika wrote:
| When the android version is no longer supported but can run Linux
| inside it is it still safe to use or subject to the android
| security problems a legacy version would have?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The kernel and the passive network services that are part of
| the Android system will still run (though you can probably kill
| them on a rooted system).
|
| The user mode processes like web browsers will still receive
| support for as long as the Termux project provides the. With
| some extra steps (chroots and such) you should be able to use
| the aarch64 version of Debian or another distro of your
| choosing instead of relying on Termux.
|
| This solution lacks proper hardware acceleration, though. A
| system such as Samsung Dex would be a much better solution to
| turning your phone into a desktop, leveraging the years of
| updates to Android apps instead of hacking Linux applications
| into Android.
| akomtu wrote:
| A random idea: android phone as a portable projector. Not sure if
| the tech allows that, but it would be cool instead of looking at
| the small screen, get it projected with a tiny LED onto a wall in
| a dark room.
| 0y wrote:
| I remember the Galaxy Beam having this
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(page generated 2023-08-01 23:00 UTC)