Yeah, that's what you need on a desktop. A OS designed for "touch" with "innovative features" (which features were standard on a desktop 25 years ago). The UI looks like a uglier clone of ChromeOS.
Now imagine you have a Surface Pro of some sort.
RemixOS – Android for the desktop
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Re: RemixOS – Android for the desktop
#52Re: RemixOS – Android for the desktop
#53It seems like a good idea, but of course its not running the latest version of Android. Most of the problems with Android stem from security updates not reaching devices in a timely manner, and RemixOS is just another example of a skin that is behind. Most devices are only on RemixOS 1.5, which is Android 5.0.2.
Re: RemixOS – Android for the desktop
#54Yeah, that's what you need on a desktop. A OS designed for "touch" with "innovative features" (which features were standard on a desktop 25 years ago). The UI looks like a uglier clone of ChromeOS.
Years ago I installed a mouse driver for iOS on a jailbroken iPad 2 on iOS 6, it more or less worked for most applications that didn't require two finger gestures. I was able to paint with Brushes and such.
It wasn't a pleasant experience but I was just tinkering to see what it'd be like. If you like big huge icons, zooming when highlighting, and having to occasionally touch your screen, I suppose it was good.
I can't imagine its about being a viable desktop OS more than push the envelope of Android.
Re: RemixOS – Android for the desktop
#55I want regular Linux on my phone, not Java Linux on my desktop.
I have an N800 sitting around somewhere; make me an offer. True multitasking, full desktop Firefox with Flash Player, and 30 minute battery life.
The battery lasted about three hours with heavy use. Standby life was about one week as well. (I still use a perma-docked n800 with 64GB storage Canola to listen to rsync'ed audiobooks.)
I would seriously avoid using the browser, especially with Flash on that device at this point. Also I believe there's only a DoS CVE for SSH.
With the OTG USB, they're still a cheaper alternative to lots of Raspberry Pi projects.
Re: RemixOS – Android for the desktop
#56As a hardcore Linux user, I'm really torn about Android. On the one hand, it has created a nice software ecosystem by pushing a consistent set of APIs. Linux desktop applications were never remarkable except for a few ones. I think fragmentation into a myriad of frameworks led to this. The only 2 X11 applications I use are firefox and zathura. On the other hand, too much stuff has been redone in Android. It's too for…
Android has been friendly toward removing the mothership since day one. Anyone can deliver APKs using either a homegrown app store (see Amazon's App Store app) or by just letting the user download APKs from the browser.
The problem is that most app developers currently -only- distribute their app via Google Play, as it's the primary distribution channel that devices tend to come with. This isn't a complete lock-in, since you can still get those installed APKs from a device where they've been installed and archive them or reinstall them on other devices. (Refer to ApkMirror as an ethically dubious prime example of this)
Still, this is nothing to hold against Android itself.
Re: RemixOS – Android for the desktop
#57Google could - and certainly has (even with the latest Pixel C) - do much worse than RemixOS for the desktop. If they can't come up with any other way to make Android look good on the desktop, it should at least acquire RemixOS and go from there. I'm not a fan of the whole "Android apps inside Chrome OS" idea - it seems like a very roundabout and complex way to achieve what Android already can by itself - run over a…
I would rather slowly move everything to ChromeOS and abandon android. I find it ridiculous that I am running an OS from Google with a broken mobile browser. I also find it more likely that the ChromeOS model could remain secure despite the contents of the play store than the Android "we aren't quite sure what we meant to do here" model.
Re: RemixOS – Android for the desktop
#58This link has more info:
http://www.xda-developers.com/jide-announce-multi-window-and...
> Today’s public release of Remix OS, based on Android x86, is something that we’ve been working towards since we founded Jide Technology in 2014
So it's a commercial fork of the Android x86 project, basically.
Re: RemixOS – Android for the desktop
#59As a hardcore Linux user, I'm really torn about Android. On the one hand, it has created a nice software ecosystem by pushing a consistent set of APIs. Linux desktop applications were never remarkable except for a few ones. I think fragmentation into a myriad of frameworks led to this. The only 2 X11 applications I use are firefox and zathura. On the other hand, too much stuff has been redone in Android. It's too for…
> I would prefer less app-ification, more package management. I would argue for the opposite: One problem with linux is that you can't run untrusted software without it getting the same access as the user. That's exactly what the appification is. I see package managers as a source of some problems of linux: Package maintainers are a unneeded middleman between the writers of the software and you, package managers inte…
> I see package managers as a source of some problems of linux: Package maintainers are a unneeded middleman between the writers of the software and you, package managers interact with the whole system, scattering files around the whole filesystem...
It sounds like you'd enjoy Slackware's approach to package management. Zero dependency resolution, packages are built from the source tarball with little or no patching (unless you patch it yourself), and the files are installed where the author intended them to be (though that can be good or bad depending on your perspective). If the application has dependencies, you're left to install them yourself, ensuring that only the absolutely necessary dependencies are installed, and not, for example, all of Gnome when you just want a simple text editor.
> ...and running scripts as root when installing/uninstalling packages.
Given that this happens even when you build from source and install yourself (./config, make, sudo make install), I'm not sure what you're asking for. Perhaps the Mac OS X method of "the app is a folder with pre-built binaries and all necessary libraries"? And even some OS X apps require elevation to install, especially those distributed as .pkg files.
Re: RemixOS – Android for the desktop
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems that "Remix OS for PC" will be at least "free to use": > "With that in mind, Remix OS for PC is free to download, free to install, and free to use." No idea about open source, though.
> free to download, free to install, and free to use Remix OS is based on Android and Android includes, among other things, the Linux Kernel, which is GPL, which is Copyleft, which would mean that the Remix OS creators would need to provide the source code to users, wouldn't it?
They would need to publish any kernel changes they make, but most of the features they list would not require kernel changes.