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Maru OS – A complete desktop experience on a smartphone

maruos.com

251–260 of 264 posts

Re: Maru OS – A complete desktop experience on a smartphone

#251

I am really surprised that the "single computing / storage device" idea which can switch between different screens and input methods seamlessly (and maybe support plug-in CPUs) is just is not happening, though the concept here is a small step in that direction. Having everything in the cloud seems to have made this somewhat redundant for most users, though I still hope one day I can carry all my data around, of cours…

I just don't see the use case. For work, most people have a work computer and that's separate from their personal computer. Tons of people no longer have a computer at home, those that do are likely gamers, developers or artists that all have a huge archive of files they work with and require more power than a mobile device can supply. I wish these companies would stop trying and just make an open, mobile, general pu…

Its anecdotal, but I don't personally know, or have ever heard of anyone in my social network, regardless of age, not using a computer at home.

Re: Maru OS – A complete desktop experience on a smartphone

#252
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this makes sense until phones are basically as fast as current laptops.

The flagship phone for this OS is the nexus 5 which uses a 2.26 Ghz quad core qualcomm chip and has 2 gb ram. The hw limitation seems to be the low ram limiting the number of memory heavy desktop apps you can run. Definitely not a video editing rig and vbox doesn't work on arm hosts, but this is good for spread sheets / typing up papers / scanning things with your camera and quickly editing them on a desktop with out…

The CPU speed for all mobile devices is deceptive. You can't actually run the CPU at that speed for anything but the tiniest amount of time, without immediately running into the throttling brick wall.

Re: Maru OS – A complete desktop experience on a smartphone

#254

We are trying to do a similar thing with the Elite X3, not sure whether it's one of our big sellers...

Well to be fair it runs Windows 10 mobile...so it's not a big seller and is shrinking rapidly. [0] Worldwide Q4 2016 sales are 1/4 that of Q4 2015.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_operating_system#By_ope...

Re: Maru OS – A complete desktop experience on a smartphone

#255
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1! The way I see it, this is a "toy" (for the time being). The "2013 devices" makes me thing that this is a "toy" for people like "us" that have a Nexus rotting away somewhere and "it would be cool to fool around on your 30-inch screen and nothing more! It would be better if they would up-front say "this is not secure", "this is a demo", "this is a toy", "this is not the OS you're looking for". Imaginary CEO-CTO dia…

What's wrong with "2013 devices"? Nexus 5 probably has more alternative OS choices than any other phone available: LineageOS (based on Android 7.1), Ubuntu Touch (UBports continuation of the project), Plasma Mobile, Sailfish, and Maru OS. And what is the real benefit of having a newer device if the old one is still very capable of running modern OSes and applications?

I bought my Nexus 5 in 2013. It's still running pretty smoothly. Every time I see an app render using the N5 frame, I chuckle. It just reiterates my thought that I made a good choice when I bought my phone, and I like that feeling.

Re: Maru OS – A complete desktop experience on a smartphone

#256

I've always wondered about this. I love the portability but limiting myself to the power of something that has to fit in my pocket feels... limiting. What if we just carried around our software and files and popped them into whatever computer we have on hand? I know they're pricey but M.2 SSDs are tiny, fast, and high in capacity. I can imagine a desktop (maybe even a big laptop) with an sd-card-reader-like slit wher…

I like your "just take the data with you" idea. I did something similar with a tiny (about the size of my thumbnail) USB stick about ten years ago, running Linux everywhere I could (and wasn't really supposed to!).

It was pretty slow though. These days though, read and write speeds (on USB 3) are over 10x faster. So even without the hardware changes you describe, it's already more than feasible :)

Re: Maru OS – A complete desktop experience on a smartphone

#257

I was interested in the merging of desktop and mobile OS many years ago. I don't understand why Apple/MS/Google didn't pursue this, is it technically challenging? or is this just not "something people want"?

Well, Microsoft did try really hard, it was called "continuum", but the fall of windows mobile brought that dream to an end. The other company that tried was Ubuntu, their effort was called Unity if I'm correct. That was axed recently as they needed to focus on profit-making parts of the company. Also, I don't think any mainstream ubuntu phone with unity was ever released. Finally, Apple's strategy is clearly differe…

I had a dream once where I was holding an iPhone, and every time I looked away and back again, it would be one form factor bigger (iPhone -> iPad -> MacBook). That was a really cool dream.

Re: Maru OS – A complete desktop experience on a smartphone

#260
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

libhybris reuses hardware drivers from Android, as used by sailfish, ubuntu touch, plasma mobile et alia.

Does libhybris support X11 with GPU accel now? It didn't when I tried to use it in the past

I'm not sure, I thought most projects were Mir or Wayland based - not X.
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