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Maru OS – Use your phone as your PC

maruos.com

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Re: Maru OS – Use your phone as your PC

#81

Post by gt0 »

For me these efforts feel like a solution to a problem very few people have. People who want a portable computer have settled on laptops. The people who want a portable computer, which needs access to a screen, keyboard, mouse and desk, just seems like a very small niche. Even when you get that computer set up, you end up with something quite slow with limited RAM and storage, unless you've bought a real flagship phone which is more expensive than a good laptop anyway.

I tried this with DeX, it's cool, but it's just really hard to see where I'd use it. Some sort of trip where for some reason I can't bring my laptop, but I do have access to the various peripherals required to make a desktop setup.

Re: Maru OS – Use your phone as your PC

#82

Post by bsimpson »

fsflover wrote: post #77
bsimpson wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a product decision. Apple decided when the iPhone first came out to redo the whole UI stack to be touch-first. There are hardenings for security and battery preservation, but that's arguably the biggest difference between iOS and macOS. Windows and Linux have tried to retrofit their ecosystems to also work on touchscreens. It hasn't gone well. Too many apps assume a mouse-equivalent pointing system. Adaptive des…

> Windows and Linux have tried to retrofit their ecosystems to also work on touchscreens. It hasn't gone well. Concerning Windows, you're right. Concerning GNU/Linux you aren't: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19328085

That post is 6 years old, and yet Linux still sucks by default on a touchscreen.

I installed NixOS on a handheld nearly 2 years ago and tried a whole bunch of touch-oriented options (including tiny ones like Maui). The closest I got to good enough was running the mobile fork of GNOME, using someone on GitHub's custom flake to pull it in at HEAD. I'm very happy that Valve has released SteamOS for other devices so I can offload that tinkering.

Steam is very usable on a touchscreen, but the KDE desktop mode hasn't impressed me.

Re: Maru OS – Use your phone as your PC

#83

Post by jez »

doebler wrote: post #3

> Simply plug your phone into an HDMI screen, connect up a keyboard and mouse, and you’ve got a lightweight desktop experience you can take anywhere. No, I can't take it anywhere, because few places I go to have a HDMI screen and keyboard ready for me. And to the ones they do, I carry my laptop.

I could commute to the office every day with nothing but the shirt on my back and the phone in my pocket if my work-provided device were my phone. I would not need a backpack or briefcase, which means that for any errands or dinner plans after work, I don't fumble with a backpack. I already leave my preferred keyboard+mouse at my office desk.

If I needed to fly to another office for a business trip, same story: I could sit down at any desk, grab a spare bluetooth keyboard from IT (if there isn't already one on the bookable desk).

If I'm over at a friend's house for dinner and get paged, I could just ask to sit down at their desk and plug my phone in.

I would love to not have to carry a laptop around to all the places that I do today.

Re: Maru OS – Use your phone as your PC

#84

Post by rramon »

zorrn wrote: post #52

I think Apple would actually be in a position capable of doing this. Slap an M1-4 into an iPhone Case with MacOS. Normally you have an interface like iOS, which shouldn't be hard because iOS is based on MacOS, and when you connect it to a monitor you have normal MacOS. Normal iOS applications need to run on MacOS which I think they already could. You would just have to allow apps to transform the interface between de…

They could sell MacOS as a mobile app subscription like logic Pro for iPads or for one time fee somewhere between $99 - $199, and many would switch from MacMinis I guess.

Pair this with some nice "Vision Air" glasses as a screen replacement..

Re: Maru OS – Use your phone as your PC

#85

Post by supportengineer »

stego-tech wrote: post #51

Bill Gates spoke of this context-aware OS at a lecture in the mid-00s. He specifically called out future phones (this was pre-iPhone era) that would have location context (work/home/mobile) and load secure, sandboxed datastores and profiles depending on that context. He also spoke at length about how desktop computers would transform into accelerators, like your gaming GPU at home or your additional processors and me…

I have an idea for a ring you can wear on one of your fingers and this ring actually runs Java [1]

[1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/300495374337

Re: Maru OS – Use your phone as your PC

#86

Post by thewebguyd »

gt0 wrote: post #81

For me these efforts feel like a solution to a problem very few people have. People who want a portable computer have settled on laptops. The people who want a portable computer, which needs access to a screen, keyboard, mouse and desk, just seems like a very small niche. Even when you get that computer set up, you end up with something quite slow with limited RAM and storage, unless you've bought a real flagship pho…

> People who want a portable computer have settled on laptops

Especially now with laptops like the Apple Silicon macbook air, with more than enough power and battery life.

I used to want a beefy phone that could run a full Linux desktop when plugged into a monitor, but that was a long time ago (ironically, Google is getting there with some of the Android 16 stuff...too bad the switching cost from Apple for me is too high at this point).

But then the M1 air came out, and that was pretty much game over for me. I've since upgraded to my M4 pro but it's still small and light enough to go everywhere, I have no need for an all-in-one phone.

Re: Maru OS – Use your phone as your PC

#88

Post by bboygravity »

bsimpson wrote: post #23

It's interesting that in the early 2010s, both halves of the ecosystem were talking about "convergence:" Ubuntu wanted to make its Linux render a single column on a handset and with floating windows on a larger screen. Motorola had a similar project based on Android. A dozen years later, nobody has done that well. Ubuntu gave up. Mobile-targeted Linux distributions aren't good (missing functionality, mobile UX, or bo…

Linux barely works on a limited set of hardware that it was designed for. Indeed I don't think it's reasonable to then also make it work on some completely different phone hardware that has a operational life of like 2 years + full of closed source hardware and drivers.

If you want users, the thing has to be usable. For the thing to be usable it needs software with perfect hardware support. Google, Android vendors and Apple (and to some extend System 76) understand this.

Re: Maru OS – Use your phone as your PC

#89

Post by fsflover »

bsimpson wrote: post #82
fsflover wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows and Linux have tried to retrofit their ecosystems to also work on touchscreens. It hasn't gone well. Concerning Windows, you're right. Concerning GNU/Linux you aren't: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19328085

That post is 6 years old, and yet Linux still sucks by default on a touchscreen. I installed NixOS on a handheld nearly 2 years ago and tried a whole bunch of touch-oriented options (including tiny ones like Maui). The closest I got to good enough was running the mobile fork of GNOME, using someone on GitHub's custom flake to pull it in at HEAD. I'm very happy that Valve has released SteamOS for other devices so I ca…

I'm writing this from Librem 5 phone running PureOS with Phosh DE. It's convenient and pretty in my opinion. Also it runs desktop Firefox with all plugins you want.

Re: Maru OS – Use your phone as your PC

#90

Post by bsimpson »

jklinger410 wrote: post #46
bsimpson wrote: post #23

It's interesting that in the early 2010s, both halves of the ecosystem were talking about "convergence:" Ubuntu wanted to make its Linux render a single column on a handset and with floating windows on a larger screen. Motorola had a similar project based on Android. A dozen years later, nobody has done that well. Ubuntu gave up. Mobile-targeted Linux distributions aren't good (missing functionality, mobile UX, or bo…

GNOME is still plugging away at this, making sure their entire OS is usable on mobile. Even without a market or audience.

Both impressively and disappointingly, that seems to be literally one guy in Germany.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/verdre/gnome-shell-mobile

relevant https://xkcd.com/2347/

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