Maru OS – Use your phone as your PC

Post by LtWorf » Tue, Jul 29, 2025, 10:46 PM UTC

p1necone wrote: post #104

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…

Imo trying to make a single UX that just changes a little bit to suit different device types is a misguided approach. Using a large screen with a mouse and keyboard is a fundamentally different thing to using a phone with a touch screen. Using the same hardware for both would be super useful, but the software stack from the desktop environment upwards should be entirely different (yes, including most of the applicati…

Post by LtWorf » Tue, Jul 29, 2025, 10:49 PM UTC

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…

Post by sudhirb » Tue, Jul 29, 2025, 10:54 PM UTC

jez wrote: post #83

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 cou…

Post by andybak » Tue, Jul 29, 2025, 10:56 PM UTC

thewebguyd wrote: post #86

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…

Post by RajT88 » Tue, Jul 29, 2025, 10:59 PM UTC

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…