Maru OS – Use your phone as your PC • Hacker News Board

Re: Maru OS – Use your phone as your PC

#161

Post by pjmlp » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 7:20 AM UTC

anthk wrote: post #157

pjmlp wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides working with it on servers on regular basis, and having had enough with it on desktops and laptops since 1995, last year I managed to get a NUC, where Ubuntu, Red-Hat and SuSE weren't able to boot from the internal SSD or get along with UEFI, only booting from the external drive worked. So yeah no problem, and yes I know should have gone to the usual forums asking everyone and their dog if someone before me h…

I have different opinions. Try my NUC. Reinstall Windows 10 on it; you won't get audio support unless you get especial audio drivers from a shady download URL (usually used from pirating services) linked from the OEM vendors. Windows Update won't help. Neither SDI Tool Origin. GNU/Linux works, HDMI output et all.

I love how HN nowadays mirrors the Linux forums experience from phpBB and Slashdot days.

Re: Maru OS – Use your phone as your PC

#162

Post by Agingcoder » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 7:21 AM UTC

anthk wrote: post #157

pjmlp wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides working with it on servers on regular basis, and having had enough with it on desktops and laptops since 1995, last year I managed to get a NUC, where Ubuntu, Red-Hat and SuSE weren't able to boot from the internal SSD or get along with UEFI, only booting from the external drive worked. So yeah no problem, and yes I know should have gone to the usual forums asking everyone and their dog if someone before me h…

I have different opinions. Try my NUC. Reinstall Windows 10 on it; you won't get audio support unless you get especial audio drivers from a shady download URL (usually used from pirating services) linked from the OEM vendors. Windows Update won't help. Neither SDI Tool Origin. GNU/Linux works, HDMI output et all.

Unless I’m mistaken windows 10 is end of life in 3 months so this shouldn’t be surprising ?

Re: Maru OS – Use your phone as your PC

#163

Post by anthk » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 7:23 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #161

anthk wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have different opinions. Try my NUC. Reinstall Windows 10 on it; you won't get audio support unless you get especial audio drivers from a shady download URL (usually used from pirating services) linked from the OEM vendors. Windows Update won't help. Neither SDI Tool Origin. GNU/Linux works, HDMI output et all.

I love how HN nowadays mirrors the Linux forums experience from phpBB and Slashdot days.

Because with NUCs if you dare to gasp reinstall the OEM OS, if the vendor it's gone, with Windows you might get a nice door stopper. You can get audio thru the headphones/speakers output, but that's a shitty experience for your living room.

With Windows 11 it will happen the same.

Re: Maru OS – Use your phone as your PC

#164

Post by anthk » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 7:23 AM UTC

Agingcoder wrote: post #162

anthk wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have different opinions. Try my NUC. Reinstall Windows 10 on it; you won't get audio support unless you get especial audio drivers from a shady download URL (usually used from pirating services) linked from the OEM vendors. Windows Update won't help. Neither SDI Tool Origin. GNU/Linux works, HDMI output et all.

Unless I’m mistaken windows 10 is end of life in 3 months so this shouldn’t be surprising ?

Barely no one uses Windows 11.

Re: Maru OS – Use your phone as your PC

#165

Post by Agingcoder » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 7:29 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #152

knowitnone2 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then don't use it. Linux needs less people like you

And I don't, Android/Linux, WebOS/Linux and VMs are good enough. If others have fun making it work, good for them, I have better ways to spend the rest of my life on this litte sphere. As what Linux needs, I thought it needs every little user, to make a difference against Apple and Microsoft, after all we are always told that now is the year everyone is going to flee into Linux.

Agreed - my view is that Linux on the desktop failed and will never succeed and its mostly alright since people have shifted their computing needs from desktops to phones.

So the market for personal computers has grown massively with phones entering it, and Linux has won here.

As to the general state of Linux usability - I’ve been using Linux since 1995, and professionally for more than 20 years - it’s great for professionally administered servers or workstations, less great for regular desktops / laptops where things pretty never work out of the box which is unfortunately not going to bring in extra users …

Re: Maru OS – Use your phone as your PC

#166

Post by antonvs » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 7:41 AM UTC

bboygravity wrote: post #88

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 an…

Linux is used on a far greater variety of hardware than Windows or Mac, from phones to supercomputers, and everything in between. The number of servers, of all architectures, running Linux completely dwarfs either Windows or Mac.

Re: Maru OS – Use your phone as your PC

#167

Post by fsflover » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 7:52 AM UTC

ruszki wrote: post #159

vimredo wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Linux to gain 5% marketshare, I really doubt it "barely works" on a "limited set of hardware that it was designed for". It can run headless on basically anything better than a Pentium, and it mostly just works on average hardware (except fingerprint sensors and Nvidia). I've had no problem with Linux on all my hardware, and I have a feeling the last time you looked at it was 2013.

Linux didn’t work reliably on my laptops in the past 10 years. And I mean basic things, like booting up, or showing a desktop without serious glitches. And all the time problems were non deterministic, and printing just generic unhelpful “something is wrong” errors, if there were any. I try it every year, whether the situation is better, and in the past 25 years, the answer is that barely. Yes, you can have terminal…

> Linux didn’t work reliably on my laptops in the past 10 years. And I mean basic things, like booting up, or showing a desktop

Which laptops? Do they all have Nvidia graphics? This is really vague. Your comment is not helpful, and it just looks like usual Linux bashing from people who don't know what they're talking about.

Re: Maru OS – Use your phone as your PC

#168

Post by bytehowl » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 7:55 AM UTC

Agingcoder wrote: post #165

pjmlp wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I don't, Android/Linux, WebOS/Linux and VMs are good enough. If others have fun making it work, good for them, I have better ways to spend the rest of my life on this litte sphere. As what Linux needs, I thought it needs every little user, to make a difference against Apple and Microsoft, after all we are always told that now is the year everyone is going to flee into Linux.

Agreed - my view is that Linux on the desktop failed and will never succeed and its mostly alright since people have shifted their computing needs from desktops to phones. So the market for personal computers has grown massively with phones entering it, and Linux has won here. As to the general state of Linux usability - I’ve been using Linux since 1995, and professionally for more than 20 years - it’s great for prof…

Linux may have won on phones, but free software did not, which is the thing that actually matters.

Re: Maru OS – Use your phone as your PC

#169

Post by fsflover » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 7:58 AM UTC

bboygravity wrote: post #88

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 an…

> Linux barely works on a limited set of hardware that it was designed for.

This is demonstrably false, and I don't understand where all these comments from Linux haters came from. My Librem laptops work flawlessly, including suspend.

Re: Maru OS – Use your phone as your PC

#170

Post by fsflover » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 9:40 AM 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…

> 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 applications!)

Phosh (Phone Shell) already exists and works quite well. I'm writing this comment from desktop Firefox running in Phosh on Librem 5 smartphone.