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RemixOS for PC released

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Re: RemixOS for PC released

#41

Post by dharma1 »

matt_morgan wrote: post #32
dharma1 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really up to app developers to make sure their apps work ok (provide fallbacks if gesture heavy) for mouse. I think we are in a period where Android is just starting to get used with mouse so I'd expect it to take a bit of time for things get in shape for mouse users. Some apps work better than others

Understood who should really address the problem, but if RemixOS doesn't have an interim solution we might see the same catch-22 here as we often do. App developers will care about these things when it matters commercially, and consumers will care about them when the apps work.

It'll be a thing soon (1-3 years from now) once Google integrates Android with ChromeOS.

Personally I find a lot of Android apps already very usable with mouse, YMMV

Re: RemixOS for PC released

#42

Post by edcastro »

lovelearning wrote: post #16

Anybody got this to work on VirtualBox? It's not moving past the bootloader screen for me, no matter what VM configuration I select.

Works fine on Virtualbox using 'Linux' as Guest. The mouse DOES work, it just doesn't show the cursor, if you click and drag, it will show like a "finger cursor" on screen.

To navigate the menus, you can use tab, as usual. (in the case of the "next" button.

Re: RemixOS for PC released

#43

Post by ultramancool »

timwaagh wrote: post #39

so this would be the first closed linux distro in history. An ironic milestone for the open source community. or have I missed something?

Well, depends on what you consider a Linux distro, there are many Android ROMs that are closed in a similar way, including those from phone manufacturers, where kernel sources are released but nothing else, there definitely existed before Remix OS.

Does Android really qualify as a Linux distro? Does a Linux distro need a GNU system behind it? Because that's missing here, no glibc, no coreutils, etc. This is why some people have been insisting on calling it GNU/Linux all along, it can create ambiguity in situations like this. Linux is after all, just a kernel.

Re: RemixOS for PC released

#44

Post by dharma1 »

fps wrote: post #40
matt_morgan wrote: post #26

I have a little box for my TV running Android. The issue with all the apps is that 90% (looking mostly at games, I guess) of them more or less expect gestural input, and are either really difficult to play or just not fun with a mouse. I doubt that particular issue is as bad in productivity apps etc., but there's a lot more to running a mobile app on a big screen than just resizing a window. Does this have some magic…

Lots of android games play well with a bluetooth or USB controller instead of a mouse. You can easily hook an XBox or PS4 controller to a PC.

Yep! I've got an NVidia Shield TV running Android TV and I'm pretty happy with it. Great hardware (super fast mobile GPU) and the software isn't bad either. The included gamepad works great, additionally I bought a Logitech K400 wireless keyboard/trackpad to use some apps which aren't great on the gamepad (Chrome etc)

Re: RemixOS for PC released

#45

Post by dharma1 »

nailer wrote: post #2

Awesome. It's much easier to make Android (with it's massive app ecosystem) a desktop OS than it is than to build an app ecosystem for traditional Linux desktops. Interestingly enough it doesn't look like there's an installer - they want you to run it from USB for now.

Another option would be to be able to run Android apps on traditional Linux desktops. I hope that will be possible in the future, right now there isn't anything that achieves that seamlessly.

Re: RemixOS for PC released

#46

Post by cmrdporcupine »

matt_morgan wrote: post #26

I have a little box for my TV running Android. The issue with all the apps is that 90% (looking mostly at games, I guess) of them more or less expect gestural input, and are either really difficult to play or just not fun with a mouse. I doubt that particular issue is as bad in productivity apps etc., but there's a lot more to running a mobile app on a big screen than just resizing a window. Does this have some magic…

Android TV (like on my NVIDIA Shield box) is far better than any stock android. The apps are designed to be used with a controller or remote. And they work well.

It is now my primary media device. The games aren't PS4 quality, but they run in 4K and everything is smooth. We use it for everything, and it's _mostly_ a good experience.

Re: RemixOS for PC released

#47

Post by soylentcola »

isbn wrote: post #29

Would be cool if they'd release this for ARM too. The Pi, Cubietruck and all the other dev boards would run this nicely.

From what I remember, there are ports to RaspPi but a major issue is getting graphic acceleration working. Not sure what the current state of it is.

Re: RemixOS for PC released

#48

Post by sandGorgon »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #15

Hmm, it requires legacy boot. I wonder why it doesn't support UEFI? Makes it hard for me to test this on the devices I would want to use it with. EDIT: More research. Results: There is an EFI system on this image, but it has a corrupted GPT. I fixed it with gdisk and I ran into some issues trying to boot it via EFI shell on one of my netbooks. My libreboot laptop was able to boot it but it gets stuck during bootup. D…

Someone got it to work on /r/remixos using efi files from chromeos

Re: RemixOS for PC released

#49

Post by gtk40 »

ultramancool wrote: post #43
timwaagh wrote: post #39

so this would be the first closed linux distro in history. An ironic milestone for the open source community. or have I missed something?

Well, depends on what you consider a Linux distro, there are many Android ROMs that are closed in a similar way, including those from phone manufacturers, where kernel sources are released but nothing else, there definitely existed before Remix OS. Does Android really qualify as a Linux distro? Does a Linux distro need a GNU system behind it? Because that's missing here, no glibc, no coreutils, etc. This is why some…

Since there are various systems which use the Linux kernel without the GNU userland, it can make GNU/Linux more important as a term, in contrast to Android and others.

Although I have wondered if OS like Maemo, which use Busybox instead of GNU, should be considered Busybox/Linux. :)

Re: RemixOS for PC released

#50

Post by chc4 »

ultramancool wrote: post #43
timwaagh wrote: post #39

so this would be the first closed linux distro in history. An ironic milestone for the open source community. or have I missed something?

Well, depends on what you consider a Linux distro, there are many Android ROMs that are closed in a similar way, including those from phone manufacturers, where kernel sources are released but nothing else, there definitely existed before Remix OS. Does Android really qualify as a Linux distro? Does a Linux distro need a GNU system behind it? Because that's missing here, no glibc, no coreutils, etc. This is why some…

It's definitely still a Linux distro. It's just not a GNU/Linux distribution, but Bionic/Linux.
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