The year of the Linux tablet? [LWN.net]

The year of the Linux tablet?

Posted Aug 25, 2011 8:42 UTC (Thu) by hadess (subscriber, #24252)
In reply to: The year of the Linux tablet? by Trelane
Parent article: The year of the Linux tablet?

To reuse Android's bits, the main thing missing would be X.org drivers. Other than that, it's the same problem as on upstream Linux, drivers lacking generic interfaces (say, for ambient light sensors, or orientation detection) so you end up writing hardware specific integration.

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also for Android-on-Linux

Posted Aug 26, 2011 10:35 UTC (Fri) by skierpage (guest, #70911) [Link]

There are other considerations, I think you need the Binder IPC mechanism and possibly other kernel features like Android's wakelocks implementation; see e.g. http://elinux.org/Android_Kernel_Features . Back in 2009 "Canonical demonstrated a prototype version of an execution environment for Ubuntu that lets it run Android apps", but nothing since. More recently, "Myriad Alien Dalvik Allows Nokia N9 to run Android Apps Seamlessly".

also for Android-on-Linux

Posted Aug 26, 2011 16:38 UTC (Fri) by hadess (subscriber, #24252) [Link]

I'm not interested in running Android, on whatever devices are available. I'd want to use Android's kernels and drivers to run GNOME instead.

also for Android-on-Linux

Posted Aug 26, 2011 16:57 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

since people have reported running standard linux distros in a chroot sandbox on android machines, it appears that for the most part no special work is needed.

now since most normal distros don't work well with just touchscreen input (and as you note userspace interfaces to the hardware the kernel has drivers for), more work is needed to make it practical.

... or Linux desktop-on-Android

Posted Aug 26, 2011 22:58 UTC (Fri) by skierpage (guest, #70911) [Link]

Both ways are worthwhile. Linux desktop-on-Android would seem very doable, either run Linux binaries (probably chroot'd as libc is different) with a rootless X Window System running on Android, or port GTK/Qt to Skia graphics; it's just tons of work either way.

You would think Google is figuring this out so Android and ChromeOS are cooperating runtimes on one kernel; a Chromebook capable of running a subset of Android apps (like Google TV) seems useful. But for whatever reason the two projects are disjoint and ChromeOS is resolutely web-centric. FWIW I've tried booting Android-X86 and it failed on desktop and laptop (as did Chromium OS), perhaps due to poorly-documented graphics requirements.