Android on the desktop: Not really “good,” but better than you’d think (Ars Technica)
We've Frankensteined together a little Android desktop setup using a Nexus 9 and a USB keyboard and mouse to see just how easy—or complicated—it was to use what is still formally a "mobile" operating system in a desktop context today, right now, without complicated changes or reconfigurations. It worked, but Android still has a ways to go before it can be called a real desktop operating system—quite a ways, in some cases. The biggest affordance Android makes for a desktop OS is that it supports a keyboard and mouse. Any Android device can pair with a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, and if you want to go the wired route, just about any phone can plug in a mouse and keyboard via a USB OTG cable and a USB hub. Some OEMs even build Android devices with a keyboard and mouse, like the Asus Transformer series, which is a convertible laptop that runs Android."
Posted Dec 22, 2015 1:02 UTC (Tue)
by ajdlinux (subscriber, #82125)
[Link] (2 responses)
My grandmother uses an HP Slate Android all-in-one, which has worked surprisingly well for her internet needs - she used to use a Mac followed by a Windows 98 PC, but as her vision and overall health has deteriorated she's benefited from having a simpler interface rather than having to relearn the Windows UI if she'd bought a Windows 7/8 box. Android's accessibility features are surprisingly reasonable.
Posted Dec 22, 2015 8:37 UTC (Tue)
by kugel (subscriber, #70540)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jan 8, 2016 19:21 UTC (Fri)
by landley (guest, #6789)
[Link]
In 2016.
Really.
Posted Dec 22, 2015 4:56 UTC (Tue)
by josh (subscriber, #17465)
[Link] (12 responses)
Posted Dec 22, 2015 11:33 UTC (Tue)
by Lennie (subscriber, #49641)
[Link] (1 responses)
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/12/the-pixel-cs-bumpy...
Posted Dec 22, 2015 17:30 UTC (Tue)
by zdzichu (subscriber, #17118)
[Link]
Posted Dec 22, 2015 16:37 UTC (Tue)
by k3ninho (subscriber, #50375)
[Link] (9 responses)
Arguably Google is a services operation, where your device connecting to their cloud using their app is more important than which combination of kernel, libc, graphics and web stack you're using. Making that access easy and inexpensive to maintain with common UI components and server API's is a win for Google.
In terms of Google's competitors, MS has Surfaces and done the hard/ugly work of having a unified phone/gamestation/tablet/laptop/server OS and Apple has created a 'very-nearly' device in the iPad Pro. Whatever Google's spokespersons have said, other people in the same game are converging touchscreen-slate portable computers with folding keyboard-and-screen portable computers. This will happen.
K3n.
Posted Dec 22, 2015 18:15 UTC (Tue)
by LightDot (guest, #73140)
[Link] (8 responses)
Where does this leave linux distributions? I would love to have Arch or Fedora on a tablet or a convertible, such as Microsoft Surface Book or Lenovo Yoga, together with working touchscreen etc. ...
Posted Dec 22, 2015 19:46 UTC (Tue)
by atai (subscriber, #10977)
[Link]
Posted Dec 23, 2015 0:49 UTC (Wed)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (5 responses)
In the same place where HP-UX (or FreeBSD) is today: essentially dead. They would still be around but fewer and fewer guys will care. First Android devices must become “good enough” for desktop (and as Pixel C reviews are showing that Android is not there yet). After that productivity apps and games must be ported. And then, finally, support for Ubuntu and other Linux distributions will be dropped. This all takes time, of course, and will not happen tomorrow. I would be surprised if it'll happen faster than in about 5 years (Google really botched the transition, I've expected it to be already underway), but I don't think it'll need 10 or more (transition is happening, after all, just not as fast as I've expected previously). The biggest question in all that is: will Intel be able to grab that market or not? It's position is not good currently, but as I've said it [still] has time. The fact that all three vendors have missed the mark (iPad Pro and Pixel C are useless as desktop devices because hardware is just not right, while Surface nailed the hardware but bombed the software) gives Intel time which it desperately needs.
Posted Dec 23, 2015 5:35 UTC (Wed)
by rqosa (subscriber, #24136)
[Link] (3 responses)
> After that productivity apps and games must be ported. No need to port them — instead, just make a single compositor that can run both SurfaceFlinger clients and Wayland clients (including XWayland). > And then, finally,
… you'll be able to run any Android app on any Linux distribution. Then the only remaining difference between "Android" and "a Linux distribution" will be that "Android" has the proprietary Google stuff preinstalled. > support for Ubuntu and other Linux distributions will be dropped. If that's true, then how is it that pretty much all of the "productivity apps and games" in question have already been ported to Windows (running on Qt / GTK+ / wxWidgets for Windows, and/or Cygwin, etc.), and Mac OS X too (I remember some people saying that it would kill desktop Linux back when it was new, too), but despite that, desktop Linux distributions are still developed and used today?
Posted Dec 23, 2015 8:46 UTC (Wed)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (2 responses)
Who would do that? And, more importantly, why? You live in some imaginary world. Or may be in parallel universe. In our universe most “productivity apps and games” are only supported on Windows and Linux support is an afterthought at best. Linux desktop survives on outskirts of technology landscape using some leftovers from server platforms where Linux thrives, but since Android would use the same kernel and you would be able to run the same stack of server technologies you run today on Linux desktop… who would need GNU/Linux? And why? P.S. Note: I'm not saying that Linux distributions will die. They will just become mostly irrelevant. Whoever cares about new version of AmigaOS or KolibriOS? No, really? It's clear that such people exist (or new versions of these OSes wouldn't be released), but how many of these are out there?
Posted Dec 23, 2015 12:13 UTC (Wed)
by rqosa (subscriber, #24136)
[Link] (1 responses)
> And, more importantly, why? The same reasons why any of these exist: Wine, XWayland, various X servers for Windows (and the one for Mac OS X, and there's even at least one Android now), WinUAE and Amiga Forever, etc. > In our universe most “productivity apps and games” are only supported on Windows But you said: "productivity apps and games must be ported [to Android]. And then [emphasis mine], finally, support for Ubuntu and other Linux distributions will be dropped." I thought this was supposed to mean that porting Linux-desktop apps to the future Android desktop will cause the decline of traditional Linux distributions… but apparently you actually meant to say that porting Windows-only apps to Android is what will cause that? How exactly would that hurt Linux usage share, when the apps in question already don't run on Linux? > Linux desktop survives on outskirts of technology landscape using some leftovers from server platforms where Linux thrives Not really, it's more like the Linux desktop survives on the outskirts of the desktop-hardware landscape that's designed to run Windows (previously DOS)… or rather that's how it used to be, but even today many of the traditional GNU/Linux distributions support ARM hardware (e.g. ARM Chromebooks, DragonBoard and the rest of the 96Boards family, Raspberry Pi, etc.) And that trend will only increase, especially if/when "Android for the desktop" arrives. Or to put it another way: Today, Android is the dominant mobile platform, and CyanogenMod survives on its hardware base. In a future where "Android for the desktop" has displaced Windows as the dominant desktop platform, all the "traditional Linux" / "GNU/Linux" / "Unix-like Linux" distributions will have adopted the Android-desktop-hardware base as their own (in the same way that they currently use the Windows hardware base, and as CyanogenMod uses the current Android mobile hardware base), turning CyanogenMod into basically just another desktop distribution. (They'll even be able to grab whichever pieces of AOSP / CyanogenMod / whatever else is necessary to be able to run unmodified Android apps natively… and even will be able to, upon installation on a stock Android device, preserve the preinstalled Android apps from a stock Android device in the same way that CyanogenMod already can.) > you would be able to run [on Android] the same stack of server technologies you run today on Linux desktop… The same thing is basically true for both Mac OS X and Windows, even though they don't use a Linux-derived kernel. (I seem to remember reading an opinion piece circa 2002, maybe written by Tim O'Reilly, that basically said that all Linux desktop users should switch over to Mac OS X, since basically all open source programs for Unix-and-X can be compiled for it. Clearly, that hasn't happened.) > They will just become mostly irrelevant. But they have always been "mostly irrelevant" to the majority of desktop users; this majority only uses Windows. The current desktop-Linux user base uses it despite the fact that pretty much all free software for Unix can (one way or another) be run on Windows too. (And it being slightly easier to run traditional-Unix apps on Android, compared to running them on Windows or Mac OS X, isn't going to make much of a difference to that user base.) Likewise, CyanogenMod is irrelevant to the majority of mobile users, and the current CyanogenMod user base uses it despite the fact that they don't need to use it instead of stock Android. So, I predict that if/when "Android for the desktop" takes over, the majority of desktop users will be using stock Android, whereas today's desktop-Linux user base will then be using the same kind of desktop hardware as the majority (just like they're currently using x86_64 hardware built for Windows) but will have replaced its preinstalled stock-Android OS with some sort of "mutant GNU/AOSP distribution" (in the same way that people run CyanogenMod on Android-mobile devices today)… and the current crop of GNU/Linux distributions (Arch, Debian, Fedora, etc.) will eventually become those mutant GNU/AOSP distributions. TL;DR version: We are the GNU/Linux user/developer base. Your OS's hardware platform and APIs will be added to our own. Resistance is futile.
Posted Dec 23, 2015 16:37 UTC (Wed)
by raven667 (subscriber, #5198)
[Link]
On the other hand, while having relevant market share has plenty of benefits, for a software project to be sustainable it really only needs a relatively small critical mass of developers and users, development environments like COBOL or TCL or LISP are still maintained today even though their relevancy was decades ago because there are still enough people who care, today GNOME and KDE have developers and put out releases even though they are in no danger of being relevant to the wider software industry any time soon. For the few million (out of billions) people who use them that may be fine, as long as they have their own needs met, it's not important that others needs are met as well. It's the reason people are so critical about the design direction of GNOME 3, in an attempt to meet the needs of the billions they seem to have de-prioritized the needs of the the few million or thousand technical users who made up the bulk of the user base a decade ago.
I can say from my personal experience in IT that all of the IT staff where I work who were using Linux desktops switched to Mac OS X about a decade ago with 10.4 and haven't looked back. I still am interested and toy around with Linux desktops personally but haven't switched back to Linux for my daily driver although I did just switch from iOS to Android for my mobile devices and use a lot of apps from F-Droid because I do prefer Free Software but it's not my most important criteria.
Posted Dec 23, 2015 9:52 UTC (Wed)
by kugel (subscriber, #70540)
[Link]
I'd say it's the other way around. iPad pro and Pixel C are useless as a desktop because the software running on them is incapable, and standard pc software can't be installed. The Surface Pro on the other hand has a capable desktop OS, and can easily run arbitrary Linux distribution. However, the hardware could be better (mostly its too expensive).
That said, I have Arch Linux on my x86-based lenovo tablet (via "Android on Linux"). It runs a ssh server for root access in the background, but I'm still looking hard for use cases where Android isn't the better option. But then I'm not targeting convergence with this thing because my laptop is just loads more capable.
Posted Dec 23, 2015 5:39 UTC (Wed)
by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
[Link]
I have convergence with my phone though -- a chrooted linux desktop and a foldable bluetooth keyboard. I have actually written documents and presentations that way.
Posted Dec 22, 2015 22:07 UTC (Tue)
by mahdif62 (guest, #105945)
[Link]
Android on the desktop: Not really “good,” but better than you’d think (Ars Technica)
Android on the desktop: Not really “good,” but better than you’d think (Ars Technica)
Android on the desktop: Not really “good,” but better than you’d think (Ars Technica)
Android on the desktop: Not really “good,” but better than you’d think (Ars Technica)
Android on the desktop: Not really “good,” but better than you’d think (Ars Technica)
Android on the desktop: Not really “good,” but better than you’d think (Ars Technica)
Denial doesn't mean
Denial doesn't mean
Denial doesn't mean
Denial doesn't mean
Where does this leave linux distributions?
Denial doesn't mean
Denial doesn't mean
No need to port them — instead, just make a single compositor that can run both SurfaceFlinger clients and Wayland clients (including XWayland).
If that's true, then how is it that pretty much all of the "productivity apps and games" in question have already been ported to Windows (running on Qt / GTK+ / wxWidgets for Windows, and/or Cygwin, etc.), and Mac OS X too (I remember some people saying that it would kill desktop Linux back when it was new, too), but despite that, desktop Linux distributions are still developed and used today?
Denial doesn't mean
Denial doesn't mean
Denial doesn't mean
Denial doesn't mean
Android on the desktop: Not really “good,” but better than you’d think (Ars Technica)