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RemixOS for PC released
- nailer 11y agoAwesome. 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.
- SG- 11y agoExcept that massive app ecosystem is designed for small screen phones and single window design. It also hasn't helped Windows Mobile at all with it's "massive" desktop ecosystem.
- derefr 11y agoSmall-screen phones and medium-screen tablets. And some netbooks. Pretty much the same as the set of devices Windows 8's Metro UI was designed for. Look what Windows 10 did with Metro apps: it took those "single-window designs" and just... stuck them in regular windows. And that works pretty well, it turns out.
- 746F7475 11y agoImo if you can run existing Android apps in resizable windows it would be a huge win. There are many well made Android apps that would work just fine as their own windowed applications
- on_and_off 11y agosome would definitely work pretty well. Several streaming services have native apps on both mobile & desktop. I think that their mobile apps could run pretty well on desktop. For many complex apps though (like anything dealing with text edition), the lack of hover & right clics handling would be a pain. Android supports 'hover' events (and since API 1 IIRC) but nobody implements them in custom widgets. Android supports mouse input but even as an android engineer I have no idea what the right click does in that situation.
- 746F7475 11y agoI know this is a cop-out, but wouldn't Google Docs work just fine in the browser here. I mean I haven't done any work on Google Docs, but I did use it all the way through uni. Or maybe we should just force everyone on Vim and world would be more glorious and productive place.... right?
- yincrash 11y agohttp://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/MotionEvent.html#BUTTON_SECONDARY http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/MotionEv... BUTTON_SECONDARY is reported in the getButtonState() of the MotionEvent, but I'm not sure most apps ever check that. I would guess in a lot of cases, if there is only checking on pointer down and up, it will act like the left mouse button.
- nailer 11y agoNot sure Windows is similar: Windows Phone has very few apps, Windows 8 desktop has very few 'modern' apps which can handle being distributed through an app store. Neither can leverage the other because there's nothing to leverage.
- droelf 11y agoThere is also project "shashlik" by the KDE folks which, if it works as advertised at some point, should make it possible to run Android apps natively in Linux. https://github.com/shashlik/shashlik https://github.com/shashlik/shashlik
- dharma1 11y agoHow well does that work?
- simcop2387 11y agoNeat. I've been using ARC with chrome for a couple of apps that i grabbed from my phone with adb. This looks like it'll eventually be pretty nice to avoid having to open chrome for them.
- dharma1 11y agoAnother 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.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- swiley 11y agoExcept that the android apps almost all suck. I'd far rather have the Debian repository on my phone than Google play on my laptop.
- kitd 11y agoI have a spare AIO touch-screen PC which I'm hoping to revive. This could be perfect.
- castell 11y agoRemixOS uses GPLv2 code (Linux, etc) and other open source licenses. They might got away with proprietary devices, their official response on their old (closed) forum was telling. But now they will have to provide it. The idea of adding a several improvements to Android for desktop usage (improved right mouse click) is good, but why not keep it open source? Also I don't see a real business model, as Google is already working to merge Android and ChromeOS "somehow" (as indicated by news lately) and both ChromiumOS and Android are open source.
- mankash666 11y agoBecause they want to profit from it. BTW - the kernel layer is GPL-ed and is already available in source form with the Ansroid x86 project. The Android layer is Apache licensed and they are't required to open source it, or using your own misleading verbiage, they can "get away with it".
- niutech 11y agoHow will they profit from giving away their OS for free? Maybe by gathering their users' data, given their EULA?
- mankash666 11y agoI don't know what their exact business plan is. Just like Twitter STILL doesn't have a real business plan.
- Sir_Cmpwn 11y agoHmm, 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. Does not show up as an option for booting on my macbook. Going to try booting it via EFI shell on my desktop and report back. Alright, got it to POST on my desktop, but it hangs during boot. On my libreboot laptop, it boots all the way to desktop if I do it in _guest_ mode. Pretty underwhelming once I got there, though.
- sandGorgon 11y agoSomeone got it to work on /r/remixos using efi files from chromeos
- petecox 11y agoMy laptop that had BIOS only got to the bootloader and crashed soon after doing the disk write test. My NUC is set to UEFI but only successfully ran by manually selecting it in legacy, as you say.
- igitur 11y agoDoes it run easily on a Raspberry Pi 2? It's probably mentioned somewhere else, but I suspect a lot of people here will want to know the answer.
- mankash666 11y agoNo - because this build is targeted at the x86 architecture
- soared 11y agoAndroid needs graphic acceleration which doesn't work on the pi. So it might run but very slowly.
- lovelearning 11y agoAnybody got this to work on VirtualBox? It's not moving past the bootloader screen for me, no matter what VM configuration I select.
- wiiittttt 11y agoNo, same issue here with VMWare player.
- cordite 11y agoIt detected it as FreeBSD for me. It never really booted in VMWare player.
- b3lvedere 11y agoNope. I also tried it on a ESXi 5.5 . The only small notification i see is that it cannot determine the USB writing speed and then it reboots again. So perhaps because it doesn't have write access.
- michielr 11y agoIt works fine for me, be sure to choose guest mode though. Virtualbox on a W10 host. edit: screenshot http://i.imgur.com/Ev7Kvil.png http://i.imgur.com/Ev7Kvil.png
- lovelearning 11y agoStrangely, it didn't work at all on VirtualBox on Ubuntu, but worked on a Windows 7 host. Thanks for the hint!
- voltagex_ 11y agoIf you've got the OSE (free) version of VirtualBox on Ubuntu, it might be missing chipset support.
- circuitslave 11y agoConfigured as Other Linux 64bit w/12gb of disk and 2gb of memory it booted for me in VirtualBox
- dharma1 11y agoanyone managed to boot this off USB stick on macbook pro?
- SG- 11y agoTrying to right now, there's 0 instructions provided for OSX booting other than to hold 'Option' for the boot loader which is pretty useless. Hoping I can just dd it to my SD card and have it boot. Edit: doesn't seem to want to boot from my SD card or recognize it as bootable.
- sandGorgon 11y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10886820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10886820 HTH.
- merqurio 11y agoI just booted in a rMBP 15 2014. It worked well but withou Play store nor Google Chrome, nothing fancy.
- ivl 11y agoIs there really a chart comparing performance on an i7 to a bunch of smartphones? I'm having a really hard time seeing the point of that comparison. Why not benchmark against other PC operating systems, like say Chrome OS?
- matt_morgan 11y agoI 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 to solve that in a general way?
- dharma1 11y agoIt'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
- matt_morgan 11y agoUnderstood 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.
- dharma1 11y agoIt'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
- petecox 11y agoMouse support in the OS has been there a while, a friend had one of the early Asus Transformers some 4 years ago with a trackpad.
- matt_morgan 11y agoI can use the mouse on my android box ... the issue is that the things you have to click don't make sense with a mouse. E.g., there'll be two buttons, one on each side of the screen. Easy to hit with two thumbs, impossible to hit with a mouse.
- isbn 11y agoWould be cool if they'd release this for ARM too. The Pi, Cubietruck and all the other dev boards would run this nicely.
- soylentcola 11y agoFrom 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.
- isbn 11y agoThere definitely are Android ports for RaspPi and other ARM boards, but I don't think there are RemixOS ports for these, which I would like.
- timwaagh 11y agoso this would be the first closed linux distro in history. An ironic milestone for the open source community. or have I missed something?
- ultramancool 11y agoWell, 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.
- gtk40 11y agoSince 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. :)
- chc4 11y agoIt's definitely still a Linux distro. It's just not a GNU/Linux distribution, but Bionic/Linux.
- mtgx 11y agoIt's more like a closed Android ROM/distro, which isn't that uncommon. CyanogenOS isn't open source either.
- sowbug 11y ago"First" is a difficult claim to sustain. But Tivo is a better candidate for the most notable early one, as it was a major motivator for GPL v3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization
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- mtgx 11y agoGoogle should buy this now before Microsoft applies its EEE strategy on it or tries to fill it up with Cortana and stuff.
- pmx 11y agoThey would be wasting their money it's terrible.
- sandGorgon 11y agoAnyone know how they are building a desktop experience on Android? Have they just layered a userspace on top of traditional Linux.. Or did they actually work with binder /init - > kdbus/systemd
- mirap 11y agoDo someone understand their business model? What are they planning to sell?
- lovelearning 11y agoI guess their Ultratablet and Mini, running Remix OS with multitasking support.
- Nursie 11y agoHow is this different from android-x86?
- pmx 11y agoIt appears to BE android-x86. I'm pretty sure all they have done is created a custom shell/launcher.
- Bossman 11y agoIt's pretty cool to see work being done to get Android working better in a desktop environment. I applaud the progress. But I don't really have a need for this. I love my Chromebook and ChromeOS too much and it feels like they fill similar niches.
- hitekker 11y agoI recall, perhaps mistakenly, that there use to be a big buzz in the 90's about having Java as a desktop OS.
- leishulang 11y agohttps://dn-cdn-shop-jide-com.qbox.me/jide_upload/S1451544263698_pants.png https://dn-cdn-shop-jide-com.qbox.me/jide_upload/S1451544263... That's it! I am buying that jeans.
- pmx 11y agoManaged to get it too boot on my Acer laptop. Not impressed with it honestly. Mouse isn't really useable and the only thing that make it "desktop like" is the task bar at the bottom. The music application still opens full-screen with no close button or any window chrome at all. Sure the site says it has Google Play Store but there is no sign of it here.
- dizzyviolet 11y agoJust booted it. The EULA is frightening to say the least. 1. "You agree that you irrevocably waive any and all ownership, legal and moral rights to your user content." 2. You're also not allowed to oppose "the basic principles determined in the Constitution of the People's Republic of China", harm it's "national honor and interests", or undermine it's "national religious policy, promoting cults and superstitions". 3. Also, you're not allowed to spread rumor, disturb social order, or undermine social stability. There's other strange rules of conduct that just turned me off from the entire project. Besides, it doesn't see either of my wireless adapters and the desktop blanked out when it attempted to adjust my screen resolution:) I'm still interested in getting completely off Windows 10, so I'll stick with Linux for now.
- anon4 11y agoFuck China. -- posted from my RemixOS desktop
- soggypretzels 11y agoWhat an amazing thing to put in a EULA. Are they somehow sponsored by China?
- yohui 11y agoJide appears to be a Chinese company founded by former Google employees: http://www.jide.com/about http://www.jide.com/about > 北京技德科技有限公司 If the stuff above is in their EULA, it's probably Chinese legal boilerplate. More heavy handed than the boilerplate we're used to, perhaps.
- chillingeffect 11y agoIf this is really true [1] and not an exaggeration, there is no way on Earth I will touch this or let anyone I care about touch it with a 100-foot pole. Closed source? Waive legal rights? to my own content? Not criticize China? Not in 100 million years. Glad I switched to 100% Ubuntu. Donated and anticipating 16.04 LTS in April. It's one thing to get pressured into a gray area w/r/t freedoms in exchange for some perceived benefit, but to explicitly waive them and endanger myself to a foreign power? Who knows what China would do? No way. How do these people even make a EULA with a straight face and expect people to drink it up? Even though Windows and OSX are closed-source, at least hackers have a grasp on what it's doing and you're not instantly giving up rights and ownership when you turn it on. This crosses my line in the sand. [1] I've been trying to find the EULA online somewhere, but can't so far. Any leads? I'm afraid to install this and look at the EULA.
- lutusp 11y agoI would love to add my comments as a tester, but I can't get the PC version to boot successfully after Linux and Windows install attempts. I thought the USB 3 interface specification was only desirable, but it seems it's a requirement. I have ordered some USB 3 memory devices, I'll post again if I see a successful boot.
- petecox 11y agoAnyone want a review? Bad problems booting certain machines data partition creation very slow no Google Play Good eventually boots! wifi and bluetooth work can configure layout for external keyboard f-droid works firefox has reasonable keyboard shortcuts Ugly multi-monitor support - screen mirroring only no multiple screens and rotation support apps not designed for mouse input - right/middle click or drag and drop app install of apks a little flakey inbuilt browser very basic graphics rendering slower than X11