17 ms·

My Watch Runs GNU/Linux

437 points by BuuQu9hu 10y ago

kriro 10y ago
Since I own the same watch...I'm intrigued. Battery life is a concern (as is integration with some stuff). But yeah who am I kidding I'll try this and even if all it will ever do is display the time there's something to be said about "well yeah I got my Linux box right here!" :D Remembering the "runs on a toaster" shirts I am now curious if NetBSD (or any BSD) will run on it. The thought that I never even considered messing with the watch makes me a bit sad (I've turned into too much of a consumer, not enough tinkerer left :P)
orblivion 10y ago
I run Asteroid OS on the old LG watch (which I also got for free; probably a prime market for this OS). It's still in alpha so it's fairly buggy. But it looks really nice, particularly for being FOSS. It can (in principle) do notifications, weather, and music control. I look forward to them smoothing it all over, but I wear it already.
h4nkoslo 10y ago
This would be extremely appealing if it had sufficient I/O to make it into a mobile, basically headless computer you could hook up to whatever display or input was handy. Looks like it only has a single MicroUSB port though.
- sigmar 10y ago
  You could do microUSB -> MHL -> HDMI, and maybe use the watch bluetooth for mouse/keyboard input. Though I don't think MHL is open source, and I'm probably completely wrong in thinking the BT hardware on that could be used with the bluetooth host stack
  - detaro 10y ago
    MHL is not based on USB, only runs over the same cabling, so that wouldn't work (unless for some totally crazy reason the watch has the necessary hardware, totally unused)
- i336_ 10y ago
  Theoretically, it has the CPU, and the USB port is 2.0, so you could manage a USB 2.0->VGA converter. I've heard such converters are the hardware equivalent of running the unaccelerated VESA driver due to the low bandwidth though. I don't expect it would do 60fps beyond 1152x864 and 30fps beyond 1280x1024.
  - mschuster91 10y ago
    Speaking from experience: these things are only useful for running powerpoint presentations. They break down even on scrolling a browser page, much less playing video.
    - i336_ 10y ago
      Ah. Yikes. Thanks for the info, I'd always wondered. Kinda sad none of them spent the extra effort on building a differential update protocol of some kind - but then the processor inside would probably need to be 250MHz+...
api_or_ipa 10y ago
One of the big draws of buying and wearing a mechanical watch is the emotional feeling of something busily working away on your wrist. In the same way I would fine great joy in wearing a flavour of linux right on my wrist.
- kbutler 10y ago
  Meh... Maybe I'm just jaded by having had Linux running in my pocket for many years. (Linux, then BSD, then Linux again...)
- MBCook 10y ago
  I do love my Apple Watch, but I would also be thrilled if they put some sort of really fancy mechanical gizmo in there for the sole of having some ultra complex mechanical escapement only instead of software.
  - disordinary 10y ago
    Apple used to put speakers in their ipods just so there was a click when you used the scroll wheel, so I wouldn't put it past them to have some sort of haptic imitation of ticking that 99.999% of people will never notice or feel. :)
    - jodrellblank 10y ago
      Apple put an electromagnet in their newer laptop trackpads so they click when you press them, even though they can't move and aren't buttons.
      - disordinary 10y ago
        Yeah, and it's amazing how realistic it feels.
        72deluxe 10y ago
        I find the clicking on my MBP 2012 really irritating - I much prefer tap to click. Do others really spend the entire day noisily clicking around to do stuff? Weirdly the tap to click stops working after connecting to the MacBook using VNC, even though if you open System Preferences and look at the touchpad options, it believes it is enabled with tap-to-click. They've said it is fixed about 10 times now - not sure if it is. Must retest.
wonko1 10y ago
Oh neat! I've always wanted this. When I last tried hacking my Moto360 it was possible to get Debian running in a chroot reasonability easily. The trouble came mostly with video access. The userland graphics libs are all compiled against BIONIC rather than glibc. And they were at the time only available in compiled form. That meant it wasn't really possible to have a clean glibc system. I guess either something has changed, or they're using a hack, incorporating BIONIC, which is what many people have done on other mobile platforms. Very neat though, I'm going to have to try this out!
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  Apparently libhybris [1] solves the glibc -> bionic problem, but I've never been able to work out how to use it. I'd like to see a "Hello World" done with a small rootfs+libhybris on something like the Nexus 4. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybris_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybris_(software)
shmerl 10y ago
What GPU does it use? Is it a native GPU driver + Mesa or you use it with libhybris and Android blobs? Wayland is neat, but it's pretty annoying when there are no native drivers available. One of the problems with Android is, that it became like Windows of the past. Hardware makers produce Android drivers with closed userspace blobs, and leave it at that. Blobs built against bionic make running a proper glibc Linux on such devices a pain unless hacks like libhybris are deployed, or you manage to replace them with proper open drivers.
- fabrice_d 10y ago
  From the front page: "AsteroidOS is built upon a rock-solid base system. Qt 5.6 and QML are used for fast and easy app development. OpenEmbedded provides a full GNU/Linux distribution and libhybris allows easy porting to most Android and Android Wear watches."
  - shmerl 10y ago
    Understandably it can use libhybris. I was asking what GPU is used in the poster's watch. If it has native drivers, libhybris isn't necessary.
    - petecox 10y ago
      Qualcomm, so in theory can use Freedreno. AFAIK, Hybris isn't just for the GPU and is used to port various binary Android drivers to ubuntu touch, sailfish, tizen, luneos etc as can be seen from the following chart: https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Adaptations/libhybris https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Adaptations/libhybris
      - shmerl 10y ago
        Yes, it can be used any time there is a need for blob that depends on bionic and there is no open replacement. May be for touchscreen driver in this case? That's why it's such a mess with Android only hardware. No idea why Tizen needs it though. Samsung can afford writing normal drivers for all their hardware.
hardwaresofton 10y ago
This is awesome. I got in on the smartwatch craze super early (like sony smartwatch 1), and the one thing I wished was for was some F/OSS to run on my watch (believe it or not sony smartwatch 1 actually had a dev kit), and to finally getting rid of the oddly-intrusive smartphone apps that came with most smartwatches. Hyped to hear someone actually did it with Asteroid OS (even if it's Alpha). I also thought FirefoxOS would evolve to maybe get in this space, but I was mega wrong about that and lots of other things so there's that. I'm excited that Asteroid won't meet the same fate, but maybe I'm biased. Also stumbled upon http://www.openembedded.org/wiki/Main_Page http://www.openembedded.org/wiki/Main_Page while looking the repo for Asteriod. Excited to see what comes of this project and maybe even contribute in the future.
- xyzzy_plugh 10y ago
  OE has been around a while, and while it has matured well it is still somewhat of a bridge to building bespoke distributions. It's a great start if you're looking to maintain a custom distribution for a custom product/form factor but it's a bit rough for end users. Worse still, there is little-to-no motivation for vendors to open up their products to their customers.
  - hardwaresofton 10y ago
    I've always thought that one of the best things about the Raspberry Pi/ODROID/Zero/Arduino/other mini computers/microcontrollers is that they made it obvious and easy (easier at least) for people to bring hardware to consumers, at the sacrifice of some speed and efficiency. When the Raspberry Pi came out and only cost $25, it made me think I could write some relatively resilient/robust software, put it on a SD card, put it in a PI, add a case, and sell useful hardware for $50. OE seems like a good step in the direction of recovering some of the speed/efficiency losses that running even some of the most lightweight linux distros would force you into. I think the end user problem can be solved with extremely robust client-side installers and amazing instructions. If IKEA can get people to build furniture (even if badly), why can't we manage to get a user who has booted an operating system on a running computer to flash a device, when usually most cases are the default case (as in you usually don't have to change a ton of ADB/system settings to connect to most android devices).
branchless 10y ago
This needs a microphone. Would be great to be able to drive activity via voice, or make reminders. If it had some kind of bluetooth/wifi also then you could send emails via dictation but I guess the size/battery constraints rule that out.
- andrewaylett 10y ago
  It's got a microphone. Also both Bluetooth and WiFi, and you can (with the original Android Wear -- no idea if Asteroid has got to the point of implementing anything similar) drive activities by voice, set reminders and send emails by dictation. The battery lasts for around two days.
  - branchless 10y ago
    Wow that's cool. Battery life is always a pain but two days is not so bad.
flukus 10y ago
Quad core + 512MB of RAM. Now it just needs HDMI out and we've got a quite capable portable computer on our wrists.
- BuffaloBagel 10y ago
  throw it in a pot, add some broth, a potato... baby, you've got a stew going
- gravypod 10y ago
  My only concern with smart watches is battery life.
  - soylentcola 10y ago
    It's definitely one of the main restricting factors. That said, even my gen-one Moto 360, while not new and not known for being amazing in the battery department hasn't been an issue for me. I just put it on the cradle on my nightstand when I go to bed and pick it up in the morning. It charges pretty quickly as well so if I get home from work on a Friday and anticipate being out late, I can put it on the cradle for 30-60 min and top off the charge before heading out and there's never an issue. Still, the battery isn't something like the battery in a traditional watch so at some point I won't just be able to order a button cell on Amazon and swap it out like I could on any old Timex, etc. Definitely hurts the lifespan and it's a major reason I only bought this watch because I got it on sale for $100. I wouldn't feel as comfortable buying a $500 watch that would be forever battery-dead in 3-4 years.
awinter-py 10y ago
I tried asteroid on the sony smartwatch 3 this month -- graphics are iffy. Docs suggest experience is better on other hardware.
pkaye 10y ago
Its hard for me to consider a smartwatch when my current watch is solar powered and I haven't had to change batteries for the last 8 years. Maybe when these can run on a charge for 2+ weeks at a time I might consider it.
- adamweld 10y ago
  RIP pebble.
- aedron 10y ago
  My Seiko Kinetic is going on 15 years without a single charge and will probably do fine for many years to come. Also, I can just look at it to tell the time, no need to turn it on first!
  - disordinary 10y ago
    I found an old Casio in a box a few years back, it must have been five or six years old but was still going strong and had the right time.
  - fegu 10y ago
    My huaweii smartwatch is always on. That, and being round instead of square, is the reason I bought it.
- suprfnk 10y ago
  That's a completely different usecase though. You don't wear a smartwatch just to see the time. You wear it because it can do stuff for you outside of telling you the time.
  - darfs 10y ago
    Im confused. Isnt that the definition of a Smartphone? :P
    - OJFord 10y ago
RhodaLs 10y ago
Being an old Slashdot user, the first incredibly dumb thought of mine was "Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!" With a pic of Natalie Portman for the watch face, of course. But, one fun thing I could imagine doing is using it as an incredibly portable PirateBox. Or any other use of a file server hiding in plain sight.
- AceJohnny2 10y ago
  Man, I remember when those jokes were old, 15 years ago. Speaking of Beowulf, has there ever been an evolution of the concept? The closest I've seen since has been QNX's QNet, which allows transparent management and communication between process on nodes of the cluster. I suppose Hadoop or even Kubernetes can be seen as the continuation of the concept?
  - erik 10y ago
    The idea of a Beowulf cluster was using networked commodity PC hardware and Linux to do HPC / scientific computing. In some ways this idea came to dominate. If you look at the top500 list: https://www.top500.org/list/2016/11/ https://www.top500.org/list/2016/11/ All of these machines are big clusters running Linux. Mostly on Intel CPUs. But on the other hand, the idea of using commodity hardware is kind of a thing of the past. It's mostly Xeon CPUs, not desktop processors. And it's specialized network hardware. And more and more you see dedicated compute hardware like Intel Phi and Nvidia Tesla cards.
    - kefka 10y ago
      Yeah, it's pretty intense to see these clusters in person. In our data centers, we have 40G optical interlinks per rack overhead, 100G spidering across the racks to different rooms and the main network room. And thinking of he main network room, with the amount of brocades in there, it's probably more expensive than the main enterprise pod just in sheer super-expensive network stuffs. We're also behind the times in lots of our management. 80% of our servers are bare metal, with limited automation. But we also do "NOC in a box"... many of our use cases wouldn't cleanly work right using tech like docker and kubernetes.
ge96 10y ago
Site has responsive problem, cells overflow on Nexus 4
- samtoday 10y ago
  Love the nexus 4 mate! Watch out for breaking power buttons though! Thanks for the bug report btw. I'll fix it when I'm thinking straight in the morning!
  - ge96 10y ago
    Oh yeah. It's those pesky little things that push the width beyond 100% at least here it was easy to find. Sometimes you have to use the console>inspect that highlights parts of the page to find what is causing the width overflow. Also yeah Nexus 4 isn't bad, too bad they don't update it anymore :(
rxlim 10y ago
I like how he is sarcastic about being very happy that systemd is installed on the watch.
- i336_ 10y ago
  If you're right, that's a big sigh of relief from me. The guy mentions how "Lennart Poettering would love it!" as the h2, and also describes X11 as "legacy". With these in mind I feared he was serious about the systemd bit. I'm really sad X11 is legacy software myself, as an aside. It's a disaster, sure, but now we have one more layer of "uhhhh..." for all the UX-types to get scared away by: it used to be "(WinAPI) vs ((Qt)/(GTK+)/(Xlib/XCB))", which was embarrassing enough; now it's "(WinAPI) vs (X11((Qt)/(GTK+)/(Xlib/XCB))/Wayland((Qt)/(GTK+)/(???)))" which is just plain annoying for low-level graphics hacker wannabes - I can make a WinAPI app in C that opens a window in a few KB, where as to do that in Linux now I HAVE to support XCB and also write my own tiny UI for Wayland. Practically speaking it means that most developers will just pick a side^H^H^H^Htoolkit and go with that. It doesn't help that I've never been able to get past Qt's love of background processes vs. GTK's various displays of autism/spasticness. sighs...rant over, situation accepted a bit more. systemd is still a disaster though. I saw a massive 3Wx5H 1080p video wall in a shop window the other day, displaying... systemd emergency mode. At least I learned that some video stretchers are smart and will drop the panels they're controlling into standby if they display black for too long. (Only the two panels at the top-left displaying the error were on, the others visibly had their backlights off. Neat.)
  - i336_ 10y ago
    Curious why this was downvoted (it's currently at -1). Happy to hear any explanation or view.
    - grzm 10y ago
      I haven't followed this discussion so am unfamiliar with the validity of the details of the comment, so I can't speak to the content. The downvotes may be in part due to the rantish nature of part of it, which you were aware of at the time of posting. Some readers may have thought as you knew its tone was overly heated, you could have taken the time to express it better. However, this is just speculation, based on behavior I've seen on HN.
hyperpallium 10y ago
This is amazing (I also have a moment of amazement at my smartphone every so often). But an issue is power usage. (eg) ubuntu runs on a smartphone, but with much shorter battery life than android. (Tho TBF, I don't know the power efficiency of Asteroid OS). One side-benefit of non-rooting linux (eg termux, terminalIDE) is retaining battery life. However, Asteroid OS is open source, which counts for a lot!
matthewmorgan 10y ago
Looks cool. Wouldn't trust it to tell the time though
- 72deluxe 10y ago
  Does it just run date on the CLI and pipe that out? That'd be useful. Or show the date in your BASH prompt.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    watch date
    - karlmdavis 10y ago
      Probably don't want the default refresh of 2 seconds. And the title/header is probably redundant, as well. Maybe this, instead? $ watch --interval 0.1 --no-title date ;)
disordinary 10y ago
Whats the battery life like running Asteroid vs Android Wear?
mankash666 10y ago
Newbie question - isn't Android wear's kernel open source? Android has switched to Wayland as well right?
- guelo 10y ago
  Android Wear's kernel is linux and some of the low level userland is open source but everything above that is locked down and proprietary. It's definitely not using Wayland. In general Google has been moving away from Android's open source legacy as much as they can.
- fsiefken 10y ago
  Tizen uses Wayland
- pjmlp 10y ago
  No, it is using Flinger. https://source.android.com/devices/graphics/architecture.html https://source.android.com/devices/graphics/architecture.htm...
Animats 10y ago
Four processors in a watch? That's impressive, but if you actually use them, what's the battery life?
- dspillett 10y ago
  > Four processors in a watch? Four cores, which makes a difference. > what's the battery life? It might not be as bad as could be feared, specifically regarding the CPU at idle anyway. A lot of modern CPUs support turning cores individually on/off (or at least into very low power sleep states) as needed and if the OS scheduler is bright enough then taking advantage of this can be a lot more power efficient than trying to fiddle around with variable clock rates. There might be a performance hit for single one-thread tasks of course as per-core performance might be low, but at times when you care (while in active use, interacting with an app) there will be at least three distinct tasks going on: core function management, display management, and at least one user task. While the watch is idle there will just be one active task most of the time so only one core needs to be powered up (of none most of the time, with device management tasks and user apps that respond to events/notifications only waking up on interrupt). Having said that, having to charge it at least once most days is my only major complaint with the MS Band that I wear most of the time. It would be interesting to see how well this manages in that regard.
Nux 10y ago
Very high CPU usage while browsing this site, Firefox' Reader View saves the say once again..
- cornedor 10y ago
  I had the same problem here, while scrolling Firefox couldn't catch up and showed white just white for a short time. Then I saw the huge background gradient. The background is an image, a radial gradient, and also background-blend-mode: hue; edit: there are even more huge div's that have the same background, so there are multiple layers of gradients with hue blend mode.
  - samtoday 10y ago
    Spot on. I found this out the hard way today and wrote up a post with some benchmarks and the tiny patch that fixed the bug: https://learntemail.sam.today/blog/1-css-property-that-will-ruin-your-scroll-performance/ https://learntemail.sam.today/blog/1-css-property-that-will-...
    - dom96 10y ago
      If I were you I would also consider getting rid of your textured background (https://learntemail.sam.today/static/images/texturetastic-white.png https://learntemail.sam.today/static/images/texturetastic-wh...). The little grey blobs just make me wonder whether my monitor is dirty.
vmp 10y ago
Does it run Doom? :-)
- coldtea 10y ago
  Obviously it does.
dom96 10y ago
is there anything like this for Pebbles?
deavmi 10y ago
That's awesome.
INTPenis 10y ago
Love the hack but I can't agree that they're a fad. Long before smartwatches my cousin had a bluetooth watch connected to his phone. And today I have a smartwatch connected to my phone to avoid having to stop and take it out when I'm on a bike. I bike everywhere, like thousands others where I live. So there's clearly a market for some sort of wrist-device that makes using your phone easier. The thing that makes it feel like a stupid fad is when you have to charge it every day and therefore forget to put it on. It hasn't become habitual quite yet. Which is why I love my smartwatch for having an e-ink display and not an amoled display. So even after more than a year of operation I still only charge it once a week.
- andrepd 10y ago
  That's why he said it was a fad for him. And it is, for the vast majority of people, just a fad. Bar some use cases like biking and so on, having a smartwatch brings nuisances for no tangible benefits.
- coldtea 10y ago
  One could argue that in the larger context of modern cities (outside of specific places like the Netherlands, or some Chinese cities), biking is mostly a fad too.
jpl56 10y ago
I notice that nobody answers to the "what is the battery life" questions...
- delinka 10y ago
  The article has both the hard fact "410 mAh" as well a a more colloquial "a good days worth!" Sure, the author doesn't confirm this nor expand on it, but I'd say his comment is sufficient.
  - itp 10y ago
    410 mAh is a measure of battery capacity, not battery life. And the phrase "a good days worth" presumably describes the watch as shipped with Android wear. I think what the original question was getting at was more like "what is the battery life of the watch when running AsteroidOS?" That seems like a pretty fair question which was not addressed.
elcapitan 10y ago
What would be the killer app for a smartwatch from a hacker/techie perspective? Because I'm still struggling to see any realistic use case for myself.
- OJFord 10y ago
  In a movie, we'd be disabling CCTV cameras from it as we ran through corridors of the Pentagon, y'know, hacking stuff. In reality, I think the author just did it for its own sake: > I ended up with a free LG Watch Urbane ... I realized that smartwatches were just a fad (for me at least), and this was a device I could experiment with.
- veli_joza 10y ago
  For me, killer application is basic usable text input. I'd love to covertly send text messages, write down some thoughts and TODO items, while still maintaining eye contact and following discussion. For it to be usable, it should not require sight and higher typing speeds should be achievable by training. This rules out virtual querty keyboards and predictive suggestions. I think glyph recognition would be usable, but also other gesture systems would work if they don't demand supervision by sight.
  - jokr004 10y ago
    Does there exist any input method that doesn't require sight other than physical keys? If so, I'm not aware of any.
    - homarp 10y ago
      morse code ?
      - w8rbt 10y ago
        It's been done. http://www.cultofmac.com/409175/nifty-app-uses-morse-code-to-send-apple-watch-messages/ http://www.cultofmac.com/409175/nifty-app-uses-morse-code-to... Although I think a better input method would be voice (like the GoPro cameras) for most use cases. "Watch, send text to Mom...." Morse Code is just too slow and most humans can no longer send or copy it. It should be the input method of last resort.
gcb0 10y ago
meanwhile, everyone's phone here runs gnu/linux but completely out of reach. everyone bought a computer from an advertising (google) or fashion (apple) company that only runs in kiosk mode. how does your 90s self feel about that?
- blauditore 10y ago
  To be fair, that's all most users need, and could also use for desktop OS'. You don't need admin rights to open Facebook in a browser... But it hurts as a power user.
- AsyncAwait 10y ago
  True, but Termux[1] on android makes this less of a pain. 1 - https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=termux&fdid=com.termux https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=termux&fdid=...
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    I wonder if it still would work in Android 7, with the new restrictions that kill any application that tries to link to non public NDK libraries.
    - fjrieiekd 10y ago
      And since Android 4.4, access to external SD cards has been restricted unless you use an annoying API or have a rooted device.
- AlexeyBrin 10y ago
  > meanwhile, everyone's phone here runs gnu/linux but completely out of reach. everyone bought a computer from an advertising (google) or fashion (apple) company that only runs in kiosk mode. Pretty sure there is no GNU component in iOS which is based on BSD. Also, Android uses only the Linux kernel, not even close to a GNU/Linux system.
  - 10y ago
jff 10y ago
> Even more amazingly, running on that tiny package of hardware is some live multitasking Yep, pretty amazing that a quad-core 1.2GHz machine with half a gig of RAM can run more than one thing at a time!
- htor 10y ago
  I sense dark sarcasm hidden in this message, perhaps from behind a smug UNIX beard?
  - andybak 10y ago
    Or maybe someone that remembers the Amiga...
    - 0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago
      No need for that much memory. If you can remember 8 years ago that's enough.
      - i336_ 10y ago
        Scans mental dictionary for interesting things from 2009 Nothing found What are you referring to?
- globuous 10y ago
  While I don't find this that impressive. I do find amazing that a quad-core 1.2GHz machine with half a gig of RAM can fit in that tiny package of hardware.
teaearlgraycold 10y ago
Is it 2003 again? The content container here uses a white png as a background instead of background-color: white
- manarth 10y ago
  It's not a perfect white: it's a 476-pixel square with some random (very small) splotches of light grey. As the image is called 'texturetastic-white.png', I assume the intention is to give a more natural texture feel to the background. I'll admit that it's not the design choice I would have made, but then again, I'm not a designer!
norswap 10y ago
Is this really something to be happy about? Even ignoring technical considerations (the dizzying amount of code and cruft required to run a watch), it goes against one time-honored watch tradition: simple, elegant mechanics.
- andybak 10y ago
  Congratulations. You've won today's "Find something to moan about" prize! Seriously though - stop getting hung up on the word 'watch' - it's not the real point here. Nobody is arguing that telling the time doesn't require a full blown OS. > simple, elegant mechanics. Have you ever looked inside a watch!
  - manarth 10y ago
    > simple, elegant mechanics. Have you ever looked inside a watch! Well, I'd grant the "elegant mechanics", getting all those teensy cogs and wheels and levers and bits to work together like, er, clockwork… But "simple"? It's telling that the term for each feature on a watchface is "complication" :-D
- coldtea 10y ago
  >it goes against one time-honored watch tradition: simple, elegant mechanics. So, just like every digital watch ever created?
aceperry 10y ago
Great project. I had no idea the LG Urbane used an ARM Cortex-A processor. I have a few 1st gen Android watches, and those used the ST ARM cortex-M series micros. I have an LG Urbane as well, but wouldn't want to dump it since I find Android wear to be useful.
- aceperry 10y ago
  Ooops, my bad. I was mistaken about the 1st gen Android wear watches. They also used Cortex-A processors and can be updated with AsteroidOS. I was thinking of other smart watches.
ensiferum 10y ago
Something only a nerd can be excited about.

437 points by BuuQu9hu 10y ago

kriro 10y ago

Since I own the same watch...I'm intrigued. Battery life is a concern (as is integration with some stuff). But yeah who am I kidding I'll try this and even if all it will ever do is display the time there's something to be said about "well yeah I got my Linux box right here!" :D Remembering the "runs on a toaster" shirts I am now curious if NetBSD (or any BSD) will run on it. The thought that I never even considered messing with the watch makes me a bit sad (I've turned into too much of a consumer, not enough tinkerer left :P)

orblivion 10y ago

I run Asteroid OS on the old LG watch (which I also got for free; probably a prime market for this OS). It's still in alpha so it's fairly buggy. But it looks really nice, particularly for being FOSS. It can (in principle) do notifications, weather, and music control. I look forward to them smoothing it all over, but I wear it already.

h4nkoslo 10y ago

This would be extremely appealing if it had sufficient I/O to make it into a mobile, basically headless computer you could hook up to whatever display or input was handy. Looks like it only has a single MicroUSB port though.

sigmar 10y ago
You could do microUSB -> MHL -> HDMI, and maybe use the watch bluetooth for mouse/keyboard input. Though I don't think MHL is open source, and I'm probably completely wrong in thinking the BT hardware on that could be used with the bluetooth host stack
- detaro 10y ago
  MHL is not based on USB, only runs over the same cabling, so that wouldn't work (unless for some totally crazy reason the watch has the necessary hardware, totally unused)
i336_ 10y ago
Theoretically, it has the CPU, and the USB port is 2.0, so you could manage a USB 2.0->VGA converter. I've heard such converters are the hardware equivalent of running the unaccelerated VESA driver due to the low bandwidth though. I don't expect it would do 60fps beyond 1152x864 and 30fps beyond 1280x1024.
- mschuster91 10y ago
  Speaking from experience: these things are only useful for running powerpoint presentations. They break down even on scrolling a browser page, much less playing video.
  - i336_ 10y ago
    Ah. Yikes. Thanks for the info, I'd always wondered. Kinda sad none of them spent the extra effort on building a differential update protocol of some kind - but then the processor inside would probably need to be 250MHz+...

api_or_ipa 10y ago

One of the big draws of buying and wearing a mechanical watch is the emotional feeling of something busily working away on your wrist. In the same way I would fine great joy in wearing a flavour of linux right on my wrist.

kbutler 10y ago
Meh... Maybe I'm just jaded by having had Linux running in my pocket for many years. (Linux, then BSD, then Linux again...)
MBCook 10y ago
I do love my Apple Watch, but I would also be thrilled if they put some sort of really fancy mechanical gizmo in there for the sole of having some ultra complex mechanical escapement only instead of software.
- disordinary 10y ago
  Apple used to put speakers in their ipods just so there was a click when you used the scroll wheel, so I wouldn't put it past them to have some sort of haptic imitation of ticking that 99.999% of people will never notice or feel. :)
  - jodrellblank 10y ago
    Apple put an electromagnet in their newer laptop trackpads so they click when you press them, even though they can't move and aren't buttons.
    - disordinary 10y ago
      Yeah, and it's amazing how realistic it feels.
      - 72deluxe 10y ago
        I find the clicking on my MBP 2012 really irritating - I much prefer tap to click. Do others really spend the entire day noisily clicking around to do stuff? Weirdly the tap to click stops working after connecting to the MacBook using VNC, even though if you open System Preferences and look at the touchpad options, it believes it is enabled with tap-to-click. They've said it is fixed about 10 times now - not sure if it is. Must retest.

wonko1 10y ago

Oh neat! I've always wanted this. When I last tried hacking my Moto360 it was possible to get Debian running in a chroot reasonability easily. The trouble came mostly with video access. The userland graphics libs are all compiled against BIONIC rather than glibc. And they were at the time only available in compiled form. That meant it wasn't really possible to have a clean glibc system. I guess either something has changed, or they're using a hack, incorporating BIONIC, which is what many people have done on other mobile platforms. Very neat though, I'm going to have to try this out!

voltagex_ 10y ago
Apparently libhybris [1] solves the glibc -> bionic problem, but I've never been able to work out how to use it. I'd like to see a "Hello World" done with a small rootfs+libhybris on something like the Nexus 4. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybris_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybris_(software)

shmerl 10y ago

What GPU does it use? Is it a native GPU driver + Mesa or you use it with libhybris and Android blobs? Wayland is neat, but it's pretty annoying when there are no native drivers available. One of the problems with Android is, that it became like Windows of the past. Hardware makers produce Android drivers with closed userspace blobs, and leave it at that. Blobs built against bionic make running a proper glibc Linux on such devices a pain unless hacks like libhybris are deployed, or you manage to replace them with proper open drivers.

fabrice_d 10y ago
From the front page: "AsteroidOS is built upon a rock-solid base system. Qt 5.6 and QML are used for fast and easy app development. OpenEmbedded provides a full GNU/Linux distribution and libhybris allows easy porting to most Android and Android Wear watches."
- shmerl 10y ago
  Understandably it can use libhybris. I was asking what GPU is used in the poster's watch. If it has native drivers, libhybris isn't necessary.
  - petecox 10y ago
    Qualcomm, so in theory can use Freedreno. AFAIK, Hybris isn't just for the GPU and is used to port various binary Android drivers to ubuntu touch, sailfish, tizen, luneos etc as can be seen from the following chart: https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Adaptations/libhybris https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Adaptations/libhybris
    - shmerl 10y ago
      Yes, it can be used any time there is a need for blob that depends on bionic and there is no open replacement. May be for touchscreen driver in this case? That's why it's such a mess with Android only hardware. No idea why Tizen needs it though. Samsung can afford writing normal drivers for all their hardware.

hardwaresofton 10y ago

This is awesome. I got in on the smartwatch craze super early (like sony smartwatch 1), and the one thing I wished was for was some F/OSS to run on my watch (believe it or not sony smartwatch 1 actually had a dev kit), and to finally getting rid of the oddly-intrusive smartphone apps that came with most smartwatches. Hyped to hear someone actually did it with Asteroid OS (even if it's Alpha). I also thought FirefoxOS would evolve to maybe get in this space, but I was mega wrong about that and lots of other things so there's that. I'm excited that Asteroid won't meet the same fate, but maybe I'm biased. Also stumbled upon http://www.openembedded.org/wiki/Main_Page http://www.openembedded.org/wiki/Main_Page while looking the repo for Asteriod. Excited to see what comes of this project and maybe even contribute in the future.

xyzzy_plugh 10y ago
OE has been around a while, and while it has matured well it is still somewhat of a bridge to building bespoke distributions. It's a great start if you're looking to maintain a custom distribution for a custom product/form factor but it's a bit rough for end users. Worse still, there is little-to-no motivation for vendors to open up their products to their customers.
- hardwaresofton 10y ago
  I've always thought that one of the best things about the Raspberry Pi/ODROID/Zero/Arduino/other mini computers/microcontrollers is that they made it obvious and easy (easier at least) for people to bring hardware to consumers, at the sacrifice of some speed and efficiency. When the Raspberry Pi came out and only cost $25, it made me think I could write some relatively resilient/robust software, put it on a SD card, put it in a PI, add a case, and sell useful hardware for $50. OE seems like a good step in the direction of recovering some of the speed/efficiency losses that running even some of the most lightweight linux distros would force you into. I think the end user problem can be solved with extremely robust client-side installers and amazing instructions. If IKEA can get people to build furniture (even if badly), why can't we manage to get a user who has booted an operating system on a running computer to flash a device, when usually most cases are the default case (as in you usually don't have to change a ton of ADB/system settings to connect to most android devices).

branchless 10y ago

This needs a microphone. Would be great to be able to drive activity via voice, or make reminders. If it had some kind of bluetooth/wifi also then you could send emails via dictation but I guess the size/battery constraints rule that out.

andrewaylett 10y ago
It's got a microphone. Also both Bluetooth and WiFi, and you can (with the original Android Wear -- no idea if Asteroid has got to the point of implementing anything similar) drive activities by voice, set reminders and send emails by dictation. The battery lasts for around two days.
- branchless 10y ago
  Wow that's cool. Battery life is always a pain but two days is not so bad.

flukus 10y ago

Quad core + 512MB of RAM. Now it just needs HDMI out and we've got a quite capable portable computer on our wrists.

BuffaloBagel 10y ago
throw it in a pot, add some broth, a potato... baby, you've got a stew going
gravypod 10y ago
My only concern with smart watches is battery life.
- soylentcola 10y ago
  It's definitely one of the main restricting factors. That said, even my gen-one Moto 360, while not new and not known for being amazing in the battery department hasn't been an issue for me. I just put it on the cradle on my nightstand when I go to bed and pick it up in the morning. It charges pretty quickly as well so if I get home from work on a Friday and anticipate being out late, I can put it on the cradle for 30-60 min and top off the charge before heading out and there's never an issue. Still, the battery isn't something like the battery in a traditional watch so at some point I won't just be able to order a button cell on Amazon and swap it out like I could on any old Timex, etc. Definitely hurts the lifespan and it's a major reason I only bought this watch because I got it on sale for $100. I wouldn't feel as comfortable buying a $500 watch that would be forever battery-dead in 3-4 years.

awinter-py 10y ago

I tried asteroid on the sony smartwatch 3 this month -- graphics are iffy. Docs suggest experience is better on other hardware.

pkaye 10y ago

Its hard for me to consider a smartwatch when my current watch is solar powered and I haven't had to change batteries for the last 8 years. Maybe when these can run on a charge for 2+ weeks at a time I might consider it.

adamweld 10y ago
RIP pebble.
aedron 10y ago
My Seiko Kinetic is going on 15 years without a single charge and will probably do fine for many years to come. Also, I can just look at it to tell the time, no need to turn it on first!
- disordinary 10y ago
  I found an old Casio in a box a few years back, it must have been five or six years old but was still going strong and had the right time.
- fegu 10y ago
  My huaweii smartwatch is always on. That, and being round instead of square, is the reason I bought it.
suprfnk 10y ago
That's a completely different usecase though. You don't wear a smartwatch just to see the time. You wear it because it can do stuff for you outside of telling you the time.
- darfs 10y ago
  Im confused. Isnt that the definition of a Smartphone? :P
  - OJFord 10y ago

RhodaLs 10y ago

Being an old Slashdot user, the first incredibly dumb thought of mine was "Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!" With a pic of Natalie Portman for the watch face, of course. But, one fun thing I could imagine doing is using it as an incredibly portable PirateBox. Or any other use of a file server hiding in plain sight.

AceJohnny2 10y ago
Man, I remember when those jokes were old, 15 years ago. Speaking of Beowulf, has there ever been an evolution of the concept? The closest I've seen since has been QNX's QNet, which allows transparent management and communication between process on nodes of the cluster. I suppose Hadoop or even Kubernetes can be seen as the continuation of the concept?
- erik 10y ago
  The idea of a Beowulf cluster was using networked commodity PC hardware and Linux to do HPC / scientific computing. In some ways this idea came to dominate. If you look at the top500 list: https://www.top500.org/list/2016/11/ https://www.top500.org/list/2016/11/ All of these machines are big clusters running Linux. Mostly on Intel CPUs. But on the other hand, the idea of using commodity hardware is kind of a thing of the past. It's mostly Xeon CPUs, not desktop processors. And it's specialized network hardware. And more and more you see dedicated compute hardware like Intel Phi and Nvidia Tesla cards.
  - kefka 10y ago
    Yeah, it's pretty intense to see these clusters in person. In our data centers, we have 40G optical interlinks per rack overhead, 100G spidering across the racks to different rooms and the main network room. And thinking of he main network room, with the amount of brocades in there, it's probably more expensive than the main enterprise pod just in sheer super-expensive network stuffs. We're also behind the times in lots of our management. 80% of our servers are bare metal, with limited automation. But we also do "NOC in a box"... many of our use cases wouldn't cleanly work right using tech like docker and kubernetes.

ge96 10y ago

Site has responsive problem, cells overflow on Nexus 4

samtoday 10y ago
Love the nexus 4 mate! Watch out for breaking power buttons though! Thanks for the bug report btw. I'll fix it when I'm thinking straight in the morning!
- ge96 10y ago
  Oh yeah. It's those pesky little things that push the width beyond 100% at least here it was easy to find. Sometimes you have to use the console>inspect that highlights parts of the page to find what is causing the width overflow. Also yeah Nexus 4 isn't bad, too bad they don't update it anymore :(

rxlim 10y ago

I like how he is sarcastic about being very happy that systemd is installed on the watch.

i336_ 10y ago
If you're right, that's a big sigh of relief from me. The guy mentions how "Lennart Poettering would love it!" as the h2, and also describes X11 as "legacy". With these in mind I feared he was serious about the systemd bit. I'm really sad X11 is legacy software myself, as an aside. It's a disaster, sure, but now we have one more layer of "uhhhh..." for all the UX-types to get scared away by: it used to be "(WinAPI) vs ((Qt)/(GTK+)/(Xlib/XCB))", which was embarrassing enough; now it's "(WinAPI) vs (X11((Qt)/(GTK+)/(Xlib/XCB))/Wayland((Qt)/(GTK+)/(???)))" which is just plain annoying for low-level graphics hacker wannabes - I can make a WinAPI app in C that opens a window in a few KB, where as to do that in Linux now I HAVE to support XCB and also write my own tiny UI for Wayland. Practically speaking it means that most developers will just pick a side^H^H^H^Htoolkit and go with that. It doesn't help that I've never been able to get past Qt's love of background processes vs. GTK's various displays of autism/spasticness. sighs...rant over, situation accepted a bit more. systemd is still a disaster though. I saw a massive 3Wx5H 1080p video wall in a shop window the other day, displaying... systemd emergency mode. At least I learned that some video stretchers are smart and will drop the panels they're controlling into standby if they display black for too long. (Only the two panels at the top-left displaying the error were on, the others visibly had their backlights off. Neat.)
- i336_ 10y ago
  Curious why this was downvoted (it's currently at -1). Happy to hear any explanation or view.
  - grzm 10y ago
    I haven't followed this discussion so am unfamiliar with the validity of the details of the comment, so I can't speak to the content. The downvotes may be in part due to the rantish nature of part of it, which you were aware of at the time of posting. Some readers may have thought as you knew its tone was overly heated, you could have taken the time to express it better. However, this is just speculation, based on behavior I've seen on HN.

hyperpallium 10y ago

This is amazing (I also have a moment of amazement at my smartphone every so often). But an issue is power usage. (eg) ubuntu runs on a smartphone, but with much shorter battery life than android. (Tho TBF, I don't know the power efficiency of Asteroid OS). One side-benefit of non-rooting linux (eg termux, terminalIDE) is retaining battery life. However, Asteroid OS is open source, which counts for a lot!

matthewmorgan 10y ago

Looks cool. Wouldn't trust it to tell the time though

72deluxe 10y ago
Does it just run date on the CLI and pipe that out? That'd be useful. Or show the date in your BASH prompt.
- icebraining 10y ago
  watch date
  - karlmdavis 10y ago
    Probably don't want the default refresh of 2 seconds. And the title/header is probably redundant, as well. Maybe this, instead? $ watch --interval 0.1 --no-title date ;)

disordinary 10y ago

Whats the battery life like running Asteroid vs Android Wear?

mankash666 10y ago

Newbie question - isn't Android wear's kernel open source? Android has switched to Wayland as well right?

guelo 10y ago
Android Wear's kernel is linux and some of the low level userland is open source but everything above that is locked down and proprietary. It's definitely not using Wayland. In general Google has been moving away from Android's open source legacy as much as they can.
fsiefken 10y ago
Tizen uses Wayland
pjmlp 10y ago
No, it is using Flinger. https://source.android.com/devices/graphics/architecture.html https://source.android.com/devices/graphics/architecture.htm...

Animats 10y ago

Four processors in a watch? That's impressive, but if you actually use them, what's the battery life?

dspillett 10y ago
> Four processors in a watch? Four cores, which makes a difference. > what's the battery life? It might not be as bad as could be feared, specifically regarding the CPU at idle anyway. A lot of modern CPUs support turning cores individually on/off (or at least into very low power sleep states) as needed and if the OS scheduler is bright enough then taking advantage of this can be a lot more power efficient than trying to fiddle around with variable clock rates. There might be a performance hit for single one-thread tasks of course as per-core performance might be low, but at times when you care (while in active use, interacting with an app) there will be at least three distinct tasks going on: core function management, display management, and at least one user task. While the watch is idle there will just be one active task most of the time so only one core needs to be powered up (of none most of the time, with device management tasks and user apps that respond to events/notifications only waking up on interrupt). Having said that, having to charge it at least once most days is my only major complaint with the MS Band that I wear most of the time. It would be interesting to see how well this manages in that regard.

Nux 10y ago

Very high CPU usage while browsing this site, Firefox' Reader View saves the say once again..

cornedor 10y ago
I had the same problem here, while scrolling Firefox couldn't catch up and showed white just white for a short time. Then I saw the huge background gradient. The background is an image, a radial gradient, and also background-blend-mode: hue; edit: there are even more huge div's that have the same background, so there are multiple layers of gradients with hue blend mode.
- samtoday 10y ago
  Spot on. I found this out the hard way today and wrote up a post with some benchmarks and the tiny patch that fixed the bug: https://learntemail.sam.today/blog/1-css-property-that-will-ruin-your-scroll-performance/ https://learntemail.sam.today/blog/1-css-property-that-will-...
  - dom96 10y ago
    If I were you I would also consider getting rid of your textured background (https://learntemail.sam.today/static/images/texturetastic-white.png https://learntemail.sam.today/static/images/texturetastic-wh...). The little grey blobs just make me wonder whether my monitor is dirty.

vmp 10y ago

Does it run Doom? :-)

coldtea 10y ago
Obviously it does.

dom96 10y ago

is there anything like this for Pebbles?

deavmi 10y ago

That's awesome.

INTPenis 10y ago

Love the hack but I can't agree that they're a fad. Long before smartwatches my cousin had a bluetooth watch connected to his phone. And today I have a smartwatch connected to my phone to avoid having to stop and take it out when I'm on a bike. I bike everywhere, like thousands others where I live. So there's clearly a market for some sort of wrist-device that makes using your phone easier. The thing that makes it feel like a stupid fad is when you have to charge it every day and therefore forget to put it on. It hasn't become habitual quite yet. Which is why I love my smartwatch for having an e-ink display and not an amoled display. So even after more than a year of operation I still only charge it once a week.

andrepd 10y ago
That's why he said it was a fad for him. And it is, for the vast majority of people, just a fad. Bar some use cases like biking and so on, having a smartwatch brings nuisances for no tangible benefits.
coldtea 10y ago
One could argue that in the larger context of modern cities (outside of specific places like the Netherlands, or some Chinese cities), biking is mostly a fad too.

jpl56 10y ago

I notice that nobody answers to the "what is the battery life" questions...

delinka 10y ago
The article has both the hard fact "410 mAh" as well a a more colloquial "a good days worth!" Sure, the author doesn't confirm this nor expand on it, but I'd say his comment is sufficient.
- itp 10y ago
  410 mAh is a measure of battery capacity, not battery life. And the phrase "a good days worth" presumably describes the watch as shipped with Android wear. I think what the original question was getting at was more like "what is the battery life of the watch when running AsteroidOS?" That seems like a pretty fair question which was not addressed.

elcapitan 10y ago

What would be the killer app for a smartwatch from a hacker/techie perspective? Because I'm still struggling to see any realistic use case for myself.

OJFord 10y ago
In a movie, we'd be disabling CCTV cameras from it as we ran through corridors of the Pentagon, y'know, hacking stuff. In reality, I think the author just did it for its own sake: > I ended up with a free LG Watch Urbane ... I realized that smartwatches were just a fad (for me at least), and this was a device I could experiment with.
veli_joza 10y ago
For me, killer application is basic usable text input. I'd love to covertly send text messages, write down some thoughts and TODO items, while still maintaining eye contact and following discussion. For it to be usable, it should not require sight and higher typing speeds should be achievable by training. This rules out virtual querty keyboards and predictive suggestions. I think glyph recognition would be usable, but also other gesture systems would work if they don't demand supervision by sight.
- jokr004 10y ago
  Does there exist any input method that doesn't require sight other than physical keys? If so, I'm not aware of any.
  - homarp 10y ago
    morse code ?
    - w8rbt 10y ago
      It's been done. http://www.cultofmac.com/409175/nifty-app-uses-morse-code-to-send-apple-watch-messages/ http://www.cultofmac.com/409175/nifty-app-uses-morse-code-to... Although I think a better input method would be voice (like the GoPro cameras) for most use cases. "Watch, send text to Mom...." Morse Code is just too slow and most humans can no longer send or copy it. It should be the input method of last resort.

gcb0 10y ago

meanwhile, everyone's phone here runs gnu/linux but completely out of reach. everyone bought a computer from an advertising (google) or fashion (apple) company that only runs in kiosk mode. how does your 90s self feel about that?

blauditore 10y ago
To be fair, that's all most users need, and could also use for desktop OS'. You don't need admin rights to open Facebook in a browser... But it hurts as a power user.
AsyncAwait 10y ago
True, but Termux[1] on android makes this less of a pain. 1 - https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=termux&fdid=com.termux https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=termux&fdid=...
- pjmlp 10y ago
  I wonder if it still would work in Android 7, with the new restrictions that kill any application that tries to link to non public NDK libraries.
  - fjrieiekd 10y ago
    And since Android 4.4, access to external SD cards has been restricted unless you use an annoying API or have a rooted device.
AlexeyBrin 10y ago
> meanwhile, everyone's phone here runs gnu/linux but completely out of reach. everyone bought a computer from an advertising (google) or fashion (apple) company that only runs in kiosk mode. Pretty sure there is no GNU component in iOS which is based on BSD. Also, Android uses only the Linux kernel, not even close to a GNU/Linux system.
- 10y ago

jff 10y ago

> Even more amazingly, running on that tiny package of hardware is some live multitasking Yep, pretty amazing that a quad-core 1.2GHz machine with half a gig of RAM can run more than one thing at a time!

htor 10y ago
I sense dark sarcasm hidden in this message, perhaps from behind a smug UNIX beard?
- andybak 10y ago
  Or maybe someone that remembers the Amiga...
  - 0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago
    No need for that much memory. If you can remember 8 years ago that's enough.
    - i336_ 10y ago
      Scans mental dictionary for interesting things from 2009 Nothing found What are you referring to?
globuous 10y ago
While I don't find this that impressive. I do find amazing that a quad-core 1.2GHz machine with half a gig of RAM can fit in that tiny package of hardware.

teaearlgraycold 10y ago

Is it 2003 again? The content container here uses a white png as a background instead of background-color: white

manarth 10y ago
It's not a perfect white: it's a 476-pixel square with some random (very small) splotches of light grey. As the image is called 'texturetastic-white.png', I assume the intention is to give a more natural texture feel to the background. I'll admit that it's not the design choice I would have made, but then again, I'm not a designer!

norswap 10y ago

Is this really something to be happy about? Even ignoring technical considerations (the dizzying amount of code and cruft required to run a watch), it goes against one time-honored watch tradition: simple, elegant mechanics.

andybak 10y ago
Congratulations. You've won today's "Find something to moan about" prize! Seriously though - stop getting hung up on the word 'watch' - it's not the real point here. Nobody is arguing that telling the time doesn't require a full blown OS. > simple, elegant mechanics. Have you ever looked inside a watch!
- manarth 10y ago
  > simple, elegant mechanics. Have you ever looked inside a watch! Well, I'd grant the "elegant mechanics", getting all those teensy cogs and wheels and levers and bits to work together like, er, clockwork… But "simple"? It's telling that the term for each feature on a watchface is "complication" :-D
coldtea 10y ago
>it goes against one time-honored watch tradition: simple, elegant mechanics. So, just like every digital watch ever created?

aceperry 10y ago

Great project. I had no idea the LG Urbane used an ARM Cortex-A processor. I have a few 1st gen Android watches, and those used the ST ARM cortex-M series micros. I have an LG Urbane as well, but wouldn't want to dump it since I find Android wear to be useful.

aceperry 10y ago
Ooops, my bad. I was mistaken about the 1st gen Android wear watches. They also used Cortex-A processors and can be updated with AsteroidOS. I was thinking of other smart watches.

ensiferum 10y ago

Something only a nerd can be excited about.