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“Maru is a new kind of computing experience.” Is it? This type of “All Your PC Are Belong To Phone” type of fads have been attempted (and so far, miserably fai

“Maru is a new kind of computing experience.” Is it? This type of “All Your PC Are Belong To Phone” type of fads have been attempted (and so far, miserably failed) for many, many years now. Looking at the website, I see little reason why this should succeed where others have failed.

deleted 9y ago
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slobotron 9y ago
Motorola webtop on Atrix was too early - phones were just too slow for even basic browsing in Firefox in laptop mode. Perhaps Maru is smooth enough on new hardware? (Still have the lapdock lying around, now hooked into RPi.)
- strozykowski 9y ago
  In your experience, how well does the lapdock run with an RPi? I have a lapdock lying around, and never thought of this for some reason.
  - jtuente 9y ago
    Not the person you replied to but I have the same setup. The only real issue is getting the adapters so they can be connected (plenty available on a variety of websites, but of questionable quality).
  - slobotron 9y ago
    For me it's mostly a novelty - I put RiscOS on it to try it out, and it seems snappy enough. But it's a mess of cables - I never got around to making it as pretty as some [1] [0] https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/raspberry-pi https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/raspberry-pi [1] https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/a/27081 https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/a/27081
    - strozykowski 9y ago
      Thanks! This looks like a pretty simple solution to me.
xrisk 9y ago
It’s an OS for your phone that becomes a proper desktop OS if you plug in a monitor, mouse, keyboard etc. I don’t think this has been done before, or maybe I’m just hopelessly unaware? Either way, I think it’s quite interesting.
- cwyers 9y ago
  Motorola Atrix, Ubuntu Phone, Windows Phone 10 has Continuum. It's been tried before.
  - xrisk 9y ago
    I stand corrected then.
  - ruleabidinguser 9y ago
    I don't think this makes sense until phones are basically as fast as current laptops.
    - thatcat 9y ago
      The flagship phone for this OS is the nexus 5 which uses a 2.26 Ghz quad core qualcomm chip and has 2 gb ram. The hw limitation seems to be the low ram limiting the number of memory heavy desktop apps you can run. Definitely not a video editing rig and vbox doesn't work on arm hosts, but this is good for spread sheets / typing up papers / scanning things with your camera and quickly editing them on a desktop with out any data transfer hassles.
      - petecox 9y ago
        Exactly, the complaint of power users is that "it'll never be as powerful as my Core i7 desktop". Were a phone solution seamless enough to dock into my kvm switch, I'd power up my 'workstation' far less often.
      - ksk 9y ago
        The CPU speed for all mobile devices is deceptive. You can't actually run the CPU at that speed for anything but the tiniest amount of time, without immediately running into the throttling brick wall.
jjrh 9y ago
Well this probably isn't going to succeed where others failed, but the idea is good. I'm glad someone is trying to move forward with the idea of using the very capable computer in your pocket as more than a phone. I mean my current phone has more ram than my last laptop....

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

slobotron 9y ago

Motorola webtop on Atrix was too early - phones were just too slow for even basic browsing in Firefox in laptop mode. Perhaps Maru is smooth enough on new hardware? (Still have the lapdock lying around, now hooked into RPi.)

strozykowski 9y ago
In your experience, how well does the lapdock run with an RPi? I have a lapdock lying around, and never thought of this for some reason.
- jtuente 9y ago
  Not the person you replied to but I have the same setup. The only real issue is getting the adapters so they can be connected (plenty available on a variety of websites, but of questionable quality).
- slobotron 9y ago
  For me it's mostly a novelty - I put RiscOS on it to try it out, and it seems snappy enough. But it's a mess of cables - I never got around to making it as pretty as some [1] [0] https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/raspberry-pi https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/raspberry-pi [1] https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/a/27081 https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/a/27081
  - strozykowski 9y ago
    Thanks! This looks like a pretty simple solution to me.

xrisk 9y ago

It’s an OS for your phone that becomes a proper desktop OS if you plug in a monitor, mouse, keyboard etc. I don’t think this has been done before, or maybe I’m just hopelessly unaware? Either way, I think it’s quite interesting.

cwyers 9y ago
Motorola Atrix, Ubuntu Phone, Windows Phone 10 has Continuum. It's been tried before.
- xrisk 9y ago
  I stand corrected then.
- ruleabidinguser 9y ago
  I don't think this makes sense until phones are basically as fast as current laptops.
  - thatcat 9y ago
    The flagship phone for this OS is the nexus 5 which uses a 2.26 Ghz quad core qualcomm chip and has 2 gb ram. The hw limitation seems to be the low ram limiting the number of memory heavy desktop apps you can run. Definitely not a video editing rig and vbox doesn't work on arm hosts, but this is good for spread sheets / typing up papers / scanning things with your camera and quickly editing them on a desktop with out any data transfer hassles.
    - petecox 9y ago
      Exactly, the complaint of power users is that "it'll never be as powerful as my Core i7 desktop". Were a phone solution seamless enough to dock into my kvm switch, I'd power up my 'workstation' far less often.
    - ksk 9y ago
      The CPU speed for all mobile devices is deceptive. You can't actually run the CPU at that speed for anything but the tiniest amount of time, without immediately running into the throttling brick wall.

jjrh 9y ago

Well this probably isn't going to succeed where others failed, but the idea is good. I'm glad someone is trying to move forward with the idea of using the very capable computer in your pocket as more than a phone. I mean my current phone has more ram than my last laptop....