6 ms·

Android X server

83 points by pmarin 14y ago

jevinskie 14y ago
So is this the first real X client on Android? I've only found VNC clients for Android in the past. Having a real X client would be amazing because that would allow the efficient use of GUIs with a chroot install of debian (or pick-your-distro)! The status quo is to use a VNC server in the chroot and a VNC client on Android to get a GUI. Not very "clean".
dzorz 14y ago
FWIW iSSH on iOS has good X support.
jlgreco 14y ago
I'm not convinced this would be good for much as it is, considering the reality of input devices on Android, but it seems like something like this could have potential in aiding porting. Getting a good terminal emulator ported to Android using this sort of thing to help could be an interesting endeavor for example.
- georgemcbay 14y ago
  Android has fantastic support for mice, touchpads and keyboards (not to mention Xbox 360 controllers, etc).
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    In practice nobody actually uses those things. The reality of input on android is that the general public just uses touch screens.
    - georgemcbay 14y ago
      "nobody"? Asus Transformers are a very popular option for Android tablets, in part because they have keyboards and touchpads and a full sized USB port for easily plugging in mice.
    - jfb 14y ago
      The set of people willing to use a mouse with their phone is probably a strict superset of those who want to run X, so I wouldn't think of it as problematic. Also, good on the OP. But X on Android? It's a jfb Hell.
hayksaakian 14y ago
This is cool hack, but is there anything fun or useful I could do with it?
- olgeni 14y ago
  You can run xeyes as it was meant to be run.
  - tmzt 14y ago
    Xeyes with a touchscreen doesn't work so well, you have to touch the screen before it tracks.
    - marshray 14y ago
      One could charge $1.99 for an app that allows users to poke the xeyes.
- pmarin 14y ago
  Running X UI Toolkits on Android like Tcl/Tk, GTK, QT, Java/swing, Inferno/Tk, etc.
- marshray 14y ago
  I might enjoy running a full X IDE and other tools on my powerful dev box from my phone. I wonder whatever happened to the NX projects... they were optimizing X11 for high-latency systems.
rogerbinns 14y ago
What I really want is to extend my host's desktop onto the Android device. I'd settle for something as simple as Synergy working (in the wishlist, not done yet). There are numerous solutions for Windows and Mac (eg AirDisplay, SplashTop) but nothing to extend Linux desktops onto Android devices.
- Elv13 14y ago
  Both GTK+ (broardway) and Qt (lighthouse) have some sort of HTML5 frontend. It is the most portable solution, if not a little slow. Extending the desktop can be done with some VNC+Xinerama trickery too. But it ain't easy, I will give you that. If you want to drag and drop a window from Xorg to Android (2 server), get ready for trouble. Not that X can't support it, it does, but modern toolkit hate being redirected like that, it is a very niche X11 feature.
  - rogerbinns 14y ago
    In other words not particularly practical :-) I would expect the tablet to be plugged in as a virtual monitor (ie xrandr would should it as another monitor) and if you take the tablet away it should be no different than disconnecting a monitor.
tmzt 14y ago
So this is implemented in pure java? I did something similar, but ported the C X server to Android using the JNI. If you want to compare approaches my source is at http://github.com/tmzt/androix http://github.com/tmzt/androix and a test apk is available at http://db.tt/UkFlvNAm http://db.tt/UkFlvNAm
Negitivefrags 14y ago
> I had assumed that all internet-enabled smartphones would be sitting behind NAT-ing routers, both for security reasons and to conserve IPv4 addresses. But no, on the “3″ network in Australia at least, phones all have externally-accessible IP addresses, meaning they can run servers. This seems like a terrible thing. Given that data costs so much on phones, you would think just the internet background noise would cost quite a lot per month. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_background_noise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_background_noise According to that article the background noise is about 20 bits per second. According to my back of the envolope calculation that is about 6.1 megabytes per month. I get around 50 megabytes per $6 on my phone so this is costing me 73c per month!
- SeppoErviala 14y ago
  I would be more concerned about battery usage than data costs.
- yareally 14y ago
  Some of us in the US still have unlimited data plans. Not many, but some of us were grandfathered into it and hold onto it for dear life :) Not exactly related to your post, but I'm not sure why he would be concerned with the phone service's NAT if the x-window app is running on a remote server (making him the client). Now if he were running it on his phone (as the server) and connecting to it through the cellular data service, then I could see why.
  - Negitivefrags 14y ago
    X windows client server model can seem intuitively backwards. The applications you run on remote servers are clients of the x server (that renders the windows) you are running locally.
    - beagle3 14y ago
      It's a relic from a different era: You had a dumb terminal that could only display stuff, and several servers that each could run a piece of software you like. Also, the networks were (supposedly) less dangerous security wise, so people worried less about things like authentication and access control back then. X is celebrating 25 years or so these days: And yet, modern clients can mostly work with 25 year old clients, and modern servers can definitely accept connections from 25 year old clients. And it's very usable. It's a marvel of engineering, even if it is showing its age.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
surrealize 14y ago
More Android<->(non-android)Linux compatibility would be great. Given that the linux desktop is moving toward wayland, and given that android's SurfaceFlinger is a lot closer to wayland than to X, I'm not sure that X is the best way forward. It would be interesting to see how much work it would take to implement SurfaceFlinger apis in terms of wayland or vice versa. Kind of like this work implementing the AudioFlinger api on top of pulseaudio: http://arunraghavan.net/2012/04/pulseaudio-on-android-part-2/ http://arunraghavan.net/2012/04/pulseaudio-on-android-part-2...
tjoff 14y ago
Cool. Since android has great VPN capabilites being NATed doesn't necessarily present any problems. EDIT: And why not link to the play store? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.com.darkside.XServer https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.com.darksid...

83 points by pmarin 14y ago

So is this the first real X client on Android? I've only found VNC clients for Android in the past. Having a real X client would be amazing because that would allow the efficient use of GUIs with a chroot install of debian (or pick-your-distro)! The status quo is to use a VNC server in the chroot and a VNC client on Android to get a GUI. Not very "clean".

dzorz 14y ago

FWIW iSSH on iOS has good X support.

jlgreco 14y ago

I'm not convinced this would be good for much as it is, considering the reality of input devices on Android, but it seems like something like this could have potential in aiding porting. Getting a good terminal emulator ported to Android using this sort of thing to help could be an interesting endeavor for example.

georgemcbay 14y ago
Android has fantastic support for mice, touchpads and keyboards (not to mention Xbox 360 controllers, etc).
- jlgreco 14y ago
  In practice nobody actually uses those things. The reality of input on android is that the general public just uses touch screens.
  - georgemcbay 14y ago
    "nobody"? Asus Transformers are a very popular option for Android tablets, in part because they have keyboards and touchpads and a full sized USB port for easily plugging in mice.
  - jfb 14y ago
    The set of people willing to use a mouse with their phone is probably a strict superset of those who want to run X, so I wouldn't think of it as problematic. Also, good on the OP. But X on Android? It's a jfb Hell.

hayksaakian 14y ago

This is cool hack, but is there anything fun or useful I could do with it?

olgeni 14y ago
You can run xeyes as it was meant to be run.
- tmzt 14y ago
  Xeyes with a touchscreen doesn't work so well, you have to touch the screen before it tracks.
  - marshray 14y ago
    One could charge $1.99 for an app that allows users to poke the xeyes.
pmarin 14y ago
Running X UI Toolkits on Android like Tcl/Tk, GTK, QT, Java/swing, Inferno/Tk, etc.
marshray 14y ago
I might enjoy running a full X IDE and other tools on my powerful dev box from my phone. I wonder whatever happened to the NX projects... they were optimizing X11 for high-latency systems.

rogerbinns 14y ago

What I really want is to extend my host's desktop onto the Android device. I'd settle for something as simple as Synergy working (in the wishlist, not done yet). There are numerous solutions for Windows and Mac (eg AirDisplay, SplashTop) but nothing to extend Linux desktops onto Android devices.

Elv13 14y ago
Both GTK+ (broardway) and Qt (lighthouse) have some sort of HTML5 frontend. It is the most portable solution, if not a little slow. Extending the desktop can be done with some VNC+Xinerama trickery too. But it ain't easy, I will give you that. If you want to drag and drop a window from Xorg to Android (2 server), get ready for trouble. Not that X can't support it, it does, but modern toolkit hate being redirected like that, it is a very niche X11 feature.
- rogerbinns 14y ago
  In other words not particularly practical :-) I would expect the tablet to be plugged in as a virtual monitor (ie xrandr would should it as another monitor) and if you take the tablet away it should be no different than disconnecting a monitor.

tmzt 14y ago

So this is implemented in pure java? I did something similar, but ported the C X server to Android using the JNI. If you want to compare approaches my source is at http://github.com/tmzt/androix http://github.com/tmzt/androix and a test apk is available at http://db.tt/UkFlvNAm http://db.tt/UkFlvNAm

Negitivefrags 14y ago

> I had assumed that all internet-enabled smartphones would be sitting behind NAT-ing routers, both for security reasons and to conserve IPv4 addresses. But no, on the “3″ network in Australia at least, phones all have externally-accessible IP addresses, meaning they can run servers. This seems like a terrible thing. Given that data costs so much on phones, you would think just the internet background noise would cost quite a lot per month. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_background_noise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_background_noise According to that article the background noise is about 20 bits per second. According to my back of the envolope calculation that is about 6.1 megabytes per month. I get around 50 megabytes per $6 on my phone so this is costing me 73c per month!

SeppoErviala 14y ago
I would be more concerned about battery usage than data costs.
yareally 14y ago
Some of us in the US still have unlimited data plans. Not many, but some of us were grandfathered into it and hold onto it for dear life :) Not exactly related to your post, but I'm not sure why he would be concerned with the phone service's NAT if the x-window app is running on a remote server (making him the client). Now if he were running it on his phone (as the server) and connecting to it through the cellular data service, then I could see why.
- Negitivefrags 14y ago
  X windows client server model can seem intuitively backwards. The applications you run on remote servers are clients of the x server (that renders the windows) you are running locally.
  - beagle3 14y ago
    It's a relic from a different era: You had a dumb terminal that could only display stuff, and several servers that each could run a piece of software you like. Also, the networks were (supposedly) less dangerous security wise, so people worried less about things like authentication and access control back then. X is celebrating 25 years or so these days: And yet, modern clients can mostly work with 25 year old clients, and modern servers can definitely accept connections from 25 year old clients. And it's very usable. It's a marvel of engineering, even if it is showing its age.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

surrealize 14y ago

More Android<->(non-android)Linux compatibility would be great. Given that the linux desktop is moving toward wayland, and given that android's SurfaceFlinger is a lot closer to wayland than to X, I'm not sure that X is the best way forward. It would be interesting to see how much work it would take to implement SurfaceFlinger apis in terms of wayland or vice versa. Kind of like this work implementing the AudioFlinger api on top of pulseaudio: http://arunraghavan.net/2012/04/pulseaudio-on-android-part-2/ http://arunraghavan.net/2012/04/pulseaudio-on-android-part-2...

tjoff 14y ago

Cool. Since android has great VPN capabilites being NATed doesn't necessarily present any problems. EDIT: And why not link to the play store? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.com.darkside.XServer https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.com.darksid...