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Gnome, KDE, LXDE, IceWM All Working On Android
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Feb 22, 2009 09:56 PM
from the options-are-good dept.
from the options-are-good dept.
dooberrymctavish writes "Ghostwalker over at AndroidFanatic has gone and done it again; now he's released clear and concise instructions on how to get X11 server running on your Android device. Not only that, but he has successfully gotten LXDE, and IceWM running at a pace. There is even a photo with the instructions showing the LXDE desktop running right there on the device itself. Apparently, you can also VNC straight onto the phone's new desktop from your PC."
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But does it run... (Score:5, Funny)
... wait never mind!
So much potential (Score:5, Funny)
Er, no thanks. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why don't you try the phone before assuming? N810 has its own problems because of how its handled.
The G1 tends to handle the sizing better than most phones in all honesty. If there's one thing the phone does noticeably well it's handle an enormous amount of icons while still having a keyboard (and not on screen keyboard) available.
Re:Er, no thanks. (Score:5, Insightful)
.. because he's saying that most window managers can't fit well in the resolution. It doesn't matter how well Android handles sizing if the window manager that you're trying itself is terrible at it.
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Re:Er, no thanks. (Score:5, Informative)
It may not look bad, but I run into situations repeatedly on my Aspire One where the dialog is simply too tall to be usable. Sometimes options, and frequently the Help/Ok/Cancel buttons are below the bottom edge of the screen (even if I set both of the gnome panels to autohide) and cannot be reached.
Frequently I run into default windows that are larger than 640x480, which while small was typical not long ago, and still common among mobile resolutions. GUI designers need to keep this in mind.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Frequently I run into default windows that are larger than 640x480
It seems like we are actually going backwards when it comes to UI design. Can we please get a course on UI design mandatory in all CS programs, thank you? Lately I've been running into scads of programs whose dialog box (sans decorations) is bigger than 800x600 on default fonts! I believe Handbrake was one of them...
Re:Er, no thanks. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Well then (Score:3, Insightful)
Write new software that does look good on a cell phone screen.
With X11 up and running, that opens up a large bank of developers that know X and can do that, you know.
Great Combination. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Speed and resolution of a Portable Device, combined with the large size of a Desktop PC.
Yea you get geek cred points but for the most part it is kinda useless, for most real uses.
Re:Great Combination. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Great Combination. (Score:5, Funny)
Whenever somebody says "server farm" I imagine some guy wearing plaid and overalls out in a barnhouse milking servers.
Parent
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Well thats all an good (Score:2)
Re:Well thats all an good (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
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Fuzzy photo fail (Score:4, Interesting)
You'd think someone smart enough to create this hack would be able to use a camera to take a decent picture of it... but no.
Re: (Score:2)
In fact, these guys were so geeky they hacked their own brains to image what they saw directly.
But being basement nerds their eyesight is roughly on par with that of an Euglena.
To merge your phone with your PC... (Score:5, Informative)
Synergy (http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/) and X2VNC (http://directory.fsf.org/project/x2vnc/) can be useful to 'merge' your phone and home PC screens. Move your mouse over to your android screen, copy something, paste it onto your PC application.
From Synergy website:
Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It's intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s).
Redirecting the mouse and keyboard is as simple as moving the mouse off the edge of your screen. Synergy also merges the clipboards of all the systems into one, allowing cut-and-paste between systems. Furthermore, it synchronizes screen savers so they all start and stop together and, if screen locking is enabled, only one screen requires a password to unlock them all. Learn more about how it works.
Rolling our own mobile desktop (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Rolling our own mobile desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:2)
It's what I'm looking for. Personally, I'd be happy with something slightly bigger than most smartphones are now given that it supports bluetooth and wired earbuds for phone use. I'd like more USB support and a cradle that allows me to plug a keyboard into it as well as perhaps software that allows an X window on my desktop to be what is on the Android. Not quite a laptop, but just below that level of functionality. To be truly useful, I'd like to be able to plug a keyboard into it that is sized for my fing
Re:For that matter so is the iPhone (Score:5, Insightful)
"Just as open in the end."
What total bullsh*t.
Android is open from the kernel upwards, you can develop what you like for it without needing a developer account or a jailbreak. This is massively different from the iPhone, on which you can only make software if you have an account and the stack itself is totally closed.
This is why android can now be run on multiple devices, some ported by the community.
Parent
IceWM ftw (Score:2, Interesting)
HTC Wizard (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Probably not possible without support from HTC. Which won't happen. Phone makers basically consider a phone and its OS a matched set.
So if I were to install Skype on it... (Score:5, Funny)
...I could use it as a mobile phone!
They got VNC backwards.... (Score:2)
But can I vnc into my desktop from the phone?
Re:They got VNC backwards.... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, your argument is so compelling.
Seriously, what's wrong with this troll? Is he drugged up or something and can't troll properly?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
linux is like a hydra, if you fork it two will rise from the ashes...
Re:Driver issue (Score:4, Funny)
"Because we can" the neckbearded Linux dweebs living in their mother's basement will tell you in between LARP sessions and shoving greased up Yoda dolls into their asses, while the adults are running rock-solid proprietary software on their server machines to do things which are actually important. Get the facts [getthefacts.com], people.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
""Because we can" the neckbearded Linux dweebs living in their mother's basement will tell you in between LARP sessions and shoving greased up Yoda dolls into their asses,"
OK, you sold me on the lifestyle. Is there a particularly suitable Yoda doll?
Re:Driver issue (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never seen any "rock-solid software" of any kind, but at least the Open Source stuff I can fix by myself when needed.
Parent
Re:What's not to like? (Score:4, Insightful)
X11 was left behind by a number of different commercial Unix users for a reason. Apple being the most prominent i can think of, one of their engineers even left a rather long post on slashdot explaining why they went with their own system (hint: adding all the things they needed that X11 lacked and probably still does, would have required so much work it was easier to do something else).
And now Android has done something similar albeit for different reasons.
Personally X11 is the last thing i want to see on Linux devices going forward. I hate the thing and want to see it suffer if only for irrational reasons.
Parent
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Re:What's not to like? (Score:4, Insightful)
X11 was left behind by a number of different commercial Unix users for a reason.
How many of them are still alive, though? other than OSX which has fed on OS9's marketshare rather than UNIX's, all of the rest seem to have bit the bullet a long time ago. Meanwhile, Linux, the *BSDs and Solaris seem to be going fairly strong despite being 'stuck' with X11.
Seems like UNIX admins are still too attached to being able to run their apps remotely, among other things.
Parent
Re:What's not to like? (Score:4, Interesting)
None of those systems have been doing well in the mainstream desktop space, which is what all the excitement over Android is about.
UNIX admins have little to do with the need for a good clean display system on portable devices and desktops. In fact the needs of geeks seem to guide the FOSS world far too much, thats why it was a big headline one or 2 Xorg releases ago that input and display devices would be hotpluggable years after everyone else solved that problem, it wasn't a dire need of the geeks in charge of the project nor anyone using it.
Parent
Re:What's not to like? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:What's not to like? (Score:5, Informative)
X is not short for "X11 Window manager". If you do not know that X is not a window manager, you should probably be reading up on what X is instead of trying to makecomments about frame buffers, memory usage and other things you do not know about...
Parent
Re:What's not to like? (Score:5, Insightful)
You have no fucking clue what you are talking about.
Just thought I'd let you know.
Parent
Re:What's not to like? (Score:4, Informative)
Here is explanation of X & X11 ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System [wikipedia.org]
Here is an explanation of Window managers ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_window_manager [wikipedia.org]
There are many kinds of window managers, with and without widgets, running on many different x-servers.. Although they may seem like one thing, they are not.. But your point on windowing and widgets I get, but that is not to say that some neat things can not be done with X windows at that size.. I mean if you wanted to you could make icons or buttons the size of your hand on your 19 inch (or whatever) monitor and fill the desktop with em, so if you scale down that to phone size, then it's not so crazy.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Those who do not understand X, are doomed to scream for its death while begging for someone to reimplement X poorly.
Re:This is heinous (Score:5, Interesting)
I $ssh -x quite often from my eeepc in class. It's nice to be able to use my desktop computer's far superior processing power for things like compiling LaTeX documents (it's the format I take all my notes - lots of math stuff). Additionally it's nice to be able to take advantage of my computer's superior disk space for all sorts of things. The problem is, this is highly dependent on getting a wifi signal.
I ssh from my blackberry quite a bit as well. It'd be great if I could ssh some X stuff over it, for all the same reasons it works wonderfully on my eeepc - but when I don't have the eeepc or are lacking wifi. I can manage without it (my command-line-fu is not weak), but it'd be great if I did not have to do things like rip out the text from a PDF before reading it remotely, etc.
Hopefully I can keep from breaking my blackberry until a viable option for $ssh -x'ing from a new phone will be available.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Many good things came out of the Athena project.
One of those things was X.
*puts on random statistic hat*
Another one of those things -which 90% of the corporate world uses every day- is Kerberos.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
For the record, Android is not just about running stuff in Java: the developers at Google are actively working on the semantics behind having accessible JNI, some of the existing applications (including the OpenGL demo from Qualcomm people rave over) are mostly written in C, and we are likely going to have an entire Android "NDK" for doing native development to play with. Android is definitely the entire platform, including Linux.
If you search around on the android-platform mailing list you will find discus