Gnome, KDE, LXDE, IceWM All Working On Android 194
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."
But does it run... (Score:5, Funny)
... wait never mind!
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... ratpoison?
So much potential (Score:5, Funny)
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Er, no thanks. (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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Linux is continually improved by it's developers and it's users, while many users are unable to fix a gui problem they can help by filing a bug report when gui issues occur.
If you want something fixed the first thing you need to do is provide the developers with feedback to identify the problem. It's your opportunity to contribute to the community. A politely worded bug report is likely to result in the problem being resolved.
Got to admit far too often I ignore the gui bugs I come across, I really should ma
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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.
New to Linux? Use Alt+Mouseclick to drag the window by any point in the window.
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Riiiiight. The G1 phone may have an Alt key, but you have to open the keyboard. The G2 has no physical Alt key at all. What is a 'mouseclick'?
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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...
Alt-click is your friend (Score:2)
Alt-click is your friend, and doing so on any background area of the window will allow you to move the window around so you can get to the interesting parts.
Alt-click doesn't work properly if you have the desktop effects enabled though. I guess that the affects does boundary checking to prevent the top of the window from being dragged higher that the screen, which is something that it really shouldn't be doing.
Also, Gnome is working on a "tiny" window manager theme for screen space constrained devices. I
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desktops larger than the screen resolution are possible with windows, too.
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desktops larger than the screen resolution are possible with windows, too.
That's not what he was saying, though: with pretty much any window manager for X, you can drag a window around (and thus partly off-screen) by holding down ALT whilst dragging with the left mouse button. But I'm sure there's some powertoy or similar under windows that does the same thing these days ...
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Oh man! You have no idea how many times I wish I knew that! Curse you designers who can't make a window that is smaller than 640x480!!
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On Windows, if you right click the taskbar icon, use the 'Move' menuitem and then position the window using the cursor keys. Left click to 'cancel' this move-mode.
(I learned this when using the Windows 'Display settings' dialog, which is just too big to see the OK/Cancel buttons on the bottom. You'd think that'd be the first window to make fit in small resolutions!)
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On Windows, if you right click the taskbar icon, use the 'Move' menuitem and then position the window using the cursor keys. Left click to 'cancel' this move-mode.
You can do the same exact thing on Linux, but also move the Window using the mouse. I'm pretty user that Windows is the one OS that doesn't really have any OS level window functions that can be accomplished by using the mouse and keyboard together.
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If you do what you suggest below, but hit any of the arrow buttons *once*, the mouse is then active to move the window around. Left clicking "stops" the move and leaves the window where ever you clicked.
On Windows, if you right click the taskbar icon, use the 'Move' menuitem and then position the window using the cursor keys. Left click to 'cancel' this move-mode.
(I learned this when using the Windows 'Display settings' dialog, which is just too big to see the OK/Cancel buttons on the bottom. You'd think that'd be the first window to make fit in small resolutions!)
Re:Er, no thanks. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Ummm, no. Knowing X doesn't mean that one knows HCI as well. In fact looking at the development of Linux GUIs over the years I'd say the odds are against it. Note that's not saying one can't be developed, but it's more work than people really anticipate. A cellphone GUI that tries to be all things to all people (curse of a thousand choices) doesn't fit well into the appliance (does a few things well) nature of the device.
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HCI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-computer_interaction [wikipedia.org]
There are people in the world who think "HCI" is more than common sense and taking some time the think. They tend to think they know what you'll like better than you. You can sometimes find them in forums responding to "How do I..." questions with admonitions not to do what you're asking.
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I wouldn't have modded you flamebait, but I know why you got that mod. Your tone is very contemptuous. You could have laid out your reasoned, cool argument about why you don't need usability experts... instead, your post attacks the behavior of these people without offering any explanation as to why their behavior is wrong or what a better alternative is.
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I second that. As much as I love my n810, I came to understand that anything less than 1024x768 just does not work nicely in the current world. (And while we're at that - my work notebook is 1024x768 because it's ultraportable; most of the time it's enough but SOME applications are a pain in the back to work with at 1024x768; think constant scrolling). Oh, and on an unrelated note - processor on n810 sucks; yeah, complex sites and video streams kind of work but far from perfect. Don't get me wrong, I love t
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Even the 800x480 of a Nokia N810 is a bit cramped for normal desktop style window managers. I hate to contemplate what it would be like to use anything like them on the 320x480 screen that is the G1.
The answer may be in repressed nightmarish memories from your youth.
Didn't you ever run a PC with a CGA display in color mode (320x200), or try with a VGA adapter set to MCGA mode (=CGA with more colors)? It only sucks a little if your interface is designed to work with low resolution displays. If the interface was conceived with more pixels in mind, and just supports low resolution as an afterthought, then it really sucks.
Actually, everything sucked on CGA in graphics mode, including Windows 1.0 and GEM.
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well, 640x480 is fine for xp classic (tried it with htc universal & remote desktop). so there.
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well, 640x480 is fine for xp classic
Actually, there are now numerous dialogs in Windows XP itself which will not fully fit on the screen at 640x480. I would go look for them all, but I'm sitting at my 32" 1080p and leave that as an exercise for the unfortunate. I don't think I have anything less than 800x600 any more (My iOpener is now my oldest, slowest, and least-efficient computer clock for clock. And my largest machine isn't much bigger :)
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)
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.
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Mmmmm linux server milk. Creamy goodness.
Uh, that's not milk you're looking at ...
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At the expense of a Woosh post. If you allow a full server farm to go down you probably wouldn't have the skills to setup a new one with cell phones.
Well thats all an good (Score:2)
Re:Well thats all an good (Score:5, Interesting)
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So if they combine the desktop work with this gui combination, android will be a competitor in the netbook market.
What makes Android interesting is the interface and the app store. Take that away, and why would you want android?
I have a tablet/netbook (DT Research DT360) and my plan is to get Angstrom Linux running on it (wish me luck.) It's designed for small screens and limited devices. My tablet has 512MB flash disk, 512MB RAM and I am adding an 8GB 133x CF shortly because it doesn't appear to have +5V support for microdrives.
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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.
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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.
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Camera?! WTF? Why not simply take a screendump with any of a zillion Linux programs which can grab the screen?
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Because that wouldn't show the device running the software, just that you've been able to configure your display to use a lower resolution.
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.
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Seconded. I've been using Synergy between my Windows and Linux desktops and it's seamless - you roll the mouse cursor across the edge of the screen and the other system has focus. I only have to use the KVM to switch over to the Linux box (yeah, I'll admit it, Windows is still my main desktop at work, so sue me) after the screen went to power save mode, and for text consoles. Is there a command line utility to tell X to wake up the display?
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xset dpms force on
Rolling our own mobile desktop (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Rolling our own mobile desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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Add to that you can only develop for the iPhone an a Mac. So Windows, Linux, etc users are SOL unless they buy Apple hardware. Nice business model. The main reason I wont buy Apple, lock in.
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"Can I install my own OS? No - Android is only open in the sense that I can install my own applications developed for it. However, I cannot install my own OS or even leave the JVM sandbox."
Then you're talking about the handset, not the OS.
I have Android running on alternative (open) hardware and can do what the hell I like with it. There is no comparison here. Android is FOSS. The G1 may not be open hardware, but that's like saying linux isn't FOSS because your router manufacturer doesn't provide an easy wa
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There is certainly no officially-endorsed manner of obtaining root access to a non-developer android phone (the unlocked ADP phone gives you root). However, RC29 of the G1 android image had a gaping local exploit that you can use to obtain root. A signed image of RC29 is available which can be used to downgrade any non-rooted phone back to RC29 so that the exploit can be used. All subsequent updates have been re-issued with root permissions intact - once you have root you can flash your bootloader to not
IceWM ftw (Score:2, Interesting)
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I was just happy to see IceWm in a slashdot headline. It's a great little WM that doesn't always get the attention from users it deserves.
I'll second that. IceWM was my main WM from 2001 until last year (when I finally gave in and allowed my GPU to worry about window management cycles ...)
It can't match it with the compositing giants these days, but IceWM ran super-smoothly on a P120 laptop -- and that's gotta be worth something. The code base was small, straightforward and easy to hack, too. I still miss using it from time to time.
HTC Wizard (Score:2)
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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)
What about Compiz? (Score:2)
Just thought I'd ask.
XFCE - and haven't looked back (Score:2)
I have this old laptop that had difficulties coping with KDE, Gnome and Windows' memory demands. It was almost unusably slow.
I decided to try XFCE on it. Then I also installed xmonad and vimperator for better keyboard control.
It is blazing fast on this old laptop, faster than Gnome is on my very new desktops.
Its not as "pretty", but I think "immediate response" is so much more fun than "pretty" that I think I'm going to switch all my workstations to XFCE/xmonad rather than Gnome or KDE.
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I've been running XFCE on my IBM T23. It does run like a charm, but I'm beginning to wonder why I need the overhead of a desktop environment. What does XFCE do for me that Fluxbox doesn't? Not much.
I tried LXDE too. Man was that a pile of shit.
There's a reason... (Score:2)
...that they didn't use X in the first place. It's heavy. It'd also be a huge pain in the ass to get power management and wakeups under control
IMHO the biggest mistake with Android was the decision to invent their own (shitty) set of UI widgets. The interface designer is a joke. They should have ported the relevant bits of Qtopia.
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err, actually if you put a fork() in linux you get a pid, not a point, duh :-p
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linux is like a hydra, if you fork it two will rise from the ashes...
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linux fails it in every way. just put a fork in it.
Hmmm ... I think you meant to say "Windows" there. Linux handles fork() perfectly fine ...
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handles fork()
How many candles ?
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: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.
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""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?
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They may get linux to run on it, but then it won't be able to communicate with any peripherals. WTF is the point???
well the article said
That seems to imply to me that you can connect to any X11 server you have credentials for and a network connection to and therefore any peripherals on that server or network.
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.
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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.
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.
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None of those systems have been doing well in the mainstream desktop space, which is what all the excitement over Android is about.
They're doing *far* better than the ones that tried to develop alternatives to X11, aren't they? and no, Android is about the mainstream *smartphone* space, it resembles the desktop space in some ways but in others it's much closer to the embedded one. What applies to Android and the rest of the smartphones does not necessarily apply to Windows, Linux and OSX, as it should be obvious.
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.
Agreed for the first part but X11 also brings some familiarity to the relatively large market of UNIX/Linux developers and ge
Re:What's not to like? (Score:5, Informative)
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...
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Someone needs his morning coffee ;)
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.
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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So you can print things?
With CUPS? *shudder*
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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.
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You need X forwarding to compile \latex documents?
I can't really see how that would be the case for anything you would have the time to type up during a class session. :\
Most of the stuff you described I do on my eee or cli on my desktop.
(However, I can't say anything about the blackberry since I don't have one)
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You need X forwarding to compile \latex documents?
No, but I need X forwarding to view LaTeX documents compiled on another machine without scp'ing each time. Not much use in compiling them if I can't see them. You can't pull out an easy-to-read math formula from a compiled LaTeX document.
I can't really see how that would be the case for anything you would have the time to type up during a class session. :\
After a quarter's worth of notes, the LaTeX document can get quite heafty.
I compile more than just the day's worth of notes - I compile all the notes since the class began. It's not unusual at all for me to have to go back
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Here's a tip I picked up a while ago with Nautilus, not sure if it would benefit you or not. As a replacement for (what seems to me as being very slow even on the campus network here) X forwarding or (tedious) scp, entering sftp://IPorDomain/wherever/you/stash/your/stuff will let me open files locally from remote computers. The plus side is if you have ssh enabled, then the sftp protocol works.
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No! X must not be ported! X must die!
Too late. X runs everywhere. It's a good, flexible set of protocols, and there are dozens of different implementations. Microsoft and Apple have been making their window systems more and more X-like over the years--but they are slower and less efficient.
The X Window System is like UNIX/Linux: so-called experts have hated it because they thought it should all be done differently, but in the end, it turns out that X (and UNIX) got it right from the start.
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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.
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No, it would make the hardware non-free.
GNU is not the only FOSS definition and Android is all under the APL2, not GPL.
You can download the full source, redistribute it, port it to other systems etc etc (and people have done so). The locked use of it on the G1 does not make the OS any less open, just the handset closed.
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Yeah. This makes the "instructions" rather dis-useful: they are simply "install X" (as X is already ported and we already know how to get Debian setup on the device), "run the X VNC server", "connect with an Android VNC client". The instructions should likely just have been placed in the article summary rather than forcing us to click through to AndroidFanatic to just get disappointed :(.
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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