MicroXwin Creators Have A PC That Runs Debian & Android Together

[phoronix]

Phoronix: MicroXwin Creators Have A PC That Runs Debian & Android Together

The company behind MicroXwin, a kernel-based X Windows implementation that claims to be the smallest and fastest X implementation, has come up with a unified Linux distribution that runs Android and Debian/Ubuntu applications simultaneously...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTc0NDQ

[Shnatsel]

https://www.alwaysinnovating.com/ had exactly this in 2009, actually.

[cb88]

MicroXWin has elicits absolutely no desire for me to use it... it isn't open source and if you are running Linux or Android and also looking for alternative display servers.. that is probably a big issue for you. I mean who wants another blob in their kernel not me....

Also he never played fullscreen video on MicroXwin did he?

[edgar_wibeau]

I've been wondering for some time why so little people seem to be interested in running Android inside a running Linux system. Last vacations I had a laptop with me plus a smartphone, and I wanted to be able to read Google Books and Kindle (the smartphone screen being to smal for my taste). So parallel to Linux I installed Windows 8 and this (also) shitty android environment inside a VM, forgot the name, only to be able to do so. Ok Kindle also ran on that Windows 8 but for G-Books I needed Android. Slow and battery-busting of course. Two extra systems only to be able to read some book and not carry a tablet together with laptop and smartphone. While it could be so simple and with great performance becaue Android would run on the same kernel as the host OS - on x64 of course. Plus no need to spoil my laptop with MS.

[schmidtbag]

Ugh I had a MK808 not that long ago, but got rid of it. I'd have loved to try this on it, because the android setups were crap (decent performance but a serious lack of drivers) and installing linux natively was even more restricting.

The benefits this offers is great, I'm just wondering how exactly they did this.

While I wish Canonical's efforts to run android apps natively in linux would have been great, I think this route would have been a better alternative for them at first.

[uid313]

MicroXwin is proprietary software so it can go fuck itself!

Also X11 is dead anyway, long live Wayland!

[bulletxt]

MicroXwin is proprietary software so it can go fuck itself!

Also X11 is dead anyway, long live Wayland!

X11 is dead? Really? I do not see X11 dying at least for the next 3 years. And I'm optimistic.

[DanL]

X11 is dead? Really?

uid313 must think that if he says it enough, it will be true.

[eydee]

It's interesting to see how they demonstrate video playback using a possibly pirated copy of the movie. At least the file name suggests it is, though I don't want to accuse anyone...

[ssokolow]

I've been wondering for some time why so little people seem to be interested in running Android inside a running Linux system. Last vacations I had a laptop with me plus a smartphone, and I wanted to be able to read Google Books and Kindle (the smartphone screen being to smal for my taste). So parallel to Linux I installed Windows 8 and this (also) shitty android environment inside a VM, forgot the name, only to be able to do so. Ok Kindle also ran on that Windows 8 but for G-Books I needed Android. Slow and battery-busting of course. Two extra systems only to be able to read some book and not carry a tablet together with laptop and smartphone. While it could be so simple and with great performance becaue Android would run on the same kernel as the host OS - on x64 of course. Plus no need to spoil my laptop with MS.

I'm always open to it but there are two main obstacles:

1. The only "Android in a VM" solution I've seen with accelerated graphics is AndroVM, which is closed-source and doesn't implement touch remapping. (Only the VM guest is allowed to be closed on my system, not the privileged host code.)
2. Doing a Wine-esque hybrid solution requires kernel systems like the Binder IPC layer which currently aren't safe to run on a desktop Linux system. (Basically, the Android kernel relies on SELinux and Dalvik sandboxing to cover design flaws in some of their kernel modules, leaving your traditional X11 userland vulnerable.)

As for why I don't demand it from the rooftops? I have a strict "only games and grandfathered applications may be closed source" policy and, aside from one or two games I'm curious about from a Humble Mobile Bundle I bought for the soundtracks, everything on Android either has a superior Windows (Wine) or Linux version or is closed-source without being a game.