Ubuntu Linux On Samsung Galaxy Devices Finally Reaches Beta (Samsung DeX)

[skeevy420]

I think the hope of people commenting above was running Linux desktop distros INSTEAD of Android, which does have its own appeal.

I'd love an actual Linux desktop on my various Android devices. If I could ditch Android and all that Google Spyware for any Linux distribution I would in a heartbeat.

What Samsung is doing doesn't seem all that different than a random Linux on Android app with VNC for a desktop, other than it might being more secure due to sandboxing. I've already had Arch Linux Arm with XFCE running on my phone so this really doesn't seem that big or major.

[Ardje]

I think the hope of people commenting above was running Linux desktop distros INSTEAD of Android, which does have its own appeal.

I can understand that, but I was never under the illusion it would be like that. Linux runs on the chromebook by ways of containment, and it allows X11, and I thought wayland clients too. The biggest advantage for one of my friends was that he could run firefox on a "certified" safe chromebook.
Running plain linux on a phone is a disaster. Although I can see the beauty, it just makes it a brick you can ssh into. Even then, plain linux is not safe enough to contain applications, unless you are stepping it up using containers :-).
Anyway, as far as plain linux usuable interfaces go, I think we can count openmoko (qt based framebuffer). Are there more? The only phones and items that have a "desktop like" installation currently are tizen based phones (efl+wayland), and in the old days there was the Nokia N900. So the disappointment the people have is more like never having thought about it.
To be clear: I am typing this on an exynos5422 based arm as my desktop, so I do want an arm based desktop, but bricking a phone for that is not worth it.
That brings us to a good question: would the note 9 be able to work as a desktop? If you forfeit the function of it being a phone. If you were able to get an exynos 9810 reference platform board, it will still be around $2000. Are you willing to pay 1250 euro (8GB RAM, 512GB UFS) for a desktop that can't even play games?
As for vulkan, opencl and opengles, I think the distribution licensing model has been changed favorably towards the end user, so that will work.

[Ardje]

Hope it gets support for the latest Ubuntu release, instead of that rather old Ubuntu release.
Would love to see more Android device have support for something similar.

As I understand it, you have a container manager that you have to point to the container you want to run or clone.
As such you should be able to run anything that you like that falls within the android security policy.
So most likely it will have a virtual ethernet, no direct connections of any kind, tethered to the upstream of the phone.
You might be able to assign usb access rights to your container... that would be awesome.
Because next to basic development on-the-go, or running gimp, or whatever (tahoe-lafs as cloud connector for instance),
I do want to access some usb hardware to program them. Or very low latency audio like jack (which is included on samsung phones as professional audio) and midi access.

[starshipeleven]

Running plain linux on a phone is a disaster. Although I can see the beauty, it just makes it a brick you can ssh into.

Don't be daft. The dream is running Linux with actual hardware support, you know, not just run headless on the CPU with no drivers for GPU, modem, and wifi because blobs.

Even then, plain linux is not safe enough to contain applications, unless you are stepping it up using containers :-).

This is mostly mitigated by the fact that you are not installing untrusted closed-source applications, but yeah Linux Desktop lacks a mature sandboxed app ecosystem. Flatpak is in its infancy.

Anyway, as far as plain linux usuable interfaces go, I think we can count openmoko (qt based framebuffer). Are there more? The only phones and items that have a "desktop like" installation currently are tizen based phones (efl+wayland), and in the old days there was the Nokia N900. So the disappointment the people have is more like never having thought about it.

KDE and GNOME have touch-friendly interfaces (for KDE it is an option, for GNOME it is the default).

That brings us to a good question: would the note 9 be able to work as a desktop?

With driver support? yeah why not. I know of people that replaced their desktop with their Android phone, a bluetooth keyboard/mouse and a screencast dongle to show the screen on a monitor.

Are you willing to pay 1250 euro (8GB RAM, 512GB UFS) for a desktop that can't even play games?

Nah, but you don't need that to be a decent desktop.

[Ardje]

[QUOTE=starshipeleven;n1060187]Don't be daft. The dream is running Linux with actual hardware support, you know, not just run headless on the CPU with no drivers for GPU, modem, and wifi because blobs.[/QOUTE]

It's not just blobs, there is the upstream kernel lagging infra support for the hardware, so we have an old kernel with loads of hacks to get it to do what it does now.

[QUOTE=starshipeleven;n1060187]
KDE and GNOME have touch-friendly interfaces (for KDE it is an option, for GNOME it is the default).
[/QOUTE]
I can't really say that gnome is touch friendly. Really... I have touch interfaces enough to feel the pain (as I am a POS developer working on exactly that). It is however a very good step in the right direction.
[QUOTE=starshipeleven;n1060187]
With driver support? yeah why not. I know of people that replaced their desktop with their Android phone, a bluetooth keyboard/mouse and a screencast dongle to show the screen on a monitor.
[/QOUTE]
But that sounds like a linux environment inside an android environment :-).

Nah, but you don't need that to be a decent desktop.

True... I still don't feel limited by my exynos 5422 having only 2GB of ram. But then again, I also have a chromebook dedicated to chrome.
The arm desktop also runs chromium, but limited. Not 4 windows with 30 tabs. More like 1 window 4 tabes, and sometimes I need to kill it.

Anyway, my not so obvious main point was that you can't expect it to dual boot plain linux and android. That won't even be happening with chromebooks. You have to select fully supported or unlock/root it. "desktop" linux on a note 9 as a phone would take a lot of work. In that case a better look at rooting tizen phones would be easier.
(tizen phones use rpm as package management).

[edwaleni]

What happened to Samsung and Tizen?

[Ardje]

I've ordered a note 9 and I am amazed for now... The hard part is always network, but I can just ssh into any IPv6 node on my network.
Unlike googles crostini, which uses virtual networking with ipv4 nat, you got the same network namespace as the phone. I probably have no rights to do anything with that, but I use the original namespace. Hmmm, let's start an sshd server..