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Samsung has announced a new app called Linux on Galaxy that works with its DeX docking station to bring a full Linux desktop experience to Galaxy Note8, Galaxy S8 and S8+ smartphone users.
Comments from IDC sounded skeptical saying the concept is "interesting at best", but "the No. 1 challenge is that there is no public infrastructure for where you can dock your phone, other than in your home or office... Where you really would like to have that is at a hotel, at an airport, etc."
Samsung is touting their DeX environment as "supremely better than all the earlier attempts to have a smartphone docking into a big screen".
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Samsung to Give Linux Desktop Experience to Smartphone Users
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There *__is* intelligent life on Earth, but I leave for Texas on Monday.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Monday October 30 2017, @12:05AM (14 children)
I've been using Unix since 82/83. I discovered Linux in 94. I was a sysadmin for a 20 something Sun workstation network in '90. I've written Linux device drivers, and some of my code was at one time in the main Linux tree (it's been 20 years, one was a workaround for an Intel ethernet chip bug, the other was getting Firewire to work).
I don't see any reason to run Linux on my damned phone. Let me play poker, keep a shopping list, give me directions to where I want to go, and, oh, hey, let me make and/or recieve phone calls 2-3 times a month. But run Linux on it? Why would I possibly want that?
/ got preview silicon of Intel Ehternet chips in 90 or so
// they had a great feature to reduce idle time that, unfortunately, did not work
/// I found a workaround, that I sent to Intel, that Intel sent out as errata, that in '94 when I found Linux I found my workaround.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @12:56AM
Umm. most non-Apple phones run Linux.
The story is about a Linux desktop on the phone. Presumably that implies GUN and the X window system. (TFA does not give details other than working Vulcan drivers).
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @01:27AM
Sounds like you've given up. It comes to us all, eventually, but not quite yet for many of us out here, statistically all modern phone run linux and we're just getting access back.
But please enjoy your poker.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @02:48AM
They've done better lately but it's still pretty horrid.
Android.permissions [google.com]
Exploits database for the Android platform [exploit-db.com]
.
...and I saw Samsung's announcement several days before it appeared in the queue.
Like AC#589269, I thought "Meh. There's far too few details on this."
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by stormreaver on Monday October 30 2017, @03:30AM (1 child)
I don't see any reason to run anything other than a pure Linux on my phone. The Purism phone sounds like a dream come true: all open hardware, no hidden chipset super-operating systems, trustworthy security and encryption, and pure Linux driving it all.
I'm saving my money now so it can be my next phone. I'm so sick of Android (and can't stand Apple) that I'm willing and happy to put out the extra cash to regain my freedom and to not have to write to closed API's.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @04:59PM
exactly! some one gets it!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @03:50AM
Smartphone is a computer, fam. It ain't like the flip phones that you use to talk with people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @02:15PM
> Let me play poker, keep a shopping list, give me directions to where I want to go, and, oh, hey, let me make and/or recieve phone calls 2-3 times a month
the first two apps i loaded were a term emulator and vnc, and I am a power user not even a sysadmin.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 30 2017, @05:15PM (3 children)
Control, that's why. I was in your camp for a long time, but I got sick of ads and adware leaching away the performance of my devices. I got tired of the stupid pre-installed NFL app I never wanted and never even launched once sitting in prime real estate and hogging way too much storage. I got sick and tired of nagging messages urging me to update to new versions to give me even more of the same, and so some a*hole UI designer could paste their "vision" all over my interface. No thank you!
I don't sit down and develop on my phone because that's silly, but there have been times it's nice to do what I want, when I want, how I want. For me that is a price above rubies.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Monday October 30 2017, @09:46PM (2 children)
That's also a good point. Once upon a time I felt like writing some small stuff for my Nokia and by the time I had the time to take a second look at it they had practically discontinued all development "support" (including sending all the stuff —SDKs, docs, even tutorials, lots of handholding, APIs— that I had found the last time I looked at their site, all of that right into their own /dev/null for "archival" in nowhereland). Later yet I found that someone else had figured out and documented a way to develop on it independently of "all that had been" (and the JavaME approach of theirs is likely still feasible) but meh...
Actually one of the things I wanted to do was to "develop" on it ...on a dumb phone... ...using the number pad of course... (so far it's actually all incredibly neat, think ultra-super-duper-dynamically-adaptive-auto-complete neat; the ideas could/should work) ...preferrrrrably doing Python... ...and for that I was going to have to dust off the Java books and do JavaME in some outdated special edition depending on the version of the software in the firmware of the specific model of an old phone?...
...well just call me lazy please :D
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 30 2017, @11:44PM (1 child)
Holy crap! That is a level of masochism I have never even guessed at before. I bow to you.
Hope you do it someday, though, because that has geek hall of fame written all over it.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Saturday November 04 2017, @06:40AM
It is increasingly unlikely but yeah it does sound "fun" in a most insane way :D
It wouldn't be much more than a novelty thing these days when everyone can and do get themselves a smartphone and could buy a roll-up keyboard.
For a novelty item it would involve a lot of work though, at least to make it really interesting. The input part is mostly custom word processing and wouldn't be too bad on its own except to figure out what would be sensible for all the chording going on but the really fun part would start when the language itself is included/ported and then if one had gotten that far to combine it all into an added interpreter (I was aiming at Python).
Prototyping would use a number pad on a keyboard on a normal PC or similar. The input would function as "chorded coding" for a whole programming language, a mode selection or menu equivalent (most likely a dedicated starting key), as well as a chording for the full keyboard to input numeric values, variable and function names, etc., and also a sort of advanced auto-complete for programming structures and name completion for previously used variables, functions, etc. (requires list selection functionality).
The really nasty part enters once one tries to get this working on phone pads and phone screens and so on that are more or less unique for any phone model and/or sub-release of said model (which phone "OS" at which revision and so on and which software functionality and updates they have and so on)...
Too much work XD
If some crazy teenager (that is meant more as an energy quantity than anything else) wants to do it then they're free to do whatever they like: I too will be very impressed at the "hall of fame" nerdiness of someone completing something like it :)
I'm sure there's lots of people out there who could breeze through it but I fully understand it if it doesn't feel like it's worth it since I'm not doing it myself :)
Then again if it turns out we'll all live a few hundred years more than we expected to then it's not impossible I'll get back to you :D (until then it's in the "crazy ideas" stack with all the other ones —it's nowhere near the top of the "crasy stack" though so even with a few hundred years the prospect doesn't look too good for it).
As my silly "user bio" says I'm "likely insane" :)
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Monday October 30 2017, @09:26PM (2 children)
Because it would instantly be less bloated than even old (I mean old!) pre-MS Nokia feature phones? :S
(And maybe, just maybe, give you a sliver of privacy although that's doubtful).
Not that I'm planning on buying anything from Samsung, I'm pretty sure they're on my shit-list for something (bricking computers, hdd stuff, etc. I don't remember the latest outrage).
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday October 31 2017, @10:50PM (1 child)
What reason do you have to believe that? If you want a bloat-free, privacy-friendly smartphone, just wipe the stock OS and put on LineageOS or some other custom rom. But since Samsung has no problem piling up their custom Android rom with all this added bloat and spyware, why would you think they wouldn't do the same to their phone-based Linux distro? We don't even know if you'll have root on that system. It's not like it's impossible to add that kind of crap to a Linux desktop or lock the user out of having any real control. That tends to be how Samsung does things...
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Saturday November 04 2017, @06:08AM
Ah no: I fully agree with you, I only wanted the Linux part, not the Samsung part (or Apple or Google or Microsoft etc.). My mistake for not specifying that :)
And must have root, and full chip control too please, no hidden monkey business :)
But yeah I know I'm dreaming.
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))