Sighted: Nexus One Running Ubuntu
Running desktop Linux apps on your Android smartphone: worth your time?
The Nexus One gets some hacker love from a certain "Max" of NexusOneHacks.net, who's figured out a way to install Ubuntu on Google's smartphone—without removing the Android installation. This means those who can pull off the install can still use their rooted Android OS mobile normally, launching Ubuntu as a sub-system when needed.
Why would anyone bother running a desktop OS on their smartphone? Max lists a couple of scenarios:
"I... see many... engineering [students] when they are studying Ubuntu/linux. Instead of heading to the lab or having dual-boot on their computer, students will be able to use their Nexus One/Android phone as a test device."
"[F]or web designers, their Android phone can become a portable test web server to test out their new designs."
And of course, the prospect of running desktop Linux software on a phone is awesome. The full step-by-step is here. Needless to say, the procedure—which requires rooting your Nexus One or Android smartphone—may void the warranty. A video walkthrough is also available below:
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1:06 VNC login. Anyone know why he does that? Is the OS really inside the phone or is this just a remote view using VNC.
Considering the processing power of smart phones is approaching low-end netbooks, this is not unrealistic. The screen size is the main limitation. A USB video adapter or a roll-out plastic display could fix that. Add a bluetooth keyboard and mouse (or a virtual system that uses the camera) and you have a very portable desktop system.
There are quite a few folks who have already run a slimmed down version of Linux (esp. openBSD/Fedora) on the G1.
1:06 VNC login. Anyone know why he does that? Is the OS really inside the phone or is this just a remote view using VNC.
The connection was localhost (loopback), Probably just to skip Graphics driver problems and provide a properly designed interface.
Ubuntu was running ON THE PHONE, He was just using a remote client to provide the connection to a Virtual Visual Environment.
Next up: Linux on iOS
Next up: Linux on iOS
eww...no...
There are quite a few folks who have already run a slimmed down version of Linux (esp. openBSD/Fedora) on the G1.
openBSD isn't Linux, Android is
As a long time Linux/GNU user I was really disappointed that google made it so difficult to get standard *nix apps to work on this. I understand why they did it but as a power user I'd like to setup my firewall and network options the way I want without losing waranty or at least start a ssh and http server on it.
HTC gave Flash support with last update and the performance on these is horrible... I don't know what he expects from running hulu on this through vnc.
I did this on my HTC Magic with Debian about a year ago.
Useless because you keep running out of RAM.
The loopback VNC connection is because we lack a proper graphics driver but we would also need some sort of input driver (touchscreen, keyboard).
Awesome! That also proves again how less resources Linux requires compared to Windows. I myself would try it when I get my hands on one such smartphone.
Awesome! That also proves again how less resources Linux requires compared to Windows. I myself would try it when I get my hands on one such smartphone.
This phone has 512MB of RAM. That's as much as PS3 and X360. I remember my old gentoo booting with KDE3 using 90-120MB. Just checked and my desktop now uses 1GB + 3GB of caches.
Nice hack, and Ubuntu is running unbelievably smooth.