Using an /e/ phone as a desktop or laptop
nexedi.com
nexedi.com
AOSP derivatives are a suboptimal approach to convergence though (i.e. running the same OS on desktop/laptop and a mobile device). Ultimately, a native convergent OS such as PostmarketOS (running GNOME Phosh or KDE-Plasma Mobile) or UBPorts should work a lot more smoothly. AOSP apps should be supported via a container-based approach, as with Anbox.
Phones are commodity devices where volumes have to be high and costs low.
The big manufacturers that have the resources to make and sell something like this at scale(i.e. Samsung) want you tied in their ecosystem instead.
Maybe some niche manufacturer could make a device with this via crowdfunding but the price would be too high for such a low volume as the niche of techies this would be aimed at are savvy enough to flash it themselves on an older phone for free.
PinePhone has one-upped /e/ and is releasing a competitively-priced device with mainline Linux support (not just AOSP)! It absolutely is a possibility.
And that's the problem right there.
Hell, even the people who work in cybersecurity don't give two shits about this. I'm in this gig and phones are IOS across the board.
- Sent from my iPhone ;)
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Samsung-finally-adds-DeX-suppo...
Android 10 can apparently be coaxed into something like a desktop experience if you have the right phone. It's at least possible Android 11 will have a proper desktop mode built in, but I suppose I'm not holding my breath.
https://www.xda-developers.com/make-android-10-desktop-mode-...
For simple HTML editing I ended up using an app called Quoda, the closest I could find to Panic's Coda with an integrated editor and FTP:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.henrythomp...
DeX isn't something I've used long term, partly because I can't use it in a cafe (there's no laptop DeX form factor), and mostly because much of my work requires Windows software. But I was still very impressed at how much I could get done. For some people it would easily be all they need.
https://9to5google.com/2019/10/18/samsung-discontinues-linux...
DeX is still around and lets you run Android as a full desktop environment by plugging your phone into an HDMI screen.
But some have already released phones with a similar desktop mode.
(Disclaimer: I'm a Microsoft employee and the phone and docking station were both given to me.)
However, after using it, I don’t think this is actually a useful feature. It is cool, but I found no practical use for it because my laptop could do all the same things better. I think it only makes sense if you have no other computing device, but still somehow have invested in a keyboard, display, mouse and dock setup. I don’t know who that mythical person is, but it definitely wasn’t me.
It's effectively a linux distribution for android (with a large repository of packages), that uses the existing android kernel. So no rooting required, and has the power efficiency of android.
And turn off scanning WiFi APs? Just allow manual selection.
Also, can you flash firmware? Maybe wipe the GPS firmware?
Oh, and can you mess with the baseband?
Edit: I asked in the Termux Wiki.
mirimir> I'd like to totally lock down the GPS chip.
xeffyr> Not without root and some actions will be device-specific.
mirimir> I'd also like to turn off WiFi-based geolocation.
xeffyr> Android settings isn't enough ? Or you think the settings are no-op ? In such case delete the Google Play services immediately.
mirimir> And totally prevent sharing of location data, anywhere outside the device.
xeffyr> Disassemble your device and cut the all antennas and optionally USB port.
mirimir> I'd like to turn off scanning of WiFi APs.
xeffyr> Again - go to Android settings and turn off.
mirimir> And just connect manually to a private AP
xeffyr> Impossible if previous 2 points are performed.
mirimir> for connectivity via nested VPN chains.
xeffyr> You really think that VPN chain is more secure than just 1 VPN ? From encryption side it is but you forgot about side-channel attacks. Time (worldwide) and connection metadata are your enemy here.
mirimir> If possible, I'd like to disable or wipe the GPS and baseband firmware.
xeffyr> Find the right block device in /dev/block then fill it with zeros. Example: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/block/mmcblk0p8.
xeffyr> Some devices do not expose the baseband block device or have it in permanent RO mode.
xeffyr> GPS can be completely disabled by recompiling kernel without its drivers + modifying init.rc scripts in ramdisk to disable gpsd service.
mirimir> And then use an external WiFi router or cellular modem/router.
xeffyr> Good luck with modifying Android OS framework. It does not natively support external wifi or cellular modem.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Atrix_4G#Webtop
- https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/Continuum
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_DeX
- Ubuntu's convergence attempts
and probably many more (e.g. the Nokia N900 was already more of a laptop than a phone). However, all of them flopped for being too inconvenient (needing lots of cables/peripherals), too slow, too thick or just too "early".
For comparison "VR" has been tried extensively already in the 1990s by Sega, Nintendo and others. It flopped. Now it is coming again and even has a Half-life game in the works. However, I am not too optimistic it will succeed this time.
My Huawei P20 Pro does it off the shelf.
It seems to be a bit picky about which monitors it's willing to speak to, but with the 'right' ones it's just a matter of plugging it in via USB-C and attaching a bluetooth keyboard. It has a windows-mimicking desktop mode and the phone screen becomes a trackpad.
I've never really found a use for it myself, but it is there.
As mentioned in the article: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andromium/the-superbook...
I was playing around with https://ish.app/ on ios.. It supports airplay. But I couldnt' get it to compile some things I'd want, and it was still very slow.
Chrome offers some really interesting use cases in enterprise now, and the pricing is competitive with traditional thin clients. You can still get Wyse devices for less money at scale.
In what ways has the gap between ChromiumOS and ChromeOS increased? Is that true of Chromium and Chrome as well?
> Nexedi has thus decided to support the /e/ foundation and its sister corporation, with the hope that /e/ would some day become a usable OS for desktop or laptop.
Good for them, I think/hope!
I realize the license allows this but attribution would still be appreciated.
Lack of stable support of CJK input in guest mode (and the difficulty to find anyone capable of solving this problem or supporting us) was the biggest issue for me.
Some years ago, the difference was: - support for flash movies - support of certain video codecs - support of certain Google APIs (but that is OK for me) which was fine to me.
Note: I wrote the article on /e/ for Desktop
- support for flash movies
- support of certain video codecs
- support of sound hardware of many recent Chromebook models
- support of CJK input (at least in Guest Mode)
- support of Android apps
- support of Linux virtual machine subsystem
- support of certain Google APIs (but that is OK for me)
Lack of stable support of CJK input in guest mode (and the difficulty to find anyone capable of solving this problem or supporting us) was the biggest issue for me.
Some years ago, the difference was:
- support for flash movies
- support of certain video codecs
- support of certain Google APIs (but that is OK for me)
which was fine to me.
Note: I wrote the article on /e/ for Desktop
In particular it's hard to tell if any particular fork is just a one man hobby project, a fork of a fork, or has any significant work behind it.
Of course the big one is LineageOS, but they seem to make specific phone images, mostly for high-end phones, rather than generic system images for my low-end phone.
The list of generic system images is extremely long and not all that helpful: https://github.com/phhusson/treble_experimentations/wiki/Gen...
I ended up chosing phh-treble because it doesn't add any BS, promises quick updates, and serves as a base for many other roms, lending it some reliability. It's pretty much AOSP with hardware fixes.
That said, it doesn't do some pretty basic things like automatic brightness and night mode, or a PIN timeout. So maybe that's eventually drive me to try another ROM...
Connect your USB-C phones which support Desktop Mode, and the apps in them can be used in the laptop shell.
They depend upon phones that short this via Android Q. They are tracking other projects such as OXI, MaruOS, and Librem to ensure compatibility.
Does /e/ require a phone? Or would it work with a tablet as well?
The article is incorrect also about the browser: it is simply packing a re-branded Bromite browser.
I see that some phones have 6GB RAM, and that should be enough for at least two or three VMs. And many have lots of CPu cores.
But maybe I'm missing something.
So what do phones normally do with their CPU?
3B+ has a GigE adapter working over USB2 so you can get ~200Mbps, on other models you can get an off-board adapter providing much better performances than the on-board one but still not "real GigE": https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blogs/jeff-geerling/getting-gig...
Here’s an example of what an H.264 decoder chip would be like:
https://www.digikey.ca/en/product-highlight/s/system-on-chip...
The main difference, from a resource usage perspective, is that each VM needs RAM. I typically run at least two pfSense router VMs as VPN gateways. They use about 600MB each. And the Debian VM that I'm writing this in uses about 2.4GB. Most of that's used by the browser. But CPU usage is only about 10% of four 3GHz i5 cores.
But if I stream some video, or download a torrent, all three VMs use more CPU. Altogether maybe 50%-60% CPU. That's because there are thee OpenVPN instances (one in the host, and one in each pfSense VM) encoding/decoding traffic.
Even so, I doubt that it'd be all that different if there were no VMs, and the host was doing all that. In other words, I don't think that the VirtualBox overhead is all that high.
Not GPGPU no, dedicated decoding blocks in the SoC. That's why getting hardware support in the phones is a Big Deal for video codecs (audio as well, to a somewhat lesser extent but support in the audio decoding block means audio playback can happen completely off CPU and let it sleep).
> But do phones have gaming-level GPU?
Not in the "modern PC gaming-class GPU". They have efficient GPUs but simply don't have the physical, thermal or energetic headroom.
In GFLOPS, higher-end phone GPUs are roughly where desktop GPUs were 10 years ago or so (though obviously there are other factors like texturing units and the like).
Back in the day before SSDs, I used to cool external HDDs with axial fans during TB-scale operations.
I want router VMs for chaining VPNs. And for Whonix.
https://www.nexedi.com/NXD-Presentation.Status.Roadmap?porta...
Our story with /e/ is that we decided that it would make more sense to invest some cash in /e/ (we did it) than try to maintain NayuOS now that most ChromeOS users expect to run Android apps (and this part is not in ChromiumOS AFAIK).
Also, we observed a growing need for some kind of "desktop OS" for industrial applications (robotics, industrial automation) that does not depend on Google APIs (factories are often in China or do not have Internet access).
/e/ thus made a lot of sense.
Note: I the author of the post.
It still seems offensive that there's no way to reset it.
But in any case, it ought to be fixable by an authorized service technician.
Indeed, it's arguably a right to repair issue.
In many jurisdictions, warranties against manufacturing defects (perhaps with a certain limited duration) are mandated by law and non-waivable, and language which purports to disclaim them or have the customer agree to a waiver has no legal effect. To the extent a warranty is discretionary or waivable and properly waived, such an act may void the warranty, but that's not as often the case as simply reading manufacturers disclaimer language would suggest.