I really don't see what this brings. Is google so lost that the only "innovation" they can bring in android is descovering that the linux kernel has support for virtualization ?
When talking about the strategy of a successful multibillion dollar company, the most likely answer is "no".
The very short article explains at a high level:
"they’re used for things like enhancing the security of the kernel (or at least trying to) and running miscellaneous code (such as third-party code for DRM, cryptography, and other closed-source binaries) outside of the Android OS."
First Google is gonna run Fuchsia on Linux, then linux will be removed entirely.
that's what this laying the groundwork for.
"I can already achieve this with FTP/samba/whatever." Sometimes taking existing, established technology and making it easier to use is all it takes to "innovate".
Of course I have no idea how killer this particular Android feature will be. I'm just criticizing the "this is not new" argument.
This one, it's not the first VM on smartphones at all. Running a desktop OS is possible for years with comparable solutions. What makes this different from Samsung's DeX, for example?
Its current financial state is more a case of bigger vendors bundling a good enough alternative with their products AND dropbox not adding much beyond "easy to use"; than HN insight of "lol just rsync/bash/perl instead" being right all along.
They appear to be in the black.
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Microsoft OneDrive is fuckin' awful in how long it takes for a file on one system to be synced to another, even when both systems are online at the same time. It also has a habit of completely pausing syncing entirely if it reaches a file it can't read (such as a lock file).
Google Drive works well, but I find its desktop client to be resource-heavy, especially on startup. I like its integration with my Android, though.
Still not seeing the point?
People are either gonna love or hate it. Love because of how little space it requires or hate because the performance is gonna be worse then even the non pro versions of the surface.
When you add the display, battery, keyboard and mouse, it's really cheap to add brains and storage and build a full laptop that can share data with your phone.
This is why most lapdocks fail - they aren't that much less expensive than a cheap laptop. This is also why, at some point, nobody was making dedicated terminals for large computers - they were as expensive to build as PCs.
I wonder when we'll be there. For sure we're not there for wireless, yet. It's unreliable, especially if you have a lot of wireless devices around.
A mid-range Xiaomi phone is better than the Librem 5 and costs four times less.
Also, it will receive software updates forever unlike any other phone.
not to mention, from the thread you linked:
"About 2600 L5's have been delivered, so everyone who ordered before October 2017 should have gotten their phones. Purism reportedly just got in another 1100 L5's from the factory, so when those get shipped out, that should cover the orders up to mid-2018."
I mean you can't be serious. People paid almost a grand to wait four years for a phone?
But this tiny company with no experience in smartphones did finally produce the product respecting users unlike Google or Apple. The current problems with CPU supply is not Purism's fault.
Also, the phone supports microSD up to 2 TB.
That's the real killer feature.
https://blog.esper.io/android-dessert-bites-5-virtualization...
Ps Firefox containers are great indeed and I use them for the same reasons. But I doubt this is the intended usecase for this. I don't see Google investing a ton of money to build something that will hurt their bottom line.
Like in the case of the Shelter app.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.typeblog.s...
Also there are Android based VR headsets, anh their resolutions are getting better. Think of working in a connected virtual office, running Windows applications.
I know there are some options for this, like Samsung Dex, but with this there is at least some potential for having a Windows PC in your pocket. Like Microsoft tried to do with those older Windows phones.
Yes this virtualization allows us to run windows/linux. Thats not the main goal probably. Its more to reuse packages from those stacks on your android phone, kinda like the VMware Fusion mode on a Mac, to run applications side by side, or to run things in a secure virtualized container.
Why recompile to android, when you can virtualize?
Performance?
We need to bring back gestural writing, with simplified letter forms. The basic tech was in production use in the mid-1990s, and there are clearly unencumbered alphabets that could be easily used for this, such as the 19th century Moon Script. Recent UI work has made Linux quite usable on touchscreens and smaller devices, but text input is way harder than it could be.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/11/android-12-the-ars-t...
Private Compute Core—Running AI code in a virtual machine?