
Android on the desktop: Not really “good,” but better than you’d think - BerislavLopac
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/12/android-on-the-desktop-not-really-good-but-better-than-youd-think/
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Spooky23
I tried this a few years ago with an android on a stick device. It's
definitely doable, but I'm fortunate to have the resources to not need such a
thing.

~~~
rwmj
I had Android running on a Mele Quad[1], with a mouse, keyboard and a big TV.
The main problems were the awkward mouse controls and the fact you can only
run one program at once, but for random web browsing it was fine. It's not
going to replace my laptop any time soon though.

[1] [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mele-A1000g-Quad-Android-
Black/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mele-A1000g-Quad-Android-
Black/dp/B009GPNEDU)

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jarcane
I used an Asus Transformer Prime as my laptop for some time, and in some ways
the experience described here sounds like it's actually gotten _worse_ on an
interface level since 4.0.

For the most part though, I found it reasonably decent for just a "monkeying
around on the internet" desktop, but when I needed to actually do work, it
quickly became useless. Google Docs on Android is a fucking travesty of a
thing, and MS Office was not yet available at the time.

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
We reached peak Tablet usability somewhere around 4.3/4.4. At this point
Android actually seemed to _use_ some of that landscape screen space to do
things like have the quick-settings menu drop down on the right-hand side of
the screen, and have the notifications bar drop down from the left-hand side.

Then Google decided to merge the two, and since then it's been back to the
"tablet is giant phone" interface.

Ars Technica has done several articles on Google's failure to follow its own
design examples when reviewing tablets:
[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/11/the-
nexus-10-lollipop...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/11/the-
nexus-10-lollipop-and-the-problem-with-big-android-tablets/)

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namlem
If Google brings the full version of Chrome to Android, it will be a viable
desktop OS. Not a good one, but certainly usable.

~~~
pqs
I few days ago I made a related question, but I got no answer. I'll link it
here, maybe somebody can answer it.

Why can't Android run the full Chrome browser? Why can't Android's Chrome run
Google Docs and Sheets?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10716287](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10716287)

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BerislavLopac
Why can't we simply have a regular desktop Linux on a tablet form factor?

~~~
rwmj
You can. There are however a couple of things that make it hard:

1\. The Android kernel is essentially a fork of the Linux kernel with a bunch
of non-upstream features and non-upstreamable crapware drivers written by the
phone/tablet vendors. By and large mainstream Linux distros are only happy to
ship upstream kernels. This means you'd need to run a hybrid distro userspace
+ Android kernel, which sucks because of missing kernel features, lack of
integration with distro packaging, and lack of security updates for the kernel
(unless you apply them by hand each time yourself).

2\. Mainstream Linux desktops suck without a mouse and don't have any
multitouch features -- despite groups like GNOME fetishizing iOS, they haven't
"got" what makes it good nor provided a competent replacement. Also the form-
factor of a phone or tablet is quite different from a laptop or desktop and so
requires somewhat special GUI software - single app at a time, on screen
keyboard, larger text, page-sized forms without decorations and so on.

Anyway, you can look at Ubuntu Phone as a good place to start.

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boardmad
been watching the progress towards higher and higher powered mobile devices
and I can see a point if someone decides to do it when your compute and
'emergency screen' is your mobile device and you get to home/office and dock
to your keyboard/mouse/screen setup and you are away.

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milge
I've actually done this in the past on my Nexus 7. It's really not too bad.
There's a few things to get used to as mentioned in the article. With the rise
of online IDEs, cloud technologies, and a remote desktop app, I can actually
do all of my work on an Android tablet.

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jdonaldson
I'm really surprised that we haven't seen more phone + car integrations. I
realize CarPlay is on a few models, but you'd think it would be all over the
place by now.

~~~
marcosdumay
It is all over the place. Cars play the phone musics, and answer the phone -
the two useful actions for it, they could also sync GPS targets, but that
requires cooperation with Google/Apple.

It just works, so people don't talk about it anymore.

~~~
jdonaldson
bluetooth isn't really about interaction though, and voice activation doesn't
give you enough control or feedback.

I'd really just like my dash screen to show the contents of my phone... or
better yet ... have the phone adapt to the dimensions of the screen, and
change the layout/interaction style, etc.

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trowawee
So...it's pointless? I guess I get the drive from G/A/M for OSes that are
unified across devices - it makes life easier from their perspective, and from
the perspective of people developing for their systems (and I count myself
among those ranks) to just have one OS to develop for. But I don't understand
why users would or should accept this (which, yes, according to the fcking
XKCD that'll get posted five seconds after I say this in accordance with
internet law, means it'll be the biggest thing in the world in five years). It
seems like for users this just means you get an OS that isn't optimized for
any use case.

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AndrewGaspar
Wish I could try Remix OS in a VM.

~~~
frik
Is RemixOS open source?
[https://forum.jide.com/index.php?p=/discussion/563/source-
co...](https://forum.jide.com/index.php?p=/discussion/563/source-code-request)
. Seems a bit shady.

Well, I will wait for Google to merge/combine ChromeOS and Android somehow to
offer the best of both worlds then. An Android smartphone/tablets that offers
ChromeOS capabilities (or an mouse+keyboard centric) window manager when
connected to a monitor/projector would be awesome. I think this will be the
future.

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mkesper
For desktop usage, I would have expected a look at Office solutions.

~~~
jamies888888
They demonstrate MS Office in the slideshow.

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swiley
Android is an OS for text messaging and web browsing. If that's all you want
to do then it's great! Otherwise it's absolutely aweful.

~~~
dnautics
I would say navigation on it is fantastic, setting alarms ("ok google set
alarm for 10 minutes" \- spot on every time), getting weather reports ("ok
google what's the weather like"), and occasionally reading a PDF instruction
manual while at the instrument in question are things that android do modestly
well. I think that comprises the use cases for android for me.

~~~
collyw
All the things you have described are "phone" type applications rather than
desktop applications (consumption versus creation in my mind). Ok, that's very
much a generalisation, but I think that what the original comment was getting
at.

