
Development on Remix OS and related consumer products is being discontinued - Double_a_92
http://www.jide.com/
======
jhbadger
Once ChromeOS started adding support for Android apps, the use case for this
(Android on a laptop) became even more questionable than it was already.

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kemonocode
So with Remix OS being effectively canned, what other alternatives do remain
for Android on x86? I do know they were leveraging the efforts of the aptly-
named Android-x86 project, but I don't know to which extent they did and the
state of completeness of said project.

~~~
Fnoord
Bluestacks. Wikipedia entry here [1]. It works but it might have too much
overhead for your needs though.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlueStacks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlueStacks)

~~~
kemonocode
I've used it before, along with similar "emulators" but what I was indeed
looking for were for other native Android distros, one advantage being as they
used to advertise it, that it was light enough for you to stick into an USB or
a SSD then boot up your underpowered computer from it. I used Remix OS for my
parents' computer as a no-frills alternative to a fully fledged Linux distro,
and it actually worked pretty well for that.

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astannard
I have backed and received a few Jide products and love them. The ones I have
received will continue to work and benefit my family. It is a shame they are
moving away from the consumer space but I wish them luck.

I recently ordered a pinebook and intended on installing remix OS on it. I
think I will choose differently now though.

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jaboutboul
They should at a minimum open source all the closed pieces.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Open source isn't particularly appealing to a lot of enterprises, and now that
they're focusing on that market, they have little to no reason to look for
'community contributions'. Giving away their special sauce isn't in their best
interest.

If they were shutting down, open sourcing would be more likely.

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jaimex2
There's still [https://maruos.com](https://maruos.com)

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rahimnathwani
"we decided to focus our company efforts solely on the enterprise space moving
forward."

Edit: only the English page has been updated. If you're in China and get auto-
redirected, click the 'English' button at the bottom-left to see the full
message.

------
iiv
It's like a loan with no interest! How has no one done this before?

~~~
kogepathic
_> How has no one done this before?_

Lots of crowd funding projects have done this. Just look at the Jolla Tablet
[0] if you want a concrete example of a company using backer's money as an
interest free loan without delivering anything. Fortunately for Jide backers,
they're actually receiving a refund. Jolla has been giving their backers
excuses for why they cannot return the funds for the past 2.5 years.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolla_Tablet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolla_Tablet)

~~~
coldpie
I mean, this is how crowdfunding works. If you're not willing to risk getting
nothing in return for your money, then don't crowdfund. You need to evaluate
the people proposing the project before deciding to trust them with your
money. There should be no expectation of a refund if the project fails.

~~~
Bartweiss
This is reasonable in general, but the expected narrative for "project fails"
is something like "we can't make this" or "we needed more money than expected"
or even just "we got bored, screw you". It does feel a bit different when the
answer is "we took this as seed funding to go enter a totally different
market, suckers!" Or in Jolla's case, "thanks for the money, asshole!"

There are plenty of markets with risks to the investors that still have
boundaries. If a mutual fund picks badly and loses money, that's an issue for
the investors. If a mutual fund turns out to be using your money on personal
bets (like the London Whale) or simply stealing the money outright, that's a
legal issue.

~~~
kogepathic
_> If a mutual fund turns out to be using your money on personal bets (like
the London Whale) or simply stealing the money outright, that's a legal
issue._

Exactly, there's a difference between failure and fraud.

If you're soliciting donations to advance your OS development, then pitch the
project as such. If you're promising backers a physical good, and then you
decide to pivot, keep the money, and not deliver the backers _anything_ or
return their money, then people will obviously feel like you've defrauded
them.

Unfortunately from a legal perspective, crowd funding backers have little to
no legal recourse when businesses decide to use their contributions as an
interest free loan for their other business operations.

------
shams93
Samsung beat them at their own game, if you have an s8 with the desktop dock
your phone can act like a remix os box.

~~~
digi_owl
Android in general really.

Once 7.0 was demoed with optionally floating windows, it was really game over
for Remix and similar.

The really sad part is that if one watch the thinking from Rubin and crew
around Android 3-4, it was clear that this was their goal.

But then came ChromeOS, a refocusing on that for "desktop", while Android
languished in a doldrums.

Only after corporations etc firmly dismissed Chromebooks did we see a renewed
interest in Android as anything more than a fancy media player.

~~~
amiga-workbench
I thought that Remix was a doomed product the first time I'd laid eyes on it.
We have seen similar attempts from other manufacturers in the past, be that
Motorola's webtop, the mini apps lumped into several OEM ROMs that emulate
floating windows or the third party app packages that do the same thing.

At the end of the day, Google is the only one who can viably create new modes
of interaction and the new API's to support it.

OEM's can throw their own garbage together but they will typically only ever
push it on a single flagship device or some quirky variant with this feature
differentiating it from the horde of other models they vomit out in the space
of a year. You will get the paltry in-built apps to use and perhaps the apps
of one or two sponsored partners, the development community at large will not
bother using the feature because they would be targeting such a tiny fraction
of their users.

Android OEM's should be purely hardware companies, focusing on hardware
gimmicks alone, leave the software to those who can do it properly. It's not
dissimilar from ISP's gagging to be anything but a dumb pipe, inserting
themselves between you and your media. It's very unwelcome.

------
franciscop
My phone broke (only the screen) back last year and I used Remix OS as a
substitute. I have to say I loved it! I could load the apps I wanted to use
all from my desktop, including things that are limited by design to
mobile/tablet.

I am so sad to see it gone, it seemed like the main project with a future in
the space.

------
murrayb
I have a remix mini attached to our TV. It's been a fine device for what we
use it for- watching movies and TV shows from Google Play and the occasional
ABC iView show. Sorry to see them exiting this space.

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piyush_soni
Take money from 'community', develop using that and get famous, get enterprise
funding, stop community project and return the 'community money'. Good idea.

~~~
setr
From my experience seeing games on kickstarter, this is pretty much what is
reasonable to expect.

I mean the whole model is 1\. Get money from community to fund game
development 2\. Sell the game again after, for extra profit, because why not

And somewhere along the way there's usually a total mis-estimation of funds
and resources

At least here something was given back to the "community"...

The entire crowdfunding platform is absurdity; I'm not really sure what people
are thinking when they use it. Nothing given back to community, significant
risk of failure, no real quality control or even a basic measure to meet, and
extremely hype-cycled. Its mostly just a platform to give away your money for
empty promises...

~~~
majewsky
> The entire crowdfunding platform is absurdity

The totality of this statement is what's absurd. There's some good stuff on
Kickstarter etc., but Sturgeon's Law applies: 90% of everything is crap.

~~~
StavrosK
No, it's crowdfunding itself that is absurd: You are literally pre-paying full
price for a small _chance_ that a product will actually be shipped to you.

Imagine Amazon, but instead of next-day delivery you get next-year delivery
and there's a 90% chance your product won't be delivered at all: That's what
crowdfunding _is_.

Traditionally, when funding a product, investors got a portion of the earnings
to offset their risk. Crowdfunding has managed to eschew that in favor of just
getting you to give people money just in case they can come up with a product.
If the bet works out, great, you get a product, but so do I, and I didn't give
the creators any money in advance. If it fails, you're out your money.

~~~
ulkesh
> You are literally pre-paying full price for a small chance that a product
> will actually be shipped to you.

Anecdotal, of course, but "small chance" for me is that I have received 28 out
of 29 projects I've helped fund in roughly the time-frame outlined. Only one
project did I simply waste money on (the Lunecase for iPhone). For me, that's
a 96.6% success rate of crowdfunded items I've backed.

The reason I crowdfund is for the product, sure, but also for the extras that
the main product won't have upon release. It's not so much bragging rights, I
couldn't care less about that. It's because I feel like I'm getting more for
my money, well, because I am.

Maybe I'm just lucky.

~~~
StavrosK
Maybe you're just better at due diligence than the average person (who can't
really be expected to know how products get launched and what the red flags
are).

~~~
ulkesh
I would love to think so! But sadly I've been burned on some things in the
past as well (usually trusting that Amazon ships me the right item, eBay, that
one item on Kickstarter, etc). I do my best to check seller reviews/ratings on
typical eCommerce sites, but with Kickstarter it's more about experience of
previous campaigns (like Cool Mini or Not, I trust them implicitly now).

I do agree with you, though, that crowdfunding, as a concept, is a _caveat
emptor_ situation. Sadly, as is the case in the United States anyway, _caveat
emptor_ seems to be the norm.

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maelito
Just tested android-x86 7.1 rc on Dell XPS 13, it's impressive. Everything was
working properly.

------
grizzles
What is Jide's enterprise offering?

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mfoy_
So... Android is built on the Linux kernel... and these people were making an
"Android" PC OS? How is that not essentially just another Linux distro?

What exactly, was the point?

~~~
opayen
Access to all Android apps maybe?

~~~
mfoy_
So it's a Linux distro that offers native Android app support, sans-emulator?
Was that the whole thing?

Considering how... entrenched the OS market is, it's not easy to have a solid
value proposition for creating a _new_ OS.

~~~
NikolaeVarius
I mean ChromeOs is a thing right? They wanted to beat Google to the Apps on
Desktop game

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aruggirello
I'm sad, I almost liked Remix OS.

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Double_a_92
Why was this thread renamed? Now people have to guess that it might be
about...

Edit: It's better now.

------
baybal2
Given the background of founders, some might have thought that they only seek
an interest-free loan.

From the time of original kickstarter campaign, the interest from the sum
would've been more than enought to sustain the company given crazy interest
rates in Chinese black banks

