Living in an Android world?


Grench

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OK, so there is contention about how moving to an Android world would be a loss to those of us who want/need a 'full' linux desktop environment.


Something in the back of my brain makes me curious if we can't actually have it 'both' ways.


Android is most commonly seen on mass produced phones and tablets where the device manufacturer and the wireless phone company have locked the device down to only what they want the user to see. Interfaces are dumbed down to lists of icons. The actual OS is hidden away.


Why would we be restricted to that? Under the thick skin of commercial applications and icon menus, isn't Android - at it's core - a Linux on ARM OS?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)


So - here's my thought. Rather than fight to put a full Arch/Debian/Angstrom/flavoroftheday OS on the device, why not overlay on top of the Android OS the functionality that we want/need?


Is there any reason that XFCE couldn't lay on top of Android as an alternate UI?


Why wouldn't we be able to have the .PND system live within Android?


What, exactly would be 100% lost if this route of adding the functionality of a desktop OS on top of the Android kernel?


Android, Angstrom, Debian, Ubuntu, etc... - they're all flavors of Linux in the end. Android is just a bit more cooked on the UI than most.


Could this work?
 
Android's kernel is in the process of being merged back into the vanilla Linux kernel, for what it's worth. The next version will have everything but its power-management in place (that should follow in the one afterwards, I gather).


This being the case, it would probably make solutions for running Android applications on Linux rather more feasible, or even that Ubuntu + Android thing that was recently demonstrated.
 
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Android has almost nothing in common with a GNU/Linux userspace. All GNU/Linux apps would have to be runned in a chroot containing the entire GNU/Linux userspace, I don't think any part of the Android userspace can be shared in its current state.
 
canonical has made ubuntu boot off of the android kernel. It can even laungh android apps inside of ubuntu.
 
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