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New Samsung Video Demos Linux on Galaxy Smartphones (liliputing.com)
Slashdot reader boudie2 tipped us off to some Linux news. Liliputing reports:
Samsung's DeX dock lets you connect one of the company's recent phones to an external display, mouse, and keyboard to use your phone like a desktop PC... assuming you're comfortable with a desktop PC that runs Android. But soon you may also be able to use your Android phone as a Linux PC [and] the company has released a brief video that provides more details. One of those details? At least one of the Linux environments in question seems to be Ubuntu 16.04... While that's the only option shown, the fact that it does seem to be an option suggests you may be able to run different Linux environments as well.
Once Ubuntu is loaded, the video shows a user opening Eclipse, an integrated development environment that's used to create Java (and Android apps). In other words, you can develop apps for Android phones with ARM-based processors on an Android phone with an ARM-based processor.
Samsung promised in October that its Linux on Galaxy app will ultimately let users "run their preferred Linux distribution on their smartphones utilizing the same Linux kernel that powers the Android OS."
Once Ubuntu is loaded, the video shows a user opening Eclipse, an integrated development environment that's used to create Java (and Android apps). In other words, you can develop apps for Android phones with ARM-based processors on an Android phone with an ARM-based processor.
Samsung promised in October that its Linux on Galaxy app will ultimately let users "run their preferred Linux distribution on their smartphones utilizing the same Linux kernel that powers the Android OS."
Here's the Samsung demo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"What's the benefit to this versus what I already have?"
Presumably it's available out of the box and ready to go with a few touches of a button, with official support from the vendor.
Motorola Atrix from 2011 was an Android phone that would run a Linux desktop (X11) when you plugged it into an external monitor. And there was a dock for the Atrix that gives you keyboard, display and extra battery. The Atrix dock did not sell well and a lot of hobbyists picked them up at a discount and rewired them for their own projects, mostly into Raspberry Pi laptops.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
2017 Year of the Linux on Desktop!
oh wait it's actually on a phone?...
2017 Year of the Linux on top of Desk!
close enough.
What's the benefit to this versus what I already have?
The benefit is that you don't have to be a basement-dwelling geek to get it to work. You just plug it in and turn it on. This is for normal people to use their phone with a large display and a nice keyboard, to edit docs, work with spreadsheets, tweak images, etc. For many people, their phone is their computer, and this will make that easier and more common.