[camillomiller]

Maybe 2018 is finally the year of the Linux desktop. Wait... :)

Jokes aside, I can see how this would be useful for sysadmin and devs - bring along your smartphone and you're set - but this would never fly for a general, even if geeky, public. Very nice approach though, curious to see where this ends up going.

[K0SM0S]

I tend to agree with your sentiment, but

> this would never

From experience, I now pause and consider twice any statement I make using never. You know, I thought Facebook would never become dominant using such a one-size-fits-all interface where I can't even choose a theme or even my color, let alone which elements to be displayed and in which order (I keep thinking their UI is ugly to this day, if this was our 'home' it feels it looks like a housing project on internet to me). Or back in 2010 when I bought an iPhone 4 and later an iPad 2, I thought Apple would never keep iOS so dumbed down compared to OSX (e.g. "Smart" features, a great first step into intuitive automation, the real graal of computers imho, lest one thinks it's OK to become a robot and click/tap thirty times to perform thirty times the same operation).

So... yeah, I don't know. Everything says you're right today, but with just the right tools/apps, a good Linux distro tailored to popular phones could reach the same level of popularity than, say, iPhones (currently ~10% of the market, roughly one in ten Android phones).

[camillomiller]

Good observation. I will keep it in mind.

[herbst]

To be fair this is already what we do. Android already IS linux. You can install plenty of scripting environments like Ruby or Python while having access to the underlaying Linux system which is only partly crippled.

Personally i see this more as a marketing thing from Samsung than anything else.

[CaptSpify]

A shitty, half-assed linux. Until I can just put Debian on natively, and use apt-get for packages without a problem, I want us to keep moving to an actual linux on the phone.

I'm quite eager to get away from android

[herbst]

I would love to get away from Android, but this is helping as much as Ubuntu on Windows is helping to get away from Windows.

If you'd want debian natively this also was possible for a while, next to the option to have it run on a compatibility mode on top of your android kernel but does not even require root. Both methods supporting apt-get, X, and whatever else runs on ARM.

Then there is also the Ubuntu phone project (which i assume is pretty much dead meanwhile) which has no Android in the mix at all. Except a possible compatibility layer for apps.

Also its not a half-assed linux. Its just a linux that uses weird libraries to build their environment on which are not compatible with your desktop like environments.

[CaptSpify]

> I would love to get away from Android, but this is helping as much as Ubuntu on Windows is helping to get away from Windows.

I'm not sure how much this helps, I'm just replying to the idea that we "Android already IS linux". That is technically true, but not practically true. I also don't want Debian to run on top of the android kernel, but I want to use Debian's kernel. The android one is pretty neutered and crappy.

And yes, it is half-assed linux precisely because it's intentionally not compatible with desktop-like environments. Android has different goals than I want out of a phone, and that's perfectly fine, but that doesn't mean I have to be happy with Android as my only option (excluding IOS as that is a different beast altogether).

Just because you are OK with it doesn't mean that I have to be, and every step further we take from Android, the better, IMO.