Handset cohabitation: Ubuntu for Android

Posted Feb 22, 2012 0:10 UTC (Wed) by pataphysician (guest, #73773)
Parent article: Handset cohabitation: Ubuntu for Android

Isn't this is just a chroot linux distro, which has existed for Maemo, Meego, WebOS, and Android for awhile?

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Handset cohabitation: Ubuntu for Android

Posted Feb 22, 2012 9:20 UTC (Wed) by misc (subscriber, #73730) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, there is also a android emulator ( the one demoed 2 years ago ), and likely some hack around SurfaceFlinger and X/Wayland/whatever to share the display ( and I wonder how it does work), as well as proper symlink or mount -o bind ( to access data outside of the chroot ), maybe some interface for the sound too ( ie, pulseaudio speaking to the audio daemon of android ), and various integration with android dbus services.

So there was some work done for integration, even if the whole idea was already demoed and done by hobbyists.

Handset cohabitation: Ubuntu for Android

Posted Feb 22, 2012 14:41 UTC (Wed) by nhippi (subscriber, #34640) [Link]

"Shared kernel driver with associated X driver; Open GL ES/EGL"

Sharing kernel driver with android/X would seem a rather complex solution. And depends on the goodwill of the proprietary code vendors. Would seemingly make more sense to create xorg-server-android which exposes whatever 2d-acceleration/opengl-es/video codecs the android phone already supports.

As bonus point you could then sell the xserver as an independent Android app in the market for the small group of users who want to run X11 apps remotely on android.

Handset cohabitation: Ubuntu for Android

Posted Feb 22, 2012 11:08 UTC (Wed) by mgedmin (guest, #34497) [Link]

"Isn't Ubuntu just a Linux distro, which has existed before, e.g. Debian?"

Integration and polish have value, and there's a difference between a chroot that can be set up by power users and getting a working system out of the box. Although it isn't clear to me yet that this is what will happen here.