Why I do like RemixOS (Android X86 on steroids) on laptops.

in #remixos8 years ago (edited)

I'm quite into Linux since the early '90 (the first version of Linux I had was "Yggrdasil plug'n Play Linux" in 1995, with kernel 0.99.9), so I used to have Linux installed at home, at work, and then I learnt to use *BSD for servers. This was my favourite setup until I needed to go with laptops.

I'm not saying Linux is not for laptops: actually It went well for me using RedHat first, and then Debian. But, the issue was always the same: mobility. To connect a stupid Bluetooth Keyboard to Debian means manually set hardware address into text files, which is not a tragedy if you work on servers, it is pretty annoying if this is for your laptop, and it's happening each time you change keyboard/Bluetooth device.

After a While , I was missing how easy was to connect external devices into my Android tablet. I tried some mixed devices, in between a tablet and a laptop, but then I miss the fact this was two pieces of hardware, sometimes it was like a PC when you need a tablet, sometimes you have a tablet in the very moment you need a full PC.

So just realized that a laptop is, actually, a huge mobile device. That I need full featured, but still I needed it as a mobile device. So why don't install Android on it?

I first landed into AndroidX86. Nice product, still was too "mobile-like". Had lot of advantages from Android, like the Market, but still not 100% ready for a laptop. Then I read about RemixOS.

I downloaded and installed just using a linux PC. You download the zip, you get the image of the disk on Linux.

Then, given the file name like <RemixOs_version>.img, put a USB key into the computer say /dev/sdc, and then do like

cat <RemixOs_version>.img >/dev/sdc

Primitive, and it worked.

I choose the EFI version, since one of my laptop has the option to boot from EFI, and then I tried. The first time it didn't worked, as I can't get it working on AMD CPUs I have at home. So I used my main laptop (I prefered to avoid it because of data into the disk: I have backup, but I hate the restore process) which is Intel i7 , just booting from the USB key.

It took a while to start the first time like 10 minutes (so be patient), and it was amazing. Was Android with multitasking, windows-contained applications, bluetooth was managed "the Android way", you have root access since of the beginning so you can install whatever hack from the market which requires root, and you have the whole market. Sure. You can have your WhatsApp, your hangout, your WPS Office, any cloud you see in the Android market, and... all on your laptop.

I've found my convenient SSH client for technical stuffs, and almost I need to to with a light Laptop.

So I decided to install on the laptop itself: you just enter the boot menu, choose your USB keyboard, then you press 'e' to edit the GRUB options: you just truncate everything is after "quiet" and you write INSTALL=1. Then you boot.

Since it was a Linux laptop with gpt table, it didn't worked at all. So I needed to download gparted live image, rewrite the partition table with a "dos" one. Then I was able to format the laptop : just leave empty some space at the beginning , like 200MB, say "no" to use "gpt", and the installation just takes a couple of minutes.

Then I restarted, and it was the best choice I've made for my laptop. I can enjoy all the disk space, which makes android amazing. I had my documents shared using Syncthing, my light Bitcoin client. Laptop's camera worked at the first attempt, wifi was recognized with no problems, and when I connect a USB dongle with SIMcard inside, I have LTE.

So finally I have a real Laptop as a mobile computer.

Based on a linux kernel. I'm root. The desktop is wonderful, I have a taskbar , I can easily use OperaVPN to switch regions , and more and more: whatever is into the Android Market is possible (did I mentioned games?).

Of course for some extent is not very useful: I still write code into my home computer with Debian, since in terms of IDE Android is not so good... Debian offers way more IDEs than an operating system born for phones.

Still, I am very entusiast of RemixOS . I think we have THE operating system for Laptops, and we don't know.

You can see it from here: http://www.jide.com/remixos

P.S: yes, you can have also eSteem for Android running on your laptop. :)