Debian Kit

[Ravi]

Hello there everyone,

Many will be familiar with the Desktop Linux installer apps on Google Play that are available for ARM-based Android devices, giving them access to the desktop apps ecosystem as well as Android's touch screen apps.

This ability, I feel, would be really useful on Android-x86 - as a lot (most?) of installs are on desktop and laptop hardware.  Indeed, quite a few people are already running a dual boot between Desktop Linux and Android.

After a while searching, I've found Debian Kit, and it supports Android-x86.  Using the guide, I am able to do a full Ubuntu install (and run some console apps), but am unable to connect to the X server.  I've asked the author of the project for some advice but am yet to recieve a reply.

Could someone else give it a go and see if they can get the X server to run?

Thanks

[Ravi]

I managed to get it to show an X server by using tightvncserver instead of the built in RDP support.

I'll post a VirtualBox image if there's any interest

[Ravi]

Here's a few screenshots for anyone who is interested.  As you can see, it runs WINE (great potential here), has access to the Android file system and also x86-only Linux apps like Kingsoft Office.

The only significant app I couldn't get to run was Chromium (not sure why), so I replaced it with Firefox.  Also, sound can't work as it is running in VNC.

[Chih-Wei Huang]

Interesting. Thank you for the sharing.

Would you like to share the detailed steps
to do it?

2014/1/2 Ravi <ravi.ch...@gmail.com>

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Android-x86 project
http://www.android-x86.org

[Ravi]

The way I managed to get it to work was:

1. Download debian-kit-1-5.shar from http://sven-ola.dyndns.org/repo/
   
2. Go to the Terminal Emulator, and type su to gain superuser access.
3. cd to the directory where the file was downloaded to
4. Type sh debian-kit-1-5.shar in, and confirm install with y
5. Choose the type of install (2p for a full 2GB install image) 
6. It will start downloading files.  In the mean time, install a VNC client. (e.g. Android VNC viewer or Wyse PocketCloud)
7. It will ask you if you want to remove installation files. Type ovpn to remove them all
8. Start the Linux system by typing in /data/local/deb/deb
9. Type in sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade and then sudo apt-get install andromize-lxde
   
10. Set a password for root by typing in passwd root
11. Create a user account by typing in adduser [username]
12. Give sudo rights to the account by typing in adduser [username] sudo
13. Clean up the install by typing in apt-get autoremove and apt-get clean
14. Type in /data/local/deb/deb x to start the X Server
15. Switch to the non-root account you made by typing in su [username]
16. Type in tightvncserver to switch on VNC.  Take a note of the desktop number it mentions as we need this for the next step.
17. Open up your chosen VNC client.  Add a new connection. Leave the IP address blank if possible or otherwise type in 127.0.0.1
18. Set the port to 590_ where _ is the desktop number mentioned in the terminal (e.g. Desktop 1 = port 5901)
19. Set colour to 24 bit.
20. Connect and you should be in!

Hope it helps

Ravi

[Greg McGee]

Reviving an excellent thread, I just tried this, have a couple additions and a question:

You have to install tightvncserver and X11, and some sort of desktop.

"apt-get install tightvncserver lxde" will get the job done

The only issue I'm having is getting the mouse to "connect", the arrow keys fallback works but all other attempts to get it to work properly have been in vain.

[Greg McGee]

Mouse seems to work fine with the Wyse app for VNC

[Ravi]

Glad to here it's working.

Sometimes to get the mouse to work in AndroidVNC, you need to press the menu key and change the input mode.  But if Wyse is working, then there's no need to do that.

It would be really great if we could offer a download of Android-x86 with a Linux environment preinstalled.  

Better integration of the Android and Linux environments would be desirable as well.  The LinuxOnAndroid developers are working on a way of having both Linux and Android running at the same time, without requiring VNC (opening up the opportunities for 3D graphics, sound etc..).  MicroXWin seems to have already done something similar, but their implementation isn't FOSS (so we can't use it) and besides, I can't get it to work.

It seems like Intel, AMD and most the hardware manufacturers are now working on convertibles running Windows 8 and Android at the same time.  As Linux and Android can run off one kernel, with shared drivers, file system etc, I don't understand why they aren't considering Linux for the desktop environment.  It would be much more energy efficient as no virtualisation of another OS would have to occur.

[Greg McGee]

AFAIK using a fully open-sourced androvm xserver or similar is part of the long term Evil Plan for Android-x86, the goal being acceleration and a universal xserver and to build on the existing X11 hardware infrastructure., which is actually very solid, esp for machines over a year old.

It's actually not hard at all to install Debian like this,  but anything short of having an accelerated xserver is probably going to be too slow for some apps.

Getting it to just automatically start will be job 1.

My goal was to have an x86-64 build with matching Linux userspace so the whole setup was self hosting. The fact that it also allows full memory usage is a bonus.(8gb in my case)

Unfortunately Kitkat is still in very heavy dev and not ready for users, and JB will no longer even sync properly, I need to figure out how to sync my tree to a good state.

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