Thread: What's the best Handheld gnu/linux machine for 2016?
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javispedro is offline javispedro
2016-01-11 , 22:54
Posts: 2,355 | Thanked: 5,249 times | Joined on Jan 2009 @ Barcelona
#142
Originally Posted by Ken-Young View Post
Regarding your real question, I guess I've been both lazy and poorly informed. For example, I thought that Wayland would provide the sort of effortless X11 compatibility one gets on Mac OS X.
You'll need to elaborate on that.

"Effortless"? Sure.

"Integrated with the host window manager, clipboard, etc."? Most probably not.

Originally Posted by Ken-Young View Post
The thing I personally need *most* is X11 server mode on my handheld, displaying for a remote client. It doesn't look to me like that's available either with SailfishOS or Ubuntu Touch.
Simple "X11-in-a-window" is _trivial_. I don't know what the hell you're talking about since by now you've already had examples of X11 programs in both Sailfish and Ubuntu Touch.

Originally Posted by Ken-Young View Post
For those OSs it looks like X11 capability, at best, supports local X11 clients.
What exactly did you make believe that?

Originally Posted by Ken-Young View Post
And there are these little caveats like "input doesn't work", etc., which make a big difference to me.
Ah, welcome to the wonderful world of open source!

If you're thinking Xwayland for sailfish, the primary reason touchscreen input does not work is that I find touchscreen support useless without a stylus and thus I didn't give it a second thought. Keyboard and mouse work quite OK.

Originally Posted by Ken-Young View Post
Using VNC is much more cumbersome than having a real X11 server, and some of the remote machines I work with are headless.
For the "X11-in-a-window" setup, no, not really. The amount of complexity is the same and there's no difference in functionality. And what's the problem with headless? In fact, Xvnc would do wonders here?

Originally Posted by Ken-Young View Post
I guess my best course is to wait for Pyra. If both my n900s (and any neo900 that I get my hands on) die before Pyras ship, my best course might then be to try to get SailfishOS running on a Nexus 5 (or whatever is the best "supported" hardware at that time) and try to strip out Wayland and substitute X11.
Ah, so if you've used regular X11 desktop programs on Maemo then you're already used to the intricacies of poor window manager integration, and most probably you're already using Xephyr. Is that the case?

If so, you fall straight into the "X11-in-a-window" use case which is trivial. Vnc, Xsdl, Xwayland all will successfully implement this on almost any device you can think of.

The "other" use case, which includes integration with Hildon as window manager, is more complicated, and most probably irreproducible on the Jolla. Some "un-hildonized" programs are still somewhat usable under Hildon; but the number is greatly reduced under Harmattan or Jolla.

Originally Posted by Ken-Young View Post
The fragmentation of Linux display managers into X11, Surfaceflinger, Wayland and Mir is certainly a grim development. I know X11 is full of ancient cruft and providing full X11 server compatibility involves supporting crazy things like its old, ugly pixel fonts, but given Android's huge market share, I think Jolla and Ubuntu should have just gone with Surfaceflinger.
And Wayland itself is also hugely fragmented. I personally will stuck with X11 on my desktop as long as I can.

But Surfaceflinger? WHY?

Originally Posted by Ken-Young View Post
The real irony is that if Apple were to implement the X11 capability in iOS that they provide in Mac OS X, my best choice for managing remote Linux servers would be an iPhone!
The iPhone already supports X11 as good as any other device.

You're making this stuff much more complicated than it is.
Last edited by javispedro; 2016-01-11 at 23:06.
 

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