pelya

Your grandma will never type file names in shell, she’ll use Open File dialog, where case sensitivity does not matter.

It’s supposed to be available on Android 15, but only on ‘select devices’, so probably only on Pixel.

Thanks for trying it.

You need to enter these commands in the Linux terminal app, not in the X server app. Once the two apps connect, it should be possible to launch another terminal inside the X server.

• Go to your phone Settings > About Phone and tap “Build number” seven times. You will receive notification that your phone now has developer options enabled.

• Settings > System > Developer Options > Linux development environment. On that page, tap the On/Off slider.

• You will find an icon for the new Terminal app on your home screen. It’s going to download 500 MB of data when you open it.

• Long-press the Terminal app icon, tap Info > Mobile data, and enable Unrestricted data usage.

• Now you can download more packages inside your Linux virtual machine using apt-get command, as described in my previous post.

Yup, Android is Linux, but you can’t run desktop apps on it like Gimp or LibreOffice or VS Code, that’s what Linux terminal is capable of.

Google’s bullshit strikes again! All apps must be built for Android 13 or they are removed from Play Store, apparently because Google could not do the Android security correctly for the first 12 versions. Now they can emulate Linux on Android, but cannot emulate an older version of Android on Android. And I last updated my app in 2021, during Android 11 era.

Here’s the link to sideload the app:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/libsdl-android/files/apk/XServer-XSDL/XServer-XSDL-1.20.51.apk/download

I’ll try to update it on Play Store tomorrow, if my crusty build scrips will work with the new Android SDK.

Someone who owns a fancy new phone with Android 15 or 16, could you please test if you can run GUI Linux apps on it using my X server app?

Supposedly it should work like this:

• Install and run XSDL app
• Go to home screen, open Linux terminal
• Run commands

sudo apt-get install task-xfce-desktop
export DISPLAY=127.0.0.1:0
xfce4-session

Open XSDL app again, you should see XFCE desktop environment with mouse cursor, and you should be able to launch Synaptic and install other Linux packages.

There were two or three MIPS Android tablets long time ag, at the time of Android 5. Now Android does not have MIPS support anymore.