Use an app to manage the desktop rootfs

[pdsouza]

Let's use an app to manage the desktop rootfs rather than shipping the rootfs directly on the system partition.

Why?

• Legacy devices with a limited /system partition can still be supported
• It can be extended to allow users to easily install alternate desktops (e.g. Arch instead of Debian)
• It can be the foundation of experiments to make a simplified version of Maru as an app

[mahesh-hegde]

It should be possible to make it a package and be installable using dpkg. A minimal version of dpkg can be provided w/ busybox. (Debian has such a busybox variant).

[mahesh-hegde]

Download rootfs

I think UserLAnd does it, although for a different purpose (of running them in fake root)...

[utzcoz]

@pdsouza Samsung’s Kills Off Its Ace ‘Linux on DeX’ Project, maybe we can speed up the progress of developing an app to manage desktop rootfs to attract users, is interested in Linux on Dex, to MaruOS community.

[pintaf]

Hey ! Did someone started working on this ? I'm willing to continue the work

[pdsouza]

@pintaf I think @utzcoz was taking a loot at this when he was extracting our desktop settings into a standalone app.

[utzcoz]

@pdsouza, I found an very interesting project, called android-xserver, and it can run an x-server in Android based on its view subsystem. In another word, maybe we can use an application to run x-server in Android, and Linux draws content to it based on local area network.

[SuJiKiNen]

@pdsouza, I found an very interesting project, called android-xserver, and it can run an x-server in Android based on its view subsystem. In another word, maybe we can use an application to run x-server in Android, and Linux draws content to it based on local area network.

there's a lot vnc app out there...which more sophisticated solution.

I fonud this project more fancy,It's using adb.

[utzcoz]

@SuJiKiNen vnc can be candidate choice for it, but scrcpy is not. The scrcpy is used by Linux to project Android. It's useful for Android developer with develop kit without screen.

[pdsouza]

@pdsouza, I found an very interesting project, called android-xserver, and it can run an x-server in Android based on its view subsystem. In another word, maybe we can use an application to run x-server in Android, and Linux draws content to it based on local area network.

@utzcoz Very interesting. So we could run android-xserver on the Android side and have the Linux container apps speak directly to it by sharing the local network namespace. This would bypass the extra copying done by mclient/mflinger. I wonder how the performance is? It would be cool to build a demo app to try it out.

[SuJiKiNen]

@SuJiKiNen vnc can be candidate choice for it, but scrcpy is not. The scrcpy is used by Linux to project Android. It's useful for Android developer with develop kit without screen.

as yon can see the scrpy performance is very good,thus this opens the opportunity to every device can streaming acceptable HDMI content.

just need a middle tiny gadget which run a adb server and transform things into HDMI buffer.I think there is already something like this had implemented,but need to install specific app on phone,which is not ideal,and may not have a way to talk to mclient currently.

[pdsouza]

You pointed it out - > performance.
I tried that androidnx server long time ago, and from my point of view was just crap compared to mflinger mclient.

Sigh. That is unfortunate... It looks like the entire thing is written in the Java layer. Maybe it would be better if implemented as native C/C++? It's hard to know exactly why it is slow without more detailed profiling I think.

What would be cool is if mclient could link against the SurfaceFlinger APIs directly, which would eliminate the need for the copy between mclient and mflinger. This seems like something libhybris might make possible by allowing bionic libs to run under glibc/Linux. Unfortunately, the libhybris docs are practically non-existent.