whats the point on ubuntu on the atrix - Atrix 4G Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

i just want to know, please tell me thanks

well, the webtop application currently uses a different version of linux, which is very locked down. installing ubuntu allows a lot more customization in the webtop environment, and you can even install some extra applications.
at this point in time, it's more of a proof-of-concept i believe, since there isn't much extra disk space to add extra stuff. however, more disk space is what Sogarth is looking into right now, and that's a big step towards making the full ubuntu install a more viable addition to your atrix.

alright that does sound good. cant wait

Well Linux being on the Laptop thingy rather than Motorola's UI then i'd be a way better experience.
I think....

Related

[Q] Tell me why I should be sad.

This may sound like a totally naive question. I've asked it to myself a few times but with all the wailing and gnashing of teeth today about Nvidia not supporting newer android releases I have to ask. I have two gtabs and I've tried installing a number of different roms with different kernels and while some are definitely zippier than others and some look a little different, they are basically all the same (stock roms excluded of course). I've wondered what having a gingerbread or honeycomb android system would really mean for me on the gtab. I do a lot of work with VM machines - mostly running Windows. Outside of the fact that Microsoft also won't write drivers for some newer hardware for older operating systems, I don't see a lot of difference between say Windows 2000, XP and even W7 (other than W7 makes everything I do harder). I can run most application fine on any of them. I'm sure that under the covers there is some different functionality and even improvements but for the user experience - I'm hard pressed to explain why someone should dump their stable and working fine XP for a W7 machine unless of course there is some device or application that has been specifically coded not to work with XP. For example: Google Chrome and Firefox run on XP and W7 but the new Internet Exploder from MS won't run on XP. That was clearly a deliberate choice by MS because the other guys can all run. Sorry rambling a bit here but that leads to my question. What would I gain by having honeycomb running on my g-tab? The applications would all still be the same I imagine. Perhaps the performance would be a little better? Perhaps I might have a few OS type enhancements? But, at the end of the day, what would I really see as the true benefit of having a honeycomb android system running a dev built rom? I'm not being facetious here - I really would like to understand why this is so important to everyone. Hopefully the answer is something technical and not just "because it is newer so it must be better." What am I missing?
hi enigma,
It is a good question that you have asked and I certainly understand where you are coming from and tbh I am certainly no expert and maybe not best placed to try and give an answer!
I think honeycomb as a version is particularly sought after simply because of the fact that it was built from the bottom up as a tablet OS. You would have to assume that this would increase ease of use, functionality and aesthetics. I reckon this is quite a big deal. I have a couple of android phones and the g tablet and I would prefer for my tablet to look and feel different from my phones.
I think another reason is that people are very keen to be running honeycomb on a relatively cheap tablet – honeycomb tablets are coming out at around double the price of the g tab. The chance to say a big fu*k you to those prices is I guess quite exciting.
Finally, I think as you mentioned, people have a desire to have the newest things. This is just human nature and I am the same – bit pathetic maybe but that is just how it is.
Anyways, these are basically the reasons why I personally would love a bit of honeycomb on my g tab!

Tegra Linux involvement

I am a long-time Linux user, and have noticed there's some support for getting vanilla Linux onto Tegra prototyping hardware. Nvidia has some walkthroughs, there's an ARM based Arch district, which I think would be a good starting point. Does anyone have any suggestions on where I should start?
I'd like to see KDE or Meego as a GUI, with dalvik running on the side. I think it'd be a wonderfully flexible tool at that point!
Sent from my MB860 using Tapatalk
This needs to be moved to Q&A or maybe General but certainly not DEVELOPER.
It should be in development
sent from cm7 atrix 1.3ghz
the question is what exactly you want to achieve, is it only to have that linux distro on it or to have it next to android like webtop is now? as much as i saw nvidia has all the tutorials and support for ubuntu, which i dont really like so i was playing around with gentoo for it, but it is quite a nightmare to get it to run like a webtop, i think it should be way more simple getting it to run next to cm7, however gentoo takes a lot of time to compile and set up (but is faster and more space conservative than), so probably Arch is better. as for running only linux you would have to create your own kernel and ramdisk for it probably and than go on from there, since we cant change the bootloader to just load linux directly. just as a side note this should probably be in fact in the Q&A section since there is no real development made here, just discussing options.
What about running Ubuntu netbook edition? I run Ubuntu all the time, it's very stable and fast, but for this application it needs to be small and lightweight, so for that case we could go to the netbook edition. Just a thought.
I think Arch would be easiest, as it uses vanilla sources (Ubuntu heavily patches their packages) and has the most transparent configuration stuffs.
I'm rather familiar with Linux, I'm just less familiar with phone hacking and partitions.
I'd really like to see Linux running in place of android, with the dalvik machine there to be able to run android apps. Android is VERY messy.
I'm thinking the telephony end of things will be difficult, but maybe not impossible. I will be working on this, and will be pursuing it, so I think "development" is where it belongs.
Sent from my MB860 using Tapatalk
Hi killer_siller,
I know this isn't for the atrix, but it could be a good beginning for you.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=10181908
Swyped from "Mount" Olympus
nitrox1 said:
Hi killer_siller,
I know this isn't for the atrix, but it could be a good beginning for you.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=10181908
Swyped from "Mount" Olympus
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've played with that on a few phones, and it's not as good as the experience you get from Native Linux - ala the HD2.
Nvidia has quite a lot of resources available for their Tegra stuffs:
http://tegradeveloper.nvidia.com/category/zone/mobile-development
Here's ArchLinuxARM; they're actively developing Tegra stuffs:
http://archlinuxarm.org/
Here's a Meego dev who got meego working on Tegra2 hardware:
http://wiki.meego.com/ARM/TEGRA2
I think it's a bit dated, though
I think Meego would be the easiest route to functioning native linux on the Atrix, as it's already made for handsets, and they're already working to get android apps to run in it natively.
This may seem like a circuitous route, but you couldn't imagine how powerful this hardware could be when you peel away the android mess.
you might want to check this thread out, unfortunately the package he attached is corrupt: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1180800 u think with cm7 it should be substantially easier to get the xserver to run properly. yes meego would be best in fact but everyone is dropping support for it so ...

[FAILED] VMWARE on x10 mini pro

did anyone tried to run and develop ROMs for VMWARE under linux and try to install VMWARE on our x10 mini pro??
if this is possible then i believe we can run multiple versions of ROMs and kernels without even lose any piece of data and i believe we can also keep the stock rom too. therefore we can always use our phones even if the rom crashed at anytime!
i'll try to check the requirement for vmware installation on mobile ...
DUDE! You HAVE to be kidding me. VMWare is a virutalisation platform, it simulates any hardware for software to run on. What we need is, a way to change the /system to a alternate one to allow for dual booting. I believe its avalible in some recoveries.. i think. And AFAIK, no virtualisation platform will run on our tiny ammount of RAM and sluggish processor.
Dude! i'm not kidding i believe we can use VMWARE on our hardware but the limitation will be to run each OS at a time.
and remember that Android is based on Linux and VMWARE could be installed on Linux also i believe that with slight modification we can run only shell linux with vmware installed which will need only like 64MB RAM and pentium 2 300Mhz minimum to make it all work!
so virtualisation is possible on our phone and i visited the VMWARE site and guess what they have mobile virtualization solution for mobiles and tablets!
i believe we can reach a level of customization never done before!
EDIT: and by the way take a look at the following LG VMWARE virtualisation you tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47kzIvFfV_E
this is possible!
I dont get the point, why not just combine the work & personal life in one rom? This just seems like a waste of space, plus the phone in the video is much more powerfull.
Sent from my U20i using XDA App
@naw3x i know it's much more powerful my idea won't need that power!
we can use our OS father Linux! if we use the minimal version only kernel and shell we can install VMWare (at least the player) and install images of whatever OS we want to use and it would be extremely easy to back up and customize!
linux kernel plus shell won't take that much resources as base layer! it will only take the what the phone stock kernel of RAM may 10 MB more!
for the use of virtualisation like in the video it's not a waste of space for a company but for us we can say this! for a company that need privacy toward it's data it can backup the vm Rom in a minute and remove it totally if the employee wants to leave without affecting his personal phone!
Maybe it could work, whilst it may be able to utilise the hardware built into the phone there would be significant performance in emulating an alien processor and the associated custom chips (if for instance you wanted to emulate a different phone).
If you want to run a second virtual x10 mini pro (not concurrent - obviosuly) then it probably wouldnt be anymore significant than rerouting the system/ folder.
Running an OS from flash would be more energy/resource consuming than the internal memory anyway.
Sent from my U20i using Tapatalk
Useless idea, because virtualisation always needs quiet a lot of cpu-power. There is the possibility to run a dual boot system, but afair this project has been stopped. Also i dont get the point in running multiple roms on your device, since the data-partition could only be used by froyo OR gingerbread OR eclair and since basically any rom has the same progress in development, because obviously the cookers use the work from other cookers, which is awesome because it is some kind of collaboration, it is senseless to use multiple roms at once.
Also, if you want the futures of linux, even without gui, you need the right kernel, otherwise your device would not know how to handle your command.
So whats the point in your idea?
Well the point is to try to run and test vm without even attempt to flash which will help in testing the currently in development roms and kernels! And even you can use it for a lot more things! And about the linux kernel you already have it it's in your android os all the time!
Anyway if no one wants to share ideas and discuss this subject, I thank you all for your answers it was an attempt to do something useful
Hey. Don't give up, buddy! Anything is possible!
good idea
Dont know why people are down on the idea,i think it would be great, basically 2 phones in 1,i do use 2 phones atm, good look with it
Yeah.. it is nice... in theory. But its practically useless. We are already strapped for ram, and a VM implies running another OS inside the current one. Which is definitely not practical. At any rate, a reboot is still needed. You could just redirect the system and data folders to their own image on the sdcard. Cos we sure dont have the space to store them in internal memory.
Honestly I was thinking of a light way to install vmware ( or any virtualization tool and remember dalvik itself is a virtualization engine! ) which may lead supposed to run it like hyper v terminal in hyper v servers if you know it! For now we can think of the redirection of system and data to the external storage as a way to run 2 os on one machine but if we reach a way to run a virtualization platform I believe it should be great!
Well in teory it should work! smartphones are a bit like pc.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1079898
Up is a case that worked but if you see this close you see that is not that good.
I think that you are missing some of the principal "rules" of vmware. you have always to be using the host and the virtual machine on top of it. and the host will be always working and consuming resources. in that case it won't be mutch left for the virtual machine! i believe that it would be better (Like someone said before) for you to take a look at the multiboot option!
CWM 3.x.x.x R5 has this option available! make a litttle search, i believe that it will be mutch better for you!
Cumps
SpitFire-ZX said:
Well in teory it should work! smartphones are a bit like pc.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1079898
Up is a case that worked but if you see this close you see that is not that good.
I think that you are missing some of the principal "rules" of vmware. you have always to be using the host and the virtual machine on top of it. and the host will be always working and consuming resources. in that case it won't be mutch left for the virtual machine! i believe that it would be better (Like someone said before) for you to take a look at the multiboot option!
CWM 3.x.x.x R5 has this option available! make a litttle search, i believe that it will be mutch better for you!
Cumps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well i know the principals of vmware what i'm saying we have already the kernel running u need only a shell application to install vmware and i believe kernel plus shell won't take more than 50 MB at max and 200MB will be left for vmware.
well it's an attempt man to see how much our device could endure tweaking
thanks
minachvim said:
well i know the principals of vmware what i'm saying we have already the kernel running u need only a shell application to install vmware and i believe kernel plus shell won't take more than 50 MB at max and 200MB will be left for vmware.
well it's an attempt man to see how much our device could endure tweaking
thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But then you would neet to have a virtual machine system like the one used in servers!
I see your idea and i understand the logic but it would require mutch more then our mobile specs! But anyway you had a great idea!
Final results of testing virtualization over x10 mini pro!
I tested 3 virtualization methods over one of my x10 mini pro (all running over shell and kernel without roms on the phone all on sd) which are the following QEMU of Fedora vmware player and virtual box. What I arrived to in all 3 it was tooooooooooo slow I run different OSs like symbian and windows mobile and android 2.3.7 and my biggest challenge was to run UBUNTU on our mobile!
QEMU was the best in performance but still laggish with the attempt to load the os took like half an hour on the latest symbian S60 and almost the same for Android
The worst was VMWARE symbian didn't load android took almost 45 minutes to load...
At the end I want to mark the attempt of virtualization over our x10 mini pro as failed!
Ps. I lost one of my x10 mini pro phone totally after installing UBUNTU I believe I damaged some chips while I tried to flash some changes to the kernel to make it run over VMWARE!
VMWare seems to be too heavy for this tiny hardware.
I think you should take a view at QEMU. This is minimalist, working correctly on Linux/ARM.
Personally , I'm sure that the performances will be awful whatever the emulator used.
lex2193 said:
VMWare seems to be too heavy for this tiny hardware.
I think you should take a view at QEMU. This is minimalist, working correctly on Linux/ARM.
Personally , I'm sure that the performances will be awful whatever the emulator used.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
already tried QEMU and didn't work!
and honestly i even tried to modify QEMU to have a kind of simulation of our hardware and it failed!
Failed because our phones have outdated and rather slow hardware... should work flawless on newer phones with more powerfull hardware. So yeah, it's not a completly failure.
Well for now i'll stop working on this until I get better hardware thank you all for your advices and ideas

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1a) Any roms recommended for 50% lapdock use? I intend to use the lapdock in classes for a lot of notes and papers (got 2 english class). I saw something about Jokersax's CM9 with tablet tweak or something. Is this good?
I use my lapdock daily, and rely on it as a "laptop" for my job. I have been consistently disappointed by the general speed of the phone when it is in the actual lapdock mode, but it is passable. For "official" lapdock use, I would recommend the Nottachtrix ROM with the 2.3.6 webtop build. This will give you the greatest sense of what it is "meant" to be. From there you can experiment with Webtop2SD, and begin to explore putting full linux builds on the lapdock. It really is a kick to use OpenOffice on the lapdock, but the experience is not as good as a traditional laptop. All of these actions require that you be on a Gingerbread ROM.
Now...if you want to experiment with other ROMs, there are meaningful Webtop alternatives. HDMI mirroring is a feature in CM7 and CM9 ROMs. Not sure about JB. Essentially, this is piping your phone screen onto the lapdock. It tends to be faster, but does not stray beyond anything already available on your phone. Tablet tweaks make this even easier by keeping your screen on and moving your notification bar to the bottom, and I would recommend the Free App "Button Savior" to put soft keys as clickable elements on your screen. I am using this alternative right now with a variety of 7.2 ROMS, and am happy with it. For class notes, I think you would be happy with this as well, and you will not have to worry about running afoul of tethering rules, since this is just "using your phone on the big screen".
1b) If I use webtop enabled rom, have the webtop part been edited to avoid notifying AT&T about the lapdock usage so I won't be charged with that stupid tethering charges?
I do not have a good conclusion for you on this, but I will say that I have used the official lapdock app a considerable amount, drawing data regularly for documents and streaming, and I have received no notice. I would not say that my volumes would make me hit any radars though either. Search the forums for using a script to disable the firewall if you are interested. It is simple, and gives seamless functionality.
2) any recommended note apps? Bonus point for dropbox integration or google document integration (Is the google drive app able to edit documents? if so, I'll just stay with that)
My daily driver is OfficeSuite pro. Good support for most common formats, fast, and complete. I use it in conjunction with the DropBox app, but in reality, I think that the DropBox app would work with any number of solutions.
4) Do you have any general tips for general lapdock usage? I am aware of the touchpad being rather lousy so I intend to use my laptop mouse.
The lapdock is a neat solution, but in my mind, not a true replacement for a laptop computer. It is novel, and can be very functional, but to me the lack of speed, and lack of true stability makes this a less than adequate solution. I am interested to see what Motorola does with the ICS release, since they seem to have indicated a move toward tablet functionality rather than a crippled Linux build.
Good luck to you!

[POLL] Arch Linux on the Photon 4G- Interested?

Hellooo~!
I'm a tad new to the world of Android Development, but have plenty of programming history. I'm going to be starting a project to get Arch Linux running on my Photon 4G, and am contemplating making this public. My end goal is to get it working on the Photon, with a working on-screen keyboard, decent battery life, and lapdock/HDMI/peripheral support.
If you're a bit skeptical, know that there is a distribution of Arch Linux that supports ARMv5-v7 processors.
So before I begin my journey, I want to know:
Is anyone interested in this?
Sounds interesting. It appears you may be doing something different than the typical chroot method? As an Archlinux desktop user, a phone version would be cool.
Best of luck with your project. If you need testers, I would be willing to try to help.
Sent from my MB855 using xda app-developers app
jahildebra said:
Hellooo~!
I'm a tad new to the world of Android Development, but have plenty of programming history. I'm going to be starting a project to get Arch Linux running on my Photon 4G, and am contemplating making this public. My end goal is to get it working on the Photon, with a working on-screen keyboard, decent battery life, and lapdock/HDMI/peripheral support.
If you're a bit skeptical, know that there is a distribution of Arch Linux that supports ARMv5-v7 processors.
So before I begin my journey, I want to know:
Is anyone interested in this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mighty ambitious! Im definitely interested in this. Arch is one of my favorite distributions. I'm concerned about the usability of it though. What desktop environment would you aim to use? Are there any that I'm unaware of that that are geared toward mobile phones?
jbaumert said:
Sounds interesting. It appears you may be doing something different than the typical chroot method? As an Archlinux desktop user, a phone version would be cool.
Best of luck with your project. If you need testers, I would be willing to try to help.
Sent from my MB855 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Glad to see you're interested!
As far as getting Arch on the phone, I want to the phone to boot straight into the Arch environment without the Android system in the background. This may not be possible due to the phones bootloader, but if anything I'll have an extremely minimal version of Android acting as a crutch for Arch, helping it to boot up and perform other operations. The system should be 90% Arch Linux.
Please don't take this the wrong way but as long as it has nothing to do with the current chroot/VNC method I'm all for it. The chroot method lacks access to the phone's hardware so things like audio, USB host don't work.
If chroot/VNC is what you are trying to avoid then you may want to look at Gentop2 and kholk's original Gentop project. This should give you an idea as to how they achieved framebuffer and hardware access. If you want to provide support for Tegra2 Moto's you'll need to keep the install below 755MB for Atrix support unless a webtop2sd type method will be used.
Another thing you may want to consider is that the upcoming ICS update and AOSP lack the needed framebuffer/HW access. You may need to hack and kang a far bit to get ICS and AOSP support.
Acvice said:
Mighty ambitious! Im definitely interested in this. Arch is one of my favorite distributions. I'm concerned about the usability of it though. What desktop environment would you aim to use? Are there any that I'm unaware of that that are geared toward mobile phones?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hahah, I was just thinking about that myself. As per my knowledge, there are ZERO DE's geared towards phones. We could come pretty close to the mobile-phone experience using a tablet/netbook-oriented DE, similar to Unity. Unity is capable of running on Arch, but I don't know if it's ARM compatible, or how smoothly it would run on a small processor like the Tegra 2. If anything I could just configure an Xmonad environment that runs entirely off of mouse/touch gestures.
jahildebra said:
Hahah, I was just thinking about that myself. As per my knowledge, there are ZERO DE's geared towards phones. We could come pretty close to the mobile-phone experience using a tablet/netbook-oriented DE, similar to Unity. Unity is capable of running on Arch, but I don't know if it's ARM compatible, or how smoothly it would run on a small processor like the Tegra 2. If anything I could just configure an Xmonad environment that runs entirely off of mouse/touch gestures.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unity can run on ARM and is pretty but fairly resource heavy. Canonical has Ubuntu 12 running on an Atrix2 but have no intention of releasing source at this time. I would suggest staying with a lightweight "Unity like" enviro. This will free up resources for other things.
Might I suggest OpenBox? Extremely lightweight and easily configurable to suit the needs of a small screen. Desktops and windows are easily manageable from a single bottom bar, all application categories pop up in a menu when taping on any part of the 'desktop', all with gradients and transparency as needed so to still be slick looking. My mental imagine of the setup would be similar to that of Webos and easily achievable and user friendly. A particular distribution that i've been using for a while whom has really made the flexibility of Openbox shine is Crunchbang. The dude who runs the distro has developed many little GUI utilities that are made to configure Openboxs' script-based setup. So if you decided to use it, a lot of work is already done so to speak. Check it out and see if you get any inspiration!
Acvice said:
Might I suggest OpenBox? Extremely lightweight and easily configurable to suit the needs of a small screen. Desktops and windows are easily manageable from a single bottom bar, all application categories pop up in a menu when taping on any part of the 'desktop', all with gradients and transparency as needed so to still be slick looking. My mental imagine of the setup would be similar to that of Webos and easily achievable and user friendly. A particular distribution that i've been using for a while whom has really made the flexibility of Openbox shine is Crunchbang. The dude who runs the distro has developed many little GUI utilities that are made to configure Openboxs' script-based setup. So if you decided to use it, a lot of work is already done so to speak. Check it out and see if you get any inspiration!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the suggestion! I've never used OpenBox before, but I've heard its customizability is similar to Xmonad's.
I'll check it out!
Sent from my MB855 using xda app-developers app
What's your intended target user base? Will it Linux n00b, average linux user or linux power user?
Lokifish Marz said:
What's your intended target user base? Will it Linux n00b, average linux user or linux power user?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mainly average/power users. Arch Linux is definitely not for the weak hearted.
Sent from my MB855 using xda app-developers app
Lokifish Marz said:
What's your intended target user base? Will it Linux n00b, average linux user or linux power user?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, generally speaking, Arch is most certainly not for Linux noobs
::edit::
Haha, totally didnt see there was a page 2. Jahildebra already said it.
The reason I asked is that I agree that Arch "out of the box" is more "power user" than say Ubuntu Desktop but not much more so than most server distros. It would really depend on what extras are put in. Arch running Gnome with all the bells and whistles could be very n00b friendly if set up with them in mind. Then again my perspective may be a little off as I still remember Mandrake coming on floppies with only a command line installer.
Lokifish Marz said:
The reason I asked is that I agree that Arch "out of the box" is more "power user" than say Ubuntu Desktop but not much more so than most server distros. It would really depend on what extras are put in. Arch running Gnome with all the bells and whistles could be very n00b friendly if set up with them in mind. Then again my perspective may be a little off as I still remember Mandrake coming on floppies with only a command line installer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nah I get what you're sayin. As long as you hook people up with multimedia codecs, a good package manager, and some necessary apps i think even noobs would be happy. And I havnt heard anyone mention Mandrake in many years since Mandriva. I popped into the linux scene around Ubuntus dapper drake release. Ever since Ive ran debian.
Well, it seems like there's interest aplenty.
I'll be starting the project as soon as possible.
Sent from my MB855 using xda app-developers app
More interest will arrive when some solid progress is made im sure. I do have a question though.. Im a little unsure of how you plan to get sms, mms, data and such working on this. Or maybe i missed the point entirely. Is it not meant to be a fully functional replacement of android?
Acvice said:
More interest will arrive when some solid progress is made im sure. I do have a question though.. Im a little unsure of how you plan to get sms, mms, data and such working on this. Or maybe i missed the point entirely. Is it not meant to be a fully functional replacement of android?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That will be one of the biggest challenges, alongside getting Arch to boot initially and having the phone be usable even without a physical keyboard. I plan to at least have 3G working, but I don't quite know how that will play out. None of the devices Arch Linux ARM has a release for have a 3G radio in the first place, so we have no examples to follow, and we'll have to figure this out on our own.
Sent from my MB855 using xda app-developers app
What utility does Ubuntu and other desktop distro's use to accept usb tethering from any android phone? I'm guessing netcfg (it's all I know in that department) is the norm, if so there may be a way to point it at the radio internally and then play around with settings for data and possibly calls. Webtop may still be running acual Android but it still has configuration files just like everything else in linux. We should be able to figure this out over time.
Interested? Not as such... More like curious.
I'm new to Linux and have never really been able to gain a foothold. I'm still kicking myself for building a gaming PC and thus tying myself to Windows. With Steam announcing support for Linux... If Bethesda joins them and support for the Fallout games and Skyrim comes to Linux... bye bye Windows. But for now Ubuntu 12.04 doesn't like my computer. And Arch isn't Ubuntu, but I'm willing to learn.
Would this support the phone parts? I understand that Arch has ARM builds, and they support a Tegra 2 device very similar to the Photon/Electrify, but that device doesn't have a CDMA radio in it, and possibly other components. Does it have Bluetooth? In any case, you'd need drivers for the hardware specifically in the Photon/Electrify, and Motorola hasn't been very forthcoming with community support.
As for keyboards, anyone in America at least can get a physical keyboard for $16. Newegg has a mini keyboard like an iMac's for $15 shipped, and Amazon has a USB OTG cable for under a buck. The two won't work for me on my phone under a couple CM10 ROMs, though. I read for drives it's a matter of power, but a keyboard shouldn't draw any (surely the 100mA the phone puts out over the micro USB should be enough for the caps/num/scroll lock LEDs). But the software on the phone has to support a keyboard that way; I don't know that Android knows to expect input that way.

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