Virtual Machines

[barend]

Do you think we will be able to run a VM on Linux on Gemini?

[Varti]

Do you think we will be able to run a VM on Linux on Gemini?

The only VM I'm aware of which most probably will run is ExaGear Desktop: https://eltechs.com/product/exagear-desktop/

Varti

[depscribe]

What I'm wondering about -- I'd guess I'm not alone -- is whether we'll be able to run Android apps under Linux in the machine as shipped. I've seen various reports, the last piece in The Register being the most recent, that on the Android side there will be some sort of Linux virtualization. If there is Android virtualization on the Linux side, oughtn't we then have access to things like telephony from within a Linux boot, or would that be somehow sandboxed off?

One of the things that I'm trying to anticipate is common storage between both the Android and Linux sides, which I presume would be possible with the micro SD card. I do lots of work involving .doc and .jpg files, which are operating system agnostic. But if we have access to the phone from within Linux, I can't see any reason ever to have to boot Android. (And if the agenda application is as cool as the reports suggest, having access to that from Linux would be nice, too.)

[greguu]

From what I gathered, the Gemini PDA will be first of all Android driven. You can run some Linux Distributions within an Android system to some extend, but the other way around is not that easy. There are projects like libhybris that allow some of the Android only drivers to be accessible to a pure Linux Distro, but that does not mean you can get all the drivers for 4G or GPS to work with a native Linux install. Also, this means you may be stuck with an outdated (Android) kernel in the long run as there is no opensource SDK to update to a newer (Android) kernel unless the vendor provides one. This is often the case as the chip vendor is not necessarily the company selling the finished product. This is a shame as the vendors build on Android supported hardware, not on pure Linux hardware. Android is not Linux, even if it shares some of the same kernel code.

Proven stable Virtual Machines are only really available on x86 platforms. There do exists alternatives, like Varti mentioned, but some are closed source and may not hold what they promise. Apparently Exagear is using a QEMU emulation layer to run a Debian or Ubuntu container with Wine installed. Some real dodgy stuff. There seem to be some QEMU versions available that run on ARM and can emulate x86 and you may be able to run Wine and Windows Applications (without using Exagear) but ... no promise. this is just a guess. There are good emulators available for a lot of retro games. Also you can run DOSBOX on ARM, AFAIK.. if you are really desperate. For me, the Gemini is not primarily about running a VM or emulating games, and if so, MAME and others would possibly work fine.

What I'm wondering about -- I'd guess I'm not alone -- is whether we'll be able to run Android apps under Linux in the machine as shipped. I've seen various reports, the last piece in The Register being the most recent, that on the Android side there will be some sort of Linux virtualization. If there is Android virtualization on the Linux side, oughtn't we then have access to things like telephony from within a Linux boot, or would that be somehow sandboxed off?

One of the things that I'm trying to anticipate is common storage between both the Android and Linux sides, which I presume would be possible with the micro SD card. I do lots of work involving .doc and .jpg files, which are operating system agnostic. But if we have access to the phone from within Linux, I can't see any reason ever to have to boot Android. (And if the agenda application is as cool as the reports suggest, having access to that from Linux would be nice, too.)

[speculatrix]

you might have better luck running Docker on it to give you a full linux environment.

[Isaac]

I think if running Android and Linux at the same time is important to you, you'd be better off with something like GNURoot which creates a complete GNU/Linux environment on top of Android. This even runs XWindows which you connect to using a VNC client. From what I've seen, the GUI actually is pretty minimal, not a full DE, so it may not meet your needs.

Apparently the guy who wrote it also got Runescape running this way on Android, which is awesome and ridiculous at the same time. Anyway just serves to point out that it seems to work pretty well, with enough hacking I imagine it could do just about anything. This and similar tools do require the device be rooted however.

Personally I use ZShaolin most of the time on my Android tablet to get a usable terminal and reasonable local tools (git, vim, etc.). It is a bit more light weight and serves my sysadmin type needs when I'm remote. Also good because it doesn't require the device to be rooted. I believe this isn't an issue on the Gemini (hopefully) but we'll see...

[depscribe]

I think if running Android and Linux at the same time is important to you, you'd be better off with something like GNURoot which creates a complete GNU/Linux environment on top of Android. This even runs XWindows which you connect to using a VNC client. From what I've seen, the GUI actually is pretty minimal, not a full DE, so it may not meet your needs.

If memory serves, this is what I used to make a (sort of) Linux install on an HP Touchpad in an effort to make it useful after HP bailed. I got X running and even Libreoffice, but it was like a bad restaurant -- if you plan to eat tomorrow, place your order today. The Touchpad was using WebOS instead of Android, fwiw. (Which I guess means you could use GNURoot to put Linux on your LG smart television, which is the only place you can find WebOS nowadays, I think.)

One of life's real delights is to communicate with people who understand the value of working hours to get a machine to do poorly what they have a dozen other machines that will do well, just to see if it can be done!

[speculatrix]

I like JuiceSSH:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?...cessh&hl=en

and the Hacker's keyboard makes life much better:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?...tion.pckeyboard


I also use a folding bluetooth keyboard, it's pretty good, you get used to the gaps very quickly:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B06XCXN...p;tag=zaurus-21

[speculatrix]

One of life's real delights is to communicate with people who understand the value of working hours to get a machine to do poorly what they have a dozen other machines that will do well, just to see if it can be done!

sometimes people say "that's cool, it's pretty clever, but why did you do it?" and my answer is always...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVd-rYIqSy8

[Varti]

I guess we should open a "Because we can" thread, sharing our experiments on obsolete portable devices. Why open such a thread? Because we can, of course.

The first item in my "because I can" list is running Q3CE (a Quake 3 port for PDAs) on my Zaurus.

Varti

[depscribe]

I guess we should open a "Because we can" thread, sharing our experiments on obsolete portable devices. Why open such a thread? Because we can, of course.

I still have around here the screenshots of my finest hour: while doing a little book on KDE 1.1, I needed a chapter on running DOS and WinDOS applications under KDE/Linux. WINE at that point was no™t much. VMware had just gotten introduced. It sorta worked, though driver support was awful. To show the vast computing power available to us, I set up  VMware window and inside ir had windows running, respectively, the Textra word processor in a DOS boot,  a Windows 95 boot running a cost estimation program called ebid 98, and  Windows 3.1 boot. For extra amusement, the Win 3.1 desktop was the legendary Microsoft Bob, which for its few months of release showed the world Bill what Gates and Steve Ballmer thought was a user-friendly interface. I thought it was all hilarious. In 1999 it seemed kinda bleeding edge.

[Isaac]

I like JuiceSSH:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?...cessh&hl=en

and the Hacker's keyboard makes life much better:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?...tion.pckeyboard

Yeah I use both of these as well and like them. The advantage of ZShaolin is that it runs locally, so they serve different use cases. JuiceSSH is a lot easier to use to just get into a remote box though.

[munchausen]

Hello (first post!)

I was intending to build a recent qemu because it

• Supports full hardware virtualisation on ARM
• Has virgil 3d, which allows the guest OS to use the 3D capabilities of the host GPU
• Has been tested virtualising android under linux with virgl 3d (albeit only x86 android on an x86 host as far as I'm aware)

I think this could create quite interesting possibilities for running e.g. whatsapp under Linux (at least for me whatsapp is the only reason I am forced to use an android phone instead of a dumbphone). Though I'd prefer it if it were possible to run individual android applications under linux as on sailfish.

Also, virtualisation will require support in the bootloader. Uboot supports it, but it's unclear to me what bootloader is being used. I'd have thought it would be possible to launch uboot as a second stage bootloader, but it's a bit of a faff. I hope there is some level of customisation available in the bootloader, because if it isn't possible to set linux to boot as default it could be quite annoying!

[Varti]

Also, virtualisation will require support in the bootloader. Uboot supports it, but it's unclear to me what bootloader is being used. I'd have thought it would be possible to launch uboot as a second stage bootloader, but it's a bit of a faff. I hope there is some level of customisation available in the bootloader, because if it isn't possible to set linux to boot as default it could be quite annoying!

Hi and welcome! It has been said that Gemini will use Android's LittleKernel as a bootloader, but I have not found any reference of it supporting virtualization.

Varti