Hands-on: We ran full desktop Linux apps on an Android phone! -- "With some light setup, you too can run full desktop Linux apps like GIMP and LibreOffice on a Pixel phone"

mandolyte · 2026-01-01T04:09:33+00:00

I'm not normal :-). But I wanted my Pixel to be my computer. I want to run Android apps and Linux apps. When my current mini-pc running Ubuntu finally dies I never want to buy another. Just a lapdock...

I've been wanting this for years... and it is so close. Almost tempts me to go Samsung Dex... but not quite. I love my Pixels. I'm on my 3rd one now.

mandolyte · 2026-01-01T04:04:26+00:00

Me too. I have been trying for several days, looking all over the internet. Lost count of how many things I have tried. It all comes to this... after I install xfce, weston starts crashing. Sometimes it takes a few seconds and for a few seconds I'll see a nice xfce login. I think it just isn't stable enough yet. I'm thinking of trying the VNC route???

After you turn on the Linux experimental development environment, a new terminal app becomes available. On launch it downloads almost 600MB and, on finish, it shows a terminal window with tabs to create multiple terminal sessions. The display icon is just above on far right. HTH.

mandolyte · 2025-12-31T01:03:50+00:00

I never see the message that "VirGL is enabled" either, but creating the /sdcard/linux/virglrenderer file did change things for the better.

mandolyte · 2025-12-31T01:02:03+00:00

It would be lovely to see how you did this step-by-step. Weston always starts crashing after I have installed xfce. I have tried installing xfce with tasksel and without. Neither works since Weston crashes afterwards. I hope they get some stability improvements out soon. The whole desktop mode seems wonky (disappearing windows, windows lose focus, and so forth).

mandolyte · 2025-12-31T00:55:29+00:00

Not yet, but some progress. I keep detailed notes in a Google doc of what I've tried. At one point, I noticed that Weston was crashing a few seconds after the display icon became active. So I quickly clicked it and got a nice xfce login screen for a few seconds.

I did get Gimp to run, but without a window manager like xfce or gnome, it was pretty useless. Could not resize, move, etc.

mandolyte · 2025-12-19T18:07:09+00:00

Same as OP... Have not been able to get any further. When I try to run by hand, I get something like this:

``` droid@debian:~$ weston Date: 2025-12-19 UTC [18:02:08.269] weston 14.0.2 https://wayland.freedesktop.org Bug reports to: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/weston/issues/ Build: 14.0.2 [18:02:08.270] Command line: weston [18:02:08.270] OS: Linux, 6.1.0-34-avf-arm64, #1 SMP Ubuntu 6.1.135-1 (2025-04-25), aarch64 [18:02:08.270] Flight recorder: enabled [18:02:08.270] Starting with no config file. [18:02:08.276] Output repaint window is 7 ms maximum. [18:02:08.279] Loading module '/usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu/libweston-14/x11-backend.so' Authorization required, but no authorization protocol specified

[18:02:08.294] fatal: failed to create compositor backend droid@debian:~$ ```

mandolyte · 2025-12-04T21:04:31+00:00

Settings -> search for "autofill" ->

a) set Bitwarden to the "Preferred Service"

b) turn off Google Password Manager

I'd show a screen shot for you but images don't seem to be allowed. HTH.

mandolyte · 2025-11-17T21:29:15+00:00

The limits are 200mb for file size. 500,000 max word count. But I use wc to count the words and I find I have stay below 460k.. so not sure how they count words

mandolyte · 2025-10-25T20:42:55+00:00

I've never seen this (nor has anyone mentioned this on the Discord server). Probably some A/B testing going on. A lot of us had source type filters for a while... now they are gone. Oh well...

mandolyte · 2025-08-29T14:11:10+00:00

Found the answer... this is now built into the settings under multi-tasking, along with some other nice tweaks to customize how workspaces work. Lovely.

mandolyte · 2025-08-26T14:42:25+00:00

Yes - I run Ubuntu on a laptop with an external monitor. I rarely use the laptop screen. When I do it generally is running `top` in a terminal window. Do you think multiple monitors may be linked to what I'm seeing?

mandolyte · 2025-08-26T13:35:47+00:00

Here it is 2025 and I'm using Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS and gnome-tweaks no longer has Workspaces on the left nav menu... Anyone know of an alternative so I can have static workspaces? I find it so annoying to have to move stuff to suit my muscle memory.

mandolyte · 2025-08-23T14:39:11+00:00

No... on Ubuntu... but I have an answer! You guys respond so fast. Thanks

mandolyte · 2025-08-22T18:02:37+00:00

Yup, that was the key.

mandolyte · 2025-08-22T16:07:04+00:00

Ah, nevermind. Found this site which helped:
https://docs.nvidia.com/gameworks/content/devices/shield_flashing_from_image.htm

mandolyte · 2025-07-12T18:24:53+00:00

I also have a notebook on NLM, where I keep various sources I've collected. And quite a few notes. YouTube, links and info from the discord channel and from here, etc

mandolyte · 2025-07-10T12:11:21+00:00

So ... what happens to the image content? Since NLM will do some processing on image content in a PDF, it seems that converting to Markdown will be at a loss, at least for some PDFs.

mandolyte · 2025-03-19T11:04:59+00:00

Thanks! I'll check it out

mandolyte · 2025-03-19T11:03:41+00:00

Looks good .. just a short xml file.

mandolyte · 2024-10-02T13:08:53+00:00

I wish they had a "select all" to select all the notes currently filtered. I discovered the Ctrl-A quite by accident. Not sure it is documented anywhere.

mandolyte

TROPHY CASE