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Plasma UX or Unity

PostPosted: Mar 25th, '12, 07:42
by zeke
I have VNC set up from an office desktop, and I am able to use VNC to access it from from my Android phone.

I have it set up with LXDE as a WM.

It is lightweight enough to be usable on the phone, but the scrolling and input control is still pretty bad. I am wondering if I could install Plasma UX on the computer and VNC to that environment...alternatively, I was thinking Unity might be better for phone I/O

This would essentially provide me with a full Linux OS that is fully usable on my phone (still haven't gotten sound working with VNC, so I am not sure if that is a limitation).

Has anyone done this? Are these environments built for Mageia?

Re: Plasma UX or Unity

PostPosted: Mar 25th, '12, 14:36
by doktor5000
No for Unity and no for Plasma UX, these are not available for Mageia currently.

Also what's your goal? Controlling your computer from your phone, but what use case?
What point is there in doing something on your computer from your phone which you can have natively on your phone?

Re: Plasma UX or Unity

PostPosted: Mar 25th, '12, 15:32
by zeke
I want the ability to edit Libreoffice Dcouments (and use Zotero) or display Impress slide shows using HDMI out & a bluetooth keyboard/mouse.

This would mean that when I travel for work, I wouldn't need to bring a laptop, just my phone.
I also would want to be able to use R to do stats on the road, but I can kind of already to that using Connectbot into terminal...still it would be nice to have a terminal up with R, and simultaneously have a kwrite window up with the script I am working with.


Sorry, just waking up, it that clear?

Re: Plasma UX or Unity

PostPosted: Mar 25th, '12, 16:48
by doktor5000
Why not just use an office suite directly on your phone?
The other way you always depend on your home computer and network availability. What do you do during a presentation
when the network connection of your home computer ot the one of your phone dies? This is no good approach to the problem, IMHO.

Re: Plasma UX or Unity

PostPosted: Mar 25th, '12, 20:27
by zeke
There is no Open/Libreoffice editing app for android, and everything I read suggests there won't be one anytime soon. Further, Zotero (a citation manager that integrates with LO) is critical for my work (scientific research) and does not work with Kalligra or on Android. This allows me remote access to all of my citations and references and I can even link right to the pdf file of the document referenced since I am tunnelled in to my work computer. I can print files I need from home or the road so they will already be waiting for me when I get to the office.

It also allows me to do the work I need to do with data (mining, parsing, database entry and queries) directly on my office desktop rather than on a remote laptop that would need to be transfrrred over later,

I think by reconfiguring LXDE with larger panel icons I have mostly solved my problem for now. I may try Gnome 3 once MGA2 stable is released (the server is my work computer, so I can't risk instability).

I am surprised that more people aren't doing this....Webdocking is already available on some Motorola phones with a stripped down Ubuntu running over top of android with chroot when an external HDMI monitor and USB cable is connected.
It seems pretty simple based on some info at the xda forum to extend that to a full Ubuntu distro. And Ubuntu's app is in development that will allow the same thing (IIRC) for other devices.

But this is a quick and dirty alternative that also allows me to exploit the LAN capabilities at work - like journal access and other networked file servers and avoid taking a laptop with me on work travel.

Of course for a critical presentation, I would convert the impress file to .ppt and have it copied to the phone itself so I could put it on any computer laying around as a backup in case of network problems.