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Comment by enragedcacti

1 year ago

Taking better advantage of a display is nice but imo the really exciting part of desktop mode is the planned integration with Google's Linux Terminal app (i.e. 1st party linux VM support). I have a Samsung DeX device and while you can get a basic dev environment working easily it can be really cumbersome to make it comfortable to use and integrate with your normal tablet workflow. Being able to install full-fat linux apps and run them in a window would be a complete game changer.

source for planned integration: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/392521081?utm_source=...

34 comments

enragedcacti

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Calwestjobs  1 year ago

Chrome OS allowed this even before 2020. So you could open Linux (even GUI) and android app right next to each other... Had whole JS dev workflow/toolchain running on that ( did not want to clog my main computer with that ). Problem with mixing apps is that for some you have to use mouse/ stylus because their GUI was not meant to be touched.

chneu  1 year ago

Dex is annoyingly close to being really useful.

I think Samsung recently added a "desktop Dex" mode that's supposed to be less mobile-ui. I haven't tried it tho.

  • vizzier  1 year ago

    > Dex is annoyingly close to being really useful.

    I feel this a lot. I use it daily, mostly as a thin client for remote desktop use but there are little niggles that would make it better. Examples:

    - Let me control how the top bar and taskbar are viewed

    - Let games capture the mouse in remote desktop (for fps type games)

    - Fix the small issues that cause the mouse capture to fail on steam link occasionally

    - Fix rendering issues with firefox while in desktop mode

    - Let the youtube UI work in a more "desktop" way while in dex mode

    These might be mostly app responsibilities, but if they could fix some of this stuff dex would be a dream instead of just being mostly useful.

    • LeonM  1 year ago

      I just wish it would do 4K resolution out of the box.

      The hardware can do it, it's just that the system settings won't show you the 4K resolution option for some reason. But you can do some hacks to make it appear and then it works just fine.

      You need to install a nondescript app called 'Samsung Good Lock' from the Samsung store (not available in Play store), and use that to side-load an app called 'Multistar', which is an app to tweak display settings. From that side-loaded app you need to tap the 'I Samsung DeX' which does various setting changes to "Make Dex even more friendly", it doesn't specify what it does exactly, but it'll make the 4K resolution option appear in the system settings.

      This all feels real sketchy and I don't understand why Samsung doesn't just enable 4K resolution officially, because the hardware is clearly capable of it.

      With every OneUI update there are rumors that it'll natively support 4K, but so far that hasn't happened AFAIK. Admittedly I haven't used Dex in a while for myself, but judging from recent Reddit posts this hack is still needed.

      4 replies →

  • asabla  1 year ago

    I remember when they presented the S10, with the initial implementation of Dex.

    It felt so close already back then, sluggish, but still usable. But that initial implementation was running some in-house version of Ubuntu with a custom kernel (if I remembered it correctly).

    I just wish this becomes a reality much sooner then later. Especially if I can have my dev environment on some remote VPS with either tunneling, github code spaces or Azure DevBox

  • AdmiralAsshat  1 year ago

    It's not a full laptop replacement, but at least for me it's good enough at what it does that I can just take my phone or tablet with me on short vacations and not be paranoid that I'm gonna have to do something complicated like log into my bank or write some verbose emails that I'm normally afraid to do from my phone. In those instances, plugging one of them into a KVM and Dex mode is sufficient to get over the hump.

  • RajT88  1 year ago

    Last I used it, I still wouldn't want to write code on Dex. But it was great for everything else. I could definitely complete just about any other tasks I needed with it. It was a little clunky, but doable; teams calls, getting into internal tools for triaging systems issues, the company CRM, all that stuff.

assassinator42  1 year ago

Rumor is Samsung won't support Google's Linux Terminal (at least for their existing phones) since their Knox conflicts with the Android Virtualization Framework :-(.

Honestly I'd like to see Windows 11 running under this as well, but that seems incredibly unlikely.

eru  1 year ago

When I tried the external display mode on my Pixel 8a, I did some development with a bluetooth keyboard, bluetooth trackball and vscode tunneling into my desktop.

So the development wasn't local, but it was sort-of usable. (And the editing is local in any case.)