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android full OS for PC's.. please feedback

S

siiix

Lurker
since i got 1st an iphone and recently an android phone , and now having tested windows8 i cant get this idea out of my head about to me dream OS

i'm posting this here to see what you guys think ; good or bad or suggestions

using android now i'm amazed how userfriendly the OS is, how easy is to get apps (small and big)

so what i was thinking is having the same type of desktop environment and appstores for PC's with a few changes

for example you start out in a grid of screens of 6, the home screen is in the bottom middle, so you can scroll left / right and up and down (1st only up as you start out on the bottom of the grid)

[ ][ ][ ]
[ ][home][ ]

this way you can customize your screens according to type of apps (games, grafix, work like ms office, ...)

keep in mind that if you have multiple monitors those would show the bordering desktops according to how you set them up !

this would eliminate the messy and slow start menu, but keep the icons... nice touch would be a system like bunktop to organize icons (not the 3d version, just as icon organisation and management)

the tool bar would only feature clock , connectivity , speaker control , and a way to get in to "control panel", maybe manual run command/ manual execute mode

every time you add icons to an empty screen/desktop, this would extend the grid so it will always border 1 empty screen on the grid

every desktop/screen would feature a recycling bin and an icon to jump to the home screen, maybe an icon to a full map with shortcut of screens

all apps/programs/games would be downloadable from different appstores and/or browsers, even full games... of course i realize this would require drivers and programs specifically written for this OS

in my opinion such OS would make the life of both end users and developers very easy, this would eventually become a windows killer, especially with win8 trying to do something similar in a very amateur way

this should not run on top of windows or OSX instead should be a stand alone OS

what you guys think ? would you like something like this or would you rater stick to windows and OSX ? is this even a good idea ?
 
It sounds just like android on a PC, which already exists. Or similar to linux in some principles. I prefer linux to be honest. I love android, but I even want to run Linux on my android phone.
 
my problem with general linux to the PC is that its just an other OS, it works the same way like OSX or windows, it even looks the same, its been great so far , but change is coming with touch screens, gesture controls and holographic monitors later

so i have to say i think that MS is right the age of that type of OS is coming to an end... my problem is only that how they tried to solve this with win8 will not work

on the other hand android works so well that even if i wanted to i cant come up with much better ... the current ways of installing android to a PC is not really functional, you pretty much treat the PC if it would be a phone, the entire OS has to be specifically extended and modified to fit the needs of a PC / laptop or PC-tablet, a lot of functionality need to be added

now sure it don't have to be android specifically, it could be any other linux based OS... but android is already nearly perfect, so why start from scratch

i tried to google who is developing android and could not find a clear answer, is it made by a bunch of random developers ? but if so how can it come out with specific version numbers that are the same no mater what device you are using ?

or because its open source can anyone just start to modify the OS to any hardware (in this case PC's) and the OS updates would still work ?
 
siiix said:
my problem with general linux to the PC is that its just an other OS, it works the same way like OSX or windows, it even looks the same, its been great so far , but change is coming with touch screens, gesture controls and holographic monitors later

so i have to say i think that MS is right the age of that type of OS is coming to an end... my problem is only that how they tried to solve this with win8 will not work

on the other hand android works so well that even if i wanted to i cant come up with much better ... the current ways of installing android to a PC is not really functional, you pretty much treat the PC if it would be a phone, the entire OS has to be specifically extended and modified to fit the needs of a PC / laptop or PC-tablet, a lot of functionality need to be added

now sure it don't have to be android specifically, it could be any other linux based OS... but android is already nearly perfect, so why start from scratch

i tried to google who is developing android and could not find a clear answer, is it made by a bunch of random developers ? but if so how can it come out with specific version numbers that are the same no mater what device you are using ?

or because its open source can anyone just start to modify the OS to any hardware (in this case PC's) and the OS updates would still work ?
Click to expand...

Linux does not work the same as Windows or OSX. The underlying systems (mainly the respective kernels) are different. Linux is much more like OSX, but if they were the same, Linux users would not have the probelem of not having a bunch of Windows exclusive software. A computer is a computer, so the principles of each are the same (i.e. they all address memory with the same physically, but not in code).

Now, for android, it is clear you do not know how an open source project works. That is fine--no one expected you to know,

Open source does not equal "open for everyone to randomly kang:. Well...it does, but normally people realize that if they make a change, they can submit it upstream (i.e. to the originatior or maintainer of the project) so that all can benefit. Version control systems lie git are great for this. Look up git and what a commit is and you will get a good understanding of how this works

In this case, I believe (not sure) that android is maintained by the Open Handset Alliance, and that the major contributor is Google (I an sure HTC and Samsung send a few fixes upstream, but most of what they do they keep so that their competitors do not get it).

Now, if you port (the word for taking something for one platform and modifiying it to work on another) Android to a PC (note that phones and PCs use two different processor architectures, so this is not an easy task at all. Look at the Android x86 project for what is being done now), you would NOT get the updates pushed by the OHA and Google. You would have to port each update as it came.

Hope that clears some things up,
Nkk
 
But I don't just refer to android x86 op. Some ARM based netbooks come pre installed with android. Sure, unlike windows or Linux, you can't just download it and install it on anything but most devices now won't even benefit. Its not like they can make it backwards compatible with everything.
 
SUroot said:
But I don't just refer to android x86 op. Some ARM based netbooks come pre installed with android.
Click to expand...
Indeed they do...
29609d1332401015-today-s-bad-news-android-student-laptop.jpg


T5800d.jpg

...although they don't actually call them netbooks, they're called student education computers. They're very popular as well.
 
Hmmm. Desktop Linux is nothing like Windows or OSX. Ignoring the underlying differences, just look at Gnome 3 and Unity. Vastly different to the point of being annoying to those who prefer a more 'traditional' desktop approach. Even KDE (which I tend to use.) is very easily adaptable to smaller screen/touch screen use. To me, Android on PC architecture would just be another Linux distro.

If you want Linux that looks and feels like old skool desktop systems, you'd want an LXDE or XFCE based distro these days.
 
Google's Chromium OS was supposed to fit in this space as well, sort of between android and a full os. Or you could get one of the convertable tablets like the asus transformer which runs android and has a keyboard like a normal laptop/netbook.

With open source you could modify the source all you want. A few years back I was normalizing exif data in all my pictures and wanted to see a spreadsheet like interface. Konqueror (KDE file manager) could display several exif fields, but not all and not a few I wanted. So i searched through the source and found where they implemented the ones they did and found that I just had to add more variables for each of the ones I wanted and list them in a config file and re-compile to be able to use them. This was a mod specific to me and yes updating would have 'broken' it. I never did submit it back because they switched over to kde4 and its all changed around now.
I made a couple other suggestions on a support mailing list and somoene else changed the code and submitted it, so those got back in.
Really Android is just a customized version of Linux, you can just run Linux and find a window manager thats similar to android or start up a project to take the android interface to desktop linux. Most of your linux package mangers work similar to the android app store, you just search for and get the package you want and the manager installs it.
 
ok thanx for the info

on Gnome 3 and Unity although its true that they looks and the interface has major upgrades, the basic concept is the same, specialized the OS for using it with the mouse, you have menus (witch are great for mouse only, but not for touch or gesture controls, and it would be near impossible to 3d interface when real 3d comes out)

so let say i sit on my desk doing work in photoshop, now i can minimize photoshop with out aiming the mouse, with a small gesture, once im on the desktop i can flip the desktops like a book to get where i need to go again just with my hand (no need to lift up your hand like they do in movies, just leave it right above the mouse to do a gesture), and select the needed app with the mouse OR gesture witch ever i find faster

so this is why i think current OS's would have to be redesigned (as they tried with win8)

how i imagine PC's in a few years that it will be a combination gesture mouse, while laptops will be increasingly replaced by tablets, or the more expensive ones laptop/tablet conversions (just flip the screen)

and with those technologies its better to focus on icon based solutions then menus

i know its a bit early, but it takes years to work out the kinks in a system, these are very early ideas, this is why i try to see what people think
 
So your just wanting mouse gestures? Thats been available for years
System Settings/Shortcuts and Gestures - KDE UserBase Wiki

Microsoft and Apple run a couple years behind the times so if their meetings and committies and managers decide to implement this you'll see it in windows 9 and mac os 11 or you can go open source and have it now.

There are plenty of other articles on KDE gestures, for example this one from 2007
http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/locutus/kde-gestures-you-to-easier-computer-control-21277

I personally prefer a touchpad over a mouse, makes the gestures easier since i'm just sliding a finger and not a mouse and its similar to the touch screen phones.
 
@Eugene no no no , hand gestures , NOT mouse gestures

like in scifi movies, except not so crazy :)

mouse and touchpad will soon be secondary in my opinion

now sure you could just talk to the computer, but that has serious flaws, like what if i listen to loud music, what if i'm sitting in an office with 50 other people and all of them try to do the same thing... so voice control has its issues
 
Eugene said:
hand gestures can be done easily enough, just another input device driver.
Click to expand...

yes but the OS is not built for such, the functions would not be fictional/useful

lets put it this way, you know how on IOS and android and on win8 you can scroll between desktops to select what app you like to run... you dont have that on windows, OSX or on the most common versions of linux

now sure you can install 3rd party apps that let you have custom desktops , but you still limited by the functionality of an OS that is specifically designed for mouse usage only

you also dont have the freedom and convenience of the android appstore(s), you have to get your apps/game on DVD OR download them from gazillion random websites (origen, steam or 1000000 other places)
 
umm, wait, the multi desktops has always been in x windows (linux).
All then popular linux distros you don't go to random web sites, you search for your app in the distro's package manager.
So if your running redhat or a deriviateve you open up the rpm package browser and it goes out to redhats app repository and you choose and install the from the apps they packged. Again has been there for many years, and was copied for the smartphone app stores.

now occasionally there will be an app or two not in the distros app store but you can go outside the android app store too and find and install obscrue apps as well.
 
You people are missing Siiix's basic premise - yeah, different features have been available for different OSs, including multiple monitor support, headless support, etc. - but it is not a main premise of the OS in question, i.e. it is not what the OS is built around

In all of the arguments above everyone is trying to convince that *nix is different from OSX is different from Windows - yes, in terms of file structure, file system, underlying principles, etc.

BUT if you look at any of the three OSs side by side they look predominantly the same.

Furthermore, in the last post, he says this:
now sure you can install 3rd party apps that let you have custom desktops , but you still limited by the functionality of an OS that is specifically designed for mouse usage only
Click to expand...
- which is just as true with x windows / x11/ xorg as it is with MacOS / OS X as it is with Windows 3.x+, and in particular WinNT4+.

Win8 is making huge strides because for once MS is not behind the times, they're actually ahead of the times, and it's pissing people off. It is an OS designed for touch interfaces versus mouse interfaces. So many of you, yes, you right here posting in this thread, hate W8 b/c of that very nature - you want a 'normal' looking desktop, and that is EXACTLY what Siiix is saying - all the OSs are beginning to look the same. Everything is point and click. You could plop a n00b down in front of a *nix box and as long as the GUI DM is working, inside of an hour that n00b would have figured out how to do most of the same basic tasks that he did on MacOS / Windows. And that, more than anything else, is what I HATE about over bloated DMs. I don't like the look of Gnome b/c, well, it looks primitive, even with very good resolution. I don't like older KDE (I haven't used anything recent b/c, well, I've always hated KDE) b/c it was almost half as bloated as a windows box. But, more than anything else, I hate that *nix n00bs must have a GUI, and that the world has become so dependent upon GUIs that damned near every single distro comes packaged with a DM, and usually one I don't care to install. Thankfully, more often than not I can change my preference of GUI installed, but that is what led me to Gentoo in the first place - pure customizability - I make it how I want it with what components I want ant nothing less, nothing more. That is what *nix is to me - not "Oh, get this distro, and it will install all the basic stuff {that we think} you'll need to be up and running in as little as 30 minutes." Sounds like a Shortened version of a Windows install, doesn't it?

This concept of touch (versus mouse) and eventually gesture (not mouse gestures, air gestures, as in making gestures at a camera, like the XBox Kinect) are here to stay, regardless of what we like or do not like. A mouse can only do so much ,even with drivers. a touch pad allows for multi-touch control, as we Androidians well know (and love and are addicted to). Full 3D gesture recognition - it may be a thing of the future, but it's a hell of a lot closer than you think.

Siiix, I get you on this - it might not be a bad idea to see if it is possible. The main thing I can see is that you'd still need a lot of power to drive some of the devices you need to currently achieve touch and 3D gesture recognition. And, I think that Android, in its current inception, may still be a bit too immature for the undertaking. I've read through the thread completely, and have more answers to give regarding individual posts, especially the OP, so I'll enter this in now and come back to reply more individually.
 
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