X Server Now Available For Android 131
New submitter mkwan writes "The open-source X Server for Android has hit beta and is now available for download through the Android Market. On Australian networks at least, smartphones are assigned publicly-accessible IP addresses, so it should be possible to display many Linux applications on an Android smartphone simply by setting the DISPLAY environment variable to the phone's IP address followed by :0"
The source is available under the MIT license (or Apache; the project page and story disagree) over at Google Code. It doesn't support all of the X protocol and there's no Xlib implementation (i.e. no X11 apps on the device yet except via the NDK if you're lucky), but it is a reimplementation of the X server in Java for Android. You can run remote applications at least.
Sounds funky but (Score:4, Informative)
Why?
Re:Sounds funky but (Score:4, Informative)
Same reason as SSH - it's a convenient platform. It'd be nice, if I needed to do something work related (or access something on my home machine) to have an available X session.
Re:Sounds funky but (Score:4, Informative)
Quite. X is just a remote graphics framework. The app could be created with a tablet in mind. It doesn't have to be a conventional desktop app. You can treat the phone as a peripheral for your TV or or PC without dealing with the nonsense of IR transmitters.
Run any app you like. Skip the nonsense with walled gardens.
Re:Sounds funky but (Score:5, Informative)
No, you probably CAN'T play games. Really, I just played around with it. Close to useless.
For example, nedit won't start. Emacs won't start. You CAN start an xterm, and then have access to all terminal goodness, but there are SSH clients for Android that will do just as well.
The feat if truly impressive, but not enough of "X" is implemented to make it much more than a toy.
When you try to run something serious, this is what you get:
X Error: BadImplementation (server does not implement operation) 17
Major opcode: 20 (X_GetProperty)
Resource id: 0x0
X Error: BadLength (poly request too large or internal Xlib length error) 16
Major opcode: 72 (X_PutImage)
Resource id: 0x0
Cool concept, but it needs more work to be truly usable for anything beyond "xeyes" or "xclock."