Remix OS: China's take on an Android operating system, but for PCs

[Thomas the Tank Engine]

 

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Deep dive Jide’s Remix OS is Android for a desktop or tablet OS: with multitasking, overlapping windows and the shortcut conveniences you need for productivity-style work.

 

And the firmware tweaks to make it run well on x86 processors. I’ve seen what the next billion internet users will be running.

 

Jide was founded by three Google veterans and draws heavily on the Android-x86 project, a heroic solo effort by Chinese engineer Chih-Wei Huang, that he began seven years ago. The founders moved to Beijing to be close the Huang and China’s supply chains.

 

“It’s where the talent pool is,” the founders told me when I met them recently. There are now more than 150 staff at Jide.

 

Jide’s first product was a nifty, pebble-shaped Mini, which raised $1.6m on Kickstarter. It’s also unveiled an 11.6-inch Surface-like tablet, NVIDIA Tegra powered,with detachable keyboard. Both are ARM-based hardware.

 

Jide sees its mission as “unifying the whole computing platform” – and from the results so far, I reckon it stands a very good chance of doing just that.

 

The most promising market for Remix OS is emerging markets. Dumb terminals like Chromebooks are too limited; they need always on connectivity that isn’t there. Full fat Windows 10 is still too complex and bloated. The slimmer Windows 10 Mobile just doesn’t have the apps. (Yet).

 

I chose to set up Remix OS from scratch on a 2011 Lenovo Thinkpad. I found a few minor convenience glitches but overall it was surprisingly slick and functional. And the apps just rain down from the Google Play store.

 

To get an idea of what Remix has achieved, and what it needs to do be truly prime time, here’s the journey.

 

Remix comes as a ZIP file with a USB installer and the image file. USB 3.0 and 8GB are recommended for the USB stick. You can run it off the USB drive but here I installed it side-by-side with Windows.

 

 

This boot screen will appear every time you start the machine from now on. It’s a bit misleading. Choose Remix OS at this point and the Thinkpad BIOS Flash screen will appear. On installation we get a familiar GRUB screen:

 

 

There isn't too much of an interrogation...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read the rest: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/16/remix_os_deep_dive/

[PGHammer]

Absolutely UNsurprising.

 

A "kiosk" OS that is both familiar and secure (but isn't Windows or Linux) IS going to be globally in demand.  (Windows costs money, while Linux distributions - all too often - are rather off-putting to users outside the US or Europe.  Therefore, what is left?  Android is at least as familiar as Linux (or even Windows), and especially KitKat or Lollipop (the current RemixOS is based on Lollipop), and it's easily deployable (in terms of hardware targeting).

 

What Remix (in fact, Android in general) is a threat to is Linux distributions - not Windows, and especially not Microsoft.

[neufuse Veteran]

17 minutes ago, PGHammer said:

Absolutely UNsurprising.

 

A "kiosk" OS that is both familiar and secure (but isn't Windows or Linux) IS going to be globally in demand.  (Windows costs money, while Linux distributions - all too often - are rather off-putting to users outside the US or Europe.  Therefore, what is left?  Android is at least as familiar as Linux (or even Windows), and especially KitKat or Lollipop (the current RemixOS is based on Lollipop), and it's easily deployable (in terms of hardware targeting).

 

What Remix (in fact, Android in general) is a threat to is Linux distributions - not Windows, and especially not Microsoft.

Isn't android just a shell for Linux though?

[PGHammer]

5 minutes ago, neufuse said:

Isn't android just a shell for Linux though?

No - functionally, Linux and Android differ quite significantly.  There are a number of similarities; however, the differences alone are why you have no cases of Android running servers, and why Android has higher interest merely in terms of x86 desktops than Linux distributions today.  (A major difference on the desktop alone is that Android does NOT use binary-blob graphical drivers at all, while Linux distributions can.  Another difference - still graphical underpinnings-related - is that OpenGL ES support is mandatory with Android, but is an option with Linux distributions.)

[neufuse Veteran]

4 minutes ago, PGHammer said:

No - functionally, Linux and Android differ quite significantly.  There are a number of similarities; however, the differences alone are why you have no cases of Android running servers, and why Android has higher interest merely in terms of x86 desktops than Linux distributions today.  (A major difference on the desktop alone is that Android does NOT use binary-blob graphical drivers at all, while Linux distributions can.  Another difference - still graphical underpinnings-related - is that OpenGL ES support is mandatory with Android, but is an option with Linux distributions.)

ah, I just considered it Linux since it was based on the Linux kernel

[Dhruv Mehta]

Jide’s Remix OS impressed everyone of us by taking the Android mobile operating system and turning it on its head with a classic desktop-style interface. Everything users expect from a full-featured desktop operating system is present in Remix OS. You have to Download the official latest version of Remix OS and Player, to install it in your PC or Laptop