Request for port of GMenu2X as a home launcher replacement
Website, and source code
http://mtorromeo.github.com/gmenu2x/
description
"GMenu2X is a frontend application targeted at embedded devices, originally developed for the GP2X and successively ported to other devices.
GMenu2X provides an easy to use interface with quick access to the games and applications of the device trough links similar to those found on PC's desktops.
Its interface is fully customizable with skins."
----------------
I was a big fan of the GP2X, CAANOO, WIZ, & DINGOO devices and which actually brought me to the xperia play as a handheld emulator system and it would be just great to get this software a port to the xperia play as there are more and more of these android based gaming systems popping up everday, this would be a great welcome for those individuals migrating from a standard linux platform. Request there be no specific xperia play branding.
I offer a starting bounty of $20 USD for a port that utilizes the standard BUTTON_% calls, and functions as a home screen replacement rather than just a executable app.
I have never played with the above handhelkd devices but I do know of them and had at one time considered buying one or two to play on, but then after some time, couple years, I got the Xplay. It would be cool to see this port happen, I really like GO Launcher, and would probably prefer a app rathe then a home screen replacement, but if a replacement home screen app was ported from it I would certainly give it a shot.
Related
Another discussion where I posted a version of this led me to thinking that this might make for an interesting topic all on its own.
How would you envision a port of android made specifically for Desktop/Laptop environments, and do you think such an OS would be appealing to the average user?
_______________________________
As I envision it, ChromeOS should be folded into Android 4.0 and Google should build a version of the combined OS for Desktops.
The idea would be to create a common ecosystem of apps and usage environment accross multiple device categories, ad have it all interconnected through Google products and other apps running in the background.
I envision something that boots instantly right into ChromeOS while the rest of the Android system boots up in the background, thus allowing you virtually immediate cloud based functionality on the desktop. You could even choose to ONLY boot into chrome, say if you needed to look up something quickly online and didn't want to fully turn on a computer that has been turned off.
The chrome side of things would be very similar to ICS for tablets and would be deeply linked to all things google as well as relying on versions of the same Google apps that run on mobile, but optimized for ICS and taking advantage of larger screen dimensions. I envision touch interface to be retained for those who have touch sensitive screens, but also better keyboard and touchpad/mouse controls than currently exist. Lastly I would bundle a Google fork of Libre office specifically designed to have deep automatic integration with Google docs and Google+, but allowing users to have local editing control.
I would love to have such a system and have a common ecosystem between my phone, tablet and desktop/laptop, much how Apple currently does with IOs devices and MacOS and how Microsoft is planning to do with Windows 8 and WP8. unlike those ecosystems, this would run variants of the same OS, as opposed to different OSs made to work together, thus being able to take advantage of current built up knowledge and the existing android market.
Imagine if Google did the entire thing open sourced and released it to desktop and laptop OEMs.
A guy can dream right? If only there was a way to have a bunch of people pitch it to Google.
What do you guys think and how would you envision such an OS?
Android is already going to be merged with the Linux kernel in version 3.3 (with improved power management in 3.4)
nejc121 said:
Android is already going to be merged with the Linux kernel in version 3.3 (with improved power management in 3.4)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you sure about that? From what I've read Android is going to provide it's drivers and both Android and linux are going to provide patches to each other's kernels (with Power management being addressed in later versions of the linux kernel (3.4?). The Android kernel will remain (at least for now) a fork of the linux kernel.
Still that doesn't really address the subject of this thread.
Santeno said:
As I envision it, ChromeOS should be folded into Android 4.0 and Google should build a version of the combined OS for Desktops.
I envision something that boots instantly right into ChromeOS while the rest of the Android system boots up in the background, thus allowing you virtually immediate cloud based functionality on the desktop.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah i too dream of Google using all the OS & games tech experience they have gained from Android to bootstrap a full desktop OS.
My personal fantasy is that the under no circumstances include any of the Chrome Cloud based nonsense. But focus quite heavily on games and multimedia, offer an OS that delivers content & gaming rather than try going head to head on productivity (where they would get owned).
Am not going to go into my objections to the cloud concept, lots of geeks my age & older well remember the mainframe model from the 70's and the cloud suffers many of the same inherent flaws IMHO.
I addition my fantasy involves ARM leveraging the experience with the multi-cores they have developed to produce an ARM desktop CPU arrays, as am a big fan or clusters and arrays, render farms etc.
I have to confess being serious i don't see either happening since both would be attempting to breaking into markets they are inexperienced in and where entrenched competitors already have a tough obstacle course laid out, plus pretty deep war chests.
But the main issue with a Google desktop OS, IMHO to succeed, i think it would have to be capable of some kind of half decent x86 emulation ........... But hey we are talking 'The Brothers Grimms Tales of Silicone Valley' here anyways.
Its possible to do so now, albeit not the same experince you get on your phone or tablet due to lack of driver support Its how i checked out 4.0 before I got it on my Asus Transformer Prime. Worth a try!
(Im new to XDA so I cannot post links, however google "android x86 download" and its the first link.)
There are ready is a port of android that works on desktops that these guys are working on over at http://www.android-x86.org/.
Is it possible to hire an app developer on XDA for this project I would like to see done on Android?
I want no money, or rights over the app created, I just want to pay for it to exist.
I'm not even sure we need a separate app to do this, just terminal maybe?
Ok, so enough of my jibber jabber, here's what I'm looking to get done.
The Nintendo DS was an awesome portable in its day, and had an amazing Homebrew development community.
With it came lots of homebrew (it's what we called our apps) that allowed the DS to be used as a WiFi game controller, WiFi mouse, and Keyboard, and screen mirror (VNC I think) on a Windows or Linux Machine.
What I want is the ability to connect the Nintendo DS to our Android Devices to use its buttons for emulators and games that support controller input.
I'm no dev, and don't know the first thing about coding,
but in my fantasy world where I am, this is how it would work:
I turn on my Galaxy Note 2's Hotspot, turn on the TCP/UDP listener app (or terminal?) configure the DS to always connect to the Note, launch the compatible homebrew server application on the DS.
And the DS starts spewing out all those touch events and button presses to the Note in real time, and I map the buttons to the phone.
Here is some info for the DS app servers and their Windows/Linux Clients
Some work differently than others,
DS2key - Was the awesomest one, had Windows and Linux Client
Joy2DS - Uses PPJoy
http://gamebrew.org/index.php?title=JoyDS&diff=10403&oldid=prev
Win2DS - This one kinda sucked but whatever
http://www.1emulation.com/forums/topic/24834-win2ds-unofficial-v08/
DSPad - had a Linux Client that I believe ran in a terminal window, I believe this is what DS2key turned into in its later versions.
http://forums.ngemu.com/showthread.php?t=94959
There should also be some YouTube videos on all of these
They should all also be open source, so if you cant find the source code I can help look.
good idea man, i would buy that app for my really old DS when i was a kid haha
Hi,
I hope that this is the right forum in xda to discuss this; but I'd like to introduce CuBox-i; a tiny 2"x2"x2" scalable mini computer that has up to quad ARM processor; quad GPU shader, up to 2GByte memory that is based on Freescale i.MX6 SoC.
The machine is powerful in it's specifications and already has a community around it that fully supports it from software point of view (kernel 3.10 LTS, also upstream work in parallel, lots of distributions etc...)
The biggest advantage of this machine vs. others is it's 64bit DDR memory interface that provides a thick pipe that the GPU, processors and video engine can utilize without hitting walls on 1080p resolutions. Within the interesting features is 1080p HDMI with CEC, power USB hosts, infra red receiver and transmitter, Gigabit Ethernet etc...
We already provided Android 4.3 images and now working on Android 4.4. Look for github rabeeh/android-imx6-kitkat (I can't send the link since this is my first post on xda).
There have been numerous Linux ports already done, including XBMC support; mainly by the community around CuBox-i -
(Again, can't send link; just google "CuBox-i wiki" or "CuBox-i forums" and you will find it).
What we are trying to achieve now is perfecting Android on CuBox-i; with that we are looking for developers that are willing to provide from their spare time to contribute to this project. We have issues already posted on the github issues tracking system.
Needless to say that we will be providing the hardware for the developers for free
Please PM me if interested.
Best Regards,
Rabeeh
Bump!!!
Did you use perhaps the cubox i pro 4?
I am really searching other guys who try to bring the android-os forward.
First I use OpenELEC/kodi - Helix, but I want more from that great hardware, so decide to install android (android-4.4.2-1.0.1b-ga-aaf118bb78-gapps.img.xz). Works good but not perfect.
-There is no IR-Sensor Support or CEC to controll the interface with e.g. Samsung-TV remote
-Another launcher (I mean the gui) should be neccesary. I like this here:
-I think this is the android rom- ->This is not for the cubox!
-Here some more Android-FW's- ->They are not for the cubox!
-I think the hardware is not 100% supported. Antuntu gives worse scores and some app crashes again and again or some video stock while playing.
-My Teufel Decoder-Station don't recognice dolby or dts.
I you have no cubox and wanna help I can only replay:
Needless to say that we will be providing the hardware for the developers for free
-Full source code support is available here-
Greetings by I_did_it_just_tmrrow
http://www.solid-run.com/community/ ENJOY i have the i4pro there is like 3 differnt versions of XBMC there
I am using the beautiful product that Rabeeh c.s. made: the cubox has a nice spot in my network. It is my NAS and my media-server among other things. And it's all based on Android (in my case 4.3). I am impressed by the things that developers can do in this Linux-environment. There seems to be a solution for every wish or problem. Thanks to you all. I am hoping you can also find a solution for the problem I posted on the cubox-community: "The one thing that is missing on my amazing cubox-i-installation is the possibilty to remotely control the android "desktop" on my cubox-i from my tablet or phone. There are several sollutions for it, but all my attempts fail on the same error: the apps all give the message that there is no internet-connection. I don't understand what is happening here. Obviously I do have an internet-connection to my cubox-i. I use it to download the apps. The only explanation I can think of, is that the android-app expects a Wifi-internetconnection and unfortunately, my cubox-i only has an ethernet-connection. Can anyone tell me what to do to let the app find my internet-connection? For example: which modifications should i make on the driver of the ethernet-adapter? The apps I tried to install, all look promising: Teamviewer, Bomgar, google remote desktop. They all will install without any problem, but they refuse the final step of getting an ID for remote access because of connection-problems."
Andy has a problem. Game devs can help. Now that tablets are powerful and cheap enough, many users are using them with keyboard and mice to have a small desktop experience. Problem is most devs only write code for touch controls. This makes trying to play a game with keyboard and mouse a real chore.
There are a couple of ways to do that all based as far as I know, on having to buy someones software that will help you configure the mouse and keyboard to work with your game. It should NOT be this way. All Andy games should have both touch controls and keyboard and mouse controls enabled. It's silly not to do so - you limit your potential sales which is dumb.
Come on guys.. whats the deal? Why haven't we seen a push to add this functionality to most Andy games? Is it simply because up till now there hasn't been a lot of call for non touch screen peripherals? It seems to me, when small Android Phones morphed into it's sister product, larger more powerful Android Tablets - Android developers failed to make a distinction and treat their apps accordingly. Now there is and will be an ever growing distinction between the two because tablets are getting bigger and more powerful. Will you guys be willing to do this, now that keyboard and mouse use on Android is becoming more wide spread?
You guys better consider this - there are tablets now being sold that will dual or triple boot between Android, Windows and almost any version of Linux you can imagine. People will not only want but Need this functionality in games who choose not to rely so heavily on the touch controls.
Console OS (looks like they are partnering with Intel) is shipping in Dec on real tablet hardware and has a free version PC users can download. Console OS is an Android fork that's designed for gaming and to dual boot with Windows - but it's designed to be powerful enough in style and function to replace your everyday desktop. That's impressive. This will be huge and cause Android Games to require mouse and keyboard support even more. We know the public wants this because this was funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign raising 75.000 dollars.
A simple enough solution to help get more sales for your games is a no brainer seems to me. The Windows and Linux guys will play their games with mouse and keyboard on that same hardware, but they will not buy the Android games. You will lose half your new potential customer base. This will also encourage the user to stay within that Windows or Linux system and Not switch so much into Android. Not doing this can actually hurt the Android market share and use!
What do you think?
(This thread is not a question but hopefully will start a serious discussion on this issue. Mods please feel free to move this to the Gaming subforum.. I think you have one but I cannot seem to find it since I signed up.)
Android devices are so powerful today, and the hardware is becoming so powerful that I don't think that the software is utilising that.
We already have much of the technology in devices of today to enable a desktop environment to be streamed from our phones.
Display output: Chromecast (wireless display), MHL (Wired display & charger), etc.
Input methods: Bluetooth Keyboard & mouse, Accelerometer (to emulate mouse input), etc.
UI: Separate Launcher for the desktop UI.
With Microsoft bringing Windows 10 later this year as one OS for both the Phone & Desktop, surely that will allow them to work better in sync with one another, but that will still require a separate desktop computer and phone to create this kind of experience.
But Google now has the chance to simply output a separate UI from the same device that can display a phone UI all at the same time.
If we look at past launches of major Android builds then this coming Google I/O would be the perfect time to announce something like this, since they say that they usually deliver one major build that focuses on UI, and then one that focuses on major feature integration.
And not only would this allow for us to take our desktop with us everywhere in our pocket and connect wirelessly to any compatible display but also it could enable people in poorer economies to buy one device which could give them better access to the internet with a portable display integrated into the device, and also they could connect to the larger displays to browse the web or work on office documents with apps such as 'Google Docs'.
This could really be useful for people who wish to use their device in the work place too.
With Android mobile now offering multiple user profiles on their phones, surely they could create one profile for work, with all of their work apps available in both their phone and desktop UI's, but also a personal profile with all of their media applications & games available when out of work.
The desktop tower may still be useful for a few years to enable support for legacy applications whilst we are waiting for those applications to be ported over to Android/Android Desktop, but that shouldn't take too long considering how quickly we are see'ing apps becoming available to Android offering the kind of services that many of us desire, and if the developers only need to create one application back end for both the Desktop mode & phone mode, then it will be much quicker to bring apps to market with a small bit of time required to make a UI which can be scaled between the phone & desktop mode well.
There are multiple projects trying to create this very experience, but if it was a major part of the Android OS then finally people will get the experience that many people are waiting for, you only have to look at the comments on the developer pages of these projects to see that many people want this kind of experience.
With 64-bit now supported in Android too there is less of a reason to hold back this kind of experience.
I agree totally. Is this the only thread on this subject? Was going to setup Chromecast for video and Bluetooth for keyboard, mouse and audio. Doing this on a Jiayu S3A which is very powerful. Would like one place to discuss what works and what doesn't. Launcher options also need to be discussed.