I might have written about its availability a few times, but until today I had never actually seen Ubuntu 16.04 LTS running on a Samsung smartphone.
Don’t panic, you haven’t missed any major announcements and Samsung hasn’t started to sell phones with Ubuntu pre-loaded. I’m instead referring to the “Linux on DeX” development experience.
DeX is nifty bit of software tech that lets (select) Samsung devices running Android drive a more traditional “desktop” experience when connected to an external monitor, keyboard and mouse.
“Turn your Galaxy devices into a PC-like experience with a single cable,” Samsung say.
Additionally, ‘Linux on DeX’ is an Android app that’s only available as part of DeX. It lets users download and run a full desktop Linux experience using container technology on any supported Samsung Galaxy smartphone or tablet.
Linux on DeX Video Demo
Now, Linux on DeX isn’t new and has been around in some form since 2017. Yet, I’ve never actually seen a proper “user” demo of the tech — until now!
YouTuber ETA PRIME provides an expansive look at the DeX experience on a Samsung Galaxy S10 in his new video.
The 12-minute clip mostly focuses on the Android side of the DeX experience — I want to say DeX stands for Desktop EXperience, but that might be a lie — but also demos the ‘Linux on DeX’ feature using the (official) Ubuntu 18.04 LTS image that Samsung and Canonical worked together to create:
As mentioned, the majority of the video focuses on the Android side of DeX (which I recommend watching) but you can skip straight to the Linux action that starts at the 8:56 mark.
To learn more about the technology, and view a list of supported devices, you can jump over to the official “Linux on DeX” website:-