Am 09.03.2017 um 12:01 schrieb Bernard Free:
Hello, I have a question, is there a development planned for an X2go Android client?
thank you for your attention
No, for several reasons.
- Android's on-screen keyboard doesn't work with X for Android or VNCclient for Android. Also, an on-screen keyboard takes up valuable screen real estate on the already smaller-than-usual Android screen.
- Regular X applications aren't touch-aware: Buttons are too small to properly hit them with a finger
This means that you would have to use a bluetooth mouse and keyboard for your session - not exactly what you'd want to lug around along with your smartphone.
Also, according to one of our developers, there's the following two extra reasons speaking against it:
Due to certain workarounds which would be required on Android, there wouldn't really be a speed advantage compared to VNC.
There is at least one library that we couldn't ship - I'm not sure if it was due to licensing issues (we're all GPL, which is also the reason why there's no iOS version of X2GoClient - the Apple App Store is incompatible with the GPL - the only way around it is a dual license model, which only works if you hold copyright over the entire code you upload - and we don't), or because it would require rooting the device.
That said, there is a way to run X2GoClient on Android, using a Debian Changeroot on a device that has a real hardware keyboard attached. You can watch a short demo video here, but it will also explain why you don't want to use this in production: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h_kiY78Ks4>
If you're looking for a more or less portable device that you can already run X2GoClient on, check out the Raspberry Pi 3 with the 7" touchscreen interface offered by the RPi foundation, and a small hardware keyboard, as shown in the bottom left of this picture: <http://wiki.x2go.org/lib/exe/detail.php/events:pdrm0031.jpg?id=events%3Astart> You could run such a contraption off of a USB power bank for a few hours. The advantages of that approach:
- Everything works out of the box, binary packages available in Repo
- Native X2Go speed
- At least semi-portable
- HDMI port remains unused by the 7" screen, so you can even hook it up to a large flatscreen to demo stuff.
Kind Regards, Stefan Baur
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