Official Everybody Edits Forums

JadElClemens

Member

From: Colorado, USA

Joined: 2015-02-15

Posts: 4,559

RemixOS and the Jide Remix Ultra

I've been searching recently for a laptop/tablet PC for general use and, more importantly, use in college. While I'd be perfectly fine using a typical laptop, the tablet form factor and touchscreen UX kind of appeals to me in a "why not try it out and see?" sort of way.

My plan all along was to get some x86 tablet and run GNU/Linux and Android (and maybe Windows) on it, but I recently stumbled upon Jide and their RemixOS and Remix Ultra tablet. See below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY

RemixOS is an Android ROM by a few ex-Google employees (though that fact is hardly relevant). Its key features include a functional taskbar with quick task switch (as opposed to Android's standard task switching, which is just slow enough to be annoying) and the ability to run certain apps in 'phone mode,' essentially the same way Windows deals with Windows Metro apps that have a phone version (read: nothing), which allows for true desktop-style compositing windows. It's essentially a perfect (for now) adaptation of Android to be a more desktop-style OS.

The tablet is obviously very Microsoft Surface-inspired tablet. It's an 11.6" FHD tablet with a dual-angle kickstand and the same kind of keyboard/cover combo. The tablet began production a couple of months ago after a successful Kickstarter campaign.

After watching a few videos about the OS and tablet, I can definitely see myself using this thing. As I said on Jawapa's ChromeOS topic, my browser covers the vast majority of my browsing needs, and I really can't think of anything absolutely essential that I cannot do on Android, especially with compositing window support. Best of all, the tablet is incredibly cheap at the moment. It's just $400 and sold (officially) by two retailers. If future versions of RemixOS allow for multiple instances of one app (Chrome, for example) and Windows Aero-style snapping ("drag to snap" starting in Windows 7), I'll be able to use the thing exactly like I use my desktop now. Give me a bluetooth keyboard and mouse and I'm absolutely set.

It's got an ARM (Tegra 4) processor (and likely a very locked-down firmware/bootloader), so dual-booting or installing other operating systems will be near-impossible (or fully impossible, really). Even so, ARM support is limited even on Linux, though I'm sure the essentials are all there.

After that wall of text, what are your thoughts? Can you see yourself using something like this?

---

I hate tall signatures.