Several Desktop Environments for Linux Touchscreen Devices

infoivonblog.nkfjt@aleeas.com (Ivon Huang) — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 03:00:00 +0800

Desktop envrionments & Interfaces for Linux mobile devices.

I wanted to find suitable desktop environment packages for Linux touchscreen devices, so this article sorts through active projects from the open source community over the last few years. This should give you an idea of which interfaces are available on mobile Linux.

Here, “touchscreen devices” includes phones, tablets, and convertible laptops. In other words, mobile devices.

Why Not Use Existing Desktop Environments?
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Desktop Linux has more than 20 desktop environments, and most of them are still designed mainly for keyboard and mouse input.

Among the many options, XFCE4 and LXQT can barely adapt to touch devices after manual layout tweaking.

GNOME and KDE Plasma have “tablet modes,” but they are still not enough.

So it is necessary to use desktop environments designed specifically for touch devices. The desktop environments discussed here focus on touchscreen devices, but they also work on large-screen systems. App layouts automatically adapt to screen size.

How Do You Install Desktop Environment Packages?
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Linux distros designed for phones, such as postmarketOS, Arch Linux ARM, Manjaro ARM, Mobian, Drodian, openSUSE Mobile, and Fedora Mobility, should all package the desktop environments mentioned in this article, allowing users to switch freely.

Ubuntu touch cannot freely install system interfaces because the system is read-only.

I do not recommend Android users install Termux just to try these. These desktop environments are not meant to run inside a container.

If the system supports installing a Display Manager, you can switch between multiple desktop environments from the login screen. For example: installing multiple desktop environments on postmarketOS

1. Phosh
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Image source: Purism

Source repository: World / Phosh / phosh - GitLab - GNOME

Led by Purism and shipped on its Librem 5 phone. It uses the GNOME stack, but its Wayland compositor is based on wlroots instead of Mutter.

The input method only supports the English Squeekboard, and the keyboard can be summoned globally.

Phosh also provides a scale-to-fit command that can force desktop applications to scale down for small screens.

When a phone is connected to an external monitor, Phosh transforms into a desktop mode with controls similar to desktop GNOME.

Although the feature set is simple, I personally think it is the most stable desktop environment here. Animations are smooth and response time is quick.

2. KDE Plasma Mobile
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Image source: 9to5Linux

Source repository: Plasma / Plasma Mobile · GitLab

One of the KDE community’s projects, it redesigns KDE Plasama into a phone interface layout. Reportedly, it shares more than 70% of its code with the desktop version, and the Wayland compositor is of course Kwin.

It supports Chinese touch input through Maliit Keyboard. The KDE community has also developed a set of companion apps for phones.

The interface layout is closer to Android’s stock launcher. Although it inherits the desktop version’s high degree of customization, it is not particularly stable.

3. SXMO - Simple X Mobile
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Image source: TuxPhones

Source repository: Sxmo Source Repositories

This project brings the interaction model of dwm and Sway to phones, aiming to build the leanest and most customizable system possible.

Users can choose X or Wayland as the display protocol.

Here, SSH is a first-class citizen. It includes many configurable files so you can customize gestures and hardware button shortcuts to perform all kinds of operations. There is no Chinese touch input method.

It is not very intuitive to use. If you do not want to spend time configuring a pile of knobs, do not use this one.

4. GNOME Shell for Mobile
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Image source: GNOME Shell & Mutter - GNOME Blog

Source repository: Files · mobile-shell · Jonas Dreßler / gnome-shell - GitLab

This is not officially developed by GNOME. It is an experimental fork, and it uses Mutter as the compositor.

The controls are similar to Phosh, but it is closer to original GNOME than Phosh is.

5. Lomiri
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Image source: AbhiFxTech

Source repository: UBports / Development / Core / lomiri - GitLab

Lomiri was formerly known as Unity 8, and it keeps the classic Ubuntu-style left-side taskbar design. Its Wayland compositor is Mir.

It used to be led by Canonical and is now maintained by the Ubports community. Although it is old, it has the most complete interface design of the bunch, with full Chinese localization support and a set of companion applications.

It was originally the UI exclusive to Ubuntu touch, but other Linux distros can use it now too.

It supports Chinese touch input through Maliit Keyboard.

Make a Linux Remote Desktop Friendly for Phone Controls

infoivonblog.nkfjt@aleeas.com (Ivon Huang) — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 14:00:00 +0800

Remotely control your Linux from Android with a mobile-friendly UI.

Computer screens are horizontal. Phone screens are vertical. Remote control is awkward. I want to scroll my computer while scrolling my phone.

Someone on Reddit tried a similar idea: Win10 Remote Desktop + tablet mode = poor man’s Windows Phone… great over LAN. They used Windows 10 tablet mode to turn the computer into a Windows Phone-style interface over remote desktop.

This concept is a bit convoluted. Fine, let’s call it “turning a computer into a cloud phone.”

The goal is to make the remote desktop experience on a phone less painful.

Overview
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In recent years, Linux mobile operating systems such as postmarketOS and Mobian have appeared one after another. Along with the PinePhone’s release, the Linux community developed corresponding phone interfaces such as Phosh, Plasma Mobile, and SXMO. Linux now also has many programs optimized for touchscreens.

The Linux UI that best fits both computers and phones might be GNOME. Unfortunately, it still does not handle dynamic resolution switching well, so let’s use a dedicated UI instead.

The current candidates are “Phosh” and “Plasma Mobile”. Since I use Plasma as my main desktop, I chose the latter.

Linux can install multiple desktop environments. As long as we install both Plasma and Plasma Mobile, we can switch between phone and desktop Linux interfaces.

For remote desktop software, I chose Weylus, which supports Wayland and touch gestures.

Option 1: Plasma Mobile
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On Arch Linux, Plasma Mobile has to be installed from the AUR:

yay -S plasma-mobile

Reboot, then select Plasma Mobile (Wayland) in SDDM.
Start the remote desktop software Welyus and enable Wayland support.
After connecting from the phone browser, you can control the Linux computer with a mobile UI.

But most computer screens are landscape, which creates a problem: Wayland cannot force a “portrait” resolution. So I used screen rotation instead. The projected result looks like this:

The remote Plasma Mobile view on an Android device:

This is barely usable, because after rotating the screen, the mouse and touch gestures are reversed. Excellent, just what nobody asked for.

Option 2: Plasma X11 + XRandr
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Desktop Plasma lets you arrange the UI freely and also has a tablet mode, so you can use it on touch devices without Plasma Mobile.

This only works in an X11 session. Following It’s Linux FOSS’s tutorial, use the following XRandr commands to add a custom resolution and force the screen into a portrait resolution without rotating the display.

cvt 1080 1920

xrandr --newmode "1080x1920_60.00" 176.50 1080 1168 1280 1480 1920 1923 1933 1989 -hsync +vsync

xrandr --addmode eDP-1 "1080x1920_60.00"

Then adjust scaling:

xrandr --output eDP-1 --mode "1080x1920_60.00" --scale 0.5x0.5

X11 touch gestures can be improved with Touche.

Even after all these tweaks, the Plasma desktop is still not suitable for phone use.

KDE Plasma Mobile on Ivon's Blog

Several Desktop Environments for Linux Touchscreen Devices

Why Not Use Existing Desktop Environments? #

How Do You Install Desktop Environment Packages? #

1. Phosh #

2. KDE Plasma Mobile #

3. SXMO - Simple X Mobile #

4. GNOME Shell for Mobile #

5. Lomiri #