Ubuntu 18.10 Planning For GS Connect, Allowing Phone Integration With The Desktop

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu 18.10 Planning For GS Connect, Allowing Phone Integration With The Desktop

Canonical has expressed interest in shipping Ubuntu 18.10 with GS Connect, the GNOME Shell implementation of KDE Connect that allows interfacing with your phone from the desktop. GS/KDE Connect allows receiving phone notifications on your desktop, viewing and responding to messages from your desktop, and to use your phone as a remote control to the desktop, among other features...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-18.10-GS-Connect

[JPFSanders]

We do not need the phone invading the desktop, nor we need to remote-control the desktop, there are a trillion of these.

What we need is to be able to access the phone's screen with the computer, we need to be able to remote-desktop into the phone.

The phone's notifications need to remain in the phone, what I need is the keyboard and mouse to operate on the phone.

A single screen, mouse and keyboard to control everything, the phone part of my desktop, not the other way around.

I'm shocked no one gets it.

[jwtalbot]

Here is t he gnome app I've been using it for a while and it work flawlessly.

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1319/gsconnect/

[JPFSanders]

We do not need the phone invading the desktop, nor we need to remote-control the desktop, there are a trillion of these.

What we need is to be able to access the phone's screen with the computer, we need to be able to remote-desktop into the phone.

The phone's notifications need to remain in the phone, what I need is the keyboard and mouse to operate on the phone.

A single screen, mouse and keyboard to control everything, the phone part of my desktop, not the other way around.

I'm shocked no one gets it.

Maybe I spoke too soon, there is apparently a monitor plugin for KDE Connect!

[JPFSanders]

Maybe I spoke too soon, there is apparently a monitor plugin for KDE Connect!

Well, nope :-(

[geegee]

been using kde-connect for quite some time and i especially love the copy-paste and files exchange features.
some features however are nice just for showcasing like controlling the mouse pointer from your phone but i really wouldnt know how this would ever be useful...

[MannerMan]

Well, nope :-(

Maybe this is of interest for you: https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy

[JPFSanders]

Maybe this is of interest for you: https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy

Thank you!, I'll test it right away.

I have been shocked for years that this functionality is not part of mainstream Android out of the box.

[treba]

We do not need the phone invading the desktop, nor we need to remote-control the desktop, there are a trillion of these.

What we need is to be able to access the phone's screen with the computer, we need to be able to remote-desktop into the phone.

The phone's notifications need to remain in the phone, what I need is the keyboard and mouse to operate on the phone.

A single screen, mouse and keyboard to control everything, the phone part of my desktop, not the other way around.

I'm shocked no one gets it.

Ahm, I think that is a minority position. People use small, portable devices as remote for big, unportable ones. Not the other way around. And the phone has the biggest potential as desktop remote.

I know quite a few people who love their walled apple garden for that reason. Change the music while sitting at a table (and having the desktop connected to the sound system). Show a picture, taken from your phone, on you apple tv. Stuff like that. I do agree that messenger integration on the desktop is quite a nice thing. But there're better ways for archiving that than using a remote protocol.

[Awesomeness]

This will make it easier to ship with 18.10 without having to pull in a load of new dependencies and increase further the ISO size.

KDE Connect has a small dependency footprint. Ubuntu, as it's typical for their sloppy packaging, had huge unneeded package requirements listed that where then observed by Apt (IIRC something around the ballpark of 500MB). Since then, however, the Ubuntu bug was fixed and the dependencies reduced.

The true reason is that KDE and Qt software is currently in the unsupported Universe repository. Pulling the proper KDE Connect back-end into Ubuntu means that Canonical suddenly had to care for Qt and some parts of KF5. Proper KDE Connect back-end, btw, works absolutely fine under Gnome. That Andy Holmes guy also wrote a Gnome GUI for proper KDE Connect. It works find and gets all the KDE Connect updates immediately and not only after a delay (for GSConnect every single feature must get rewritten in JavaScript).

Maybe someone would be interested in porting the phone side app to iOS? 😉

Oh look, Canonical once again too cheap to do the work. When they port existing code to iOS, it means that they have to respect KDE's (L)GPL licenses, meaning they can't slap their shitty CLA on it.