I had recently been looking for a laptop to replace my wife's aging machine. She wanted something to hit all her social media stuff, save pictures and videos, basic office, and watch her tv and movie streams.
I had a barely-used lenovo that I had put xubuntu on that I wanted her to try first to gauge her size and performance requirements, but she wasn't ready for linux. I searched around a bit (knowing putting windows 10 back on there was not an ideal experience) and came across RemixOS, a version of android for PC.
That's when it clicked for me. She didn't need a traditional PC. What she really wanted was her phone in a bigger form factor (with usable keyboard). I was able to get all her apps on in a few minutes and she had a workable system with nearly no learning curve. I suspect this will be the case for more people as time goes on. I'm in favor of a competitor to windows, and I now think that is android, not linux.
It's called CloudReady and no it doesn't have Android support yet and I don't think it's planned. Though some have hacked it to run Android apps but it's super super buggy.
On that note, Android 7 and newer supports tiled apps. And if the OEM wants to, can even do floating apps (thinks windows).
Also, Samsung demoed their Galaxy S8 the other day. And one of the big tings was Dex, a dock that turned the phone into a desktop computer. Microsoft has in the last year or so been pitching a similar system called Continuum.
I had a barely-used lenovo that I had put xubuntu on that I wanted her to try first to gauge her size and performance requirements, but she wasn't ready for linux. I searched around a bit (knowing putting windows 10 back on there was not an ideal experience) and came across RemixOS, a version of android for PC.
That's when it clicked for me. She didn't need a traditional PC. What she really wanted was her phone in a bigger form factor (with usable keyboard). I was able to get all her apps on in a few minutes and she had a workable system with nearly no learning curve. I suspect this will be the case for more people as time goes on. I'm in favor of a competitor to windows, and I now think that is android, not linux.