Is there any reason?

YouTube in its native application looks strange as expected (you can expand it to full screen, but twice, first the application itself, then the video in the application, following the arrows):

It looks better if you open it in PC mode in a browser, but you also have to expand it from windowed mode with two clicks:

Tested additional features

Launching Linux and software in it

Once upon a time, Samsung itself developed in 2018 and supported the Linux on DeX application for a year, but then it nailed it. However, the opportunity appeared thanks to the terminal application Termux And package PRoot.

There is an excellent article about Termux itself “Termux access code” from Mr. @ne555. Interesting cases of working with the terminal are listed there, from the obvious types of managing a server via SSH to more interesting types of plotting graphs. I highly recommend it! Obviously, doing these things will be even more convenient on an external monitor and even with a physical keyboard.

Let me briefly remind you what we do to run Linux (for example, Debian) on a smartphone in DeX mode:

We put Termux terminal. We remember that it works immediately under root and does not need to be installed anywhere sudo.
We update packages (at Termux your repositories):
```
 pkg update && pkg upgrade -y
```
Further on official manualinstall the package root-distro:
```
pkg install proot-distro
```
Install one of the available Linux (for example Debian 12):
```
proot-distro install debian
```
Login to the installed Debian:
```
proot-distro login debian
```
We update the packages and install the VNC server (to connect to the Linux interface):
```
apt update && apt install tightvncserver -y
```
We install a lightweight graphical environment (for example lxdeI installed everything, along with Libre Office at the same time):
```
apt install task-lxde-desktop
```
Let’s launch vncserver with the desired resolution, for example 1388×768:
```
vncserver -geometry 1366x768
```
The first time you run the command, you will be asked to create a password – enter the one you like.
In the terminal we see output like New 'X' desktop is localhost:8 – this means that everything has started and you can connect using a VNC client.
We install any VNC client on the smartphone from Google Play, for example AVNC.
We launch it in DeX mode and connect in one of two ways: either simply enter it in the field at the top localhost:8 (address from step 10), or add a server via the “plus” button, then you need to specify the server address localhost and port 560x Where x – the number after localhost from point 10. In general, it is better to check the port in Termux using the command ps -ef | grep whoami | grep vnc. In any case, to connect, enter the password specified in step 9.

After which we see the Debian LXDE desktop, put what we want there and use it. For example, I installed NodeJS and locally launched a working documentation project (since at work I also write manuals). Debian is running in the window on the right side of the screen:

The launch of different editors from the package was also successfully tested Libre Officeand editor Gimp because On Android there really are no normal editors with support for layers (or I couldn’t find one), and one screen (composed of two pictures) for this article had to be collected there. As a browser Firefox on Debian it works quite well. All software is installed normally from repositories via apt.

Put VirtualBox it’s not possible (it’s not available for arm64), but docker Although it is installed, it crashes with the error of lack of rights to change the ulimit. In fact, the Internet suggests that docker cannot be used in PRoot, so there is nothing unexpected, but I wanted to make sure.

In Linux, free and used memory on the drive and the status of RAM are normally shown (the same numbers as in the smartphone itself), but data is not transferred to the CPU.

Development

Because We work in the arm64 environment, so we can’t assemble software for desktop platforms. But at the same time, on Android you can run not only scripts from interpreted languages (such as Python, Rust, etc.), but there are even simple IDEs, for example, I installed for developing Android applications for testing CodeAssist And Code Studio.

CodeAssist Still in development, the interface is very simple and works unstable (sometimes it doesn’t switch tabs correctly), but it can use Kotlin. The application is in beta, so there’s nothing much to complain about:

Code Studio doesn’t know how to use Kotlin, but it seems to be a little better, I didn’t find any bugs in 5 minutes:

In general, you can play around installing the IDE and find something interesting. At least somewhere along the way you can open a project and quickly look at something and even try to assemble it. Again, we already have Debian, although it is limited to a set of software for arm64.

Communication in messengers

Telegram It looks okay, you can enlarge the window, but it won’t give much in terms of usability. Still not a desktop version. So there seem to be no problems in the UI.

The application also works fine corporate messenger TrueConf. For calls with the camera, the phone can be placed on a stand (wireless charging). Examples of work:

So what’s the deal with utility?

This is an interesting question. The whole time I was installing the software, writing an article, I was really surprised that this was even possible, I thought about what real cases there might be.

Let’s see what writes the manufacturer himself (several quotes):

Send messages to friends, watch a movie, work on a presentation – all on one big screen. Wireless DeX is also available for added convenience.
Are you responsible for a large project? DeX helps you easily present your presentation to your audience.
Open the DeX app on your phone and connect it to your TV to watch videos on the big screen or create a virtual classroom for your kids. At the same time, you can continue to do your business on your phone.

Well, in fact, all these cases will be convenient only with wireless mode and Miracast. With wires and a hub it’s no longer so convenient, and I can’t imagine that at some event in a conference room you could easily hook up to a TV panel – the organizers, who have everything set up and are making presentations from a laptop, will not be happy.

But in cases where you don’t want to turn on a noisy computer but you need to type something, your laptop is far away, or you are going somewhere and you know that there will be a TV in the hotel/apartment and you may need to do something like that for work or just stupidly launch YouTube from your subscriptions – then you can take the hub with you (and, if desired, a small keyboard/mouse) and be fully armed, so to speak.

While I was testing this thing, I used it myself in the following cases:

something urgent to fix in work tasks at home, when I was too lazy to take the laptop from the office
write and layout this article on Habré
choose something in online stores – it is obvious that any site on a large monitor is more convenient to use than on a small one, especially if you need to compare product characteristics
Once there was an urgent need to connect remotely to a person’s desktop and help there at one point, which again would have been extremely inconvenient to do from a small screen.

If you have any other real life cases or ideas why this might be needed, write in the comments and vote in the poll. Thank you for your attention!