New terminal GUI working for anyone?

randomgosuser

Hi, has anyone managed to get the terminal GUI to work? Most I was able to do is installing xfce and getting to the login screen, but after that it either crashes or becomes totally unresponsive. Also, if I install a DE of any kind I lose the ability to use the line-based version of the terminal.
Is there a guide somewhere? Has anyone found a GUI that is properly working? Thanks

GrapheneOS

randomgosuser Start with enable_display in the terminal, launch the full screen TTY after running it and then run chromium --ozone-platform=wayland or a similar program able to run in Weston separately. Other stuff should work too but not everything will work with the opt-in GPU acceleration enabled. They have Weston setup in a way that's meant to be working towards running multiple applications without decorations in separate fullscreen windows as part of working towards native GUI integration where you use Android's window manager to manage windows from other operating systems.

extremq

GrapheneOS Alright, I might've not been clear the first time, but I managed to get it working. My issue was that I was not sure how I was supposed to launch chromium while the TTY was unresponsive/completely black.

Either way, I managed to start chromium by running enable_display && chromium --ozone-platform=wayland in the terminal, then pressed on the monitor. It works well, has touchscreen support because it is on wayland.

randomgosuser I went ahead and made xfce work. Before you do that, make sure you change the droid user password by running sudo passwd droid.
I simply did sudo apt install xfce4 and after waiting for some time (it took a bit to install), I did enable_display && startxfce4 then pressed on the monitor icon once again. You won't be able to type in anything with only your phone, so make sure you have a keyboard with bluetooth or usb-C support. Login with user droid and the password you set and that's it.

Also, if you close the terminal and open it again, do note that you will not start in the terminal anymore, you won't be able to send any commands. You will have to press on the monitor and it will send you to your desktop environment (xfce4). This is normal, you basically configure your OS to launch into graphical mode.

Here are some screenshots:
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I think this is an extremely nice addition to Android and I hope further improvements are done. However, do not be fooled: while on Weston, Chromium ran smoothly, on Xorg, xfce4 had a lot of screen tearing. Hope this is useful for others that want to try.

randomgosuser

GrapheneOS ok, thanks a lot, but I think it's too complex for me. Love you guys!

extremq

GrapheneOS for my Pixel 8a, i dont think it works correctly. this is what happens:

enable_display: "Running as unit: run-rcba{numbers_and_letters}.service"
then i press on the "monitor", which indeed launches a tty, but it flashes the greeting and then all i see is a black screen. the terminal also freezes completely, resulting in an exit.

however, if i launch the tty without running enable_display, the tty text can be seen waiting for a command from my root user. the problem is that it's unresponsive, which is what i expect (there is a reason for enable_display).

basically, the tty is unresponsive no matter what.

r134a

@GrapheneOS Do u know by any chance if usb passthrough will be an option in the future?

GrapheneOS

r134a It will eventually be supported but it could be in the far future.

GrapheneOS

extremq

then i press on the "monitor", which indeed launches a tty, but it flashes the greeting and then all i see is a black screen

That's how it's supposed to work.

the terminal also freezes completely, resulting in an exit.

This will currently happen if you close the activity it launched with the black screen. It's supposed to start with a black screen. It does not currently gracefully handle it closing.

It does work as intended right now. It's an early proof of concept, not a good user interface, and you're not using it in the precise way it needs to be used to work.