First off I will put my hand up and admit that my experiences with Android has been the best. I’ve tried several different version of Android on smartphones and TV boxes, and I’d just wish it was more user friendly. I can see so much possibilities with Android, but everything about it seems like it only half done.
So when I came across Remix 2.0 developed by Jide my initial reaction was rather skeptical, but after pondering on installing a rather lightweight OS on a PC or Mac, and an old one at that, it might bring life back into old hardware. I’ve read about other options such as Chromium, but I wanted to see how well Android would run on a PC.
Here’s the blurb from Remix’s website:
| Remix OS is our state of the art Android-based operating system. We mean it when we say you get a PC experience unlike anything on Android and an Android experience unlike anything on a PC. The innovative features we’ve brought to Remix OS 2.0 have been meticulously engineered to bring you the best of both worlds – the harmonious fusion of a mobile and desktop experience.
What you do on your device is invariably the most important part of any computing experience. By revitalizing your seasoned hardware with Remix OS for PC, breathe new life into it with over 1.6 million Android apps. Whether it’s for work at school or in the office, watching a TV show or playing your favourite games, Android’s rich app ecosystem always has something for exactly what you need and want to do. |
I’m all for reusing old hardware, I must have gone through several laptops which when upgraded to newer, chunkier OSs just ground to a halt, ending up in the back of the drawers. I had an old HP laptop somewhere around here, and I wanted to also try Remix 2.0 on my Macbook Pro Retina (not that it needed much boost in performance). The installation process I would put down as being rather fruitful. Suffering a slight bout of amnesia last night, I set about trying to get Remix 2.0 to work. A good 2 hours was spent trying to install it onto a bootable USB drive. After much researching on the internet and downloading all sorts of tools to try and mount the downloaded img file, I ended up taking crash course in use Terminal commands to get it mounted. Remember to use the 32-bit version for older CPU PCs. I won’t bore you with all the steps involved, you can find them all over the internet, or I’ll get Winston to write up a guide for you all.
The loading splash screen – please excuse the grubby stains on the glass
On the Mac, pressing the Option key at boot allowed me to select either to boot off the SSD or the USB drive. During loading I would get several errors at which I needed to press Enter to proceed, eventually loading up the splash screen. Whilst on my PC laptop, after setting the BIOS to allow booting from USB, it was like a breath of fresh air. Simple tasks operated quickly, unlike previous when using Windows Vista which meant endless waiting for the laptop to respond. Unfortunately my experience on the PC was quite limited as the wireless card in the laptop had already gone to silicon heaven, so I couldn’t do much when I could not go online. The HP laptop was a tablet variety and even though it had a touch screen when you rotated the display module, Remix 2.0 did not make use of it, I’m guessing there’s some hardware non-comparability there somewhere.
Much like every other PC OS you are used to, Remix 2.0 had its task bar at the bottom left containing all the apps you install, and they have moved the notification bar to the far right of the screen accessed by a menu button much like the later version of OSX. Common keyboard shortcuts has been integrated into the OS so you’re not stuck with just mouse clicks, and the they have also managed to let users have the right click of the mouse! Due to hardware reasons, the Mac’s trackpad’s gestures wasn’t available, but the OS picked up all the hardware such as the wireless card flawlessly. If you’ve ever used Android before, say on your smartphone, then you’ll know that multitasking is done with ease, and that software updates can be set to be automatically performed in the background.
As its Android, you’ll see plenty of Google apps pre installed, and the Chrome browser will load the mobile version of websites by default, so you’ll need to play with the settings a bit. And yes, you can even download Android based games from the Google Play Store! Trust me, playing Candy Crush with a mouse is not as fun as you’d expect. Unlike on smartphone the window size is normally dedicated by the screen size, in Remix 2.0 you can actually resize the windows you are using.
It is still early days for Remix 2.0 as its still in its beta stage, so do expect the odd bug to pop up. On my PC laptop, it worked for the short time I played with it, its not polished right now, but I do expect the end product to be a very good alternative for aging PCs. An alternative option is CloudReady made by Neverware. CloudReady is based on open source Chromium and it too can dual boot on your old laptop. Neverware made the news late last year as they are partnering with schools in the US by turn old laptops useable again free to their students. Both Remix 2.0 and CloudReady are free to use.
