USB On-The-Go

Android is a Linux. This means that it can have a keyboard, mouse and other periferials. You could (and probably can) even burn a CD using an Android phone. One of the nice things in OTG was to connect an external screen which is turning the phone to a full blown computer. Or a media player...

HAHAHA! NAÏVE PERSON!

You couldn't watch Netflix on USB OTG. Because... because of... REASONS YOU STUPID PIRATE!!! OR FUTURE PIRATE!!! OR FUTURE WANNA BE PIRATE! YOURETOCLOOSSEETOBEEINGPIRATEYOUPIRATE!

____

disclaimer: I do not want to offend anyone. Above sentences are what I hear in my head when I see that my phone with USB OTG/USB-C is not showing the video on my tv or monitor, or even showing but only subtitles.

disclaimer 2: connecting screen using USB OTG was called MHL, not all devices had (has?) it

Android being based on Linux doesn’t mean it has all of the capabilities of a Linux distribution anymore than iOS being based on BSD or even more relevantly being a fork of MacOS means it can do everything that Macs can do.

As far as connecting an external monitor, that’s a standard USB C alt mode that your phone doesn’t support.

https://www.benq.com/en-us/knowledge-center/knowledge/usb-c-...

My iPhone 16 can send video and power to my USB C portable monitor over one cord. It can only drive the monitor as far as power up to 50% brightness.

If I plug in a separate power supply to the second USB C port on my monitor I can run my monitor at full brightness and the monitor will charge my phone while my phone is sending it video.

https://imgur.com/a/wyV4ReK

Of course my laptop supports powering and video at full brightness over one USB-C port

> Android is a Linux.

Can you run unmodified LibreOffice or Wine on it? I can on my Librem 5.

I suppose you cannot watch Netflix on anything not having a certified DRM-supporting display tract, up to the encrypted HDMI interface. Were it not so, you could PIRATE a movie for free! (Now you need to pay for a $30 HDMI splitter, or something.)

I don't do Netflix, so I don't care. Youtube works fine.

Does android actually support USB CD drives?

Reading, yes. Writing, I have not tried.

I believe I have seen an external CD drive for android, but not sure. It was quite expensive, but maybe because it was having some middleware

What I describe is my genuine experience. I had a phone with usb otg with MHL. And netflix app didn't send video to the screen of the TV. It sent only text of subtitles. Because of some stupid limitations.

MHL is different than using the more modern USB-C Alt mode. In the image link I posted above, that was my iPhone connected via USB C watching “Breaking Bad” on Netflix while I was waiting on my flight in a Delta lounge.

This is totally the fault of your hardware for not supporting part of the USB C standard.

Even Google just started supporting it last year.

https://www.androidpolice.com/google-pixel-9-display-output/

I'm honestly a bit confused about what your actual point is. Most people would agree that HDCP is hostile to consumers, but what does any of that have to do with USB or for that matter android? It sounds to me your problem is that your particular MHL implementation just didn't support HDCP. And AFAIK MHL has nothing to do with the USB standard other then reusing the connector to speak their protocol.

You're right, if this MHL implementation didn't have HDCP it would behave exactly like that. Sad.

My thinming is square. I still connect my monitors using SVGA and watch movies on them. Truly this sounds to really complicated that a phone which is indeed a computer cannot do computer things. My first android was closer to my Linux than every each version following. My colleague had SSH server on his Motorola phone. What I moan about is that limiting, strangling list of changes made to browsers and systems that is happening right now

Yeah all I think about when I connect a device to a monitor is PIRATING ARRR!

> Truly this sounds to really complicated that a phone which is indeed a computer cannot do computer things.

I agree with that point, but I don't think that's what's happening here.

Go back a couple of years and you'll find tons of posts of people trying to get Netflix working on linux. People did find various workarounds of course, including really stupid things like changing the user agent of your browser, but it really wasn't working out of the box like it should.

So the problem really isn't that your pocket computer can't do computer things, but that HDCP is doing what it's designed to do, restrict people from using video streams in a way not envisioned by the designers. The fact that this is a (legally) legitimate use-case doesn't matter, it's just collateral damage.

> Truly this sounds to really complicated that a phone which is indeed a computer cannot do computer things

An iPhone with USB C supports most of the standard protocols you would expect - video, Ethernet, audio, external storage (USB 2 speeds on non Pro models and 10Gbps on pro models), and wired keyboards and mice.

> Go back a couple of years and you'll find tons of posts of people trying to get Netflix working on linux

That’s exactly what is happening. The newest Google Pixels phone that support DisplayPort alt-mode over USB C should work with the Netflix app.

You’re over indexing on Android being based on Linux

> That’s exactly what is happening. The newest Google Pixels phone that support DisplayPort alt-mode over USB C should work with the Netflix app.

? I think you misunderstood something, but yes this works now also with usb-c alt modes on newer laptops on linux, hence the "go back a couple of years" part of my post.

Android can run a full-blown Linux desktop distro in a chroot[0] - so yes, you absolutely can run LibreOffice on stock Android if the mood strikes you. I haven't tried it wine[1], but I don't see why one wouldn't be able to run x86 Wine on x64 Android hardware - it's not an emulator, like it says in the recursive acronym.

0. https://www.reddit.com/r/termux/comments/1e6ahlg/how_do_i_in...

1. Because I don't own x86-64 Android hardware, and it's usually pretty awful (Dell Revue).

> Android can run a full-blown Linux desktop distro in a chroot

By that definition, Windows is a Linux, too (with WSLv1).

If you're playing fast and loose and consider a chroot running under a the devices' kernel (that also handles all syscalls directly) to be the same as a hypervisor, then yeah, Windows is approximately a Linux distro by the same loose considerations. Tomato/tomato: hiring a translator is basically speaking the language, right?

On the other hand, if you're a syscall purists and are particular about the dependency on virtualization microprocessor extensions (or the lack thereof), then the stack requiring a hypervisor to run a guest isn't equivalent to the OS it's hosting.

Bottom line is: if you have a shell access/ a terminal emulator on stock Android, you can configure it to run a desktop Linux using the kernel loaded on the device without installing am emulator or hypervisor. To me, this is materially different to WSL or ChromeOS' crostini.

WSL1 doesn't use any virtualization. The windows kernel loads a module that implements linux-compatible syscalls, and WSL1 processes are flagged so that syscalls go to that module.

The module that translates[1] Linux syscalls? That module?

Can I say I'm fluent in Tagalog with the help of my "English Subsystem for Tagalog v1" (aka a hired translator)?

1. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/shows/seth-juarez/windows-...

I'm not sure what you're trying to imply with your first line. Because your earlier post did have a mention of translation, but you also said it used virtualization and hypervisors.

WSL1 does translate many syscalls. Others it implements itself. It does not virtualize or hypervize. It does not emulate linux. WSL2 emulates/virtualizes/hypervizes, but WSL1 and WSL2 use completely different technology stacks at their core.

The translator is running inside the kernel as a driver.

If your company hires someone to speak tagalog, they become part of the company, and your company now speaks tagalog.

Windows supports linux binaries in the same way that it supports flash drives.