CAN SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN THIS TO ME? ANDROID OS ON FAST BOXES

[kenj66]

I am getting quite annoyed with underpowered Android boxes. I know the AW80 is out now but it is still too new. I have been looking at the the Zotac mini PCs and similar boxes which have the right form factor and features for a living room PC. But that brings up several questions that never seem to be answered here or in any other website or forum:

1. Can Android OS be installed on Intel or AMD PCs? And, whether or not they can:

2. Can I get install media for Android to install on my present Amlogic box just like a Windows or Linux distribution?

3. Android 5 is out now and I want to install it. Where is it?

4. Why aren't there any TV boxes for sale yet with Android 5?

5. How about upgrades?

6. Can I get a disk or SD chip with it, ready to install? If not, WHY NOT?

7. As an alternative - Is Android OS forever confined to wimpy devices? Let's take those SoC chips, bolt a big piece of aluminum underneath, add a fan and crank the suckers up to 4 GHz! Because I don't want to see slow web browsing or stuttering video ever again!

[RISCy Dude]

"1. Can Android OS be installed on Intel or AMD PCs?"
Android was developed primarily for RISC(ReducedInstructionSetComputing) platforms like ARM processors and relies on a different instruction set than X86 processors. However.....
Android X86 is available and free. It is an unofficial port of Android to X86 machines. You don't have to install it to try it. It can be "live" booted from a CD or USB media(SD card, thumb drive, etc.), or installed. Success will vary, but I have had a lot of fun with it. It has Android "5" at Beta level. Earlier versions of Android have more stable Android X86 releases. It runs perfect on my Acer dual-core/4GB ram laptop on it's built in monitor, but does not display from my laptop to external monitor.
Give it a try, you can't lose. Android emulators for Windows(and others) also exist, such as Bluestacks. Though I prefer, by far, Android X86.

"2. Can I get install media for Android to install on my present Amlogic box just like a Windows or Linux distribution?"
Not exactly, but dedicated developers( some of the best ones are here) have made roms for many popular devices. Much more akin to a "firmware flash", than an install. Some Linux distributions have been developed for some devices too.

[kenj66]

What a great reply! Thanks Dude

I will definitely investigate answer number 1. That is good news!

Re: #2 I am a retired IT guy and, although not a coder, I have a techie background and have been building our home PCs for over 25 years but Android info is really hard to come by. I have great respect for the rom developers here but it occurs to me they are only modifying certain pieces of the Android OS. If they really are addressing the "whole enchilada" then I would wonder why version 5 roms aren't being seen yet. For Android TV we really need the Android API to address the unique requirements for that interface.

If any coders want an interface designer I have lots of ideas!

Ken

[RISCy Dude]

Your welcome.
Have you looked into Android Studio?
It would seem hardware standards regarding ARM SOCs may not be as standardized as those in the X86 world, at least at this point. So cross system compatibility may be more of an issue when moving from one Android iteration to another. Just a thought though, as I am not a coder either. I cut my teeth on mainframes like the DEC PDP 11/55 and PLCs.

[kenj66]

OK, I was excited to look at Android X86 until I saw it had no access to the Google Play Store. Cross-platform seems to be too hard. I need Netflix, Google Drive and the ability to play web videos easily for the wife.

Looking at the Zotac mini PCs I saw they had more horsepower, more SSD size, more ram, a proper wi-fi antenna, usb3 - and so on. Just what Android TV boxes need. The new Nexus TV Player is already being panned as a joke - wimpy!

Thanks for pointing out the Android Studio software. I had looked at it before. My first attempt at code was patching a Heathkit 48 KB CPM system to support a 3rd party hard disk controller. It took me hours using the compiler since I always seemed to forget some silly punctuation! I realize modern IDE apps are far more sophisticated but the current state for Android reminds me of the the wild, wild west - exciting but untamed! DEC mainframes - looks like you may have a few years on me. I administrated an HP-UX mini computer at a prominent Navy base.

Ken

[RISCy Dude]

As for Google Play, many apps can be side-loaded and apks found elsewhere. Amazon's app store and 1Mobile offer many of the same apps. Though Android X86 can experience some app compatibility problems. As to Netflix and Google Drive, I have no experience with either.
Many speak highly of the Intel NUCs for HTPC use.
Though I see the benefit to devices like the Zotac, when you add in ram, a hard drive or SSD, etc., the price for entry can zoom past $200. Though I realize that the $200 offers many advantages. For me, I want a $100 or less android box I can gain a little "under-the-hood" experience with Android, without risking bricking a more expensive device.
If you want to experiment with other OSes for X86 platforms, have a look here. Many "Live" distributions exist, many that will run well on legacy hardware, as well as, more current tech. Have a look at kWheezy and some of the Puppy Linix varieties you will find there. Some distributions are for dedicated media/HTPC use, some incorporate XBMC(Kodi). There are specialized distributions for almost any category you could want.
The mainframe experience I had was as an enlisted US Navy sailor, maintaining a DD-963 Engineering Control and Surveillance Systems Console trainer for the Spruance Class gas turbine destroyers. Located on the FTC Norfolk Naval Base, Made by Singer-Link. Damn I'm getting old. Then 22 years old and solely responsible for that $1.8 million(a pretty penny in those days) simulator. I loved it.

[kenj66]

I have used underpowered tablets without Google Play support and found them unacceptable in so many ways. I am familiar with "side-loading" (what a term!) and have no problem with how an "app" is loaded but did run into apps which did not run. I would like to avoid that.

The alternative hardware can cost more money but the new high-end Draco AW80 is $200 and still needs so many bugs fixed. I was looking at the Zotac units because they have state of the art hardware and are small enough to bolt onto the back of a desktop monitor! Instead of building a new, full size PC every four years or so like I have been doing it looked like I could buy a new mini PC and just bolt them on - and use one at each HDTV for Internet media access.

And yes, the linux distros are getting better and better. I tried linux Mint on a retired 486 machine and was favorably impressed but - there is no Netflix "app" for linux. A deal breaker for me.

For now I guess I will just have to wait until the Draco hardware running Android 5 is finally released. Sigh!

I was the first email administrator for PSNS in Bremerton. I had to add email accounts by hand in an HP-UX System 5 unix system because the IT consensus was that PC LAN based email was not robust enough for our installation. Thankfully, that situation matured quickly. It was not pleasant taking the periodic trips to the commanders office to explain why his email wasn't working that day!

Thanks again, Dude! It has been a pleasure talking with you.

Ken

[RISCy Dude]

$79.99 on sale....

Have you looked into the Amazon FireTV box?
Lot of people seem to like it and it is supposed to do well at Hulu and Netflix.
Though l would think it would be heavily locked in to the Amazon ecosystem.

I enjoyed the conversation as well. Best of luck in your search for a solution.

[kenj66]

Yes, I looked at Fire TV, and just looked at it again - hoping..... It seems quite fast.

You are right about their ecosystem. People always seem to find ways around the supplier's limitations though, such as root access but the deal breaker here is the lack of support for keyboards and mice. Can you believe that?

I still don't have an answer for my questions 3, 4 and 5. We need an improved API for TV mode.

Ken

[kenj66]

I am about to try Linux for my TV box solution. My criteria are pretty simple:

Fast web browsing and Netflix.

I want to use anything but Intel chips - for my own personal reasons, so a husky, quad-core AMD cpu with a light-weight version of Linux may be the solution. The only drawback is Netflix, since getting it to work on Linux is iffy. But I already have a Chromecast dongle which, although single-core, was co-designed by Google and Netfix to stream properly and it does so. Two small TV devices won't be so bad, until Netflix is properly supported in Linux.

I really want to like Android.........

[Tyler Durden]

M8`

The Amlogic M8 boxes are pretty quick,

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tronsmart-Android-KitKat-Amlogic-2-0-Black-M8-TV-BOX/dp/B00KGVMIYY

[kenj66]

The Amlogic M8 boxes are pretty quick,

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tronsmart-An.../dp/B00KGVMIYY

Thanks Tyler,

I have a Beelink S82 which has the same S802 and Mali 450-MP except it came in a round box. These boxes are the first ones available in this SoC hardware market which run with 'acceptable' speed for web browsing. As you know web pages these days are so loaded with images, animations and videos that even my quad-core Windows 7 desktop machine fails to display a web page smoothly.

Try this: find a half-dozen or so web pages, such as you will find on Amazon.com, let them finish loading and then grab the scroll bar and move it down and up in a rapid fashion and see if the scroll is always smooth. I have a graphics card which is only four years old and this seldom works smooth for me because the computer can't keep up with all the stuff it needs to continuously re-display. Perhaps if I had a high-end video card this would work for me but my current machine does not.

I still use a Hard Disk Drive so this may also slow things down as well. These little boxes have the advantage of solid state storage. So, I think I will move on. I will replace my desktops and my HTPCs with something that goes very fast for the money. But they will have to be much faster than the current state of these little SoC devices.

It doesn't hurt that Linux is much more refined and reliable these days and I won't have to send in my tribute to brother Bill in Redmond, WA.

Ken

[RISCy Dude]

Hello Ken, I came across this and wondered if it might fit your needs.

[kenj66]

Hello Ken, I came across this and wondered if it might fit your needs.

Hey, Dude. Thanks for thinking of me!
Very interesting version of Linux! I will definitely check it out.

I just spent an entire day (wasted) trying Peppermint Linux. It has the distinction of picking up a project that Mozilla abandoned where it combines the advantages of cloud computing with local computing as well. They use the "Chromium" browser and integrate the Google Drive and Docs applications. The version is billed as "lightweight" so it will work on older equipment. It looked intriguing so I downloaded the 32 bit iso and ran the preview on my five year old desktop. It ran perfectly! Linux has come a long way. So I pulled out an older Pentium 4 machine I had been experimenting with for use as an HTPC and installed it to the HDD. It appeared to run fine until I tried to load any page with an embedded video such as Youtube. No matter what I tried Chromium crashed and came up with "Aw, Snap!"

I thought this stuff was designed for older equipment! They recommend booting from a USB drive. My five year old PC won't boot from a USB drive! I wonder what is old to them? If sounds like I am a little frustrated - - - I am. Seems like every time I have gone exploring Linux in recent years I end up having to use a terminal and run text commands. To me that means at least that version still isn't ready for prime time.

~Ken

[RISCy Dude]

Hey Ken, Sorry to hear about your frustrations. Linux can be a pill. There are almost as many distributions as there are Android TV boxes. And like the boxes, finding one that is suitable can be a bucket of frustration and disappointment. Regarding Peppermint, I tried dozens, but over time I found the distros that I really liked.
It seems like "old" in the PC or tech world in general, is a very relative term. 2-3 years go by and a PC is getting long-in-the-tooth. Unless it was a maxed-out, bleeding edge model, 5 years old is archaic. Again, I don't know what they meant by "old" or "legacy" systems. I installed Linux Puppy "Slacko" on a 6GB drive in an old pentium 3 256MB ram laptop. It ran, however, any graphic loaded webpage would take forever to load, and forget about flash. To be fair, I doubt there is any safe OS that will allow that old P3 laptop(I have more ram in my shoes.) to deal with modern web features/content. Processor too slow, memory, graphics and hard drive all present serious bottlenecks to today's web or other activities. I have an old desktop that runs a Dual-core AMD 64 2500, two gigs ram and a GeForce 9500GT vid card, it runs several distributions very well, if not turnkey. One is kWheezy, booted from an 8GB SD card using netbootin and with or without a hard drive installed. It is fully functional. This page loads and works fine on it using Firefox(have not tried Chrome).
However, using netbootin will not leave you with a "persistent" kWheezy. I have installed kWheezy to a drive and it runs very fast(smokes) and results in a persistent kWheezy. netbootin will allow you to boot almost any "Live" distribution from thumbdrive. My newer laptop(about 5-6 yrs old), dual-core 64 Intel Pentium@2GHz, 4GB ram, runs kWheezy very well too. I have never had to use the command line in kWheezy to configure it. It just works on the two computers I use it on.
I'm not trying to brow-beat you into liking Linux. I still primarily run Win on my laptop, so I am not an official Linux fanboy. But I do feel that Linux has a future for the typical desktop user. I hope you find a solution.
BTW It would seem Linux Mint(not related to Peppermint) is, by far, the distribution of choice, but I don't like it's looks. Try Puppy Slacko burned to CD on your 5 yr old PC, and see if it runs embedded pages. If it does not work, you'll be out 1 CD.
Anyway, this stuff is supposed to be fun.....right?
-RISCy Dude