ubuntu-touchxorg
Ubuntu touch preview does not use X11 for graphics. The repository for armhf contains virtually all apps available in desktop Ubuntu, but they cannot be run directly on the tablet (Nexus 10 in my case).
Is there a way to run those using a virtual X-server, perhaps passing through local VNC to be displayed? I have ssh access to the device, so I can run commands normally.
Ubuntu Touch, and desktop Unity starting in 14.04, will run on top of the new Mir display server. Part of the Mir offering will be XMir, an X server running as a Mir client. This will allow legacy/X11 apps to run on top of Mir without any effort.
However, even if this does allow them to run on Ubuntu Touch, most legacy/X11 applications are not designed for touch-input and small screens, so most of them would not be very usable on phones and tablets.
To allow communication between your Nexus 7 and your host system you'll need to enable the developer mode on your Ubuntu-touch device.
Go to System Settings -> About this phone -> Developer mode:
With the developer mode activated, you have several options to start a ssh connection to your device:
From the Ubuntu SDK (you can even reboot from there):
Using the phablet-tools package (sudo apt-get install phablet-tools):
Start the connection with phablet-shell and once connected type sudo reboot as you would normally do on a desktop system:
$ phablet-shell
/home/sylvain/.ssh/known_hosts updated.
Original contents retained as /home/sylvain/.ssh/known_hosts.old
Warning: Permanently added '[localhost]:2222' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.
Welcome to Ubuntu Utopic Unicorn (development branch) (GNU/Linux 3.4.0-3-flo armv7l)
* Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com/
Last login: Fri Oct 17 09:50:34 2014 from localhost.localdomain
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ sudo reboot
[sudo] password for phablet:
Best Answer
You can also run it on the phone via XMir. You need to create a custom launcher for your X11 application, let's say it is called my_x11_app, and the desktop file is ~/.local/share/applications/my_x11_app.desktop, looking like this: down vote favorite
if you cannot see the app icon on the phone among other apps, just use the search feature, it will rescan launchers and after that the icon will be there.
Additionally, if you need an on-screen keyboard support in the x11 app there are 2 conditions you need to fulfill:
I wrote an article about this on my blog: http://kriscode.blogspot.tw/2016/09/x-applications-on-ubuntu-phone.html
Alternatively you can install Libertine and use your x11 app with it.