A new project called Maru promises to provide mobile users with a full Android Lollipop experience and a Debian Linux distribution if they connect it to a screen and peripherals.
A phone powered by system Android will magically turn into a Linux desktop when connected to an external display.
It had started as a Canonical project that used the Ubuntu and Android. It was one of the company's first attempts at some sort of convergence between mobile and PC.
Never succeeded, and never started, but the idea worked. We do not know why Canonical withdrew the project, but rather had something to do with the material, which was not so strong three or four years ago.
The Maru OS trying to do something similar, and this time the development team has better material, and it probably should work, at least in theory.
Currently, Manu works only on Nexus 5, and is in a closed Beta. This means that if you sign up, you may have access.
The webσελίδα of the project states:
“Maru Mobile is developed with the latest Android Lollipop. It will be released with zero bloatware, to be the phone you lively and to have plenty of free space for all your applications. Maru Desktop will bring you true multitasking and desktop productivity in a lightweight package. It runs with a stable version of Debian Linux so you can customize it however you want.”
At the moment we do not know if the project is open source code or if it is a commercial release.
