Develop Bugs

What can be done to get open gl working

I am aware that this has been asked many many times, but i don't see a thread for this issue. I would like to know what attemps have been made to get some sort of support. I am by no means a developer, but i will try my best to get things running. Would it be something as simple as taking a a file out of a current android phone with the same specs and modding for use with a touch pro.

I'm simply curious if there is a thread or website around that discusses this and other issues in more detail.
I'm no kernel hacker, but I am...curious.

That's what i would like to know. facts about how far the development is. Maybe we could start a thread that has such progress stated. Where only the devs would be able to post, so we can have us a look.

The best you can do is read the IRC logs from #htc-linux. I think I recall reading in the logs that klinux had gotten OpenGL working on the Pro2, even with applications like Neocore (thought they're apparently slow).

You have to be a little bit more clear on what you mean by "open gl working".
I'm the developer who was working on the open gl for the klinux build. Bottom line is that open gl is working, but not with hardware acceleration. We used then nexus one drivers (adreno200) to enable things a live wallpapers. But it's so slow its not even worth it.
Now to get hardware 3d working 100%? a lot more work and testing. lol.

Well is hardware 3d working for any of the current android ports in any capacity?
Also, I'm so used to reading hardware specs in Desktop computer form. But with these phones, the only thing I know about them is the CPU manufacturer, model number, and speed.
Is there a separate chipset that handles audio graphics etc, or is it completely SoC.
I read about recent Android ports on the iPhone, and it seems they already have things like external audio working. Is this because the hardware on the iPhone similar to another HTC Android phone, more so than the hardware in the Rhodium?

awesome thread... actually informative and supportive.
i think what the OP is saying is how can us lowerscale highend users be more involved, perhaps in the debugging, data gathering... we could start a -sub group dedicated to each corresponding issues... bill gates didnt invent windows, him and his crew did. the more the merrier eh?

I have a long running reverse engineering thing going on. I have been looking for more info other than IRC. I would like to put my good skills to work w/out starting from scratch. Any info?
EDIT: I did find this, It has some helpful starting info: http://www.androidonhtc.com/wiki/Get_Involved

This is a great thread! I've been wanting to get in on some of this action. Hopefully this will reduce some of the clutter in Reefer's thread.

I meant to get hardware acceleration working. How far has this come along since i posted this??

Only Diamond / Raphael has hardware 3D enabled so far.
Very limited 3D for "low resolution" could be enabled in blackstone or other devices with workaround but that is somehow meaningless.
phh has tried different combinations of memory allocation but in vain.
so am I... given up at the moment.

mcdull said:
Only Diamond / Raphael has hardware 3D enabled so far.
Very limited 3D for "low resolution" could be enabled in blackstone or other devices with workaround but that is somehow meaningless.
phh has tried different combinations of memory allocation but in vain.
so am I... given up at the moment.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Phh recommended to trace down mem locations used by wince and that has been done but it still refuses to fire up once pmem.c is modified.
Recently i got the wince dmesg from my rhod in hopes that a cold boot would show as to how the 3d is being activated but that also showed no results. I get this crap when Manila is launched.
[ManilaToday](34156): ### Launching manila ###
23:20:09 [DISP] DrvEscape::HTC_SET_3D_LAUNCHING_FLAG.
I'm not sure what HTC_SET_3D_LAUNCHING_FLAG is.
The next step would be to make an android app and trace down what the hell the libgles_qcom driver is actually doing to see if it is working properly. If you load up ahi2dati.dll on winmo you can actually use the functions to show crap on the screen so i'm hoping the same can be done on android.
Not sure what else can be done at this stage.

[ACL] said:
Phh recommended to trace down mem locations used by wince and that has been done but it still refuses to fire up once pmem.c is modified.
Recently i got the wince dmesg from my rhod in hopes that a cold boot would show as to how the 3d is being activated but that also showed no results. I get this crap when Manila is launched.
[ManilaToday](34156): ### Launching manila ###
23:20:09 [DISP] DrvEscape::HTC_SET_3D_LAUNCHING_FLAG.
I'm not sure what HTC_SET_3D_LAUNCHING_FLAG is.
The next step would be to make an android app and trace down what the hell the libgles_qcom driver is actually doing to see if it is working properly. If you load up ahi2dati.dll on winmo you can actually use the functions to show crap on the screen so i'm hoping the same can be done on android.
Not sure what else can be done at this stage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, i would love to help out as i have never rly done anything like this b4. What exactly are you doing. How do you get HTC_SET_3D_LAUNCHING_FLAG?
How would i open a .dll, i dont think these can just be opened up to see what they are doing. I am on the dark side of the moon here. I know whats going on, but have no clue what to do to help.

garage_man said:
Ok, i would love to help out as i have never rly done anything like this b4. What exactly are you doing. How do you get HTC_SET_3D_LAUNCHING_FLAG?
How would i open a .dll, i dont think these can just be opened up to see what they are doing. I am on the dark side of the moon here. I know whats going on, but have no clue what to do to help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I actually found HTC_SET_3D_LAUNCHING_FLAG on the wince dmesg. You can do this by doing a pwf dump.txt 0x16a00000 0xFFFF0 in haret. I did it after a cold boot to see if anything is done to the gpu once wince boots.
Loading the dll is easy. just make a simple win32 app and do a loadlibrary. This part works but it's not helping on android. I'm interested to see what mcdull thinks since i think he has ventured a lot into this as well. Right now if we can make a simple app in android to load the libgles_qcom.so directly and trace every step, i think that would be helpful to see where we are failing. I'm close to giving up..lol i already took 2 sick days from work to get to where i am now so i could use some help.
Here is what i got out of the chip in wince.
name: ATI HandHeld Interface
versions: 2.07.05110.34681
Revision: 0
ChipID: 1362104322
revisionid: 0
TotalMemory: 15990784
BusInterfacemode: 2
InternalmemSize: 262144
ExternalMemSize: 0
Surface info: 800x480
surface total bytes 768000
dwFrameBufferPhysical=0x14c00780 m_dwFrameBufferVirtual=0x57e00000 dwFrameBufSize=0xbb800

Most people here could probably not help with the hardcore kernel dev stuff, but I guess if you need memory locations or so (be it for opengl/sound etc) I think there a a LOT of people that are willing to run some apps that dump a txt file with debugging info & mem locations to their SD-card and send you that
I would love to help with developing, even if it means that I have to boot into winmo and android all night long and gather certain information, memory-adresses, try different versions of programs with all kinds of parameters etc.

Star-Lite said:
Most people here could probably not help with the hardcore kernel dev stuff, but I guess if you need memory locations or so (be it for opengl/sound etc) I think there a a LOT of people that are willing to run some apps that dump a txt file with debugging info & mem locations to their SD-card and send you that
I would love to help with developing, even if it means that I have to boot into winmo and android all night long and gather certain information, memory-adresses, try different versions of programs with all kinds of parameters etc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We need more devs in general. I ran a trace on a basic app that runs 3d. So there is still a lot of crap to examine.

I'm willing to kill my touch pro 2 and remove the CPU to trace the JTAG locations but I only have the datasheet from the MSM7200/7500, not sure if it will be the same locations. I bet if I hooked up my Segger I could see exactly what is failing on the OpenGL and sound side since alot of hardware debugging is done this way...just sucks I dont know for sure if the pinouts are the same. I'm done it on quite a few different phones and boards over the years so its not a big deal. Omap3430 was simple to trace and the OMAP3530 had the exact pinouts.

BinaryDroid said:
I'm willing to kill my touch pro 2 and remove the CPU to trace the JTAG locations but I only have the datasheet from the MSM7200/7500, not sure if it will be the same locations. I bet if I hooked up my Segger I could see exactly what is failing on the OpenGL and sound side since alot of hardware debugging is done this way...just sucks I dont know for sure if the pinouts are the same. I'm done it on quite a few different phones and boards over the years so its not a big deal. Omap3430 was simple to trace and the OMAP3530 had the exact pinouts.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sounds crazy.. i love it.
I was messing around today and made a small app to load the libgles_qcom.so directly to see if i can replicate my winmo success. Most of the ahi functions are included in the android driver as well except for AhiDispSurfGet which made it impossible for me to draw anything on screen.
The chip did pump out the same info as i posted before and it matches so thats a step in the right direction. Means we can recognize the chip with no problems and all 15.25 memory is reporting as well. If i had more documentation on those functions exported im sure i can get the chip to try to display something directly.

Interesting bit of info I read and perhaps someone can clarify this here. The Sprint Touch Pro 2 uses the Qualcomm MSM7600 processor. The AT&T Tilt2 (GSM phone) uses the MSM7201A processor. The "A" refers to the smaller 65nm die size (I believe).
From what I've read, some changes occurred on the MSM7200 -> MSM7201 due to patent infringements. The next question is, is the MSM7201A and MSM7600 essentially the same chip, just different hardware for CDMA/GSM?
I guess the "libgles_qcom.so" library is used in many other HTC Android phones, but for some reason it's failing on the touchpro2/tilt2, and we're not sure why (although logically it sounds like the library should work as it's used by other android phones with the same chipset)? I'm no kernel dev (I write .NET/c# apps which are much easier than kernel stuff), but am somewhat familiar w/ linux and perhaps can assist in development..

NewbTrader said:
Interesting bit of info I read and perhaps someone can clarify this here. The Sprint Touch Pro 2 uses the Qualcomm MSM7600 processor. The AT&T Tilt2 (GSM phone) uses the MSM7201A processor. The "A" refers to the smaller 65nm die size (I believe).
From what I've read, some changes occurred on the MSM7200 -> MSM7201 due to patent infringements. The next question is, is the MSM7201A and MSM7600 essentially the same chip, just different hardware for CDMA/GSM?
I guess the "libgles_qcom.so" library is used in many other HTC Android phones, but for some reason it's failing on the touchpro2/tilt2, and we're not sure why (although logically it sounds like the library should work as it's used by other android phones with the same chipset)? I'm no kernel dev (I write .NET/c# apps which are much easier than kernel stuff), but am somewhat familiar w/ linux and perhaps can assist in development..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
learn haret/haretconsole and take a look a the kernel. good place to start. Feel free to come into the irc board if you have any questions

Syncing the Kin--Linux

Long time follower of all of the work done here. Its a shame that the device is so locked down and no progress has been made. However, I thought I would share with anyone who is interested that its now possible to sync your kin on linux without the need for a virtualbox and windows loaded up.
You can find the fork of lib-mtp at: github [dot] com/kbhomes/libmtp-zune
I've tested it and am able to now sync via terminal or with gMTP. The project was started with the hopes of syncing zunes.. Zune has the same handshake process as the KIN (MTPz)
The background on how it came to be can be found on his project blog: kbhomes.github [dot] com/blog [dot] html.
Hope this helps anyone else who just would like to sync pictures, video, images, songs.
Back to lurking I will go.

Well, it was possible already. No one here uses virtual machines (i hope) in linux but mono runtime.
At least till Kino version comes, so more native (c++ over libusb) approach would be taken.
If you are able to use the standard MTPz way (not our shorcut mtp propietary command), a better approach would be to help here into decrypting the app syncing/uploading procedure, so we could understand what xna framework does in the background and do homebrew launch (which could then help the phone development).
On the other hand, being able to "transparent" sincing would be kind of a good stuff if you could use the kin in software like rythmbox

Sounds good. I hadnt thought abou going at the KIN through Linux before although it would make sense if the KIN was open source. I dont know how much this will help us though.

What he's providing is a fork of the mighty libmtp libraries & tools which is a open implementation of mtp (right one) used by almost any access on the linux environment to mtp devices.
in that fork, he redid the real stuff (aka MTPz) which could be just said as "bypassing" the kin handshake between zune and the device. At least if kin operates exactly like a Zune device (which we think).
It could help by using the kin as a normal (not protected) device on linux providing which kino does IF programs are redirected to it instead normal libmtp, so you can access files and also use in Zune-like software.
On my test field, i wasn't able to compile the software "out of the box" to try on my debian box, so no providing compilation instructions nor a .deb file (debian & ubuntu flavours) or a .rpm file (fedora & redhat 's) makes it just another utility which is non usable by common joe.
What i meant above is that the blog (which i followed back in the day) explains what he did for reversing mtpz protocol, but is not a walkthrough, so we can't just take it and learn, for example, how the kin receives "half succesfully" a XNA application, as i did back in the day in the thread "XNA madness".
better now?

What f we programm an application split it in half and add a part we dont care about for the other half that does nothing then send it to the device with a strip that tells it to complete itself by recommbining itslef on the device?

[Q] Why does the Windows RT jailbreak need volume button?

I'm posting this here because it says I need to get 10 posts in order to post on the Windows 8 development forums.
Why does the Windows RT jailbreak require that you press the volume button? As far as I can tell, pressing volume is used to trigger a code path in winsrv.dll on which a hook is placed. The hook jumps to the code cave between the .text and .data segments.
Reading the disassembly, the injected code uses the native API equivalent of EnumDeviceDrivers to get ntoskrnl.exe's base address, then calls the broken NtUserSetInformationThread subfunction 9 0x7EFF0 times to clear g_ciEnabled in the kernel. (I read the part about interlocked operations causing an exception in ARM if the target is unaligned, unlike x86 where it's merely not atomic.)
Instead of hooking an existing code path, why not inject a DLL into csrss.exe and create a thread in it? This seems like it would be much more stable, and wouldn't require pressing the volume button. CreateRemoteThread doesn't work with csrss.exe, because it tries to register the new thread with csrss.exe. Oops. However, RtlCreateUserThread *does* work, since native threads don't need to talk to csrss.
Where did cdb.exe come from? It doesn't come with the Visual Studio 2012 Remote Tools, so I'm guessing that it's a leak. In the absence of any other information, I'm going to guess that it's a leaked ARM version of Debugging Tools for Windows given to hardware developers who write drivers for Windows RT.
I'm working on a custom jailbreak that improves on a lot of issues. It's a single file, a .bat, that extracts everything needed, and a jailbreak program written in C. I've already gotten the custom C DLL loaded and executing, and am now looking into what I need to do to csrss.exe. Getting code executing inside csrss.exe won't be too hard, but I'm wondering what that code will need to do.

Moved here as not an Android related development issue, so was out of place in General forums.

You won't be able to inject .dll's. Windows will refuse to load the modules, unless the jailbreak has already ran.
As far as why it needs the volume button, you're correct in that it just executes an easily hooked code path in csrss.

netham45 said:
You won't be able to inject .dll's. Windows will refuse to load the modules, unless the jailbreak has already ran.
As far as why it needs the volume button, you're correct in that it just executes an easily hooked code path in csrss.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My DLL was linked with /filealign:4096, resulting in a perfect RVA to file offset mapping (assuming I don't create more than a small amount of zero-initialized global variables). With that, I can use NtMapViewOfSection without SEC_IMAGE to map it into csrss's memory without ci.dll getting in the way.
Once the DLL is mapped, I fix up its relocations, load the imports, and RtlAddFunctionTable. From there, the DLL is stable enough to do most things. All this works already - I'm just writing what to do next.
Does Tuesday's win32k.sys patch fix this bug? I saw that the patch had fixes for like 20 win32k bugs found by the Google guy who discovered the NtUserSetInformationThread 9 exploit.

Myriachan said:
I'm posting this here because it says I need to get 10 posts in order to post on the Windows 8 development forums.
Why does the Windows RT jailbreak require that you press the volume button? As far as I can tell, pressing volume is used to trigger a code path in winsrv.dll on which a hook is placed. The hook jumps to the code cave between the .text and .data segments.
Reading the disassembly, the injected code uses the native API equivalent of EnumDeviceDrivers to get ntoskrnl.exe's base address, then calls the broken NtUserSetInformationThread subfunction 9 0x7EFF0 times to clear g_ciEnabled in the kernel. (I read the part about interlocked operations causing an exception in ARM if the target is unaligned, unlike x86 where it's merely not atomic.)
Instead of hooking an existing code path, why not inject a DLL into csrss.exe and create a thread in it? This seems like it would be much more stable, and wouldn't require pressing the volume button. CreateRemoteThread doesn't work with csrss.exe, because it tries to register the new thread with csrss.exe. Oops. However, RtlCreateUserThread *does* work, since native threads don't need to talk to csrss.
Where did cdb.exe come from? It doesn't come with the Visual Studio 2012 Remote Tools, so I'm guessing that it's a leak. In the absence of any other information, I'm going to guess that it's a leaked ARM version of Debugging Tools for Windows given to hardware developers who write drivers for Windows RT.
I'm working on a custom jailbreak that improves on a lot of issues. It's a single file, a .bat, that extracts everything needed, and a jailbreak program written in C. I've already gotten the custom C DLL loaded and executing, and am now looking into what I need to do to csrss.exe. Getting code executing inside csrss.exe won't be too hard, but I'm wondering what that code will need to do.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello!
Glad to see here sensible Guru, who understand, that non-permanent JB, requiring "Vol -" pressing and hanging in RAM - is a vicious way! I can't understand reluctance of Netham45 to make a permanent JB (nothing personal). If you will develop your own JB with options, described above, it will be a breakthrough! Wish you good luck and fastest implementation of planned :fingers-crossed:

If you think netham45 is reluctant to make a permanent jailbreak, your lack of understanding is far greater than you know. A permanent jailbreak would be excellent, especially one that was active immediately at boot (instead of requiring a delay after booting, during which time the default restrictions are still in place).
However, there are some issues with the current jailbreak technique. In particular, it's dependent upon knowing the correct offset for the flag that needs changing, there's no way to know for certain the state of that flag before writing it, and the offset changes with updates. If the wrong offset is written to, or the wrong value written, the system crashes. Therefore, making a "permanent" jailbreak using this hack runs a very real and serious risk of putting the device into a bluescreen-reboot loop after an update, even one that isn't intended to break the jailbreak, just by accident.
In order to make a reasonably safe permanent jailbreak, a new jailbreak method will need to be discovered. That's not a trivial thing; the first one took some time to discover at all, and the effort on finding new methods has fallen off somewhat as many people are now looking for ways to use the existing one rather than looking for new ones. Additionally, even if a new method is found (which would be good; we should always have a backup), there's no guarantee that the new technique will any better-suited for being persistent or even automatic on bootup.

GoodDayToDie said:
However, there are some issues with the current jailbreak technique. In particular, it's dependent upon knowing the correct offset for the flag that needs changing, there's no way to know for certain the state of that flag before writing it, and the offset changes with updates. If the wrong offset is written to, or the wrong value written, the system crashes. Therefore, making a "permanent" jailbreak using this hack runs a very real and serious risk of putting the device into a bluescreen-reboot loop after an update, even one that isn't intended to break the jailbreak, just by accident.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did put in some code to automatically find the offset (downloads the pdbs from MS and disassembles that chunk of code from ntoskrnl and parses it), though it still does make some heavy assumptions that I wish I could do without. It should be in 1.13a.
Note that it's still just assuming that csrss is perfect, though.
Denis_63 said:
Hello!
Glad to see here sensible Guru, who understand, that non-permanent JB, requiring "Vol -" pressing and hanging in RAM - is a vicious way! I can't understand reluctance of Netham45 to make a permanent JB (nothing personal). If you will develop your own JB with options, described above, it will be a breakthrough! Wish you good luck and fastest implementation of planned :fingers-crossed:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd love a persistent jailbreak, but we don't have an exploit for one yet. I'm not reluctant to make one, I don't presently have the ability to. The tool that Myriachan is talking about would have the same issue.

netham45
GoodDayToDie
Hey, guys, I bag pardon, if I were too harsh... I'm not the Guru as you are, and really had no notion about the level of complexity of the problem. Becose of that I wrote - "Nothing personal" Wish all of you GOOD LUCK in your important work!

[Lib][Java/JAR] RegIOLib - Java/Registry In/Out Communications Lib

Hey there,
I thought it was time to release something new
A bit of background storyline:
My last projects were all VB/.Net programs, and they were somewhat great, sure. But I was missing the Linux portability and the programs aren't available on all Windows version - Which bugged me a lot. So I finally started coding in Java again! I'm also porting Universal Android Toolkit to Java, so I can easily create a Linux version of that as well.
(If you want to make that happen faster, please donate to me. I managed to fix my laptop, but I've only got a 60GB HDD and I need that much space alone for Windows and I have no income, I'm only 16 )
Anyways, now that you know where I'm coming from, as I'm porting Universal Android Toolkit to Java, I need access to the registry to save the application's settings and easily access them. But unlike .Net languages, Java doesn't have built-in support for this kind of operation, so I looked around and grabbed bits and pieces of code and stuck them together into a Java Class Library.
Thus, RegIOLib was born.
It's licensed under the GPL 3.0 (License info included in the source).
Downloads
Sourceforge
Source Code
http://github.com/Beatsleigher/RegIOLib
EDIT:
I forgot to mention the following: To get access to the Windows registry, the application needs to be started with administrative rights!
You can either achieve this by starting the app via a launcher (Which is what I tempt to do) or by right-clicking the file and allowing it to run as admin.

Beatsleigher said:
It's licensed under the GPL 3.0 (License info included in the source).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So closed source applications may not use it?

nikwen said:
So closed source applications may not use it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Of course they can use it
Just add a link to this thread and my website, done.
But if you're coming from some major company or something, then I would like something more

Beatsleigher said:
Of course they can use it
Just add a link to this thread and my website, done.
But if you're coming from some major company or something, then I would like something more
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
According to the GPL they can't because it requires the source code of derivative work to be published. That's the "problem" with that license if you use it for libraries.
Due to that the LGPL exists.

http://www.tldrlegal.com/license/gnu-general-public-license-v3-(gpl-3)
Limited commercial use. Must include source code. So no, GPL libraries and closed source applications do not mix.
An inelegant solution (which is the one I have always used actually) is to save settings in a file in %APPDATA%, no admin rights are required to edit files in there, or roll your own registry library for the application. Or Beatsleigher could LGPL it, but its his project, his license, I think he has full right to stick it under GPL if he wants to.
Although I dont think saving into a registry key is really cross platform Neither is %APPDATA% but using the %APPDATA% method is simple file read/write so on a cross platform application you can simply change the filepath dependent on the current execution environment.
System.getenv("APPDATA") will return the filepath for the current users APPDATA folder on windows. System.getProperty("user.home") works on linux and I think OSX to get the home directory. I dont think user.home works properly on windows. But it should be easy to switch between the 2 methods, add on an extra bit for where your settings file is and detect which to use at runtime.
Disadvantage (and to some advantage, depends on what the application is doing and whether the author likes it or not) is that saving configuration files as actual files means the user can play around with them. APPDATA is by default a hidden folder. But chances are most users dont even know what the registry is so in a way your settings might be more secure left in there.
Even possible to have an application load settings from the registry on windows and files on everything else.

SixSixSevenSeven said:
Or Beatsleigher could LGPL it, but its his project, his license, I think he has full right to stick it under GPL if he wants to.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Of course, he has that right. It's his code. The GNU even collected some reasons for sticking with the GPL.
Just wanted to point out that the GPL says that all derivative work (which includes programs that use libraries licenced under the GPL) must be GPL'ed (and therefore open source'd), too.

SixSixSevenSeven said:
http://www.tldrlegal.com/license/gnu-general-public-license-v3-(gpl-3)
Limited commercial use. Must include source code. So no, GPL libraries and closed source applications do not mix.
An inelegant solution (which is the one I have always used actually) is to save settings in a file in %APPDATA%, no admin rights are required to edit files in there, or roll your own registry library for the application. Or Beatsleigher could LGPL it, but its his project, his license, I think he has full right to stick it under GPL if he wants to.
Although I dont think saving into a registry key is really cross platform Neither is %APPDATA% but using the %APPDATA% method is simple file read/write so on a cross platform application you can simply change the filepath dependent on the current execution environment.
System.getenv("APPDATA") will return the filepath for the current users APPDATA folder on windows. System.getProperty("user.home") works on linux and I think OSX to get the home directory. I dont think user.home works properly on windows. But it should be easy to switch between the 2 methods, add on an extra bit for where your settings file is and detect which to use at runtime.
Disadvantage (and to some advantage, depends on what the application is doing and whether the author likes it or not) is that saving configuration files as actual files means the user can play around with them. APPDATA is by default a hidden folder. But chances are most users dont even know what the registry is so in a way your settings might be more secure left in there.
Even possible to have an application load settings from the registry on windows and files on everything else.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, as far as I'm aware, only Windows has a registry. I could be wrong though. In the past 5-6 years that I've been developing, I was only developing in VB.Net - A decision that I highly regret nowadays
But I'm so used to being able to save my settings in the registry where no 'normal' user can modify them and cause the program to misbehave, that I'd like my java programs to do so as well.
And seeming as Universal Android Toolkit is a big, big project (I've been developing it for over a year now and I'm constantly adding new features and now I'm porting it to Java making it really hard to release, but I'll get there eventually.
As soon as I've got the major stuff sorted out, I think I'm ready to release a Pre-Release candidate for testing and bug-fixing, but like I said, I'm still having some trouble and then I need to figure out a way to get those settings saved on Mac OS and Linux machines, for which I've already written some classes, but only to install ADB and stuff... And I'm getting side-tracked again, aren't I?
Anywhosers, I think I'm going to leave it under the GPL, even though you're right and that that means that closed-source programs can't use it, but I'll think of something. Even if it's a commercial license, say someone pays 2$ per program. I don't know.
But for the thing you said with %AppData%, what you can do on Linux machines, is (in Java)
Code:
private final String userProf = System.getenv("user.home");
final File tempDir = new File(userProf + "/Temp/(.)<Program>/temp.file");
private void setupTempDir() {
Path tmp = tempDir.getParentFile().getPath();
if (!tmp.exists()) {
tempDir.createNewFile();
}
}
That should solve that problem, then you COULD create some sort of settings file, but then it's just a pain to get and save the settings when you're using multiple GUIs, like me.
And then there's another way of doing that in Android apps, which I haven't figured out yet, mainly because I haven't even started with Android apps and I don't have the hard drive space to do so :/

Beatsleigher said:
Anywhosers, I think I'm going to leave it under the GPL, even though you're right and that that means that closed-source programs can't use it, but I'll think of something. Even if it's a commercial license, say someone pays 2$ per program. I don't know.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK, no problem. The GPL, however, says that you may not relicense it. :/
(All of my comments I've posted yet sound as if the GPL is a bad license. To clarify that: I don't think so. I prefer it for applications, but use the LGPL or Apache v2 license for libraries.)

Beatsleigher said:
(If you want to make that happen faster, please donate to me. I managed to fix my laptop, but I've only got a 60GB HDD and I need that much space alone for Windows and I have no income, I'm only 16 )
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm 17 and I have a 64GB SSD. C#, C++ works great.
Anyway 700 lines of license make no sense. The same about the portable registry library for linux. Could you tell the purpose of it?

Useless guy said:
I'm 17 and I have a 64GB SSD. C#, C++ works great.
Anyway 700 lines of license make no sense. The same about the portable registry library for linux. Could you tell the purpose of it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
GPL isn't 700 lines last time I checked, also I left a link to a simple description of it above (I do love tldrlegal).
There is no registry for linux, no one mentioned a portable registry for linux.

SixSixSevenSeven said:
GPL isn't 700 lines last time I checked, also I left a link to a simple description of it above (I do love tldrlegal).
There is no registry for linux, no one mentioned a portable registry for linux.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did
Anyways, now that you know where I'm coming from, as I'm porting Universal Android Toolkit to Java, I need access to the registry to save the application's settings and easily access them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

nikwen said:
OK, no problem. The GPL, however, says that you may not relicense it. :/
(All of my comments I've posted yet sound as if the GPL is a bad license. To clarify that: I don't think so. I prefer it for applications, but use the LGPL or Apache v2 license for libraries.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm working on a license for it and any other such things. So I'll release it again for commercial and closed-source programs when it's done.
And yes, it does sound like you think it's a bad license. But meh. Everyone has their own opinion, I guess.

Useless guy said:
I'm 17 and I have a 64GB SSD. C#, C++ works great.
Anyway 700 lines of license make no sense. The same about the portable registry library for linux. Could you tell the purpose of it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
GPL isn' 700 lines.
That's cool for you, that you've got that stuff. I don't. Anyways, I'm getting away from .Net languages, and C# is easy for anyone to learn. Especially if they're coming from VB, like me.
C++ isn#'t my kinda thing, as you can't natively create GUIs in it. You always need some kind of library for that sort of stuff.
And I didn't intend this for use with Linux. Everyone that has basic knowledge of these operating systems knows that Linux, BSD, Mac OS etc. don't have registries. And I never even noted that I'm attempting to use registry stuff in Linux. I said I'm porting Universal Android Toolkit to JAVA, and that I need access to the WINDOWS registry to save the application's settings in the reg, so that users can actively change the settings if the program starts misbehaving.

Useless guy said:
I did
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Click to collapse
I said JAVA, not Linux. What I probably did say, however, is that I'm porting my program to Java so that it can easily be ported to said OSs. But never that I'm attempting to save my settings in the registry in all OSs.

Beatsleigher said:
C++ isn#'t my kinda thing, as you can't natively create GUIs in it. You always need some kind of library for that sort of stuff.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Lolwhat?

Beatsleigher said:
C++ isn#'t my kinda thing, as you can't natively create GUIs in it. You always need some kind of library for that sort of stuff..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Errm, those libraries are written in C or C++... native code such as C and C++ are the only languages which can create GUI's. VB.net/C#/anything else .NET use libraries too which in the case of WinForms and WPF are just wrappers around win32 functionality implemented in C.

Beatsleigher said:
And yes, it does sound like you think it's a bad license. But meh. Everyone has their own opinion, I guess.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I love the GPL. I use it for everything (except libraries).
But I'll stop the off-topic now.

[Q] Full Windows 8.1 or 10 (x86, not WinPho) on Asus ZenFone 2

I know this question will come with some confused comments and answers... so Ill ask the question and qualify my question with some examples why I am asking and of what I am not asking.
Question: What is the likelihood of getting/shoehorning Full x86 Windows 10 (or 8.1 until 10 releases) onto this phone?
Qualifying statements:
1. I am not asking about Windows Phone OS at all. Everyone knows Microsoft screwed the pooch during their shift from Windows Mobile 6.5 to Windows Phone 7 then again from Windows Phone 7 to Windows Phone 8. That is why so many of us jumped ship from Microsoft's Phone offerings over to Android in 2010. This is 5 years later and Microsoft might be able to get some market share back, but only if they pull their head out of their a$$....
2. (Example of irrelevant answer... Why do you want full Windows when there is Win RT or WinPho???lol!!!!LMFAO!!!! TrolllFACE!!!)
There are plenty of usage cases to justify full x86 Windows on a mobile device. Microsoft and Intel are pushing on the tablet market but for some reason they have not begun to crack the phone market with Full WinTel.... Simply put, If someone is willing to pick up a Windows 8.1 x86 tablet with 1GB or 2GB of RAM for $200 or $300 bucks then they should be ok picking up a similar device with 4GB of RAM and the ability to make calls.
3. (Another example of irrelevant answer...But Android!!!! It rulz!!!)
First off I am an avid android user. We started with My wife and I getting the EVO 4G in 2010, then EVO 3D in 2011 (I know...), then Note 2 in 2012, and My wife switching out the Note 2 for the Huawei Ascend Mate 2 last year. Im holding on to my Note 2 for the final stretch with its 9300 mAh Zero Lemon battery. All phones we've gotten have been rooted and customized by me. I use Bluestacks and/or Andy OS on all of my Windows PCs and have owned several Android Tablets. In short I prefer Android over Windows phone and iOS and whatever else is out there... Now in saying that, I feel a full Windows device in a phone with sufficient processor and RAM would be able to run Windows as its main OS and Android as an emulator to satisfy my Android needs.

Very well put, I'm also interested in this.
Sent from my MT2L03 using Tapatalk

Also interested in this!

I think this needs Microsoft's direct support. IMHO these are some blockades the community will be met with:
1. Since Android uses a boot.img as stage2, some work have to be done for the boot image to be able to chainload Windows. Vanilla installation goes out of the equation.
2. Figuring out how to chainload a proprietary OS properly is, well, hard.
3. It seems like the device uses some special Intel modem and wireless chipset. Porting won't be easy (Look at Intel PRO...)
4. Although 5.5in is GIGANTIC for a phone, maybe explorer or metro won't be able to fit in it?
5. Onboard storage is lackluster to host a full desktop Windows.
6. Windows doesn't even have a dialer.
But generally, this is a great idea! Being able to run x86 apps on a phone, oh the feels!

I'd be very interested if it would run full x86 or x64 Windows! However as stated, I doubt that will happen.
Even then it would be a bit limited and the main issue I would imagine to be space. The screen is quite small for a 1080p window to display on. I'd want to probably run a 720p res for larger buttons and such, might fit a bit better.
Perhaps if you could have it all run off a memory card, but then it would be rather slow to boot and cache stuff?

Here check out this small presentation. Something could be possible with the virtualization extensions that intel processor has.

This totally depends on :
- how well Asus releases the source code.
- Bootloader unlockable or not, i.e. ways to work around the secure boot.
I tried similar things on Lenovo K900 which is running Z2580. Lenovo's open source release was just horrible since even building the kernel was difficult due to lack of info.
I was able to eventually built the kernel with KVM enabled, but was having trouble signing the kernel for the bootloader.
Just force loading the kvm.ko was not successful either since the stock kernel had some feature missing required by KVM.
I would be interested to work on this phone again if we can form a group.
kazuken said:
Here check out this small presentation. Something could be possible with the virtualization extensions that intel processor has.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

chinabull said:
This totally depends on :
- how well Asus releases the source code.
- Bootloader unlockable or not, i.e. ways to work around the secure boot.
I tried similar things on Lenovo K900 which is running Z2580. Lenovo's open source release was just horrible since even building the kernel was difficult due to lack of info.
I was able to eventually built the kernel with KVM enabled, but was having trouble signing the kernel for the bootloader.
Just force loading the kvm.ko was not successful either since the stock kernel had some feature missing required by KVM.
I would be interested to work on this phone again if we can form a group.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sure we can start a group on slack.com
some other things that also come to my mind:
wine for x86
docker for x86
debian chroot
wine already has some ARM support

This would likely be much easier... Notice the 'high end' system reqs?
http://www.ubuntu.com/tablet/operators-and-oems
I think the biggest problem for Windows would be wrestling with the PowerVR-based gpu.. Those stupid things are usually a roadblock in just about every interesting project..

kazuken said:
sure we can start a group on slack.com
some other things that also come to my mind:
wine for x86
docker for x86
debian chroot
wine already has some ARM support
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry for ressurecting this old thread but you would definitely be able to run Linux X86 on chroot. Then through wine you'd be able to run a lot of windows apps. Only issue is that performance would be low *unless* you'd output the GUI to android's framebuffer (FB0) which would require a kernel supporting this (outputting to framebuffer) which in turn would need Asus releasing the kernel sources so that to bake FB support.
So yeah it's all doable even with relatively good performance and by outputting the image (through MHL or chromecast) into the big screen would give us a X86 PC on the go. In fact I'd prefer it from running windows X86 natively because then you'd be losing calls and notifications... Imagine your *phone* running all your PC's software (well almost all as wine often has issues). You can buy one of those 128gb micro sds and your "phone" would have plenty of space for your (PC) data...

Stevethegreat said:
Sorry for ressurecting this old thread but you would definitely be able to run Linux X86 on chroot. Then through wine you'd be able to run a lot of windows apps. Only issue is that performance would be low *unless* you'd output the GUI to android's framebuffer (FB0) which would require a kernel supporting this (outputting to framebuffer) which in turn would need Asus releasing the kernel sources so that to bake FB support.
So yeah it's all doable even with relatively good performance and by outputting the image (through MHL or chromecast) into the big screen would give us a X86 PC on the go. In fact I'd prefer it from running windows X86 natively because then you'd be losing calls and notifications... Imagine your *phone* running all your PC's software (well almost all as wine often has issues). You can buy one of those 128gb micro sds and your "phone" would have plenty of space for your (PC) data...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried it out. you can get GNUroot and GNUroot wheezy x86 on play store. I was able to get fluxbox with tightvncserver running (though no apps, but was able to get an image in vnc) i am now going to try lxde and then see if nomachine 4.0 will work. wine should be able to run photoshop cs2.

kazuken said:
I tried it out. you can get GNUroot and GNUroot wheezy x86 on play store. I was able to get fluxbox with tightvncserver running (though no apps, but was able to get an image in vnc) i am now going to try lxde and then see if nomachine 4.0 will work. wine should be able to run photoshop cs2.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Problem with running your gui on a VNC server is that it is slow. It's (far) easier to setup though.
On my android machines I prefer to (basically) output an X Server window on the (machine's) frame buffer. You get real time performance (almost the same as if you had installed the OS natively), plus you get sound which is useful if one wants to run sound and video editing software (or plainly listen to music ). It's (quite) harder to setup but it has all been streamlined lately by a play store app named linuxdeploy (IIRC it has added X86 distros support lately).

Yeah... Don't use vnc, use xserver-xsdl . It's in the app store. Best Android X server. In your chroot, export DISPLAY=:0 after starting it up.
Sent from my ASUS_Z00AD using XDA Free mobile app

ycavan said:
Yeah... Don't use vnc, use xserver-xsdl . It's in the app store. Best Android X server. In your chroot, export DISPLAY=:0 after starting it up.
Sent from my ASUS_Z00AD using XDA Free mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's a great solution too! Hadn't thought to recommend it. It's easy to setup too.
Still outputting directly to framebuffer instead of an xserver app is quite faster (even than that!). But I'd expect the Xserver-XSDL performance to be quite good too.

OMG, this is SO interesting. I have been looking forward to put windows desktop in my phone since ages. Virtualization never let you go any further than Winxp. But now, this is another story. I am thinking of getting one of my own to help with the testing
Keep it up guys!

I ran photoshop cs2, via xserver xsdl, takes a while to load but eventually does, but its very hard to drag windows via xserver xsdl. i tried with vnc and was able to open a picture taken from the zenfone's camera and adjust levels. its alot easier to use a physical mouse and keyboard. but here are some screenshots of it running all on the android. it took brute force to create the x with the paintbrush and to drag a window. I ran it at 720p, also at 1080p. photoshop loads a lot quicker using xserver xsdl vs vnc.

You can change mouse settings when you start up xserver-xsdl. By default it's set up like the screen is a laptop touch pad.
The other thing you might want to try is a different Windows manager. I prefer fvwm2 since it's very light.
Sent from my ASUS_Z00AD using XDA Free mobile app

*irrelevant reply alert*
This takes me back to running Linux on the Windows-based XDA Exec. Those were the days.
Anyway, this is a great idea and you're finding some interesting workarounds, but I think you should be looking to get Windows to run natively. Sure, it doesn't have a dialler, but I'm sure someone can hook something up - especially if the interface is anything like the old Voice Modems from when we could only get our internets at 56kbps. (You kids don't know you're born! In my day, etc)
Meanwhile, in the Enterprise world where we try to reduce the costs of people having a whole processor each that they carry around with them, we're looking at using PCoIP to deliver a PC experience on a tablet. Sure, it's a little laggy (we're talking milliseconds on WiFi, though) but you get a lot of processing power, and if you're using Amazon you'll get NVidia rendering too. That's more for workstation graphics - CAD etc, rather than gaming. But then, if you're looking at installing Windows on a Phone, you're probably not going to be trying to play GTA5 on it.
Again, this reply is irrelevant because I realise you probably don't want to shell out $20-$40 per month on a virtual machine with a full Office suite. Plus, it's less fun to play with and not quite as much of an achievement to have set up something that works out of the box.

Native Linux 64 bit maybe, you get a much better OS, customizable, better resources management, open source, faster and waste less battery plus you can create your own mobile friendly interface just like Ubuntu Touch. Someone said it might be possible to port dialer, modem and other driver's concept since android is linux based. Microsoft is a handicapped development private code and as linux creator affirmed, its therefore a crappy OS lol There is steam on linux and it can run OpenGL games faster with the same hw due to uncluttered OS.
The hardest part will be GPU acceleration.

aziz07 said:
Native Linux 64 bit maybe, you get a much better OS, customizable, better resources management, open source, faster and waste less battery plus you can create your own mobile friendly interface just like Ubuntu Touch. Someone said it might be possible to port dialer, modem and other driver's concept since android is linux based. Microsoft is a handicapped development private code and as linux creator affirmed, its therefore a crappy OS lol There is steam on linux and it can run OpenGL games faster with the same hw due to uncluttered OS.
The hardest part will be GPU acceleration.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The .Net Framework is already Open Source. It's likely Windows 10 will go Open Source at some point. It's said to be the "last version of Windows" - probably similarly to the way MacOS X hasn't been replaced with MacOS XI. (There will still be a market for desktops when we have 128bit CPUs, and they won't just stick with the same 64bit kernel.)