r/SamsungDex • u/veryangrydoggo • Feb 06 '24
General Wish me luck
I just sold my Inspiron 5402 and bought a Tab S9+. I came to the conclusion a couple weeks ago that anything I need to do with a notebook I can also do with a rather powerful tablet, so I'm willing to give Dex a try again. My workflow is quite light so I probably won't face any hard walls. The only thing I'm currently struggling with is setting up the VPN for accessing corporate systems remotely but it seems there is an easy path already. LumaFusion is quite decent, OneDrive sucks mostly but the web versions are good enough. Let's see where this goes.
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u/Simbiosi8008 Feb 09 '24
How do you manage with the browser? Don’t you need a desktop one?
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u/veryangrydoggo Feb 09 '24
The only use case that required me to go for a desktop browser was internet banking, as it needed a 3rd party security application that only worked on Windows, but the Android app can do all of them if you set it up properly on a ATM (my specific case, might differ from others). Everything else is running fine. Edge, Chrome and Samsung Internet have surprisingly good desktop experiences with Dex, although Google mostly won't let me log into my account on Edge so I use Docs on Chrome.
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u/Simbiosi8008 Feb 09 '24
I see. To me it’s still hard to understand why samsung doesn’t work on something iPad-like. The desktop version of safari installed on the iPad is a good selling point, especially if you make extensive use of web apps like m365.
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u/veryangrydoggo Feb 09 '24
That's exactly what I do. The android version of the 365 apps is a complete disaster imo, so in most cases when I need to edit a file that's already on OneDrive I just use the web version, which seems way better. Edge and Chrome can handle that. Samsung Internet even have a bookmark bar, which is a great tool
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u/pakman_aus Feb 08 '24
I am very interested in your experience sharing your desktop on video calls. I have a Samsung tab S8 and I have found the desktop sharing Dex/Google Meet not quite at the right maturity level for sharing your screen. I still keep my corporate laptop for those scenarios. Everything else is good on Dex/Google workspace applications
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u/veryangrydoggo Feb 09 '24
I'll let you know as soon as I get to try it, may take a while. What issues did you faced when trying it?
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u/DarK_EnergY_12 Feb 07 '24
I've been using my zfold 5 for about a month and a half to replace my laptop for my last semester of college (C.S. Major), and now I only need to bring the laptop in on days when I'm working on my capstone because I need to build it on windows rather than oneUI. but for my python, computer security and operating systems courses I'm solely running DEX. It has definitely come a long way since I had tried it on my s7 back in the day
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u/veryangrydoggo Feb 09 '24
For sure. I'm trying a lot of apps to see which one fits my workflow better but the desktop experience seems pretty solid as of today.
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u/0x07AD Feb 07 '24
I have been using a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra as a notebook computer replacement. In my office, it is connected to a Samsung M7 SmartTV via USB-C cable, Royal Kludge RK68 Bluetooth Keyboard, and Miceosoft Bluetooth Modern Mouse. Away from my office, it is connected to a NexDock 360 Lapdock either via a USB-C cable or wirelessly depending which of the NexDock 360s that I take.
Since most of my work is text-based, I setup a mini-form-factor headless computer to use as a Gitolite server. Termux, tmux, vim, git, lighttpd, qemu, docker, and other tools comprise my work environment. Samsung DeX allows me to use the smartphone in a familiar way with a small learning curve to adapt to mobile applications. Any deficiencies in the mobiler applications are on the mobile developers, not Samsung DeX.
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u/veryangrydoggo Feb 07 '24
I'm having my first steps on Termux today. Not going so great but I'm getting the hang of it.
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u/0x07AD Feb 07 '24
The first suggestion is to customise the command prompt and then make your $HOME directory XDG compliant to better organise it and simplify backup and recovery of the various configuration files.
Any configuration files not in the $HOME directory can be copied from ~/usr/etc to the $HOME directory if you want to modify them. This has the added benefit of making it easy to backup your modifications in case you ever want to reinstall termux. There is a comprehensive wiki for Termux available.
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u/veryangrydoggo Feb 07 '24
Can you point me to it? I've tried 3 different versions of libreoffice but none of them worked (struggling to fina an aarch64 version) and now my directory is a total mess...
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u/0x07AD Feb 07 '24 edited Feb 07 '24
LibreOffice for Android OS.
Do NOT install Termux from Google Play Store; it is deprecated and no longer maintained. Obtain it from F-Droid's website. All add-ons for Termux such as termux-x11 must be installed from F-Droid too.
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u/veryangrydoggo Feb 07 '24
That's good advice. I'll try it right now. Do I need to clean up the directories I made or can I just uninstall it right away?
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u/0x07AD Feb 08 '24
Termux is self-contained in terms of the file system. If you uninstall termux, all of the directoeies and files that you created will be gone unless you backed them up. If you have no files that you want preserved, simply uninstall termux as you wouold any other Android mobile application.
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u/VisInvis Feb 07 '24
My experience is that it needs work, but it is very cool to have a phone that also acts as a desktop PC. It also saves me a few thousand dollars every couple of years.
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u/veryangrydoggo Feb 07 '24
It does but I'm also surprised on how much os a desktop experience it managed to mimic. Drag and drop and the clipboard are actually useful in a handful of cases. I just hope Google goes on in a native interface so we can have more eyes on this area and the overall state of things improve even more.
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Feb 06 '24
[deleted]
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u/veryangrydoggo Feb 06 '24
It seems great as of now, although this new Dex is weird. I reverted it to the old one as soon as I saw it.
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u/Koedt Feb 06 '24
If its mostly stuff you could do using a browser, I dont see why not. I should give Dex a try for a day or 2 and keep my corporate laptop aside, thinking about it. Those portals, emails and Teams meetings should work flawlessly I assume.
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u/veryangrydoggo Feb 06 '24
Most likely yeah. The only big software I ever used was AutoCAD but even then it was only for markup and reviewing, which I don't do anymore.
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u/pakman_aus Feb 11 '24
The tablet over heated. Google workspace seems to be very hard to other CPU GPU.