Android – Grrr!

[Robin GrahamParticipant @robingraham42208]

[Robin GrahamParticipant @robingraham42208]

When I was seduced into getting a 'smart phone' I went for Android rather than iOS because I understood that Android is Unix based, so I thought I might be able to get to grips with it. I think iOS is also Unix based, as any self-respecting OS should be ( wink because I don't really wan't to start a war!) but I thought Android might be more transparent. Not so, to me at least – my latest frustration is that someone texted me a pic which I saved to my 'album'. I can see it on the phone, but it seems invisible when I hook the phone up to my (Windows XP) laptop. Can anyone point me to to a tutorial which explains Android to a vanilla Unix geek? Like being to do ls -la and seeing the filesystem structure?

I've posted this in the tea room because (a) it's nowt to do with engineering, and (b) I should really have a cup of tea and calm down!

Regards, Rob.

Edited By Robin Graham on 12/06/2016 23:51:47

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Robin,

Way out of my league, but; you may find this of interest.

MichaelG.

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

XP often can't see an android device, maybe there's an addon that makes it easy, occasionally It can see the pictures folder, at other times it can't

I can bluetooth between android and my XP machine, but its slow

I hate Android, it almost makes windows look good

[Dave Smith the 16thParticipant @davesmiththe16th]

When i connect my phone it asks how you want to connect it, use the file manager option or mass storage.

You can then browse the phone just like an external drive. Or signup to dropbox or similar.

Every picture i take also gets uploaded to my dropbox account and you can view that anywhere with an internet connection.

I now have a NAS box that saves the drobox files directly to it also, so all my pictures are stored at home as well as on the phone.

[steveteeParticipant @stevetee]

If your phone has a lock screen you will need to enter that code before the USB will connect, otherwise it wouldn't be very secure.

[clivelParticipant @clivel]

It has always seemed bizarrely difficult to get photos off an Android phone, my old phone a Samsung II was not even capable of transferring photos via USB.

How I now do it, is by means of the Google "Photos" app. Install the app on the phone via the Play store, sign up for a free Gmail account. Even if one has no intention of using it for email, Gmail accounts include unlimited free photograph storage for images of 16 megapixels or smaller which includes most phone cameras.

When the phone is connected to WiFi (for those with generous data plans it can be set to use that as well) photos are automatically backed-up to the associated Gmail account, thus allowing the photos to be viewed and downloaded anywhere by means of a web browser.

Clive

[Ian PParticipant @ianp]

Posted by Ady1 on 13/06/2016 00:50:16:

XP often can't see an android device, maybe there's an addon that makes it easy, occasionally It can see the pictures folder, at other times it can't

I can bluetooth between android and my XP machine, but its slow

I hate Android, it almost makes windows look good

I have had three different Android phones and can confirm there is no problem transferring files between Android and XP.

You need to enable 'USB Debugging' on the phone (at least that is what its called as far as I know). You should then be able to see the phone's folders and files in 'My computer' etc.

I have a shortcut on my XP desktop direct to the phone picture folder, as soon as I plug in the phone cable the icon changes and I'm straight without having to browse.

Ian P

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

Have a look at Megasync. It is a free secure cloud service. They provide an android app for synchronising an android device to the cloud storage as well as Windows and Linux programs. You can then choose to synchronise your phone picture storage to the same cloud folder as your XP machine and voila!

Russell.

P.S. you can run Bash commands on your Android device if you install one of the many Terminal apps.

Edited By Russell Eberhardt on 13/06/2016 08:57:52

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Ha! My phone does all this perfectly by USB or bluetooth – it's Symbian OS

Neil

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

Maybe one of these

**LINK**

I suspect I would use the flikr service even though it has to be done manually.

Your problems are down to Google. Sounds like things are set up to "encourage" people to use their services. A bit like Apple really.

John

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[Roderick JenkinsParticipant @roderickjenkins93242]

I suspect that it's the manufacturers skinning that's causing the problem rather than Android itself. I've had 2 Android phones: the first was a ZTE which was pure android, no skin whatsoever and my current Huawei (presumably made in Newcastle ) which is only very lightly skinned. Neither has any problem plugged into my Windows PC, it just treats the phone as a storage device.

Rod

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

I thought that there must be something about to do it.

**LINK**

There are probably others.

A tablet can be handy for showing photo's to other people. Easier to hand around than a PC etc.

John

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[VicParticipant @vic]

I've been using IOS for a few years now and found it very intuitive from the start. I have been asked on occasion to help some oldsters struggling with Android and can't say I was that impressed. I'm sure I could get to grips with it eventually but a mate of mine gave up with his Samsung tablet and bought an iPad so maybe not?!

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

My XP pooter seems to be able to see files in the DCIM folder if I move stuff into it, then unplug the phone, then replug it in

So it's a workaround of sorts …sigh

You can get 7hrs plus of HD video on an Android phone nowadays so it's worth a bit of effort

Edited By Ady1 on 13/06/2016 11:45:02

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Robin,

One very useful 'app' is 'Android File Transfer'

I have the Mac version, but presumably there is one for XP.

MichaelG.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 13/06/2016 11:55:47

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

If you think iOS and Android are bad, try a Widows phone. Unmitigated crap. The apps are very few and far between – and many of them are shareware or worse, with endless ads and upgrade offers. Bizarrely, many of the mainstream apps simply aren't offered in Windows Mobile.

I used Windows Mobile (aka Windows CE) almost 20 years ago and apart from the groovy new W10-like interface, Microsoft hardly touched it for most of that time.

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

The whole iPad Tablet thing started by taking touch screen mobile phone software technology and using it on them so really if some one can use a phone they should get on with a tablet of either type. It sort of caught MS napping for some reason as has embedded area Linux derivatives. They don't seem to be much good at catching up. Guess that's down to having very little serious competition for a long long time.

John

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[Robin GrahamParticipant @robingraham42208]

Thanks for all the replies. I should perhaps have been more explicit – when I connect the phone (Sony Xperia) to the PC by USB I can see the DCIM folder in Windows explorer and drag 'n' drop images onto the PC. What foxed me was that although the pics which had been texted to me and saved to internal storage on my phone showed up in my 'Album' on the phone, I couldn't find them in Explorer. I eventually found an 'app' for the phone which set it up as an ftp server, so I could investigate the phone filesystem in a way that made sense to me that way. They turned up in a subfolder called Downloads.

I'm going to have to get a new laptop soon, I'll be going Linux from the start I think. I wouldn't buy a toolchest with 'My Spanners' etc permanently engraved on the drawers, prefer to take control myself!

Thanks again for suggestions, I'll be following them up pending liberation from the M$ world.

Robin

[Perko7Participant @perko7]

Perhaps you could email them to yourself from your phone, assuming your emails can be accessed from your XP machine?? Geoff P.

[clivelParticipant @clivel]

Posted by Robin Graham on 14/06/2016 00:18:20:

I'm going to have to get a new laptop soon, I'll be going Linux from the start I think. I wouldn't buy a toolchest with 'My Spanners' etc permanently engraved on the drawers, prefer to take control myself!

In which case I can really recommend Linux Mint. I Installed it as a dual boot alongside Windows on my laptop at least 2 years ago and have never looked back.
It was a complete revelation at how much faster everything ran under Linux. Applications that previously took forever to open now snap open almost instantly.

I occasionally needed to boot into Windows specifically to run my old Cannon scanner which was never supported under Linux, but even that is now no longer necessary. One can download a free XP virtual machine from Microsoft and install that in "Virtual Box" or "VMWare Player" (both of which are free) on a Linux system. Since doing so, I have had no need to boot into Windows again.

Clive

 

Edited By clivel on 14/06/2016 02:59:01

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

I stuck opensuse 13.2 running a KDE desktop onto a HP netbook with very little memory. I also installed the most complex telescope control software Linux offers on it it runs behind Kstars and offers all sorts of things. KDE isn't known for being light – exactly the opposite. It's way way quicker than the windows stuff that was on it.

I bought the netbook from Comet when they were closing down and later found it had 1/2 the memory it should have going on the model number. Tried to open it to upgrade that but suspect as it was out for demo they must have glued the cover some how.

I have wondered about Ubuntu and Mint especially now they offer 5 years update releases but I stick with opensuse. For one I doubt if they will maintain some applications I use a lot over that period but the other reason is Linux based software and installation. The installer is more or less graphical and can be left to itself or guided in detail. It's pretty easy to partition the disks on my system exactly as I want them. Software installation is literally one click. Update though are mainly purely security related and bug fixes and that sort of thing. Applications generally aren't updated and the ones installed generally lag a little behind the latest releases. They do this for stability. They do offer releases that keep systems cutting edge as well for the brave. I install from a full DVD as that allows me to pick lots of applications I want without installing from the web later. The latest versions of most things can also be installed easily. One way is to use their usual source and click on unstable versions. They are marked unstable because they don't support them. That has never caused me a problem. Using their unofficial source of applications etc has so that one needs some care. When that did mess my machine up their forum told me what to do to fix it pretty quickly. It involved work in the console. I stay completely away from that unless I have no choice. Other than compiling from source I have no interest at all in learning how to use Bash at anything other than a trivial level.

The other reason I stick with it is Linux software. I might want to do something and not know what the application is called. The graphical installation package YAST keeps a data base of everything they have. Ubunti's list of what is currently being downloaded and installed a lot by people wasn't of any use to me when I tried it. Sometimes I need to google linux and what ever it's used for. Info from any distro can be of use for that.

OpenSuse update cycle is circa 18 months but that can usually be stretched to 2 years but once the support ceases all packages they offer disappear from their main source of them. However it's often still possible to find packages in the right form for installation for some time after that and chances are that the newer releases can be compiled from source anyway for some time well after this. Compiling packages is really easy. Anyone could be told how to do it in 10 mins. There are only 2 basic methods often mentioned in the readme that comes with the source files.

John

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[Robin GrahamParticipant @robingraham42208]

Thanks for further suggestions – Geoff P, your method might well work, hadn't thought of that, but why should one have to resort to such subterfuge?

My wife ran the vac over the keyboard of the ancient laptop I'm writing on and it sucked the 'O' key right off the keyboard. My bad for insisting on a semi-industrial vac I suppose! Anyhow, definitely time for a new computing machine and having read the 'Forced upgrade to W10' thread, it's definitely going to be Linux based. Whichever flavo(u)r it has to be better than Windows.

I can understand that csh, bash , or whatever might not be to everyone's taste, but I was forced to learn it for my job, and it somehow became second nature -i t's elegant and powerful once you get the hang of it. I'm looking forward to getting the console back! It does give you enough rope to hang yourself on though. An anecdote: I once had a postdoctoral fellow (who should have known better) come to me and ask what was going on with the system because all his data had disappeared. The dialogue on his screen ran

$rm -r * .ps

rm: no such file or directory : .ps

He'd made an unintentional space between the star and .ps. He wanted to delete only his postscript files. Luckily I'd backed everything up, but I'm sorry to say I did subject the guy to a bit of tooth-sucking before I told him.

Robin

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

If anyone is intending to buy a new computer to run Linux it is generally cheaper to buy a computer with Windows installed than one with Linux or no operating system. That's because the manufacturers are paid to install PUPs (probably unwanted programs or crapwear). You can then install a distro of your choice either to replace Windows or alongside it. You can find details of over 200 distros here

This is a good guide to installing Mint ( also applicable to many other Ubuntu based versions) alongside Windows.

Russell

[Robin GrahamParticipant @robingraham42208]

Posted by Russell Eberhardt on 15/06/2016 15:46:03:

If anyone is intending to buy a new computer to run Linux it is generally cheaper to buy a computer with Windows installed than one with Linux or no operating system. That's because the manufacturers are paid to install PUPs (probably unwanted programs or crapwear).

Thanks for that bit of inside info Russell – I was thinking to look for a bare machine, but on the strength of your advice went out and bought a new Windows (10) machine today. Made doubly necessary by my wife having had a call this AM supposedly from TalkTalk. They got her to allow them remote access to my machine, and she was on the point of logging in to our internet bank account (while they watched presumably!) so they could 'refund' us £200. Luckily I saw what was going on and pulled the plug, so they didn't get bank details, but Lord knows what crap they installed on the old machine while they had access. So anyone else with TalkTalk beware – it's actually quite a convincing scam as these things go.

So now I'm typing on a shiny new machine. Given the number of Linux distros out there it's almost impossible to make a choice – I'll just go with Mint as there have been a couple of recommendations here, and see how I get on.

Tthanks again for all the advice, Robin

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