There were a few related thoughts, but the first mainstream implementation was Samsung DeX. Once you reduced a Galaxy S8, you could take help of Android apps on a larger monitor. While still a niche answer, it held usually favorable reviews, and Samsung has continued to polish the experience since then.
Samsung today announced ‘Linux on Galaxy,’ which will allow users to run desktop Linux Apps on their Galaxy phone and DeX. It will be ready to “run multiple operating systems,” presumably indicating different distros (like Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, etc). The signup page says that Linux on Galaxy works on “the same Linux kernel that powers the Android OS,” so there’s no emulation or virtualization involved. Probably, this uses a chroot, similar to crouton on Chrome OS and the many root-only Linux installer apps for Android. Put simply, production should be very good.
Since there is no emulation or virtualization, it is very likely that only Linux software Built for the ARM will work with Linux on Galaxy. While Linux software is usually compiled for multiple architectures, there is some x86-only software, like Steam. Samsung didn’t mention specifically which devices were fit, but I imagine the S8/S8+ and Note8 are included.
Samsung says that Linux on Galaxy is still in progress, but you can sign up for notifications of availability here. If this works as well as Samsung claims, it could make DeX a far more compelling product.
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