Basically the title, I want to use my laptop, which uses Arch Linux, and my tablet, which is an android one, as an external monitor for my desktop pc.
I did that from scratch a long while ago by creating a virtual x11 screen and vnc-ing to it from the tablet.
On some GPUs it works without a dummy plug.
There are some instructions out there, but I can’t search them (or my scripts) for you right now, sorry.
If you can’t manage to make it work, ping me again in a couple of days.
I believe you can buy a dummy HDMI plug and use Deskreen to host the screen in a webserver. This should work, but I don’t think it’s a good solution.
Edit: Deskreen seems to no longer be maintained and therefore doesn’t support wayland. I think it’s because of the Ukrainian war, and the creator being directly affected by it.
Something like Weylus?
Samsung tablets have this functionality natively, along with drawing tablet connections
Spacedesk does this.
I’ve gone the x11vnc on a dummy display route, but found the setup’s too much ceremony to want to use with any consistency.
Deskdock + barrier/synergy is slightly more ergonomic – your laptop mouse and keyboard redirect to control android when you move the mouse out of the laptops screen and onto the tablet, but both displays are showing their native OS.
It’s entirely tangential (not for android, not just a screen), but arcan does some cool stuff in this space. Here’s a video of “sever tunneling” https://youtu.be/jIFjzN7dk10?t=107 (fancy x11 forwarding; It looks fascinating, but I’ve never gotten it setup).
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/jIFjzN7dk10?t=107
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Quite sad actually, that you can’t just use laptop displays as external displays.
You can, if the laptop supports VLink/DP-in, such as the Minisforum V3.
Well you can, but there only are quite hacky approaches like
- diplaying a webpage with a stream of the screen
- using a capture card on the laptop and displaying the input
- using a laptop that supports it
- using a display control board to turn the diplay into an external monitor