I’ve been looking at options for controlling my Ubuntu Media Center computer from Android. Mainly Mouse, but Keyboard is good too. Looked at a lot of stuff but the most interesting ones were:

• KDE Connect. This is the one I decided on because it is common, readily available and Ubuntu has the GSConnect package to work with Gnome. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.kde.kdeconnect_tp . F-Droid also has a version that I have not tried.

• XMouse (In F-Droid, Not in Play). This actually was a dream to setup and worked well. The downside is that it is not in Play. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.stripe1.xmouse .

• remote-touchpad. A cool app that is server side only and uses the a browser on the Android side. The biggest issue is it is not that secure. Also only on Ubuntu as a snap and not on Debian.

• Bluetooth Keyboard & Mouse (serverless). Fremium and not FOSS. Should have been good but I could never get it to work. The Linux Bluetooth system sees the packets, and the USB, Input, and XInput subsystems see the keyboard and mouse but no data flow. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.appground.blek .

• WiFiMouse. Have not tried this one. It seems like another FOSS app. Just added for reference and if anyone has tried. https://alternativeto.net/software/wifimouse/about/ .

So in short I found KDE Connect was the most obvious but I really liked how XMouse worked in terms of ease of setup and simplicity. Frankly probably would have used it if it was in Play too.

I was thinking that BlueTooth would be better and more universal. The issue I found was FOSS apps seem to be missing and I could never get the one freemium app I found to actually work. This seems to be an area that needs a good FOSS alternative that actually works. Let me know if you have any idea of other options OR why I loose the data stream somewhere between the bluetooth stack and the Linux input subsystem.