Google is developing a Terminal app for Android that’ll let you run Linux apps. It’ll download and run Debian in a VM for you.
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Engineers at Google started work on a new Terminal app for Android a couple of weeks ago. This Terminal app is part of the Android Virtualization Framework (AVF) and contains a WebView that connects to a Linux virtual machine via a local IP address, allowing you to run Linux commands from the Android host. Initially, you had to manually enable this Terminal app using a shell command and then configure the Linux VM yourself. However, in recent days, Google began work on integrating the Terminal app into Android as well as turning it into an all-in-one app for running a Linux distro in a VM.
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Google is still working on improving the Terminal app as well as AVF before shipping this feature. AVF already supports graphics and some input options, but it’s preparing to add support for backing up and restoring snapshots, nested virtualization, and devices with an x86_64 architecture. It’s also preparing to add some settings pages to the Terminal app, which is pretty barebones right now apart from a menu to copy the IP address and stop the existing VM instance. The settings pages will let you resize the disk, configure port forwarding, and potentially recover partitions.
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If you’re wondering why you’d want to run Linux apps on Android, then this feature is probably not for you. Google added Linux support to Chrome OS so developers with Chromebooks can run Linux apps that are useful for development. For example, Linux support on Chrome OS allows developers to run the Linux version of Android Studio, the recommended IDE for Android app development, on Chromebooks. It also lets them run Linux command line tools safely and securely in a container.
I want a Linux phone capable of running android apps
I’ll just run Linux shit on…Linux
I’ll just run Linux shit on…Linux
Android is a variant of Linux, just not GNU/Linux because of not using glibc.
With diffs sometimes around 5m lines of code (in case of qcom)
With diffs sometimes around 5m lines of code (in case of qcom)
Nobody’s denying that. Many embedded distributions targeted special hardware are like that.
android just uses the kernel
android just uses the kernel
Yes and the kernel’s name is “Linux”. No other software is named “Linux”. Ask Linus Torvalds if you don’t believe me.
there’s more to an operating system that a program needs other than the kernel(?)
there’s more to an operating system that a program needs other than the kernel(?)
Yes, and the other parts have other names, like the toolkit GTK or the C standard library glibc and all those things make up a Linux distribution, like Fedora.
Lol thank you so much for the laugh
Much more appealing to me is running Android apps on Linux officially. I don’t want to use Android as my main system, but I sure as heck would love to have one or two Android apps available on my Linux Machines.
I’d rather have a linux OS on the phone that can run Android apps.
Can’t wait to have Google’s telemetry injected into my Linux apps
Plasma Mobile for Android? 🤔
Plasma Mobile for Android? 🤔
Doubtful. A VM doesn’t have access to the underlying hardware (unless explicitly passed through).
not doubtful, a lot of compositors, kwin included can run nested.
not doubtful, a lot of compositors, kwin included can run nested.
It’s not a question if some of Plasma Mobile could run in that VM. It’s a question if anything usable is possible. I highly doubt Google will make it possible to call phone numbers etc. in that VM.
sure, but if 90% of the stuff work work, voip, and it seems to be using crosvm for avf, so those capabilities could be passed through.
I commented having only read the headline. Too bad it’s a VM, Android could have a sort of reverse Waydroid.
Would it be like a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) but then for Android?
Interesting… but well… Android isn’t rooted, so will it use chroot or something like that? Or it will use a whole another kernel, complete VM?
This seems as much about converging Android and ChromeOS as anything.
This could be really interesting. I don’t personally see a use case for me to run Linux apps on Android. I could see myself running android apps on Linux though. Pretty happy to see this.
Very exciting stuff, Really hope wayland gets hooked up. if not, well, we can make it work somehow
Does termux not already do this?
