Anbox Can Run Android Apps Natively On Linux (In A Container) (anbox.io) 66
Slashdot user #1083, downwa, writes:
Canonical engineer Simon Fels has publicly released an Alpha version of Anbox. Similar to the method employed for Android apps on ChromeOS, Anbox runs an entire Android system (7.1.1 at present) in an LXC container. Developed over the last year and a half, the software promises to seamlessly bring performant Android apps to the Linux desktop.
After installing Anbox (based on Android 7.1.1) and starting Anbox Application Manager, ten apps are available: Calculator, Calendar, Clock, Contacts, Email, Files, Gallery, Music, Settings, and WebView. Apps run in separate resizeable windows. Additional apps (ARM-native binaries are excluded) can be installed via adb. Installation currently is only supported on a few Linux distributions able to install snaps. Contributions are welcome on Github.
In a blog post Simon describes it as "a side project" that he's worked on for over a year and a half. "There were quite a few problems to solve on the way to a really working implementation but it is now in a state that it makes sense to share it with a wider audience."
After installing Anbox (based on Android 7.1.1) and starting Anbox Application Manager, ten apps are available: Calculator, Calendar, Clock, Contacts, Email, Files, Gallery, Music, Settings, and WebView. Apps run in separate resizeable windows. Additional apps (ARM-native binaries are excluded) can be installed via adb. Installation currently is only supported on a few Linux distributions able to install snaps. Contributions are welcome on Github.
In a blog post Simon describes it as "a side project" that he's worked on for over a year and a half. "There were quite a few problems to solve on the way to a really working implementation but it is now in a state that it makes sense to share it with a wider audience."
BankID (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
So, you can use apps "designed" for a pretty small screen with a touch-only UI, on a large monitor with a keyboard/mouse?
I suppose that's better than just sitting on the floor with the lights off, but not by much.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Virtually no Android apps are even redesigned to work well on a tablet screen.
Yes, the apps will run, but for any non-trivial app, it will suck.
Actually, much better. (Score:2)
So, you can use apps "designed" for a pretty small screen with a touch-only UI, on a large monitor with a keyboard/mouse?
Actually, android also runs on tablets so not only small screens.
Nearly every last android device has a OTG port, and Android supports mouse and keyboard input out of the box (yup, plugin a powered hub, an USB keyboard and USB mouse and, suprise, everything works as expected.) (There are even small accessory manufacturer specializing in hardware keyboards with USB and Bluetooth for Android).
Not only that, but since recently Android even support variable-sized windows.
On actual real tablets, this is used to
Re: (Score:1)
Yes, the apps will run and you can use the keyboard, mouse or even a touchscreen to interact with them. And yes, if the app developer takes the time and effort, it could have a UI that works well on a larger screen with a keyboard and mouse instead of a touchscreen.
Except virtually no Android apps even bother to make their apps work well on slightly larger tablet screen. They just depend on basic scaling and automatic re-jigging of screen elements to take up the extra space.
But for the vast majority of An
Go and try (Score:2)
Except virtually no Android apps even bother to make their apps work well on slightly larger tablet screen. {...} But for the vast majority of Android apps, the actual UI experience is designed for an approx. 6" diagonal vertically oriented screen with only touch-input. Virtually no apps are designed or redesigned to even work well on a slightly larger tablet screen.
My personnal experience differs (10" asian tablet here).
Of course, your personal annecdotal experience is just one data point as well as mine.
But I've seen several applications which work flawlessly on the 10" portrait (16:9 widescreen) tablet.
None of those that I regularily use pose any problem.
(Of the top of my head: Firefox, VLC, Google Maps, Google Calendar, the finding/renting software of a couple of car-sharing services, a few games, several chat programs both personnal (Skype, etc.) and professional
Re: (Score:1)
You are confusing "works" and "works well". The apps "work". They don't "work well". The UI is, well, wrong for a keyboard/mouse/larger monitor experience.
Some people don't care about this.
Some do.
Re: (Score:2)
Having used BankID myself, I can tell you that the Linux version never worked well, but neither did the Windows version (I had one of those Gemalto NCR1 card readers that you had to connect to your computer via USB). The Mobile BankID app is a big step back in security. The Norwegian BankID system is much better; you still have a hardware token with a PIN code, but you don't need to connect it to your computer.
Wish I could run... (Score:1)
Now back to your regular programming. ;)
It's in alpha, don't expect too much out of it (Score:5, Informative)
at the moment.
I loaded it into a VirtualBox Ubuntu 16.04 VM and ran into two problems. 1. is it doesn't properly start its background service after install. Once you start it the app will start up and display the list of Android apps. However launching one of these segfaults the whole thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Even if it's unstable, if I can play some of the games I bought a few years ago that would be brilliant. I've gone from having Android clamshells and tablets to phone only, so all I have left with a nice big screen are my Linux desktops. I do have Android TV but so few of my games run on it because of the intentional crippling Google has done to it.
Re: (Score:2)
I paid for some Final Fantasy re-releases for Android as well as Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes. I don't want to buy them again for PC (if they are even available).
There are Android games that are equivalent to browser flash games, except they perform better and have better music. I'm mostly thinking of the thousands of tower defense games out there.
So some little free project that lets me play the games I want and doesn't cost me anything except a little bit of my time sounds great.
Re: (Score:2)
I have almost all of those for PC, so I did not re-buy them for Android. But I could not (at the time) get Final Fantasy for PC, so there you have it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
ARM binaries (Score:4, Interesting)
Additional apps (ARM-native binaries are excluded) can be installed via adb.
What about if my Linux was running on an ARM cpu, e.g. on a Raspberry Pi?
*hardware* limitation (Score:3)
Actually there is a limitation, but the above poster is wrong: it's not a kernel one, it's a hardware one.
- Android expects hardware floating point (e.g.: armhf). But Raspberry Pi 1 lacks them.
Also this requires Android directly talking to the host kernel.
And not all Android Kernel extension (that are needed in this case) have been thoroughly tested with raspberry pi.
Expect to stumble unpon even more never-before-seen bugs.
Native CPU (Score:5, Informative)
The summary is badly worded.
you can install apps but they need to be
either:
- in android's architecture-neutral bytecode ("I can't believe it's not Java(tm) !")
- in the same native architecture as your main OS, because there's no emulator, Anbox runs in a container, thus interecting straight with your current kernel.
Currently supported architecture lists: AMD64 (obviously), but also ARMHF and ARM64.
So you can install an ARM app, as long as you do it on a compatible Raspberry Pi, or Pyra, etc..
But again, the whole thing is currently alpha. So for the next few months don't excpet much except a lot of crashes, specially if you're not running the same kind of configuration as most other testers.
(You'll find way more bugs)
Re: Native CPU (Score:2)
So it is basically Android x86 which is indeed an unstable pile of shit - unless ran on the hardware that the "owner" of the x86 project provides from a parallel commercial company he runs and in violation of the GPL doesn't release the customizations to the Linux Kernel that makes it stable.
GPU (Score:2)
So it is basically Android x86 which is indeed an unstable pile of shit - unless ran on the hardware that the "owner" of the x86 project provides from a parallel commercial company he runs
I strongly suspect that most of the problems with android kernels are the hardware drivers : for the GPU, the wireless chips, etc.
(because there aren't much kernel drivers which support android's unusuall ABI.
Most free/libre linux kernel drivers use GNU/Linux's DRI API for graphics instead of Android's Flinger)
Here the situation is a bit different :
- in the special case of the GPU, anbox uses a facility which is normally used by the emulators (like QEMU) for accelerated emulated graphics.
Graphics command a
Did you mean: GNU/Linux (Score:2)
Any linux (Score:2)
If you play close attention :
on any user space that lacked Android support up until now.
Anbox is a combination of 3 things :
- an LXC container containing the Android userland
- compiling android-only kernel extensions so the container can actually find them in the kernel (e.g.: Binder)
- using a forwarder normally designed for the emulator that will forward a few things (like graphics). Because the container is isolated from nearly all hardware accesses.
As long as your weird user-space can hangle this, you ca
good news fucked summary/title (Score:3)
That's the fucking point (Score:2)
I will explain it to you - it runs an entire Android userspace.
Yeah, and that's the entire point.
Before, you would need to fire up something like Qemu, and emulated a complete android machine with a running kernel inside.
Now said Android userspace can talk straight to the kernel, without any emulation layer.
That's the whole fucking point of this.
Make things simple (Score:2)
Solution to run Android APPs before :
They run a virtual machine. A whole Android computer is emulated.
A complete stack, including the anrdoid userlan (of course, that's the point), but also including its own kernel which talks to the virtual hardware that is emulated inside the emulator/virtual machine, and that emulator/virtual machine is a user-land application that in turns runs on the host linux, and talk to yet another kernel, the one running on the real hardware.
In short you have two completey stack k
Re: (Score:2)
They don't emulate ARM on an x86 host if that's what you mean.
Intel at one point did release a library called Houdini, which does what you're asking.
sounds like a great idea (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
try gqrx
waiting... (Score:2)
I have been waiting for something like this for a long time. Unfortunately I have no interest in "snap" nor *buntu. And having it in a container isn't really "running android apps natively on linux" although it might be close, depending on the container system used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Other Android-under-Linux setups never seem to be free, open, stable, reliable, and compatible (especially when dealing with a touchscreen and trying to deal with screen rotation). At least not that I have tr
Re: (Score:2)
Your comment at least prompted me to go look at Android-x86, they say they are working on 3d acceleration now. If they can get that together then they'll finally really have something.
Re: (Score:2)
My Charter Spectrum Cable TV app runs on Android, but isn't available on Linux.
Spectrum has live TV available through their app and their web site. Unfortunately, the app only works on Android/iOS, and the site only works on Microsoft OSes because it requires silverlight and flash to be installed. The Linux wrapper for the silverlight plugin (pipelight) has been discontinued, so I'm out of luck. I've tried and failed to get it working under Linux with Firefox, Chrome, Chromium -- natively, under wine, n
Killer? Maybe not. Useful? yep.. (Score:2)
I am a long time GIMP user, but sometimes I just want to do quick things with photos - tweak the colors, crop, add an arrow or note, or make a quick collage. There are lots of android apps that make things like this quick and easy. I have G'MIC but that gives you all the settings, which I do use. But sometimes it's nice to just have presets. And sometimes you just gotta make a meme out of a pic to send to friends. :)
It's easy to do, just follow these steps... (Score:2)
1. Cut a hole in a box
2. Put your droid in the box
3. Make Linux open the box
And that's the way you do it!