Run Android apps in Linux
Android rules the roost when it comes to mobile operating systems, it has the biggest market share by far. Even Apple's iOS pales in comparison in terms of the sheer numbers of devices that run Android.
But did you know that there’s an open source project called Anbox (Android in a Box) that lets you run Android apps in Linux?
Brad Linder reports for Liliputing:
Want to run Android apps on a PC? Developers have been offering emulators like BlueStacks and Genymotion for years. But for the most part those applications set up a virtual machine that isolates your entire Android experience from the rest of your operating system.
Anbox is a new open source system that lets you run Android apps on a PC natively, as if they were desktop applications. There’s no emulation required.
That’s because Anbox is designed to run on GNU/Linux distributions such as Ubuntu or Fedora, using the same Linux kernel for both the host operating system and for Android.
The software is still in alpha and the installer the installer currently requires an operating system that supports snaps, so not all Linux users will be able to easily install Anbox right now. But Ubuntu, arch, Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, and several other popular Linux-based operating systems already support snaps.
Here's a video of Anbox in action running Android apps in Ubuntu:
The news about Anbox caught the attention of Linux redditors and they shared their thoughts:
E06SP: “Is this legit? I've only seen people talking about it, but no reviews.”
Venoush: “It works on my 16.04 machine, but feels like alpha version right now (crashes on music player) but its quite snappy.”
SecretelyAMosinNagant: “Just FYI, it looks like this is only available via snap right now. The github script just installs the snap too.”
Marcthe12: “It uses kernel modules. They are part of the upstream kernel but usualy excluded. Competable checks are needed. May be check the script for the list of modulkes and port it to your distro. that's the best right now. This is how it does not use the kernel.”
smartdanny: “I would imagine that Google probably doesn't want this right? Since the newest big selling point of Chromebooks is that they now run Android apps.”
Seriousn00b: “Google can't do anything about it, the project uses AOSP as a base. They'd have to make Android entirely closed source before and that won't happen unless they wanna fight almost every other big IT company these days.”
Iommu: “The arc++ backend that chromebooks use for running android apps is open source as well so if they really don't want people to run android apps on linux they're not trying very hard.”
FogNL: “Couldn't get this going on ubuntu 16.10 . Following instructions, i'm left with the anbox container not being able to launch due to missing android.img. Haven't figured out how to fix this yet. There are a nice few reports of this exact issue on the bugs page of the github.”
Tech_tuna: “I want to be able to run Windows on Android on Linux now. In Docker of course. From VirtualBox VM on OSX.”
You can now install Snap packages in Fedora
Fedora users can now enjoy the same Snap packages available to Ubuntu users, according to an announcement by Canonical.
Marius Nestor reports for Softpedia:
Canonical's David Callé is happy to announce today the availability of the Snappy technologies on the Fedora Linux operating system series, allowing Fedora users to install Snap packages.
Just like Flatpak or AppImage, Snaps are cross-distro packages that allow users of any Linux-based operating system to install any app that's packaged as a Snap using Snapcraft. These sandboxing technologies make Linux application distribution a breeze.
The Snap format was designed by Canonical for Ubuntu Linux, but the company says on the project's website that it also runs on Debian GNU/Linux, Arch Linux, Gentoo Linux, openSUSE, OpenWRT, OpenEmbedded, Yocto, and Fedora Linux operating systems.
If until today installing Snaps on Fedora Linux wasn't something "officially" supported, according to Canonical's latest press announcement, now they are and users can install Snap packages on the Fedora 24, Fedora 25, and the upcoming Fedora 26 releases.
System76 isn’t giving up on Ubuntu
System76 computers have long been bundled with Ubuntu, and the company has no plans to change that despite Ubuntu’s move from Unity to GNOME.
Joey Sneddon:
Do System76 require an introduction? I don’t think so.
This American-based computer company sells millions of dollars’ worth of PCs, laptops and servers each and every year, all of them shipping with just one OS: Ubuntu.
But, like Ubuntu, change, particularly of the GNOME variety, is now inevitable.
“System76 has received warm welcomes from the GNOME community and has begun testing Ubuntu GNOME and Wayland in-house,” the company told us in an e-mail, adding that they’ve “been very impressed by the GNOME project’s outreach since the announcement”.
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