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.
Termux has been a thing for years.
Yeah but I bet google's one will have lots of cool features like being harder to use and not supporting becoming root and requiring google play services for no discernable reason
If it’s anything like ChromeOS, it’ll be a VM where you can do whatever you want, within that VM.
Termux recently got moved off of the play store (kinda), and is now only available on f-droid/github, because Google was further locking down what they allowed on their store.
And in addition to that, they recently added a restriction in later versions of Android: "Child process limit". Although this limit used to not there, when enabled, it prevents users from truly running arbitrary linux programs, like via termux.
Although the child process limit can still be disabled in developer options, it doesn't bode well for how flexible base android in the future will be, since many times corpos like Google move stuff into the "secret" options before eventually removing that dial all together.
TLDR: Termux has been, and is a thing... for now.
Also, I want to shout out winlator. It uses a linux proot, similator to termux, and has box64 and wine inside that proot that people can use to play games. I tested with Gungeon, and it even has controller support and performance, which is really impressive.
winlator can run windows apps on android
Hey that sounds neat!
uses ubuntu as a base
Oh no...
MIT license
oh no
Have to install from github/no F-Droid build
oh no
Termux doesn't run arbitrary software. There's a pretty large set that does but plenty doesn't. A VM would resolve that.
Ehh it kinda does considering you can get a pretty full compiler tool chain running via termux.
Through termux you can already install a full linux distro on android. It is a little slow, but full desktop environment. Not bad if you have a phone that supports display output
Termux has been a thing for years.
Termux is not a full linux environment, you need proot (slow) or chroot (insecure) to get a full environment.
Smells like they might be preparing to make their own portable console running Android.
Would it be like a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) but then for Android?
Yeah... While making users run Linux applications on a system where Google is root might be a wet dream for Google, it's more of a nightmare for me.
I really hate the fact that the vast majority of consumers are perfectly fine with not being in full control of their appliances and that Google (and others) register everything they do.
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)
does this mean more steam support for android ?
an all-in-one app for running a Linux distro in a VM.
No, it won't
let you run Linux apps on Android
It will let you run Linux apps in Linux
semantics
This could actually make Samsung dex/desktop mode actually useful
yeah I'll stick to the other way around
Plasma Mobile for Android? 🤔
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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