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Android for desktop has existed for some time, and works quite well. As an experiment, I used it for days, and the experience was surprisingly complete.

Now tell me.. why would these new generations suddenly switch from mobile to desktop machine, when they get older?

What about these dudes? http://www.android-x86.org/

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/...

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 tried.... and none were "native".

http://www.shashlik.io/
https://www.genymotion.com/
http://www.android-x86.org/
http://www.jide.com/remixos

You can install Android on desktop now
http://www.android-x86.org/dow... ;-)

Because it allowed them to be CPU architecture agnostic. I don't believe an ARM based CPU is a requirement for Android?

Absolutely checkout http://www.android-x86.org/

So, other than being incomplete, it's complete, right?

No, it's complete, period. It may not contain every bit of software in the world, like Google's proprietary apps, but AOSP builds are usable on actual hardware in their own right. This is quite unlike the open-source fragments of iOS, which are just that: fragments.

Sure, both Android and iOS as shipped on most consumer devices contain some open-source parts and some proprietary parts, but let's not make a false equivalency here. Android, even without Google's applications, is a fully usable operating system for smartphones and tablets. Depending on the specific hardware in that smartphone or tablet you might need some closed-source drivers to enable functionality like graphics acceleration or Wi-Fi—which Google provides—but you do have the option of running AOSP on equivalent hardware which does have open-source drivers (e.g. Android on x86). iOS, on the other hand, is a predominately closed-source operating system with a few open-source components. The bits of iOS available as open source aren't even enough to give you a basic iOS-style user interface; none of the graphical parts are included, and even if they were, there are no publicly-available drivers which would allow you to run the open source parts on Apple's own hardware the way that Google supplies the drivers necessary to run AOSP builds with full functionality on the Nexus line of smartphones and tablets.

I'd like to see the android environment ported to PCs, so that I can use it for thick client development too.

Enjoy. Live CD ISOs on the download page

I'd like to see the android environment ported to PCs, so that I can use it for thick client development too.

Enjoy. Live CD ISOs on the download page

There is an alternative, ReactOS.

But it isn't viable yet.

I strongly encourage everybody to contribute somehow.

I would like to see this actually become a viable option, but I'm more excited by Android-x86.
Many of the XP hold outs do have an Android phone already, turning the learning curve into a slight bump. That being said I don't know if Android-x86 will ever be ported back to XP age hardware...

There is Android X86 you can run in a virtual box on pc

http://www.android-x86.org/download

Google is also well positioned with existing products that allow you to run Google Apps on x86 windows tablets. Intel is also investing a lot of money to port Android over to x86 natively for their phone x86 chips. So while a little behind Microsoft in porting their OS to a desktop environment between Intel's efforts and the Transformer book (which is very much like a desktop/laptop experience) Android could very easily cross over.

I installed Android 4.3 x86 this week (using Android x86 Easy Installer ) and although there's random reboots, choppy sound and an obvious lack of a proper video driver, I was surprised at how natural it felt using it on a desktop.

If the mentioned issues were taken care of, I wouldn't hesitate to make it the main OS for some of my technically challenged (older) friends.

Supposedly, my Asus eee PC 4G is supported hardware for Android-x86, but I haven't tried it yet. It works quite well as a regular PC still.

The underlying hardware is fundamentally the same - both have CPUs [...] Windows can be made to run on a tablet if desired

But incompatible instruction sets. If an operating system is non-free, its publisher has to make a business decision to port the operating system to a particular device. And Microsoft has made a business decision to lock third-party desktop apps out of the ARM version of Windows, making the device less useful when docked.

There is nothing limiting Android from running on what we normally call a PC [...] They are barely more different than a Mac is from a PC

What you say would have been more true prior to Apple's adoption of x86 in 2006. There exists a project to port AOSP to x86. But a lot of popular Android applications are built using the NDK and compiled only for ARM, and the publisher of each application has to make a business decision to include x86 binaries in the APK.

There is no reason Android or IOS cannot work with a spreadsheet just as easily as Windows or OSX.

Other than that Apple would frown on the interpreter needed to run spreadsheet macros under iOS.

They have that now, you know.

Not sure how well it would run on an old P4, tho...

Done,

install this:
virtualbox.org

boot an image from here:
android-x86.org

So much for chinese engineering...

Oh hell no. BlueStacks is a mind numbing experience. I tried it and can only describe the experience as the closest thing I'll come to being repeatedly hit on the head with a hammer.

AndroVM is great! I've also tinkered with the Android X86 project code as well but under a VM, not on native iron.

If google provided with an official x86 port ( 64bit only ) we would already see pcs with android ( yes i know of http://www.android-x86.org/ )

By adopting the Android desktop.

Here's the download page for the x86 version(s) of Android. Grab a liveCD image and away you go.

http://www.android-x86.org/releases/releasenote-4-0-rc2

says that they don't have ethernet for 4.0.. that's kinda bad. you could run the sdk emulators though, but they suck big time in performance..

For a hybrid device like that, Android is less than perfect - while the OS itself and its stock apps have decent support for keyboard & mouse, most third-party ones do not, and it won't change anytime soon because in Android land, this kind of device is still relatively rare - so it's simply not on the radar for most developers. So in practice it's considerably better than iOS, but considerably worse than full-fledged desktop OS like Win or Linux.

That said, this thing being x86, it can run whatever you want, including Android.

Then there's the reverse of that concept, installing android on commodity x86 hardware

http://www.android-x86.org/

Yes, you can. There are two ways to go about it:

Download the Android SDK which contains an Android emulator.

If you have any virtualization software installed, grab an Android x86 ISO image and run it in a VM.

The second method gets you higher performance (virtualization vs binary translation), but has major compatibility issues. Any app that contains ARM native code won't work in Android x86 unfortunately.

First link in google: How to run the eeepc.iso inside VirtualBox

Crazy thought... android on a desktop or laptop anyone?

Why crazy? It works fine.

http://www.android-x86.org/

I want a larger Kindle Fire:
One with a 25" screen, detachable CPU tower, Keyboard, mouse, etc. Oh and it must run Windows so I can code on it.
If it helps save money they can do away with the touchscreen aspect- I don't need that.

If they can manage all that then yes- I want a Kindle Fire.

If you're willing to also do without a battery, since 25 inches is pretty big for a pocket carried device (unless its some kind of compensation issue) it sounds like you'd really like:

http://www.android-x86.org/

with the exception of wanting to use Windows to code on it. Using windows to code sounds like a really warped fetish unless you're just using putty to ssh to a real computer. Well, some folks just enjoy pain and thats just how it is, have fun with it. Seriously though a decent vnc and/or rdesktop client on the tablet should take care of that little requirement.

I can tell you Android runs on x86 already, albeit in an unstable state. I expect with Intel behind this, things will develop faster. Regarding the compatibility issues, Android is bytecode with only specific libraries compiled natively, and they're being ported. I imagine we'll see some sort of fat binary support for both architectures on the Android Market.

If we get android running x86 (there are already a number of people out there working towards this)

Actually, I am running Android on my x86 tablet. The speakers and touch screen don't work so you have to plug a mouse, and it's unstable, but it does run already.

Android doesn't run on your desktop.

True, I don't have the x86 port of Android 3.2 installed in VirtualBox on my desktop PC. (Nor can it run ARM-specific NDK apps.) But I can install it if me want.

still needed is a port of Dalvik to x86, and a port of the Android runtime libraries to x86.

This was done eons ago.

Maybe you should set up an Android x86 virtual machine and let her play around with it as a possible primary interface?

the real reason is this: to keep small, "unlicensed" tablet and phone manufacturers from making devices with anything more fresh than 2.3. in other words it's just plain favoritism towards manufacturers who license googles stuff and pay google. a lot of googlers don't really want to say this aloud and keep promising the next version will be different story.

I mean, it would be sweet to have honeycomb or ics versions of http://www.android-x86.org/. for development, it boots up in virtual box much faster than the arm emulating shit-emulators that ship with the sdk.

It's already been ported.

Android is ARM-only and as such requires a full-fledged emulation and not some cheap virtualisation to run. And since Android-phones have more horse-power than, say, the PS2 it really is not trivial to run at an acceptable pace. This is further complicated by the emulator having not only to emulate the CPU but also the wohle peripherial components in sync. Android-x86 is not Google-powered but a community patched fork of the most current Android branch. http://www.android-x86.org/ Google has to stick with the original, but nothing keeps you from running it in Virtualbox http://www.android-x86.org/documents/virtualboxhowto (However this virtualized environment is not anything like your phone, so it's not really useful for development purposes) Our best shot is to hope for someone to design an emulator for phones running on a tabled (would have to be OC'd) like Xoom or Galaxy Tab 10.1 or on an upcoming ARM-based Android netbook.

Then why isn't this a problem for iOS?

It's almost like Apple had decades of experience in designing emulators for ARM or something.

Oh, wait...

Yes, I know the iOS emulator executes x86 code; but are you actually saying that there is some insurmountable reason that the Android community can't do the same? Afterall, emulators are allowed to be a slightly imperfect clone of the platform they emulate. Happens all the time in the embedded world (or did, before chip makers started putting better debugging features into microcontrollers). And even when the core was native (which it usually was), there was always a thick "errata" document, that explained why A/D peripherals, I/O ports, etc. would act differently than the target, because they were simulated/emulated/faked-out in "discrete" hardware, rather than being on-chip.

Android is ARM-only and as such requires a full-fledged emulation and not some cheap virtualisation to run. And since Android-phones have more horse-power than, say, the PS2 it really is not trivial to run at an acceptable pace. This is further complicated by the emulator having not only to emulate the CPU but also the wohle peripherial components in sync. Android-x86 is not Google-powered but a community patched fork of the most current Android branch. http://www.android-x86.org/ Google has to stick with the original, but nothing keeps you from running it in Virtualbox http://www.android-x86.org/documents/virtualboxhowto (However this virtualized environment is not anything like your phone, so it's not really useful for development purposes) Our best shot is to hope for someone to design an emulator for phones running on a tabled (would have to be OC'd) like Xoom or Galaxy Tab 10.1 or on an upcoming ARM-based Android netbook.

Then why isn't this a problem for iOS?

It's almost like Apple had decades of experience in designing emulators for ARM or something.

Oh, wait...

Yes, I know the iOS emulator executes x86 code; but are you actually saying that there is some insurmountable reason that the Android community can't do the same? Afterall, emulators are allowed to be a slightly imperfect clone of the platform they emulate. Happens all the time in the embedded world (or did, before chip makers started putting better debugging features into microcontrollers). And even when the core was native (which it usually was), there was always a thick "errata" document, that explained why A/D peripherals, I/O ports, etc. would act differently than the target, because they were simulated/emulated/faked-out in "discrete" hardware, rather than being on-chip.

Android is ARM-only and as such requires a full-fledged emulation and not some cheap virtualisation to run.
And since Android-phones have more horse-power than, say, the PS2 it really is not trivial to run at an acceptable pace.
This is further complicated by the emulator having not only to emulate the CPU but also the wohle peripherial components in sync.

Android-x86 is not Google-powered but a community patched fork of the most current Android branch.
http://www.android-x86.org/
Google has to stick with the original, but nothing keeps you from running it in Virtualbox
http://www.android-x86.org/documents/virtualboxhowto
(However this virtualized environment is not anything like your phone, so it's not really useful for development purposes)

Our best shot is to hope for someone to design an emulator for phones running on a tabled (would have to be OC'd) like Xoom or Galaxy Tab 10.1 or on an upcoming ARM-based Android netbook.

Android is ARM-only and as such requires a full-fledged emulation and not some cheap virtualisation to run.
And since Android-phones have more horse-power than, say, the PS2 it really is not trivial to run at an acceptable pace.
This is further complicated by the emulator having not only to emulate the CPU but also the wohle peripherial components in sync.

Android-x86 is not Google-powered but a community patched fork of the most current Android branch.
http://www.android-x86.org/
Google has to stick with the original, but nothing keeps you from running it in Virtualbox
http://www.android-x86.org/documents/virtualboxhowto
(However this virtualized environment is not anything like your phone, so it's not really useful for development purposes)

Our best shot is to hope for someone to design an emulator for phones running on a tabled (would have to be OC'd) like Xoom or Galaxy Tab 10.1 or on an upcoming ARM-based Android netbook.

What would an AMD tablet run? Surely they don't think they're going to sell a lot of tablets running Windows 7? What truly mature, tablet-ready OS runs on Intel? (And I'm not talking about Parsimonious Palembang or some other future Ubuntu release -- what's available in, say, June?)

Well, it might run Android...

There's the Android-x86 Project. I had an older build booting off a USB key on my netbook. Quite frankly, all I found it good for was as a reminder that a UI designed for a 3" touch screen is a poor, poor fit for a 9" screen with a trackpad and keyboard.

You can do this now, albeit with Android 2.2.

Seems to me it would make more sense for Intel to pursue supporting the port of Android to x86 hardware.

http://www.android-x86.org/

Why is more free, Java or Dalvik?

Dalvik, because Oracle has sued over Java and not the other way around. At least, that's one way to look at it. Dalvik is apache licensed.

Can you download and use Dalvik on your desktop or server? Is it completely open source?

Yes, you could download and run it on a PC (the SDK which includes an emulator is available for Linux, Mac and Windows). If you want to boot directly into android, google doesn't provide that, but see http://www.android-x86.org/. As far as I know it's completely open source.

Or is it just a proprietary copy of a more open platform, with a few tweaks, and a cynical dodge of paying for it?

This is the part I don't understand. Pay for what?

The JVM they aren't using? The implementation of the core classes from apache? The android stuff they did themselves? What are they supposed to be paying oracle (or sun) for?

Oracle would probably prefer that Google had used J2ME and would pay fees. But they didn't choose J2ME. Oracle would probably prefer that Google had licensed the JVM. But they didn't, they wrote their own.

Not official from Google, but Android x86 exists.

It doesn't even boot on any real-world hardware that I'm aware of - just some emulator.

From this phrase alone one can tell you know nothing about what you're talking about.
http://www.androidx86.org/
http://www.android-x86.org/

But please, don't let me stop you.

I have been running Android 1.6 on an old eeepc 701 for quite a while now, thanks to the good folks over at android-x86.org. Android is quite well suited to a low power, small screen machine like the 701.

Also, consider this: When running the android bowser, more and more sites default to a mobile version. I've found that the mobile versions of many sites are preferable to the full versions. I suspect this is at least partly to do with the mobile interface being streamlined.

1.6 has been ported by the community for some time now.
http://www.android-x86.org/

Why such the fuss? You can load Android on the device:

http://www.android-x86.org/
http://code.google.com/p/live-android/ (older)

Hell, dual boot Windows and Android if you like.

why dont you run AndroidX86 on it?

http://www.android-x86.org/