Canonical Demos Early Stage Android-On-Ubuntu

An anonymous reader notes Ars Technica's report from the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Barcelona, where Canonical has unveiled a prototype Android execution environment that will allow Android applications to run on Ubuntu and "potentially other conventional Linux distributions." "Android uses the Linux kernel, but it isn't really a Linux platform. It offers its own totally unique environment that is built on Google's custom Java runtime. There is no glide path for porting conventional desktop Linux applications to Android. Similarly, Java applications that are written for Android can't run in regular Java virtual machine implementations or in standard Java ME environments. This makes Android a somewhat insular platform. Canonical is creating a specialized Android execution environment that could make it possible for Android applications to run on Ubuntu desktops in Xorg alongside regular Linux applications. The execution environment would function like a simulator, providing the infrastructure that is needed to make the applications run. Some technical details about the Android execution environment were presented by Canonical developer Michael Casadevall... They successfully compiled it against Ubuntu's libc instead of Android's custom libc and they are running it on a regular Ubuntu kernel."

Comments

This is where a subject should be

[russlar]

Makes sense, considering they're both Linux-based. Though, what does this mean for Ubuntu Netbook Remix? Of the MID edition I've seen elsewhere.

Re:This is where a subject should be

[master5o1]

It might mean that Canonical and Google could share an app store.

Re:This is where a subject should be

[russlar]

It might mean that Canonical and Google could share an app store.

gapt?

Re:This is where a subject should be

[master5o1]

I didn't say that they would use only one between them. Ubuntu can still use its repositories while Android uses its own app store. The Android app store *could* potentially be shared with Ubuntu (or a separate one for both).

If I had the choice

[QuantumG]

I'd rather run Ubuntu on my smart phone.

Re:If I had the choice

[MichaelSmith]

I'd rather run Ubuntu on my smart phone.

Yeah we know how well that went.

Re:If I had the choice

[Flynsarmy]

Then you might be interested in this.

Re:If I had the choice

[QuantumG]

Maybe one day phones will become open platforms, but yeah, I'm not gunna hold my breath :)

Re:If I had the choice

[porl]

the problem with this was hardware issues and the fact that the software stack was dumped on the users in such a primitive state (the official line was that it would be worked on as things progressed). a lot of users bought these things expecting them to work out of the box and were disheartened so interest dropped off quickly. with a few hardware issues worked out and a more familiar front end (android or ubuntu) i think it would be an incredibly different story.

Netbooks

[gmuslera]

If well are being tested to put Android directly in netbooks, having ubuntu netbook remix (or maybe even Moblin) along with Android applications could be the perfect match

Re:important lesson

[oldspewey]

Forward to what? CLI?

Re:important lesson

[Darkness404]

Um, no it really hasn't. I'm a Linux supporter (currently typing this from an Ubuntu box) but the reasons why Linux is supported is that they aren't selling a full desktop. Android is popular for phones, people don't expect legacy apps to work with new phones, they don't have any mission critical software that needs to run (for most people), they get a new physical phone that looks different and so will take some time to learn it rather than dismiss it as broken the moment they can't find My Computer.

Windows Mobile is a broken OS, even the die hard MS fans know that out of the box its broken, sure, you can add software to make it usable, but a vanilla WinMo device is unusable. The iPhone is restricted to one device and one carrier, Android can run on many and is or soon will be on many different networks. Palm OS is severely outdated, but Web OS which is their replacement already has a strong following and the Pre is set to be the next thing in phones.

If Android was marketed as a full desktop or placed on "real" (ie: x86, full keyboard, decent screen) hardware it wouldn't sell because people won't learn a new OS on what they think is a Windows platform and it won't run some applications.

Re:Why?

[MichaelSmith]

Maybe so you can develop android applications on ubuntu.

Re:Speed?

[John Hasler]

> According to the summary it seems like it will be emulating everything, that raises a
> real speed concern, not perhaps for newer desktops but for older hardware and netbooks.

Sounds more like a shim than a simulator.

> Wouldn't a better option be to have a second real kernel being launched within the real
> one and native libs, etc?

Not a kernel, no. It might be better to run in a chroot and use the Android libraries, though. Perhaps that is what they are doing.

Re:important lesson

[Darkness404]

Well, for starters they don't have a very good web browser. Sure, its trivial to install Opera Mobile, but both the iPhone OS, and Android come with decent browsers. Then they don't have support for captive touchscreens (officially that is), then in my experience the UI is a mess (but thats just me), They don't have an app store and the one they do have lined up seems like it won't have very many apps (costs $100 for each app to be in the store per year). Then there is the general buggyness of it (hard resets everywhere, etc) in my experience battery life has suffered too (but having not ran a phone with 2 OSes on it I can't tell with certainty, but it sure seems less).

Re:important lesson

[morgan_greywolf]

Even Microsoft employees would rather have an iPhone than Windows Mobile.

And Google doesn't get Sued?

[Zehuti]

"Java applications that are written for Android can't run in regular Java virtual machine implementations or in standard Java ME environments." Is this not exactly what Sun sued Microsoft for? It's ok for Google, but M$ gets sued?

Re:And Google doesn't get Sued?

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't marketing the Android environment as Java. That's the key difference.

Microsoft had their own implementation of Java (the VM and the language), which wasn't entirely compatible with Sun's, had additional features that were only present in Microsoft's implementation, and lots of Windows-only libraries. It implemented only a subset of Sun's Java specification, and didn't pass the test suites. They still called it Java, and encouraged developers to use their implementation instead of Sun's. Their development environment and documentation led you straight to using Microsoft's implementations of everything, rather than Sun's, and their made it very hard for developers to tell if their application could run on Sun's VM as well. So in effect, they created their own distinct version of Java, with applications written for one implementation being incompatible with the other, but still called it Java, and still tried to benefit from Sun's Java marketing (including the "Write Once, Run Anywhere" promise). Basically, they tried to usurp the platform, while still using Sun's trademarked Java name to market it. Sun really had no choice but to sue.

Microsoft's Java implementation lived on after that, under the name "J++", and later as "Visual J#". They no longer position it as "Java", but as a Java-language compiler for .NET.

Google, on the other hand, don't mention Java anywhere. You're not writing Java applications - you're writing Android applications. Those applications happen to be written using the Java programming language, and execute inside a Java VM, but that's just an implementation detail. Their main website doesn't mention Java. The first few pages of their developer site don't mention Java, until you get to the page detailing the requirements for running the SDK. They make no attempt to claim that their implementation is Java, or even compatible. They make it clear that Java applications don't work on Android, and Android applications don't work on standard Java.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:important lesson

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't have an app store

Great point! Instead there are many stores and places you can download whatever app you want and then install as you wish. Shame on Microsoft.

Developer tools

[ChunderDownunder]

If Canonical do see Android as a beneficial software stack, perhaps they'll focus a bit more energy on the Java-related developer tools too.

Specifically Eclipse. Android's developer plugin requires Eclipse 3.3 or higher, whereas Ubuntu comes with 3.2. I don't know the technical details of why packaging eclipse in .deb archives should be so difficult (Fedora manage to do it for rpm)but this bug entry has been open for almost 2 years! :-( Shuttleworth commented on it 15 months ago, yet still no progress.

Sure, one can download it manually but it kinda defeats the purpose of having a package manager for such scenarios.

Re:important lesson

[AndGodSed]

how WM is broken out of the box?

although did hard reset a few times and using vanilla WM for a while.

There is a clue right there.

This is a view I find among Windows users a lot. (I support Windows for a living, servers and Desktops - XP, Vista and even the odd Win2k box and the other day I actually came across an office PC running Win98SE - eek)

The view is this - "Windows is not broken - it runs fine after installing all this, and doing that, and tweaking this, oh and don't forget the Firewall and Antivirus... look, no more crashes!"

The moment Linux comes up in the conversation (they usually ask after watching me troubleshoot the network from my laptop - Ubuntu, or whatever takes my fancy) they have this idea that it takes a lot of tinkering to get it to run properly.

From personal experience I have found a modern Linux distro takes about the same effort to get running to a users liking as would a typical Windows install. The effort is usually expended in different areas over the lifetime of the install as opposed to Windows - but it takes some effort both ways.

On some hardware I might need drivers for Windows or Linux, on others no drivers needed for either. What seems a common theme with Windows installs are general slowing down over the life of the install, random Virus issues that needs to have an eye kept on it, MS updates that break stuff.

With Linux I find that the slowing down over time is not as obvious, if at all, and update related breakages are less common.

But Windows Users will happily spend hours to tinker with a Windows box, but the moment a Linux install needs some effort they throw their hands in the air and yell "This will never be ready!"

Re:Fault != problem

[AndGodSed]

Now the obvious question: How is [manufacturers' failure to cooperate] linux's fault?

It is not Linux's fault, but it is still Linux's problem.

I agree. But the problem is not as large as you seem to make it out to be. Won't you agree that it is constantly becoming less of a problem?

My hardware is not supported on my operating system hence it is my operating systems fault, unless of course I am running Windows - in that case it is the vendor's fault.

It's the vendors' fault for not putting a penguin logo on any products that I can buy at Best Buy. But because it's equally the fault of every vendor, end users place the blame elsewhere.

I struggle to understand exactly what you are getting at here. Do you mean that it is the vendors fault for not specifying "not linux ready" if the hardware is not Linux supported, or are you saying it is the vendors fault for not providing drivers and then specifying "linux Ready?"

While it is wrong for people to place the blame elsewhere (i.e. at Linux's door) it is a symptom of the way Operating Systems are perceived. Windows = Right, Linux = Not Right.

So what if Linux drivers do not come on CD's? I live in South Africa where broadband is only just becomeing readily available

So how do you use the Internet to download the driver for your modem or network card?

I have never needed to download a driver for a modem or network card in Linux.

For WIFI (and I make here a distinction between WIFI card and NETWORK card) I have needed to get the broadcom driver from the repo, and once I got alerted that my internal wintel modem had a proprietary driver available.

For my USB LG WIFI card I could install with NdisWrapper the driver that is available on the CD, though the NdisWrapper was not always available in a clean install. With Ubuntu I needed to downloaded NdisWrapper, with Mint and Mandrive I had a NdisWrapper driver available.

Using my phone as a GPRS modem (Nokia) I came right with KDE based environments without Internet Access because KPPP supported it without the need to download anything.

Lately with UBUNTU 3g cards work out of the box, no drivers needed.

Previously I did one of two things - took my laptop to an internet cafe to download and install everything I needed driver wise via LAN (this was usually limited to a broadcom WIFI driver, and once to KPPP for Ubuntu) or I got the repo's on DVD from a local LUG for free and installed everything I needed from there.

Shipit, from Canonical, also provides the base install for free via e-mail. It is a pain though that Ubuntu does not have mainstream codec support by default though.

Like you said - Windows almost guarantees that you can use the enclosed driver

But "almost" is still better than no driver being enclosed at all, which is the case for the vast majority of hardware that one would want to use on Linux.

"Vast Majority Of Hardware" is a very strong statement. You will have to support it because I can count the unsupported hardware that I needed (or need) to download hardware for on one had.

1. Broadcom Wifi Card.
2. Wacom Tablet (now supported out of the box with Karmic Koala)
3. Nvidia Proprietary drivers.
4. My Microdia Webcam - works fine BTW.
5. Internal Intel software modem.

Honorable mention: Ndiswrapper (not technically a driver - but I'll add it here in any case since it enables the using of the hardware driver) (also not true with all distributions)

And hardware that completely fails to work with Linux.

Lexmark Printers - Some have claimed to have gotten these to work properly.
My one friend has a music centre (amplifier, auto drum set, sound board) that he had to fiddle around with to work - no official support. He is a musician and us