Anbox Can Run Android Apps Natively On Linux (In A Container) (anbox.io)

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."

Comments

BankID

[therealspacebug]

If this could make is possible to run the app BankID, it would be awsome! (BankID is a used in Sweden to login to many websites like banks, drugstores, state websites, etc). The support for the desktop program for Linux ended a few years back, and since that, the mobile app is the only thing we GNU/Linux users can use.

Re:BankID

[davester666]

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.

It's in alpha, don't expect too much out of it

[The MAZZTer]

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.

ARM binaries

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

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?

good news fucked summary/title

[gravewax]

If it is running in a container that itself is running Android then it aint running fucking natively. still awesome news.

sounds like a great idea

[FudRucker]

there are some android apps i like and would enjoy running on a Linux desktop with a proper mouse & keyboard, for example SDRTouch with my SDRPlay software defined receiver would be much better than on a little bitty tablet, and hopefully using a mouse with it would make it nicer for adjusting the frequency or bandwidth and other stuff, good luck to the developers i hope this pans out to be a great program and improves both Linux and android

Native CPU

[DrYak]

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)

*hardware* limitation

[DrYak]

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.