Linux @programming.dev Blaze @lemmy.zip 2w ago

Google is preparing to let you run Linux apps on Android, just like Chrome OS

www.androidauthority.com Google is preparing to let you run Linux apps on Android, just like Chrome OS

Google is developing a Terminal app for Android that'll let you run Linux apps. It'll download and run Debian in a VM for you.

36 comments

Are what point do they stop pretending and just make it a pure linux platform with a different packaging format for any linux app to run in? They are doing it with CROS (or whatever the new Chrome on Linux OS is being called) and maybe it's time to do it with Android. Running a VM just seems quite wasteful.

Anti Commercial-AI license
- Desktop Linux has nearly no app security. So the VM approach is a malware prevention. Android is the most used OS in the world.
  
  AppArmor no?
- I would muuuch rather a full Linux phone, and run Android apps in waydroid then have an android phone and run Linux apps in a VM...
  
  I wish postmarketOS had a fully working phone that you could daily drive that was slightly more modern and worked on USA networks.
  
  But Google would much rather keep all of the data for themselves. If you could actually control what’s happening in your phone, it could interfere with Google’s main business model.
let me??? Termux has userland covered.
- Not everyone wants to live in the terminal. I would argue most people don't.
  
  You are certainly welcome to run a stupid-graphics app that gives similar abilities.
- Oh cool how do I run VSCode in Termux?
  
  Install the server, fire it up, open up chrome in Android and point to it?
  
  Would you want to?
WSL finally has competition... American Sign Language
Termux: "Look at what they have to do to mimic a fraction of our power"

Maybe they could rather fix AOSP. Based on that recent LTT video Google doesn't really give a fuck about it anymore.

I just recently bought 2 phones (one returned, other isn't far from that), one with A14 the other with A13. Changing minimum width to >600dp (to simulate a tablet (larger screen) and trigger tablet mode) has very wild results now. I mean like overlapping icons in notification shade, completely non-functional 3 button navigation, app tray squished to less than width of 1 icon (completely unusable), icons getting off-screen, gesture navigation occasionally not working either, notification shade icons and notifications offset from their background (just a visual problem) and a lot of wasted space everywhere.

Sure, it's in developer settings, but so far whenever I did something to this in up to Android 11 including, the phone just beautifully adjusted to this and everything suddenly made more sense on a large screen.
Though maybe I was just lucky?

I am currently typing this on an old Moto G5s Plus (2017) with the now discontinued PixelExperience (11) ROM. My last bug-free Android experience. I can even route hotspot over a VPN, how cool is that.
- Wow. I did not expect people to cite LTT on Lemmy. Who cares about this garbage person?
  
  Probably people who missed the drama. Not like he really owned up to it on his own channel himself.
  
  Yeah, fuck that guy
  
  what did he do?
But you may not run them as root!
- I'm fine with that so long as I eventually get to play PC games on my phone.
  
  Eventually? How about now?
  
  https://github.com/brunodev85/winlator
I'll just stick to Termux and proot, thanks
- They are using a VM I think, and they will have Wayland compatibility and app launcher integration like ChromeOS I assume, while still giving you terminal access to that OS.
  
  So it will be better than Termux + some distro + some VNC viewer.
Very cool but I hope they give it proper GUI integration, not just a webview or VNC, which is how the alternatives work.
Wayland?
we should count chrome os as linux then, linux market share +++

36 comments