Android's position in the mobile market is beyond any dispute, although there are plenty of reasons why a user would want to run their applications in a desktop environment. Emulators are the primary resource to achieve that, but the Anbox project takes a different approach. Instead of emulating each component (with all the performance losses that implies), Anbox runs Android under the same kernel of the operating system, ensuring better integration.
Android on the Desktop
The idea is not particularly new. Many projects have bitten the dust, and others decided to change direction (prioritizing running mobile games), but Android-x86 remains strong, and already offers Release Candidates of Pie 9.0. Now, if occupying an entire computer with Android is not an option or virtualization tools are giving problems, some users may prefer to emulate the operating system directly. However, there is another alternative within the Linux universe: Anbox.
How to Run Android Apps on Linux with Anbox
Unlike traditional emulators, Anbox runs Android on the host operating system's kernel, so access to the available hardware is 'cleaner' and doesn't carry as many performance penalties. If you decide to install it, what you get in return is a very spartan environment based on Android Nougat 7.1.1, with a handful of basic applications, and no access to the Play Store. The Anbox developers acknowledge that it is possible to add it, but they do not plan to provide any kind of support. The installation process for Anbox is... complicated, though not impossible:
- First, you need to add the Anbox PPA ("sudo add-apt-repository ppa:morphis/anbox-support"), update ("sudo apt update"), and install a couple of DKMS modules ("sudo apt install linux-headers-generic anbox-modules-dkms").
- The second phase initializes both modules ("sudo modprobe ashmem_linux" and "sudo modprobe binder_linux"), and installs Anbox with the help of Snap ("snap install --devmode --beta anbox", if you don't have Snap you'll need to install it first).
- Finally, we need to configure ADB ("sudo apt install android-tools-adb") or otherwise it will be impossible to install apps in Anbox ("adb install nombre-de-app.apk").
The rest is a matter of adding your preferred apps (using some online mirror to get the APKs) and seeing how they work under Anbox. To close, it is necessary to highlight that its compatibility is not 100 percent. If an app depends on a specific hardware feature (WiFi, Bluetooth, or Telephony) or doesn't get along with Android 7's Freeform mode, it is very likely that it won't run correctly. Try it on your distro and tell us how it went.
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