Canonical gave the thumbs down to Ubuntu Touch in April, but the UBPorts team decided to continue that work to offer a real alternative in the mobile market. However, every platform lives and dies by its apps, so the only logical way to close the gap is to add compatibility with Android software. Within a few weeks, UBPorts will publish a new build of Ubuntu Touch with the Anbox system integrated, so everyone can experiment with their favorite APKs.
The mobile market
The market is supposed to always tell us what it needs, and judging by the current situation, there is no more room for another mobile operating system. The duopoly between Apple and Google has taken over everything, and even Microsoft with its extraordinary firepower failed to develop a viable alternative. Still, some projects manage to stay afloat. Samsung continues to update Tizen, the last stable build of Sailfish OS was published in November, and there is also Ubuntu Touch. Abandoned by Canonical in April, this Ubuntu variant for phones found a new home in the UBPorts project. Its main hardware support is limited to three devices (OnePlus One, Fairphone 2 and Nexus 5), but soon we will see something that will greatly improve its usefulness: Android applications.
Anbox: Android apps in a container
The work will be carried out by the Anbox technology. In essence, it is an Android container that integrates essential services into the Linux system on which it runs, which in turn allows running Android apps as if they were native software. This offers several advantages over complete emulation, starting with lower resource demand, since Anbox and Ubuntu Touch share the same kernel. Technically, Anbox is not an exclusive resource of Ubuntu Touch, but quite the opposite. The official page (link below) explains that any user can add a copy to their Linux distro as long as they have the ability to install Snaps.
Installing Ubuntu Phone and Anbox
If you own any of the smartphones compatible with the stable version of Ubuntu Phone, you should know that the UBPorts team offers several installation methods. The simplest seems to be the Windows-compatible installer, currently in build 0.1.9 beta. Now, the combination of Ubuntu Phone and Anbox still requires several additional weeks of development, and when it reaches us it will be barely a pre-alpha. We'll keep an eye on it. The container will likely carry a performance penalty, but everything can be optimized in the future.
