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.
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Engineers at Google started work on a new Terminal app for Android a couple of weeks ago. This Terminal app is part of the Android Virtualization Framework (AVF) and contains a WebView that connects to a Linux virtual machine via a local IP address, allowing you to run Linux commands from the Android host. Initially, you had to manually enable this Terminal app using a shell command and then configure the Linux VM yourself. However, in recent days, Google began work on integrating the Terminal app into Android as well as turning it into an all-in-one app for running a Linux distro in a VM.
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Google is still working on improving the Terminal app as well as AVF before shipping this feature. AVF already supports graphics and some input options, but it’s preparing to add support for backing up and restoring snapshots, nested virtualization, and devices with an x86_64 architecture. It’s also preparing to add some settings pages to the Terminal app, which is pretty barebones right now apart from a menu to copy the IP address and stop the existing VM instance. The settings pages will let you resize the disk, configure port forwarding, and potentially recover partitions.
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If you’re wondering why you’d want to run Linux apps on Android, then this feature is probably not for you. Google added Linux support to Chrome OS so developers with Chromebooks can run Linux apps that are useful for development. For example, Linux support on Chrome OS allows developers to run the Linux version of Android Studio, the recommended IDE for Android app development, on Chromebooks. It also lets them run Linux command line tools safely and securely in a container.
Chromebooks have the advantage of being mostly a laptop with a keyboard, mouse-analog and largish screen… Phones don’t really have that, so it seems an odd choice to me. Especially for a platform which is hostile to giving users permissions to install software on their own devices.
If you dock your phone it will run with display keyboard and mouse. Not all phones support it though
IIRC, Android has always had native support for keyboards and mice. I remember connecting a bluetooth mouse to my old Nexus 4 running…Android 4, maybe 5? It worked out of the box. Saved my butt when the touch screen broke. :)
Can’t say I’ve tried this in recent years but I think it still works, yeah?
Phones don’t really have that
I’ve been using Termux for years and there are a lot of nice things you can do. Also, a lot of nice tablets have good keyboards.
Yeah but to do that one thing that you really want to do, you need root and daddy says no.
Honestly you don’t need root. You can enable root (assuming you are already running a custom ROM) but that should not be needed.
