14 DAY TRIAL // We've been informed by UBports' Marius Gripsgård about the public availability of a new project called Anbox, which promises to let users run Android applications on top of their existing GNU/Linux distribution.
While currently supported only on Ubuntu, Anbox is described by its creator as a container-based approach to boot a complete and fully working Android operating system on a regular GNU/Linux distro. The project makes use of the LXC (Linux Containers) technologies to allow users to run any Android application.
Anbox also ensures integration of all Android apps into the existing desktop environment of your GNU/Linux distribution, making them look and feel like any other native Linux app. Additionally, Linux namespaces are used to isolate the Android operating system from the host.
"Back in 2015 I started working on a prototype of what I call Anbox today. It was born out of the idea of putting Android into a simple container based on LXC and bridging relevant parts over to the host operating system while not allowing any access to real hardware or user data," said Simon Fels in the announcement.
To provide support for Android apps that need OpenGL ES, the Anbox project appears to borrow parts of the code from the official Android emulator implementation, which it uses to serialize the command stream that's being sent over to the host machine to be mapped on existing OpenGL or OpenGL ES implementations.
Coming soon to OnePlus One Ubuntu Phone devices
According to Marius Gripsgård's latest Google+ post, it would appear that support for Android apps will be implemented on various of the Ubuntu Phone devices maintained at UBports with the help of Anbox. The first device to receive support for running Android applications will be OnePlus One.
However, the Anbox developer informs the community that his project is still in an early phase of development, which means that unexpected crashes or other annoyances are to be expected. The source code is available for download right now from GitHub page of the project along with detailed installation instructions, or from the official website. Check out Anbox in action in the video below!
