Includes Linux kernel 4.4.20 LTS and Mesa 3D 12.0.2

Sep 13, 2016 21:45 GMT  ·  By

Today, September 13, 2016, Android-x86 developer Chih-Wei Huang was happy to announce the general availability of the final release of the Android-x86 6.0 operating system for personal computers.

Android-x86 6.0 has been in the works since early this year, and it received a total of two RC (Release Candidate) builds during its entire development cycle, one in June and another in August. After joining the Remix OS team, Chih-Wei Huang now has all the reasons to update and improve its Android-x86 system for the latest Android releases.

Therefore, as you might have guessed already, Android-x86 6.0 is the first stable version of the project to be based on Google's Linux kernel-based Android 6.0 Marshmallow mobile operating system and includes the most recent AOSP (Android Open Source Project) security updates too.

"This is the first stable release of Android-x86 6.0 (marshmallow-x86)," reads today's announcement. "The 6.0-r1 release is based on the the Android Marshmallow-MR2 release (6.0.1_r66) with latest AOSP security updates. We created universal images for most x86 platforms."

Supports modern UEFI systems and legacy BIOS PCs

In other words, Android-x86 6.0 is here to let you run Android 6.0 Marshmallow on your personal computer, and it looks like both modern UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) and legacy BIOS PCs are supported, as Android-x86 6.0 is distributed as 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x86_64) Live ISO images.

Taking a quick look under the hood of Android-x86 6.0, we can't help but notice that it is using the long-term supported Linux 4.4.20 kernel, an updated graphics stack based on Mesa 12.0.2 3D Graphics Library, support for Samsung's F2FS file system for SSD drives, better Wi-Fi support after resume and suspend, and initial HDMI audio support.

Additionally, Android-x86 now uses a new, normal mouse pointer ported from Android 7.0 Nougat, instead of the old circle cursor used in previous releases. Android-x86 6.0 is available for download right now via our website, and it is a recommended update for anyone interested in running Android on their personal computers.