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Terminal app can now run full graphical Linux apps in the latest Android Canary
- Bluestein 1y ago[flagged]
- xeonmc 1y agoThe absolute killer feature for this is the ability to finally play Minecraft Java Edition on phones.
- piperswe 1y agoAmethyst (formerly Pojav) has made this work for years: https://github.com/AngelAuraMC/Amethyst-Android https://github.com/AngelAuraMC/Amethyst-Android
- lawlessone 1y agoThere's another app out there i've seen people use to run Fallout 4 an Samsung phones. And with decent performance. It's emulating windows and an x86 cpu though. Could probably run minecraft java too https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1divvyo/samsung_galaxy_s24_ultra_runs_fallout_4_and_many/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1divvyo/samsung_ga...
- anthk 1y agoJava doesn't need X86 emulators, but a proper interpreter for Android.
- flohofwoe 1y agoInstead of running in the terminal, this "just" seems to launch a full Wayland session from the terminal. Anybody know if the actual terminal supports pixel graphics via Sixels, or better Kitty Graphics Protocol?
- tetris11 1y agoSo we'd still need to run X11 apps via a separate server app then?
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y agoI would assume that once you have Wayland you can just use XWayland?
- IshKebab 1y agoYou aren't going to get good performance for apps that are sending their graphics via Sixels or Kitty Graphics, unless they are specifically designed for it. Anyway that's not really what this is about.
- ankurdhama 1y agoIt looks like the terminal is not a terminal but showing the content of virtual frame buffer, just like what you see when you run QEMU.
- transpute 1y agoStandard Debian-with-root Arm package repo in pKVM hardware-nested VM with OpenGL (v)GPU remoting! So many years of upstream work across Linux, Android and ChromeOS to make this possible. Now we need phone/tablet OEMs to support Android Virtualization Framework (AVF) and OpenTitan-derived enclaves, so this feature can move beyond Pixel hardware. https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2025/01/15/the-state-of-gfx-virtualization-using-virglrenderer/ https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2025/01/15/the-... > GFX virtualization aims at providing support for hardware accelerated 3D graphics in virtual machines. Unlike GPU-passthrough, with GFX virtualization the host and all VM guests can access the host GPU simultaneously. Vulkan and OpenGL are supported by virglrenderer using various approaches.. vDRM is a much thinner layer.. able to achieve native GPU performance, where VirGL and Venus may struggle to overcome expensive host/guest synchronizations..at the beginning of 2025, vDRM is partially supported by crosvm. Hopefully Google's phone-tablet-laptop-desktop convergence of Android, ChromeOS and developer-targeted Debian Linux will motivate Apple to restore iPadOS 16.2 (2022!) virtualization support, https://github.com/utmapp/UTM/discussions/5748 https://github.com/utmapp/UTM/discussions/5748.
- izacus 1y agoSamsung supports this on the new Flip 7 as well. Ironically, not on Fold 7 though. (The Flip is Exynos while the Fold is Qualcomm.)
- ankurdhama 1y agoMay be Qualcomm charges extra for using virtualization features on their chips?
- izacus 1y agoNot sure, as far as folks say it's because it doesn't support all the features Android Virt expects on current phone SoCs.
- jharohit 1y agoSo...can we run SteamOS then on android?
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y agoAFAIK SteamOS doesn't run on ARM, but I can't see any reason why you couldn't install just Steam itself with the appropriate binary translation
- ferociouskite56 1y agoSteam can be installed on Winlator https://github.com/brunodev85/winlator/releases https://github.com/brunodev85/winlator/releases
- e12e 1y agohttps://www.notebookcheck.net/Valve-adds-experimental-Arm-support-to-SteamOS-in-latest-Runtime-update-Deckard-may-launch-soon.1009490.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Valve-adds-experimental-Arm-su... ?
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y agoIt sounds like that's not actually publicly available yet? Once/if released, yes that would help, although you'll probably still want a binary translation layer since most games don't have ARM binaries. Unless of course Valve includes one like Proton, in which case you still want it but get it for free.
- pjmlp 1y agoWhat about Valve actually getting the studios that target Android NDK[0], to care about SteamOS exists, instead of having Valve translate their Windows deployments via Proton? [0] - Meaning the OpenGL ES, Vulkan, OpenSL, OpenMAX, C and C++ that also exist in GNU/Linux.
- bigyabai 1y agoWhat about it? Steam Deck didn't do any of that stuff, and half of YouTube is saying it's a better value than the Switch 2. Same goes for the Game Porting Toolkit derived from Proton's code, it's just about the only reason the Mac supports real games right now, not just Monument Valley and Laura Croft. We've already seen the whole "corporate sponsor courts game publisher" thing with Eidos and Capcom at Apple. Let's just say that Apple's commitment to native experiences didn't put them in contention with Sony or Nintendo in the way Valve did.
- westurner 1y agoDoes `ls -Z` work in Android Terminal? (SELinux has run in enforcing mode on Android devices since Android 4.4, which was released in 2013. But Android in ChromeOS only runs SELinux in the guest VM FWIU)
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y agoIt's a virtual machine, so its SELinux support should be separate from what the host is doing
- westurner 1y agoSELinux on a host should restrict KVM (and X/Wayland, and the sound server,). SELinux in a guest [VM or container] should restrict processes in the guest from interfering with other processes and resources in the guest. IMHO, Nested UIDs like uid1.subuid1.subuid2 would be better for rootless containers than root-writeable /etc/subuids.
- noisem4ker 1y agoSince I had to look it up: -Z, --context: print any security context of each file
- VadimPR 1y agoThis is great. We build a graphical MUD client (Mudlet) that's available for Linux/macOS/Windows, but Android support has (so far) eluded us. Would be amazing if this ran a native Linux binary. Of course, UI adjustments would be the next step!
- anthk 1y agoI just run Android Emacs and mu.el for that =). Also, GNUs it's the only working usenet client for Android too. Which is ironic, because k9mail/Thunderbird and friends both support NNTP in the biggy build in the desktop... And NNTP support on Android for MUA developers should be a piece of cake...
- sunshine-o 1y agoWhat is the general consensus on the usability of the Terminal app? On two different Pixel phones (6a & 8a) I had a terrible experience: - Very slow - Crash all the time - The app need to be reinitialised almost every day But I have heard some people have no complain. Also, since I couldn't really keep it alive long enough: what as the prospects in terms of battery usage? will it be realistic to have it running all time in the background?
- flyinghamster 1y agoPixel 7a: slow to start, and you must wait for it to finish shutting down (or crashing) before you try to launch it again. Lord help you if Debian pushes a systemd update, since updating systemd is a reliable crash.
- soupbowl 1y agoI had pretty good speed on pixel 6 but the reinitializeling randomly made it useless.
- carwyn 1y agoSometimes it crashes just running regular apt-get upgrade if it has too many packages to update, or takes too long. Switching away from the app can also mean it crashes. Nice idea, nowhere near ready for anything but playing.
- kllrnohj 1y ago> Switching away from the app can also mean it crashes. That sounds more like it's being killed for RAM reasons rather than "crashing"
- mort96 1y agoSame thing. Google owns both Android and the Linux Terminal app. Some combination of Google's OS and Google's app causes the app to crash or be crashed in the background. That's something that Google needs to fix regardless of where the bug lies.
- runjake 1y agoWhy does this run in a virtual machine (per the article) and not a container?
- seabrookmx 1y agoTwo reasons I can think of: 1) security. Container breakouts are much more common than VM breakouts 2) compatibility - the Android kernel is known to be heavily modified and Debian may benefit from being run on a more vanilla kernel as it does on desktop/server
- charcircuit 1y agoWhat changes do you think makes the Android kernel heavily modified?
- pjmlp 1y agoFor starters, the microkernel like driver model, where classical Linux drivers are considered legacy, since Android 8 all modern drivers run on their own processes (Java or C++) and talk with the kernel via Android IPC, known as Binderized HAL. https://source.android.com/docs/core/architecture/hal/archive https://source.android.com/docs/core/architecture/hal/archiv... https://source.android.com/docs/core/architecture/hal https://source.android.com/docs/core/architecture/hal Processes are sandboxed, in which app gets its own user id, everything that Google considers not a public API gets blacklisted, via a mix of LinuxSE and seccomp. Native executables are not allowed per se on userspace, native code outside system processes has to always be a shared object loaded into the Zygote process fork, which takes the init role on Android. There are ways to launch executables, but they are frowned upon. https://source.android.com/docs/core/runtime/zygote https://source.android.com/docs/core/runtime/zygote Android is quite stright in memory consumption, an application that is seen as misbehaving gets killed without remorses. For all details, you can go from here https://source.android.com/docs/core/architecture/kernel https://source.android.com/docs/core/architecture/kernel
- anthk 1y ago
- devinprater 1y agoWe'll see how well, or not, it works with the TalkBack screen reader.
- nsonha 1y agoSo what phone that I can get right now that runs linux with external monitor and 12+GB of RAM?
- figers 1y agoThis is my dream coding machine with a 10" tri-fold screen and Bluetooth keyboard when on the go and connected to a monitor / real keyboard when home.
- transpute 1y agoPixel 8/9 have USB-c external display. Pixel 8/9 Pro have at least 12GB of RAM, with some models (256GB unlocked Obsidian?) having more.
- wkat4242 1y agoKali net hunter can show a Linux environment over usb display port on some phones. There's also Samsung Dex but that's just android apps. They were working on a Linux version of it but killed it off within a year. It only ever worked on the S9.
- nsonha 1y agoI know, I specifically bought an S10e few years ago just for that (it worked on the s10 series too), but they had a special version of Ubuntu and all the repos were down so kinda useless. The Kali thing is also just a chroot image (if rooted) that you have to VNC into, and cannot do docker and stuff.
- wkat4242 1y agoOhh I thought Linux on DeX was only for the S9. But it was only for a very short period (during Android 9's availability :( ) I think they killed it way too quickly. But anyway, meh.. The S10e was the last small Samsung too :'(
- bjackman 1y agoI wonder if we'll reach a point soon where the monitor can be replaced by AR glasses? Beginning to dream of a Corne keyboard + AR glasses + phone setup. There's a chance we're beginning to approach fully pocketable computing with no ergonomic compromises!
- ugh123 1y agoSo, is this the year of desktop on Linux on mobile? /s
- Muromec 1y agoIs this another one we can blame on Ursula v.d. Leyen et al. or it's enough for today? Sorry, I was late to the previous 900+ comment thread, because I was busy having my mandatory 2h evening walk after having 2 hour late lunch break.
- politelemon 1y agoThis is obviously very cool and how I've always wanted my phone to work. But what does chocolate factory gain out of this? I appreciate it, but I don't have the savvy to figure out how this advertising supported business profits from it.
- transpute 1y agoNested virt with AVF can balance the competing goals of security, usability, freedom, individuals, and corporate supply chains. It can reduce the size and attack surface of the most-privileged code which runs in a system. Nested virt has been available on x86 for a decade (KVM, Bromium vSentry / HP SureClick, Microsoft Defender App Guard), on Apple Silicon since M2, MacOS since M3 and iPadOS since M4 (Secure eXclave VM). On mobile, it can sidestep some business model conflicts which torpedoed Nokia, RIM, Maemo, Meego, Tizen, etc. "Virtual Machine as a core Android Primitive" (2023), 160 comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38538100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38538100
- wffurr 1y ago>> On mobile, it can sidestep some business model conflicts which torpedoed Nokia, RIM, Maemo, Meego, Tizen, etc. Do you have a good link to learn more about that?
- ndom91 1y agoIs there any way to install this on non-Pixel phones yet?
- transpute 1y agoAVF is supposedly available on a number of non-Samsung, non-Pixel phones. https://www.androidauthority.com/android-15-virtual-machine-mandate-3498428/ https://www.androidauthority.com/android-15-virtual-machine-...
- jbverschoor 1y agoWelp, this is how Apple made their comeback 20+ years ago. Developers. If they’re not quick in getting some more bang in the phone, which is more expensive than a computer, I might even switch. At that point, what’s the point of all the other Apple hardware.
- kristianp 1y agoIt will certainly help those looking to learn technical skills in the 3rd world. Many have Android phones but can't afford a computer.
- efskap 1y agoI'm very interested as an e-ink enjoyer, as the most capable tablets run Android, mainly the Boox ones. Sure there's the PineNote that runs ordinary Debian but I hear it's not quite there yet usability-wise, and it doesn't have colour yet.
- wowczarek 1y ago...meanwhile, as always with any major/meaningful/useful Android updates, here on Earth in the world of non-Google hardware, we wait, patiently, for we have learned that one needs patience.
- matheusmoreira 1y agoHardware accelerated graphics in such an environment is certainly impressive... Looks like they did it via GPU virtualization, even. Isn't that one of those features used by manufacturers to segment the market? Google is certainly demonstrating some good habits here. They did good work in opening up their laptop hardware. Their pixels are the most friendly devices for alternative operating systems. They added standard API access to GNSS raw data. Now it looks like they're doing GPU virtualization. They just keep breaking down barriers.
- coppsilgold 1y agoLooks like it's virglrenderer. This isn't like SR-IOV. It's opengl/vulkan call interception (virgl/venus) and/or virtgpu drm native context which operates at the graphics driver level for both guest and host. Separately, wayland memory sharing channels between guest and host need to be established. This is also done through the virtgpu pipeline. Currently this appears to both work on Android and macOS[1]. AMDGPU also has virtgpu drm native context merged into Mesa but I believe it's still 'experimental'. [1] <https://github.com/AsahiLinux/muvm https://github.com/AsahiLinux/muvm> , <https://github.com/containers/libkrun https://github.com/containers/libkrun>
- WhyNotHugo 1y agoI can't help be annoy by the fact that a terminal inside a VM/container is referred to as "Linux" in this way, both by Android and Windows. It sounds to me like trying to redefine exactly what Linux is: just an app that you run on top of your proprietary OS. For a lot of people who'll be exposed to it for the first time, that's all it'll be. The mere idea of a standalone free and open source OS will be even more alien that to the previous generation.
- CrimsonCape 1y agoI've been playing with Arch recently (is it ok to say arch instead of arch linux?) I installed the kernel and then... not much. Spent some time googling what to do with Arch once it's installed. "Could this be better than my Windows setup?" is the question. Not just "equivalent" but "better" such that "this is so good I abandon 3-5 cherished Windows-only apps" Instead I waded into a soup of X11 vs Wayland, endless bickering about which tech stack, WM vs gui, etc. I would be curious to hear what people think linux's 'killer app' is. Not just "equivalent" but better. To your point, Linux needs a killer app, not just equivalent-app or "linux flavored" app that does the same thing, a DAW, a font editor, a GIS app, something. If the best coffee comes from one coffee shop, naturally you go inside there to get the coffee. We are talking about an app so good it makes you want to install linux.
- ta8903 1y ago>Linux needs a killer app, not just equivalent-app or "linux flavored" app that does the same thing, a DAW, a font editor, a GIS app, something. Those examples aren't killer apps because they could be ran in Windows/Linux through these compatibility layers. Linux's 'killer app', if it had one, would be things like better window management that doesn't get in your way, faster file I/O, being able to do more with your hardware.