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.

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.

  • Quack Doc@lemmy.world
    14·
    2 months ago

    Termux has been a thing for years.

    Termux is not a full linux environment, you need proot (slow) or chroot (insecure) to get a full environment.

    • b000rgEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      Not arguing, just curious: what makes chroot insecure? I’ve used it for installing Gentoo, but I don’t really understand what it’s doing under the hood.

      • Quack Doc@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 months ago

        Chroot = change root, and needs root to do so. Doing anything as root is insecure. escaping a chroot really isn’t all that hard. The second you elevate privledges, you need extra steps to to become secure. Chroot almost never involves any of these steps (though there is some selinux stuff you could do.)

        This is an old example, but still a valid one https://github.com/earthquake/chw00t