It's a trap. We can already run almost all Linux apps via other solutions like termux, qpython and others. They want to kill all of it, but they can't just do it without a pr hit.
So they just "pretend" to bring in crappy Linux support while removing what people actually use. You want terminal apps on that Linux? (99% of what I use) You need to connect a USB keyboard. Oh, you want X11 apps? They need to ve rebuilt with our "library" (that will probably require significant redevelopment). And so on.
No, I don't trust Google neither other monopolies.
> They want to kill all of it, but they can't just do it without a pr hit.
Unfortunately Google can do whatever they want to qpython and termux, 99% of the population will not care at all
>No, I don't trust Google neither other monopolies.
If it's any conciliation neither does the US government. We are in for a ma-bel shakeup of the market. You know, the one that let internet running to your house happen.
Genuine question from a non US citizen, did breaking up a telecom in the USA lead to personal internet connections?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler
>Prior to its breakup in 1984, Bell System's legal monopoly over telephony in the United States allowed the company to impose strict rules on how consumers could access their network. Customers were prohibited from connecting equipment not made or sold by Bell to the network. The same set-up was operative in nearly all countries, where the telephone companies were nationally owned. In many households, telephones were hard-wired to wall terminals before connectors like RJ11 and BS 6312 became standardized.
I would imagine the break up of AT&T and the monopoly that formed around phone connections certainly inspired Americans working on the early algorithms of the internet. We still use telephone numbers today, even though mobile internet has made them fully obsolete
You would imagine wrong. The internet had settled just about all the major protocol decision by 1984 it was all about the hardware you could connect to the network.
Breaking up Google but not breaking up Microsoft is a complete sham. If there's any company that needs to be broken up first, it's Microsoft.
That's cap. Google is so much more pervasive
Crowdstrike outage has shown that isn't even remotely true in comparison - Microsofts failure took out a lot of critical infrastructure. Killing Google search wouldn't come close.
Is this really still true? This isn’t meant to be a defence of Google by any means, but to me it seems Microsoft has adopted a lot of pervasive practices in recent years. To the point where they would actively add things like Minecraft installers in my personal windows machine with whatever tiny version of windows comes with a prebuilt PC used like a game console.
I guess it’s not privacy invasive to add a Minecraft commercial directly into my OS, but they seem to be doing more and more of that stuff as well through their “telemetry”. Though I suppose much of it is targeting enterprise rather than our personal privacy.
Microsoft made contracts with its clients to automatically create M$ accts, for example, my .edu email acct was self hosted years ago, then magically I had a tightly integrated (oauth at first bla bla) M$ acct. Since I didnt ask for it, and I dont want it, I couldnt care less of I run afoul of them. Heck, please revoke it, atleast that would break their contract. AFICT my credentials for journals etc still rest with my .edu (its a problem that credentials are necessary at all). Skynet on the other hand is hell bent on using its monopoly to force me to make an acct:
Termux is no longer available via Play store as they refuse to acknowledge the way is via Java user space for specific official APIs.
They're working on it: https://github.com/termux-play-store
Android dropped a lot of native APIs, though, so it may take a while for the Play Store version to be feature complete again (and even then they will still need to continuously convince their AI reviewers that they do in fact need all of those permissions).
Google decided that it's not acceptable to execute downloaded binaries, which is a fair requirement for most non-malicious apps, but a program for Termux. Termux can work around it, but I'm fully expecting them to get kicked out of the Play Store not long after their work is complete for circumventing these protections.
Termux is available via the Play store right now, on Android at least.
A "crippled" (in capabilities) version of Termux is on GooglePlay - that which targets the latest SDK instead of the last before forbidding execution of binaries outside the APK.
it's a really old version. the latest version is available on GitHub.
You're not wrong, if Google adds proper input methods support to Wayland (like on ChromeOS) apps will have to adapt. Or stick to the main toolkits (GTK and qt6) where Google provides IME modules.
IME on Wayland sucks right now outside of ChromeOS.
I just put Ubuntu 24.10 onto a box yesterday where Wayland is the new default and so far I must say everything has been smooth sailing including a few games on Steam that I tried so far.
this is based on pKVM, and should bring rootful VMs on unrooted devices
what does rootful mean here? I can't run wireshark on crostini (linux in chromeOS) for example.
"should" We shall see.
bro is paranoid
Rightfully so.
it's not paranoia when they're out to get you. these companies have made it clear time and time again, control and profits are the only things they care about - not the effort that you put in to produce something useful to others. they will break it at every opportunity to make a quick buck.
It's been teased for a while now see also @kdrag0n 's work; putting Virtualized linux (and windows) on Android phones
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30322035
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30328692
Old comment of mine in another thread: Our phones might be our next Desktops/Laptops/main personal computing device: 1. local first (you do go to the bathroom/gas station with your phone) 2. portable 3. reduce ewaste, money spent
The lack of convenience in the form of larger screen might be mitigated using smart glasses, projector(unihertz tank 3 has built in), or just connect to an external monitor
Snapdragon 8 gen 3 performs like cpu from 2020 and midtier gpu from 2016 AVF might ship with android 15 as Mainline module (One need kernel 5.10+)
Windows on arm is progressing (qcom snapdragon elite chipset on microsoft surface devices), qcom gunyah hypervisor, MediaTek's GenieZone hypervisor, winlator etc..
I haven't seen any updates than those first screenshots, almost making me wonder if this is real. I do a search every few months to see if someone created a tool that allows anyone to run Windows/Linux on Android. Nope. Because I really want to do something really meaningful on my Galaxy Tab other than just watching YouTube or web browsing.
Apple hardware (M2 onward) includes hardware support for the nested virtualization used by pKVM.
I think we're seeing another big step on the path to the deprecation of ChromeOS.
Back in June this year, they were "embracing portions of the Android stack, like the Android Linux kernel and Android frameworks, as part of the foundation of ChromeOS"[0]. Now they're enabling a Linux VM on Android, which is the inverse of what they did on ChromeOS under the ArcVM moniker, i.e. running Android in a VM[1].
[0]:https://chromeos.dev/en/posts/building-a-faster-smarter-chro...
[1]:https://9to5google.com/2019/05/24/chrome-os-android-apps-vm/
I don’t actually read it this way for what it’s worth. I agree with you that they are unifying in someways for sure but I don’t read it as the death of their desktop OS for even a moment.
They're essentially just trying to bring Android to feature parity with Chrome OS, as they're moving Chrome OS to run on top of Android in the future.
I wonder what's happening to Fuchsia, if anything at all.
I do too wonder.
Given the disruption of LLM everywhere, and in Google specifically, I wouldn't be surprised if the headcount was reduced in these teams as well.
Despite all of the rumors of its demise its continued to have a large number of daily commits to it the entire year so far. It’s clearly not “dead” I think medium to long term it still becomes the uber unified cross device operating system for them.
Chrome is taking a dependency on Androids underlying networking stack for now and picking up the ability to essentially run it in a VM and Android itself is also picking up the ability to run Fuchsia in a VM.
Fuchsia is picking up the ability to have full Linux compatibility as well via their Starnix efforts.
All of the pieces are starting to come together to make that more and more seamless until presumably at some point they are ready to start calling them the same thing fundamentally.
Sources
https://www.androidauthority.com/microfuchsia-on-android-345...
https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/concepts/components/v2/starn...
https://blog.chromium.org/2024/06/building-faster-smarter-ch...
Yes. They are clearly moving in that direction.
I hope though, that they "backport" this new core to existing devices too. Will be a disaster to make so many machines obsolete.
And to ChromeOS Flex too. Definitely.
> Will be a disaster to make so many machines obsolete.
Not at all. Most Chromeboxes/books can be unlocked to install whichever OS the user wishes. I have like a half dozen of them happily running Debian, Manjaro and Alpine after unlocking and reflashing them with the firmware (Coreboot) at https://mrchromebox.tech/ They're really good quality hardware, and once given a proper OS they become very reliable mini PCs.
It sounds like this would make Android devices more useful for developers, which is a good thing. Although I am pretty happy with building what I need via web apps these days.
The one thing I am missing on Android is that Chrome on Android does not yet support the File System Access API. So you can't make web applications which let the user store their data locally:
https://caniuse.com/mdn-api_window_showopenfilepicker
It looks like they are working on it:
https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40101963
The last commit related to this feature seems to be from from 2 days ago.
I have my fingers crossed that it will be available soon.
If you work at any standard tech company, prepare for a plethora of abuse and bot cracking on Android, just like web
Apart from development, one of the main reasons someone would want to have linux on android is to work with data on your mobile like sms, camera images or interface with apps using popular or custom linux apps.
Given the way Google has been restricting the utility of termux under the guise of security for the past few Android releases, I think they will keep the access to main os and it's data as minimal as possible.
It is great if it is, but I don't think it will be a substitute for termux and its api any time soon.
It's still better than nothing and a good thing for development purpose.
Edit: typo
This is bringing the ChromeOS version of containers which are completely isolated from the outside OS - they have their own mounted storaage. You can mount in some folders to share data, but that's it. You DO have sudo though.
I bet it's going to be the same here.
I agree. Permissioning is going to be a huge problem, given that I rather doubt that google is going to allow anyone to "sudo".
Pretty sure Google is going to allow anyone to "sudo".
... in the Linux virtual machine.
I'm not sure why I would want a terminal (or a VM) on my phone... Sure, it runs Linux, but at the end of the day, it's a phone. The only thing I could find a use for it, would be to run adb to uninstall bloat without needing a computer.
I run a simple python server on a directory of html files, these are generated whenever I save something in emacs on my laptop (and get synced by mgit).
I sometimes use ssh to log into my laptop from another room on my phone to check something.
you might not use these things, but some of us like our computers to serve us, not the other way round.
A set of patches under the tag “ferrochrome-dev-option” was recently submitted to AOSP
> Google recently demonstrated a special build of Chromium OS — code-named “ferrochrome” — running in a virtual machine on a Pixel 8. However, Chromium OS wasn’t shown running on the phone’s screen itself. Rather, it was projected to an external display, which is possible because Google recently enabled display output on its Pixel 8 series.
That would be a killer feature for me; it's already close with termux etc, but that's not good enough for some things. If it could run Docker as well... Can it on chromeos? Never used Chromeos.
It can, on ChromeOS it's a fully featured Debian VM with seamless Wayland, VirGL and USB passtrough.
I think in ChromeOS you can run Linux (sort of like WSL2 in Windows). I don't think one can run Linux apps directly in ChromeOS. One can run Android apps directly in ChromeOS though.
Android on ChromeOS runs in a VM as well nowadays.
Effortlessly hosting home assistant in a podman on my old android would be awesome.
I actually really appreciate this, and if it’s like the ChromeOS version I’d be really happy with it. Ironically it’s all I’d need to make the iPad a laptop replacement for me (which is why I don’t ever see it happening in iOS. It might not even be technically possible there without partitioning the limited memory due to needing a full VM, which isn’t an issue on Android).
It’s a nice solution. A sandboxed container in which you can run whatever you like in isolation from the host device with proper window forwarding. Combined with a bit more polishing on Android desktop mode this absolutely becomes a desktop replacement for most people, especially in corporate environments, so there’s a potentially large chunk of the Windows market that could be shaved off here.
I work on longer contracts and would absolutely buy a Pixel-per-job if it gets me a full desktop and phone in one small package that I can keep isolated from other work.
I’m not really keen on the terminal being a web view. Yes, there are lots of decently performing web terminals, etc. But to me it seems like an engineering failure to have to render a terminal like that.
I will happily give up any Linux compatibility under Android in exchange of a unlocked bootloader.
Their own Pixel phones have unlocked bootloaders by default, in fact, it's very user friendly to put another OS on them, like Graphene. I can only recommend.
In Linux it's trivial to have long-running processes. In Android it's the opposite.
So I wonder if I create a Python script which runs 24/7 and collects the sensor data, if it will get killed at will by the OS or if it just runs the 24/7 like it would on Linux.
My long running processes in termux runs just fine.
Are you using an Android version before 12? See last paragraphs of
https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/FAQ#Will_Termux_work_on_Android...
Many of those paragraphs are apparent out of date. I run android 14.
So more recent versions of Android have fixed the issue of killing background processes (Android 12), or Termux has found a programmatic way around it? Good to know.
My normal usecases are ssh sessions that run for weeks (months?) at a time and I run backups that takes up to an hour with rsync and have never had any issues. Not saying that there aren't usecases that will run into issues, I've just not run into it. Can't see how a python script running 24/7 collecting sensor data would have any issues.
And this has worked fine for me in every single android version since forever (long before v.12 and every version after) (though there have been some teething issues right after a new version is released, most notably permissions on storage. But last versions have been without any hassle that I can remember). There apparently are issues with more than 32 phantom processes or excessive CPU and some options to turn it off but it is not something I've ever had to do.
https://github.com/agnostic-apollo/Android-Docs/blob/master/...
https://github.com/agnostic-apollo/Android-Docs/blob/master/...
Maybe a problem with people trying to run a full featured linux distro with GUI support etc? Cool but never had a need. Termux environment is rich and powerful as it is.
So a couple of days ago the project was cancelled,and now it is coming again?
https://www.androidauthority.com/chrome-os-android-launcher-...
A change in launch target.
> The code change, which hasn’t been merged yet, removes the entire Ferrochrome launcher app from AOSP. Google’s reason for removing this app is that it doesn’t plan to ship it or maintain its code. It seems that Google is shifting towards using the Linux-based Debian distro instead of Chrome OS as its testbed for AVF development.
Schrodinger's product
I really hope this takes off. Android is such a nice OS, and if it could run Linux apps I would probably want to run it on my laptop too!
The example of running android studio is a great one if that becomes easier than it currently is. (apparently you can do it via termux, if you replace the java runtime in the download)
Develop/deploy on the same device would make getting into android dev much easier. Also, you have your dev tools with you wherever you are, in case you run into a bug or something while testing your app.
You might be interested in AIDE which has been around for ages
I thought AIDE was a dead project, and that the closest available be https://androidide.com
When I click the "get it on Google Play" link, I get a 404. Did it die?
It'd be more interesting if Google let us run Android apps in Chrome browsers on Windows and across linux distros.
> more
Well, not really - not more -, because we have mobile devices that are born with Android and installing a Desktop Linux on them would be a hassle of doubtful results, and we have Desktop Linux applications that are missed in the Android software availability...
Both ways are sought: running Linux applications on Android and running Android applications on Linux and elsewhere.
The very notion that google can "let" or not let you run programs on your own computer is unacceptable.
Yes in general (though security remains a tradeoff), but this is a completely different "let": it is "they are providing a solution that lets etc".
Is it any better if it's Apple or Microsoft, and it's malware stealing your data, being a part of a botnet, and infecting other users?
Whatever happens, it'll be fun to run docker images on my phone and some ddns and just see what happens
Might draw me off my iPhone....
How do you run your linux apps on your iPhone?
My interpretation: They don't.
I've heard of using UTM + https://github.com/osy/Jitterbug to enable JIT.
ish will give you a shell
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/ish-shell/id1436902243
I don’t think you can run anything requiring a GUI
I'm seeing a lot of speculation about a shadowy hidden agenda in these comments, but based on my time at Google I'd say it's very possible there is no overall strategy here. The only prereq is that someone wanted to do this and was able to get buy in from their director. Would it make sense for Google to not maintain two separate OSes that both strive to support the other OS's software? Sure, maybe it would. But that hasn't stopped Google before from having multiple products that do the same thing for no good reason. And there are likely a lot of folks who have built little fiefdoms (or at least domain expertise) within ChromeOS who want to see that investment maintained.
And remember, there's also fuchsia, supposedly a future replacement OS but who knows what that's going to turn into if anything.
To folks who think this is a way to "kill Linux support" on Android, I don't know what to tell you. Almost nobody uses those features and they're not a threat to Google; I can't imagine anyone is thinking "how can we invest developer time to get rid of this?" and being taken seriously.
> Almost nobody uses those features
...at the moment - as soon as we can build full mobile applications through something different than the SDK/NDK, development could surge, and the software supply with mobile environments in mind could also significantly pass through this alternative way.
Google finally doing something good with Android? Doubt it’s a consequence of recent lawsuit, but they should get sued more.
Obligatory joke that the year of the linux desktop may finally come as the android desktop.
I wonder how usable/peformant such as setup would be. But conceivably it could incentivise more native linux app development along the lines of KDE/Qt etc. if there is larger distribution potential.
Presumably this would include Steam?
Well there is a steam client for Android already. They could extend that to an app store and sell mobile games there too, maybe even getting developers of pc games to port their games to mobile platforms?
If you want to run Windows games on Android, Winlator already does a lot of work for you (packaging Wine+Box86/Box64). My phone isn't exactly a powerhouse so the most impressive game I've been able to play with has been Oblivion so far.
What doesn't help is that the ARM GPUs in most phones don't work like the GPUs on desktop. Their I/O model is different, so you can't just take desktop shaders, transpile them, and run them on mobile without losing a boatload of performance. Maybe the desktop-ish chips will work for that, but I wouldn't hold my breath at the moment.
I don't think that'd be very useful on an ARM based android device. But they could release an ARM version of steam eventually.
Android devices with decent x86 emulation being released would be the ideal way to have that setup. Hopefully Qualcomm doesn't gate that feature to windows laptops.
Alternatively, do it natively, https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/pc-gaming/steam-lik...
Big hint about the Steam Deck 2 there.
That means we can finally let termux rest in peace?
This seems to run a VM rather than natively supporting linux syscalls. So termux will be more performant with its natively compiled binaries than this solution.
The thing is: Android is fundamentally Linux. Why should we have to run Linux in a VM (on underpowered hardware). Why not just open up Android, and bring it closer to its roots?
They could start by getting rid of the need to root phones, to have full access to them: entering developer mode could give you access to something like sudo.
> Why not just open up Android ... root
Security. Many people want to run critical applications on their handhelds, and the policy is to err on the side of safety.
(In "better safe than sorry", that is a different kind of sorry - I spoke only yesterday with a user that got locked out of the device completely because of a small accident.)
More like: Many people want to run their applications on other people's phones, without those other people having any say about what that applications do or don't. It is security, but security of the app publishers against the user.
This - enterprise app creators (more concretely, their security auditors) outright demand that the users are locked out of their devices and that the device confirms and enforces that before their app is installed. The amount of these apps and these processes is increasing and has now made it into governmental rules as well (e.g. new digital IDs).
I guess you mean: a non rooted Android, conversely, inhibits the removal of bloatware and spyware. Yes, a proper solution covering all needs is needed.
(Personally, I do not use said «critical applications» because I do not trust container, application and providers. So...)
The only thing Linux on Android is the Linux kernel.
They'll never go that route because Google wants full control on your device. But yeah fundamentally, there's no technical reason why Android couldn't be a normal Linux distribution.
Day it will take off and be usable will be the day I leave iOS.
I've run Linux command line tools and GUI tools using Termux and a random X11 app. . It already works, just not with stuff requiring root permissions (no wireshark etc.). Apps like https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=tech.ula do it through VNC instead.
What I found to be the most limiting factor isn't the OS, but the tiny screen and the lack of good input methods.
Funnily enough, Samsung ran trials where their Dex mode provided a full Linux GUI when plugged into a monitor/USB dock, but that got killed off. Now Dex is back to being an Android desktop environment again. On the plus side, Dex now also works on tablets without being docked, so I guess that was worth it for me.
GrapheneOS + AVF/pKVM on Pixel Tablet looks promising.
Hopefully the next Pixel Tablet includes an optional wired keyboard.
iPad Pro had VMs in 2022, sadly removed by Apple.
You can count me too.
I would advise against this. I have enough with google monopoly in the browser and mobile areas to add another one in the desktop market with this, plus android is not a privacy/safe environment to use. I will probably run android apps if necessary in my linux box, not the oposite.
Of course you use applications on some systems also according to the trust that you have towards said systems. There are still applications that could be nice to have running on Android - it is a possibility.
Plus: you know, you could use Android on an airgapped device... Many of mine are.
Heard that Google? Stop immediately.