14 DAY TRIAL // Collabora announced a new project that would allow Linux users to run Android apps on top of their Linux desktop environments under the Wayland display server.
Running Android applications or even the Android mobile operating system on GNU/Linux computers starts to become a reality now that developers like Arne Exton released two distributions that let you run the latest Android 9.0 Pie on your PC, as well as Raspberry Pi devices.
Collabora is known for their contributions to the Linux kernel, improving the Linux support for Chrome OS and Android, among lots of other cool things, but it looks like they've been working lately on a new side project called SPURV, which enabled running of Android apps on your Linux desktop.
A containerized Android environment for Linux and Wayland
SPURV is a containerized Android environment for Linux and Wayland designed to enable you to run Android apps with full 3D acceleration in the same graphical desktop environment of your GNU/Linux operating system on top of Wayland. It consists of several components to enable audio, networking, and graphics.
"Running Android has some advantages compared to native Linux applications, for example with regard to the availability of applications and application developers," said Robert Foss. "For current non-Android systems, this work enables a path forward to running Android applications in the same graphical environment as traditional non-Android applications are run."
With SPURV, anyone can now try to run Android apps on their Linux desktop if they use Wayland. Basically, you have to download the Android (AOSP) and a Linux kernel, integrate SPURV into Android, build Android and the kernel, build a debootstrap-based root file system, and then flash the kernel, Android, and the root file system to the target device.
If care about privacy and security, we have good news for you as Collabora's SPURV project run the Android applications in a container, isolated from the rest of your Linux OS. But there's also an ugly part of running conternized apps, as they usually suffer of performance degradations.
