Google is looking to offer a native Terminal app for Android, possibly with Android 16. The Terminal app will allow installation of a Linux VM with full GUI and GPU acceleration along with other sysadmin features including disk resizing, port forwarding, and partition recovery. This is an extension of Google's earlier project of allowing Chrome OS to run on Android using the Android Virtualization Framework.
    • @Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.worldEnglish
      36•9 months ago

      18/f/California.

      Jokes aside, this appears to be a full virtual machine rather than something like WSL that can interact with and manipulate the host OS. You probably won’t be able to do anything interesting with your Android files using it, just mess around in a sandboxed distro. So it’s still good for developers who want a portable Linux environment to run things in, but not nearly as useful as a properly integrated terminal would be.

      • calm.like.a.bombEnglish
        15•9 months ago

        WSL 2 is a full VM. And then there are some things microsoft are doing so you’re able to access the windows partitions.

        • @Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.worldEnglish
          8•9 months ago

          Right, I should have specified isolated VM. WSL and Windows are interconnected (even if some things, like accessing Windows files within WSL2, are horribly slow). Google’s solution probably won’t have anything like that, given their reluctance to allow users access to Android’s underlying systems.

          • @Railcar8095@lemm.eeEnglish
            2•9 months ago

            I guess the downloads, music… Folders will be available. Basically what an app can access, this should be able to access too

  • N3Cr0English
    15•9 months ago

    I’m still waiting for a fully GPU-rendered gnome desktop on my phone. … and an actually working port of libre office.

    • Baron Von JEnglish
      13•9 months ago

      Yeah if this isn’t a step on the path to "connect your phone to this [usb-c|thunderbolt|whatevs] dock and you get a full desktop OS, I’m not super interested.

    • @yonder@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4•9 months ago

      Postmarketos is a project that already does that. You can run full fat gnome on a pixel 3a or oneplus 6, though phosh is more polished for daily use.

  • @yonder@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2•9 months ago

    I wonder how this will effect the linux phone space (mobian, postmarketos, ubuntu touch). I hope it does not negatively impact progress by stealing attention away.