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.
  • Pasta DentalEnglish
    15•7 months ago

    My question is, will it be a real VM or a container? They are both Linux, so it could potentially work. Anyways, I really like the idea of my phone also being my laptop that I can just plug a keyboard into, and not some big screen phone apps with a semblance of desktop layout.

    • @cron@feddit.orgEnglish
      20•7 months ago

      This graphic shows that the platform is designed with full virtualization in mind. You can see that the VM on the right has its own kernel (unlike for example docker containers).

      Edit: image source

      • Possibly linuxEnglish
        9•7 months ago

        Am I the only one that smells DRM? Maybe this will become the new way Google can force stock Android with all of its spyware

  • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍English
    10•7 months ago

    I can’t believe they’re at all worried about Linux on phones yet, not with the state mobile Linux is in at the moment. It’s improving, but UX improvements on Linux tend to move at a glacial pace. I think desktop Linux has mostly caught up such that laptops can be sold to the general public and not be a complete disaster, but it’s taken, what, three decades?

    So I have to wonder: why?

    • @vividspecter@lemm.eeEnglish
      9•7 months ago

      They might be concerned about future competition with a looming potential breakup of the company by the US DOJ (not that it would necessarily weaken Android itself but it seems plausible). But it could also just be because one of the devs wanted to do it, which is pretty typical with Google (for better and for worse).

    • PantsofmagicEnglish
      7•7 months ago

      Probably so they can discontinue ChromeOS like they discontinue everything.

  • @AngryCommieKender@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6•7 months ago

    Is Google fighting itself? Seems like the Android dev team is almost literally indirectly addressing the issues that the Chromium and App Store dev teams just created.

  • superterranEnglish
    6•7 months ago

    So does this all lead up to Android becoming the new ChromeOS? Newer builds of Android certainly make it seem so

  • cumEnglish
    5•7 months ago

    Cool I guess, but why? What’s the use case? Are they trying to bridge the gap between ChromeOS and Android? I know they’re inspired a lot by DeX, which is awesome, but as far as I know that mode is mostly for like desktop-like browsing. Not really for development, which is what you’d use a Linux VM terminal for.

    • @vividspecter@lemm.eeEnglish
      6•7 months ago

      It’s probably just something that one of the AOSP devs wanted (to scratch an itch and all of that). It might also mean they won’t have a GUI app to manage the VM initially and you’ll just use the new Terminal.

    • Possibly linuxEnglish
      2•7 months ago

      Honestly they should just enable user namespaces. That would allow apps to create containers.

    • @cron@feddit.orgEnglish
      9•7 months ago

      I don’t think so. I think they are trying to make android more suitable for “desktop” usage, similar to chrome os.

      By providing a gui for larger screens (Android 15) and virtualization (Android 16) they are significantly expanding what android can do.

  • @Nioxic@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1•6 months ago

    so… android is based on linux, right?

    so i can use the terminal on android, so i can run a VM with linux?

    linux in linux.

    i mean sure - i see the possibilities that this opens up but i also dont see why i’d want to do that - on a phone.

    i am looking forward to the terminal though - sounds juicy!