Recently, Linux has been rising in desktop popularity in no small part to the work on WINE and Proton. But for some, the year of the Linux desktop is not enough, and the goal is now for the year of the Linux phone. To that end, an Android Linux translation layer called Android Translation Layer (we never said developers were good at naming) has emerged for those running Linux on their phones.
Android Translation Layer (ATL) is still in very early days, and likely as not, remains unpackaged on your distro of choice. Fortunately, a workaround is running an Alpine Linux container with graphics pass through via a tool like Distrobox or Toolbox. Because of the Alpine derived mobile distribution postmarketOS, ATL is packaged in the Alpine repos.
In many ways, running Android apps on Linux is much easier then Windows apps. Because Android apps are architecture independent, hardware emulation is unnecessary. With such similar kernels, on paper at least, Android software should run with minimal effort on Linux. Most of what ATL provides is a Linux/Android hardware abstraction layer glue to ensure Android system calls make their way to the Linux kernel.
Of course, there is a lot more to running Android apps, and the team is working to implement the countless Android system APIs in ATL. For now, older Android apps such as Angry Birds have the best support. Much like WINE, ATL will likely devolve into a game of wack-a-mole where developers implement fresh translation code as new APIs emerge and app updates break. Still, WINE is a wildly successful project, and we hope to see ATL grow likewise!
If you want to get your Android phone to talk to Linux, make sure to check out this hack next!
Very cool project. I personally wouldn’t prefer to run android apps (any mobile apps, really) on a desktop with much larger display and non-touch UI, but i guess there are people who would prefer that.
I think the real point is, and the article agrees for folks that are actually running Linux natively on their phone not Android – so you still have the mobile form factor and interfaces available, but with a decent OS. That said plenty of stupid stuff that should exist outside of the android app really but doesn’t for whatever reason on a Linux desktop/laptop isn’t a bad thing either.
This is the most important part to me. The ability to run Android apps on a Linux phone makes having such a device more practical. Especially since Google seems to be closing Android from it’s open source roots.
With Google becoming more Apple-like with their walled garden initiative (no more side loading your apps in the future, unless they’re from a dev who’s registered with Google), things like this may be necessary to run Android apps on a Linux phone in a dystopian future where both Apple and Android are both locked down.
Umm, as an Android developer, Apps work and can scale to desktops with big displays, keyboards+mice just fine. Android has a whole desktop mode, all you need to do is plug your phone into a Monitor via the USB port to check it out.
Might be a solution to run Android apps on my Linux tablet. I did that with Waydroid in the past, but it was a bit annoying because that will fire up an entire emulated Android device.
Exactly how I came across this! While my Linux phone experiments have been mixed, my Linux 2in1s and tablets have been quite successful (my daily driver is a 2in1).
The stars are aligning, I may be able to abandon the android ecosystem right in time for my next phone replacement. Just slap together a Raspberry Pi and a screen for all my buss ticket and payment needs.
Been looking for a project like this! Reading over the source, so far it seems pretty interesting. Building my own Linux phone at the moment, hopefully this lets me run the few Android apps I need on it.
I also wonder if it could mitigate privacy issues with apps (I would assume it doesn’t support Location apis or device identifiers (like IMEI))
This seems like a much better solution than Waydroid, if this gets developed more. Waydroid will of course work better right now because it’s simply running a sort of VM/sandboxed version of LineageOS. But this means that it doesn’t always play along too well with other regular windows.
I’d suggest the two are far from mutually exclusive solutions – WINE and this ATL are never going to be quite as reliable, separate and thus secure as a more complete virtual machine concept done properly, but in many cases they are much more convenient.
Android apps on your Linux Phone? Sounds like a winner to me.
Oh I hope this works
Google and apple can go eat their heart out they need another competitor. Ideally I’d love a system that could run any of their apps and any other apps that come along basically be system agnostic, to go on your phones and tablets. Any app made for any store or any app that’s made to be side loaded without registering with the company whatever it doesn’t matter, would run on it. Yes the consumer would have to be buyer beware about viruses. This was also the case in the early 90s when computers went crazy and everybody had a desire for a desktop machine. When the internet was brand new. Yes it’s a bit wild West. But wild West was what created freedom. Of course with great freedom comes great responsibility. But we’ll take it, to get the freedom.