Android 16 lets the Linux Terminal use your phone's entire storage
Android 16 Beta 4 uncaps the disk resizing slider, allowing you to allocate your phone's entire storage to the Linux Terminal.
This is going to be nice. Good first step.
Yeah let me know when I can install mainline Linux.
Definitely a step in the right direction, but the fact that android uses the Linux kernel but still manufacturers keep so much proprietary... It kills me
They're doing this because they want to switch chrome to be android based, and they want to have desktop apps available right away since chrome doesn't have much.
Not just that - modern Androids compile apps in a VM these days to reduce the attack surface of the compiler. You can also push other services into VMs that support the main image. You could even push some vendor drivers into VMs and help keep the main kernel less of a vendor fork fest.
I mean... This is kinda close. The "Linux Terminal" app is running a full Debian install in a KVM VM. On the newest version of the app (like on Android beta or on GrapheneOS), you even have a full GUI that you can use.
In theory, we should be able to boot any mainline Linux distro in a VM, if someone writes an app for it, as AVF (Android Virtualization Framework) is just a wrapper around Linux KVM with some restrictions. (for now the built-in app only supports Debian)
It depends of your definition of mainline Linux. You can install Linux on your phone with thanks to postmarketOS Of course only if your phone is supported.
Im not sure what you mean, like, run android on mainline linux? if that is the case you already can. Not on all devices, but I think the pixel can run mainline kernel, I know ofc you can run androidx86 on mainline, if you mean via terminal I think you can sideload mainline. At least, if you compile your own rom you absolutely would be able to.
Press X to doubt.
The root filesystem will very likely still be locked down.
The article is talking about storage space, not about access to files in any particular filesystem.
Previous versions of Android 15 Terminal app only allowed 16GB of space to be used by the guest system. The article mentions it.
So even if you had 128GB in your phone, previously you could only use 16GB of them in the environment Google set up for the Linux Terminal subsystem, which made it very limiting. What the article says is that now they are removing that limitation.
I am not sure I understand what this has to do with the article. Also, I don't see why that would be the case. I don't see much of a good reason to lock the VMs down.
Someone who owns a fancy new phone with Android 15 or 16, could you please test if you can run GUI Linux apps on it using my X server app?
Supposedly it should work like this:
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sudo apt-get install task-xfce-desktop export DISPLAY=127.0.0.1:0 xfce4-session
Open XSDL app again, you should see XFCE desktop environment with mouse cursor, and you should be able to launch Synaptic and install other Linux packages.
It tells me it is not compatible with my phone. Is it on fdroid? Can I sideload it from somewhere? I have a OnePlus 12 phone and it is running Android 15
Google's bullshit strikes again! All apps must be built for Android 13 or they are removed from Play Store, apparently because Google could not do the Android security correctly for the first 12 versions. Now they can emulate Linux on Android, but cannot emulate an older version of Android on Android. And I last updated my app in 2021, during Android 11 era.
Here's the link to sideload the app:
I'll try to update it on Play Store tomorrow, if my crusty build scrips will work with the new Android SDK.
Well, this should make for some fun, new script-kiddie malware.
This is gonna be cool. Does Android 16 release in the fall?
Some time in June.
Ok. Now it won't be abandonware for me.
While technically cool, what is the use case?
It's in the article. They want to run Linux desktop apps on Android because they're switching chromeOS to android base instead of Linux.