Wine On Android Is Coming For Running Windows Apps

A port of the Wine software to Google's Android platform is being worked on.

Following the FOSDEM talk today in Brussels about Wine on ARM (notes on the Wine ARM talk will come in a later Phoronix article today or tomorrow), there was a brief showing of Wine on Android.

Alexandre Julliard, the original developer behind the Wine software project to run native Windows applications on Linux and other non-Microsoft platforms, did the very brief showing of Wine on Android. Julliard continues to be employed by CodeWeavers to work on Wine, due to their vested interest in its success due to their Wine-based CrossOver commercial software for Linux and Apple OS X.

After working through some initial issues in his demo, Julliard quietly showed off Wine running on Android. However, the performance was horrendously slow. The performance problems though were attributed to running the Android environment emulated rather than showing off the Wine implementation from a bare metal device.

The Wine Android demo begins...

Alexandre Julliard uses an Apple MacBook for development of his software that runs on Linux to run Windows software... Android was emulated for his demo.

There were some initial hiccups. This Wine port for Android is an active work-in-progress and hasn't received much attention yet.

A Windows application running on Android. While Wine is coming to ARM and there's quite a lot of interest there, CodeWeavers is quite interested and hopeful for the success of Intel x86 Atom CPUs for tablets. If Android gains traction on x86-based tablets and other mobile devices, CodeWeavers has a lot of commercial opportunities for pushing the running of Windows software on Android. Of course, there's ARM devices too, the Wine ARM update will be shared in another Phoronix article.

Wine with a Windows application running in an emulated Android environment.

Stay tuned for additional details from the Wine development talks being held during FOSDEM 2013.