The Android Runtime On Chrome OS Makes Use Of Wayland

[mcirsta]

As as C/C++ programmer I'm pretty sure that if I put enough time and resources into this it should be possible to port this ChromeOS Android compatibility layer to Gnu/Linux. I'm not sure how long it would take me though , might be a year, might be less, could be more ....
I've thought about doing this but I've come to the conclusion that this is not what I want to happen. I don't want to see Linux invaded by a couple of closed source Java ( I know it's Dalvik or whatever but I call it Java ) + binary blobs that are designed for a mobile and touch screen form factor.
I really like to see quality Qt5 apps that use native code and have those run on my system so I think my effort will be better spent elsewhere. Maybe that's how other developers think, I'm sure some of them think along these lines.

[liam]

That's what I'm saying. Their compatibilty layer is just a big fat bait to get someone into expanding Google's ecosystem somewhere else.
Because also Android is just a big fat bait, Google isn't "good", they didn't release it as open because of their love of kittens.

Was this meant for me?
I never meant to indicate that Google would do such things out of altruism (personally, I don't believe that ANY "normal" person has such "motivations"), and specified that their reasons would be the same as their reasons for most of their service options.
As an aside, I'm a big fan of Google because their modus operandi results in a near ideal combination of free (they also have a ton a libre projects), quality services. They are also (nearly?) unique in offering a way out of their ecosystem while keeping a lot of your data (Checkouts---it's not offered for every service, but, again, I've not seen any other major service provider offer the like).

[liam]

Their runtime is a Chrome/ium addon due to obvious reasons (ChromeOS), porting it to run without Chrome/ium is a Wine-like project that none (apart from Google) can be really interested in paying for.

OK, I think I misunderstood your previous post, but I'm not exactly sure how (except that the person you were responding to was wondering why no other orgs had yet done the work).

There is no real monetary benefit in making a layer to run apps for Google, for free.

NM, I read that sentence to mean that GOOGLE had no incentive to make such a layer.
Basically, we understood that "for" to have two different meanings

[GizmoChicken]

Wow, that I didn't know. Would have thought we would have seen a big boon to the shashlik project

There doesn't seem to have been much activity on the Shashlik project for several months.

Nonetheless, I posted a comment/question on their GitHub issues page. In that post, I wrote:

If I understand correctly, Shashlik relies on QEMU to run a stripped down version of Android as a VM. On the other hand, to run Android apps on their Chromebooks, Google, if I’m not mistaken, relies on containerization (probably using LXC) to run a stripped down version of Android as a container. Does that sound about right?

According to two Google devs, other than the Android container itself, pretty much everything required for running Android apps on Chromebooks has been released as open source. See https://groups.google.com/a/chromium...ss/OfBln-hl7ug

Would there be any advantage if Shashlik relied on containerization rather than QEMU?

See https://github.com/shashlik/shashlik-build/issues/28

No reply yet, and there probably never will be one. But maybe the included link will lead to further discussion.

[starshipeleven]

unapproved post for liam here

[starshipeleven]

That's not EXACTLY true, I think.
The incentive for Google to port their android runtime(and services) to other operating systems is the same as Google deciding to provide Android, and the rest of their services, for free.

That's what I'm saying. Their compatibilty layer is just a big fat bait to get someone into expanding Google's ecosystem somewhere else.
Because also Android is just a big fat bait, Google isn't "good", they didn't release it as open because of their love of kittens.

[starshipeleven]

What you wrote makes little sense, if at all: specifically for linux there's very little closed source projects that they're contributing to. I can name just a couple of extensions to Chromium, transforming it into Chrome.

Hello? Android apps are NOT open on average, are distributed through non-free channels, and they also have DRM and whatever.
All opensource foundations aren't going to do that with their own money.

The idea is to make Android apps to run easily on GNU/Linux.

You fail to understand what this means. Android has a well-established and vast ecosystem that can and probably will squash Linux's if given chance. It's like if you magically turned Wine into what it is supposed to be instead of a broken mess of hacks. Poof, you can use all windows programs on Linux too.

Any such distro would likely become "the lower layer" under what would basically be an Android system.

Probably, I should emphasize, why would anyone interested in these apps. I'm not interested, neither, probably you.

This is probably why you fail to understand.

I'm VERY interested in running Android on a PC, because it is an opensource system written from scratch keeping in mind most learned lessons from older OSes, and has an ecosystem that is vast as Windows's.

But you're probably noticed, there are peoples interested in running Android on their netbooks, for whatever reason.

Hi, I'm one of them. My world domination plan is getting a Windows tablet or convertible and replace the OS with Android x86.
There are so many good reasons that it hurts.

This means that there're peoples, interested in those apps, so if GNU/Linux could run them, the peoples could've use that instead of Android on their netbooks.

If the people installs Android apps in Linux Desktop and mostly use them as there are FAR more quality apps than linux programs (apart from the workstation stuff and PC games anyway), you end up hurting Linux as developers will likely target Android "because it also runs on Linux".

[Brophen]

A few days ago I asked in a Chromium OS discussion group whether Google has any plans to release their code that allows running Android apps on Chromebooks. According to two Google devs, other than the Android container itself, pretty much everything required for running Android apps on Chromebooks has already been released. See https://groups.google.com/a/chromium...ss/OfBln-hl7ug

Hopefully someone clever will figure out a way to port this from Chrome OS to other Linux distributions. I, for one, would welcome access to Android apps on Arch, Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc.

Wow, that I didn't know. Would have thought we would have seen a big boon to the shashlik project

[starshipeleven]

It is bizarre, however, that no one has yet finished the work of porting the runtime to a nearly identical Linux base.

Their runtime is a Chrome/ium addon due to obvious reasons (ChromeOS), porting it to run without Chrome/ium is a Wine-like project that none (apart from Google) can be really interested in paying for.

[GizmoChicken]

Since it's making use of Wayland, if Google open-sources this new ARC solution I can't see why a distro wouldn't include it. Hopefully this would incentivize the effort to make Android apps look nice on larger formfactors as well

A few days ago I asked in a Chromium OS discussion group whether Google has any plans to release their code that allows running Android apps on Chromebooks. According to two Google devs, other than the Android container itself, pretty much everything required for running Android apps on Chromebooks has already been released. See https://groups.google.com/a/chromium...ss/OfBln-hl7ug

Hopefully someone clever will figure out a way to port this from Chrome OS to other Linux distributions. I, for one, would welcome access to Android apps on Arch, Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc.