the one thing linux really hasnt been made on par with winblows yet is the dreadful amount of options for android simulation -the most popular choice seems to be Waydroid, but its such an unneeded hassle to set up at all -genymotion is just slow -and than you have things like android x86 which entirely defeat the point of an emulator
Instead of an emulator, what about a VM? Does that option exist?
What would you put in the VM? Each Android ROM is highly hardware dependent and each device’s internal storage is highly fragmented into a couple dozen partitions configured in proprietary formats.
Theoretically a GSI ROM is supposed to be hardware-independent thanks to Treble but you would still need a common base to go with any GSI ROM and I’m not sure a generic one has been made specifically for use in a VM.
Just androidx86.That’s an Android distro highly customized to running in a VM.
no it isn’t, it isnt that at all, that is so far off the mark it’s extraordinary. Android x86 is as it’s name implies, a generic x86 iso. you can install it to physical hardware or a VMM equally the same, in fact, it’s literally the exact opposite of highly customized.
it’s explicitly as generic as it can be
Apparently you never had a look at it. Getting Android to run on x86 is by far not trivial these days. To make it work, Android-x86 has a lot of modifications over AOSP, including drivers, HAL and a lot more.
Just checkout their Git to see what they had to do to get it working.
I am intimately familiar, it is not highly customized for VMs, it is as generic as it can be. a lot of work was put into making it work on x86 as a whole, but not just VMs.
Ever seen a single instance in the real world where this is running outside of a VM?
nearly all android emulators are VMs, usually vbox, common ones include bluestacks memuplay. WSA uses hyper-v infranstructure. GooglePlay Games uses crosvm
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VM = x86 = android-x86 which OP already mentioned
yeah but android emulators = VM = x86 = android-x86
There’s a bit more to an emulator than simply running Android on x86 hardware.
not really no. I mean, sure you could add a fancy gui on top of it. but 90% of android emulators are some kind of android x86 + libhoudini/ndk + vmm. some modify surfaceflinger so that each application will render to it’s own window, but usually it’s just disabling launcher, and sending some kind of command to open the app from a gui (IE. sending adb launch commands)
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No, qemu can run ARM images with ease. If I recall correctly, waydroid is using that approach
it’s not. waydroid and bliss both use libhoudini/libndk like most other android systems.
Thanks for the correction, has been a while since I used waydroid :)