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As Android is gaining more and more users every day (and Windows losing some), i consider reasonably fair for me to ask: Is there ANY Wine equivalent for Android apps? I'm not asking for native linux support for apk packages, just for a non-emulator like Wine is.

Touch-interface hardware is getting cheaper every day, and Android being king there, is just natural that all programmers keep on rushing into making Android apps. In the last year alone i've seen most famous software getting implemented in Android: Photoshop, Autocad, Revit, Pixlr, etc

I'm not an Android developer, not looking for an android-sdk, just regular user looking to use certain android apps in Ubuntu. Typical example: Autocad and Photoshop - neither one working properly under wine, but having Android variants. I'm hoping that Android being linux, it could be more easy to adapt Android to Ubuntu code, than adapting Windows to Ubuntu code.

ipse lute
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2 Answers2

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EDIT December 29, 2018

I found something named anbox. From their github :

Anbox is a container-based approach to boot a full Android system on a regular GNU/Linux system like Ubuntu. In other words: Anbox will let you run Android on your Linux system without the slowness of virtualization.

Anbox uses Linux namespaces (user, pid, uts, net, mount, ipc) to run a full Android system in a container and provide Android applications on any GNU/Linux-based platform.

The Android inside the container has no direct access to any hardware. All hardware access is going through the anbox daemon on the host. We're reusing what Android implemented within the QEMU-based emulator for OpenGL ES accelerated rendering. The Android system inside the container uses different pipes to communicate with the host system and sends all hardware access commands through these.

This is interesting. But I haven't tested it yet, but some articles on the net refers to that. You guys may want to take a look. Meanwhile, I'll update this answer later when I've tried them.

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Original answer below.

You can either :

  • Run ARChon Runtime for Chrome. It is an android runtime, made for Google Chrome. More info Click here. (You will need to convert APK to archon package with android phone. Also not all apps are compatible. I guarantee a headache, Prepare your paracetamol.)
  • Run android-x86 in a VirtualBox or similar. More information Here. You may hit performance issues because emulated GPU anyway.
  • Use Genymotion. More information here. Basicly something like BlueStacks, but also have multiple device support and most importantly, supports ubuntu. (I can't comment for performance, but in windows, it is great! Also it supports multi touch screens - again on Windows. can't comment on ubuntu.)

For exactly like wine, where you aren't emulating the whole OS, I think ARChon is the most accurate answer. But I'm pretty sure you will hit too much issues and probably just give up like me.

We all know Android is based on Linux kernel. But that doesn't mean that's the same thing. Android doesn't use X server like your desktop.

So AFAIK, there are no solution so far. Sorry.

Rinaldo Jonathan
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    Maybe both linux and Android could run Wayland protocol with Weston as its' client. X-Window Server is 30+ years old. Ironically, that's why Android is so successful, it doesn't need a full-time display server. – ipse lute May 17 '16 at 14:19
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The simplest method involves using Genymotion. It is one of several Android emulators that you can install in Linux. When compared to other emulators Before, you install Genymotion, you have to first install Oracle’s VirtualBox. VirtualBox is virtualization software that creates the virtual environment necessary to emulate Android in Linux. To install VirtualBox, download it from Oracle. Next, create an account at the Genymotion website and install the application. The application comes as a .debi file so simply double click it to begin installation. Here's the video in detail..

https://youtu.be/MHmMDEzsJEY

copied from : https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-install-Bluestacks-in-Ubuntu

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patrick
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  • Tried Genymotion in Windows. Hated it!! Sorry, nothing personal. I was shocked how hard it was to get rid of it (uninstall it). Very high on resources. And i needed Virtualbox too. My dream is an Ubuntu mobile device able to run apks, so i'm thinking a small non-emulator, not complex emulators like Virtualbox. – ipse lute May 18 '16 at 10:03
  • soo let me get this straight, you want to install Apk's on Ubuntu mobile? – patrick May 18 '16 at 10:06
  • I would love a (very) small non-emulator, small enough to run in Ubuntu on low-end CPUs like ARM or Intel Atom. Or maybe something like Ubuntu for Android, but the other way around: Android for Ubuntu. – ipse lute May 18 '16 at 14:28
  • although andriod is Linux you cant run software of andriod on ubuntu or the other way around, the reason for ths is A: different proccessors (phones mostly use the ARM cpu (think rpi) B: way different packages C: Try installing arch Linux stuff on ubuntu, no dice because they need something only the base of arch has, you can cross compile the software you need though, but i highly advice you to think about the danger that comes with it – patrick May 18 '16 at 14:32
  • from what I understand, @ipselute wants android on ubuntu mobile, just like android on BlackBerry 10 devices. am I right? – Rinaldo Jonathan May 18 '16 at 15:08
  • @patrick: Many ideas running through my head: Ubuntu running on ARM tablets and phones, Androidx86 running on Intel PCs. If Alien package converter could just add support for apks... If just all linuxes would play nice with each other... including Android and ChromeOS! – ipse lute May 18 '16 at 15:48
  • Hmm smart idea, tell you what, send me a chat message containing your mail adress and we'll see what we can do aight? – patrick May 18 '16 at 20:34
  • IMO the best way to go is to figure out how andriod installs softwake, in other words extract a APK pkg on ubuntu, see whats making it tick, i am going to try this weekend using one of the older whatsapp apk's – patrick May 18 '16 at 20:44