Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Android 16’s Linux Terminal can now run graphical Linux apps such as Doom.
- This is thanks to improvements like hardware acceleration support and a display server.
- These upgrades aren’t live yet in the most recent Android 16 beta, but they could arrive in a future release.
Google wants to turn Android into a full-fledged PC operating system, and to do so, it needs to get desktop-class programs running on it. The best way for Google to do that is to add support for running Linux apps on Android, much like it did with Chrome OS. That’s exactly the idea behind the Android Linux Terminal app that Google has been working on for the past several months. The current version of the Terminal app lacks support for running graphical apps, but that could change in an upcoming release of Android 16.
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Android’s Linux Terminal is an all-in-one app that downloads, configures, runs, and interfaces with an instance of the Debian distribution running in a virtual machine. The app relies on the Android Virtualization Framework (AVF), a set of APIs that allow an Android host device to run other operating systems via virtualization. AVF is supported by many different devices from a variety of OEMs, with the noteworthy exception of Samsung.
Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority
The Terminal app first appeared in the Android 15 QPR2 beta as a developer option, and it still remains locked behind developer settings. Since its initial public release, Google pushed a few changes that fixed issues with the installation process and added a settings menu to resize the disk, forward ports, and backup the installation. However, the biggest changes the company has been working on, which include adding hardware acceleration support and a full graphical environment, have not been pushed to any public releases.
Thankfully, since Google is working on this feature in the open, it’s possible to simply compile a build of AOSP with these changes added in. This gives us the opportunity to trial upcoming features of the Android Linux Terminal app before a public release. To demonstrate, we fired up the Linux Terminal on a Pixel 9 Pro, tapped a new button on the top right to enter the Display activity, and then ran the ‘weston’ command to open up a graphical environment. (Weston is a reference implementation of a Wayland compositor, a modern display server protocol.)
We also went ahead and enabled hardware acceleration beforehand as well as installed Chocolate Doom, a source port of Doom, to see if it would run. Doom did run, as you can see below. It ran well, which is no surprise considering Doom can run on literal potatoes. There wasn’t any audio because an audio server isn’t available yet, but audio support is something that Google is still working on.
Regardless, the fact that Android’s Linux Terminal can run graphical apps like Doom now is good news. Hopefully we’ll be able to run more complex desktop-class Linux programs in the future. I tried running GIMP, for example, but it didn’t work. Eventually, Android should be able to run Linux apps as well as Chromebooks can, as I believe one of the goals of this project is to help the transition of Chrome OS to an Android base.
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