Google just added a powerful new feature to Android: The Linux terminal. It's easier than you think to use and it unlocks a whole new level of control.
Difference is a fully virtualized Linux VM running natively, compared to termux terminal emulator running in user space with an independent package manager.
So you (in theory) have more hw access, access controls and aren’t limited to Android user space running a single user emulation - with no privilege separation existing within termux.
The VM isn’t running in user space, it runs through the hypervisor, shell in userspace is just a convenience feature of accessing the VM that is running parallel to Android and the hypervisor enables passthrough of certain SoC features to talk directly to CPU/GPU, without traversing the android userspace.
It’s like running wsl on windows, both windows and wsl are virtualized and talking to hypervisor, your wsl instance isn’t running within your windows instance.
Can you link any direct confirmation that this is actually a VM on hypervisor, and not just a non-hypervised VM but with GPU passthrough like the Crostini on ChromeOS? These two are very different things.
Is this not just…termux?
Difference is a fully virtualized Linux VM running natively, compared to termux terminal emulator running in user space with an independent package manager.
So you (in theory) have more hw access, access controls and aren’t limited to Android user space running a single user emulation - with no privilege separation existing within termux.
Uhh
How does a Linux vm have more access to hardware than a userspace termux?
The VM isn’t running in user space, it runs through the hypervisor, shell in userspace is just a convenience feature of accessing the VM that is running parallel to Android and the hypervisor enables passthrough of certain SoC features to talk directly to CPU/GPU, without traversing the android userspace.
It’s like running wsl on windows, both windows and wsl are virtualized and talking to hypervisor, your wsl instance isn’t running within your windows instance.
Can you link any direct confirmation that this is actually a VM on hypervisor, and not just a non-hypervised VM but with GPU passthrough like the Crostini on ChromeOS? These two are very different things.
It uses the Android virtualization framework: https://source.android.com/docs/core/virtualization
Using a modified KVM: https://source.android.com/docs/core/virtualization/architecture
Thanks, this might prove promising!
No it’s actually debian Linux. With apt. You can run native Linux app servers and visit them through a browser.