Anbox – Android in a Box | Hacker News Reader

Anbox – Android in a Box

anbox.io

92 pointsrcarmo24 comments

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14090482

This is really amazing! I have used a virtual machine + Remix OS[1] when I needed something like this, but native in Linux will make things a lot easier for me. This would be the equivalent of Wine for Android, right?

Windows installed => Windows in VM => Wine

Android in phone => Remix OS in VM => Anbox

[1] http://www.jide.com/remixos-for-pc

I liked Remix OS, but hey, are they really comparing performance of a modern PC with Android phones and saying that Remix OS runs faster on the PC than Android on the phones?

Remix OS seemed like a nice concept, but it had both hardware and EULA issues[1] that made it impossible for me to use.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10888760

Speedwise, this would be a great sub for the Android Emulator for development purposes. I've always felt something like the iOS Simulator was missing a counterpart for Android.

Actually, the Android emulator with x86 package can be super fast for development. Just need to install the package in android studio.

Have been trying to get this to work under arch for days. No luck so far.

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/anbox-git/

It seems that this supermagical snap thing isn't working.

  ~> sudo snap install --classic anbox-installer
  error: cannot install "anbox-installer": snap not found

Where does `snap` looks for snaps?

  ~> snap find anbox
  The search "anbox" returned 0 snaps

Anbox is a baby now, full of bugs and without internet support. I will keep watching.

Cool!

What hardware abstraction layer is made available or what hardware can be used?

+ accelerometers, gyro

+ touch

+ bluetooth, BLE, WiFi

That would make it a complete debugging experience.

Anyone know of a Mac OSX alternative to this?

I don't think you can run it under Mac natively.

I was thinking about trying this in a Linux VM with VirtualBox, but maybe someone already knows why that wouldn't work.

Theoretically, you could do it with Docker Mac since Docker is just a VM (no native Mac support). You would just need the Docker image to be created.

At that point, would Android-x86 be easier?

Probably won't work because it has to install kernel extensions.

Will I be root on the boxed droid if I am root on the Linux system or do I still need to root the android system?

You'll be rooted. There's no "android system".

Disclaimer: I'm just deducing from the Anbox landing page copy.

Since Android apps are all Java based, I'm wondering: what Java virtual machine is this using?

dalvik on <= android 4.4

So I can run WhatsApp without a phone? This is marvelous.

No, WhatsApp requires you to verify your phone number on any device you install it on. You won't be able to do that here.

Of course you can, WA offers you to enter the confirmation code by hand if you wait 3 minutes at the "waiting for SMS" screen.

Also, for the GP, you can use web.whatsapp.com.

If it works like Remix OS probably you can. Just have your phone available and write the confirmation code from the phone into the computer.

HOWEVER, a whatsapp account can only be installed in one device so you'll have to choose. Or you can use the official website: https://web.whatsapp.com/

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