Run Linux containers on Android, no root required | Hacker News Reader

Run Linux containers on Android, no root required

github.com

221 pointspolitelemon87 comments

I don't understand what this would be useful for. The Linux terminal app on Android (check Developer settings if you want it) already exists and it uses hardware accelerated virtualization, while this uses QEMU with TCG. The Linux terminal app also supports running a DE (No VNC - as in no VNC, not NoVNC - required!), has full shell, full root, all the features of Podroid, and hell, you could even swap out the terminal if you wanted to. The only advantage to this seems that it supports Android 14, 15, and 16. Am I missing something, or does this have no purpose?

My understanding is that the integrated linux terminal is not supported on all processors like snapdragon ones and also is not available on all manufactures like Samsung. Therefore this approach covers a much bigger audience.

I think it was only available on Google Pixel until recently. As far as I understand, some Samsung Exynos devices support it (e.g. Z Flip 7, non-US S26 with Exynos), but not Snapdragon devices, which don't seem to support non-protected VMs yet:

Error code: java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException: Non-protected VMs are not supported on this device

I can find it on my S25fe with exynos android 16/oneui 8.0 if I search for it in the setting but is greyed out. I wait for 8.5 to see if it is enabled then and is the only time I'm happy to have an exynos device!

Can confirm -- seeing the same error on a Samsung Snapdragon device when attempting to use the Linux terminal

It also behaves weirdly if you use a VPN.

Android's terminal app is really slow and takes some time to boot comparing to Termux.

Also, the Terminal app is essentially a webview (as I understand, the reason is architectural).

This. Also, for phones that don't support Android virtualization, there's a user-space hack, part of Termux upstream, that allows for root-less chroots via LD_PRELOAD: https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/PRoot.

systemd won't boot with this (needs to be PID 1), but a lot of software will work just fine and there's nearly zero emulation overhead.

I don't think it uses LD_PRELOAD, it uses ptrace to intercept system calls (hence the name). Unfortunately this does have performance overhead, although I've never bothered to measure it. Actually that would be an interesting thing to benchmark.

My bad, I must have confused it with something else. Yes, it uses ptrace; there definitely is some overhead around system calls, but that still should be better than running atop a full-scale CPU emulator. That being said, I haven't benchmarked it myself, just remember it being pretty snappy.

Thanks for your correction!

The new app is truly awesome, was able to get a desktop environment running, and a minecraft server & client. Just a shame that you can't pass through USB.

The Linux terminal app on Android reddits are full of reports of instability. It is far from being useful as far as I understand. I had so much hope for this being a good way to use my phone as a portal for development, but it's a dud. At least we have termux and proot.

Termux itself is a red-headed step-child on Android, with current releases installable only from F-Droid, and quite possibly subject to further restrictions in future.

Mind: Termux is the only thing on Android which has not precisely sucked in my own 15+ years' experience with the platform. It remains both crippled and emperiled by the OS and Google.

<https://web.archive.org/web/20210103151837/https://wiki.term...>

There's ... some Google Play availability as of June 2024: <https://github.com/termux/termux-app/discussions/4000>.

F-Droid's own future viability is at risk given Google's recent Android directions:

<https://www.techdirt.com/2025/10/07/googles-requirement-for-...>.

My own interests lie more in the ability to run Android emulated under Linux, and switching from phone / tablet devices to a small form-factor laptop (Framework 12 or 13 most likely) for on-the-go computing.

you seem to have articulated precisely the advantage that makes it serve a purpose for me: supporting the version of android on my phone. presumably i am far from unique in not having android 16

Not everyone owns one of the limited range of devices that Linux Terminal is available for. For example, no Snapdragon chips currently in use support the "non-protected" virtual machines required by the Android Virtualization Framework. Also, it doesn't jive with Samsung Knox, so the few Samsung devices that this might work on (mostly international models with Exynos chips) will likely not be supported.

Wow, didn't know this existed, thanks. But 761 Mo download?? That's insanely big for a terminal, what could possibly make this bundle so big?

It's not giving you access to Android shell, but one inside VM. So OS image for VM.

It is a complete OS in a virtual machine.

The Linux Terminal app is incredibly buggy in my experience, but that may be because I use GrapheneOS.

I tried it on my Samsung phone. Keeps crashing, "recovery" just deletes everything and you start over from scratch. No session lasted more than 5 minutes.

Isn't this super limited? It seems to only support the latest version of android which only recently released phones have.

Personally this toggle doesn't do anything (Android 16, Samsung) so I'm not sure when it's supposed to be ready

We can use old phones for running PiHole.

> The Linux terminal app on Android (check Developer settings if you want it)

I don't see it. How do I install it?

In developer settings, under debugging "Linux development environment (Experimental) Run Linux terminal on Android"

No such option. Apparently it needs to be allowed by the vendor (Samsung)?

Yeah, it is controlled by the vendor. If you can't find the option, you will need to use `adb` to enable it that's what I did basically. You can Google it and you'll find what I'm talking about. IRC, it is `pm enable ...`.

Sometimes the capability unlocks the possibilities.

But does it synergize paradigms?

Creating a new capability is like making a new flashlight.

Maybe the new light can see wider, or further and you see something you didn’t before that was possible.

You can synergizr the looksmaxing while cooking if you like :)

Termux and a BT keyboard it's enough.

Also, native Emacs under FDroid has recently been improved a lot.

With just Emacs you get:

- An IRC, Usenet and Mail client. The ONLY libre Usenet client. comp.arch and comp.misc have really engaging discussions. You can score up nice commenters and blacklist every spammer

- Gemini and Gopher via ELPA (run Esc-x package-install RET elpher)

- A math mini CAS with Esc-x calc RET

- Esc-x package-install RET malyon, get some nice ZMachine text adventures at IFDB

- Elisp environment+cl-lib can do a lot

- Esc-x package-install jabber, Esc-x jabber. Chat with cool people at XMPP servers.

- Org-Mode, enough said

- eshell will allow you to automate stuff

- Elisp + Android related functions + org-mode: heaven.

- Sudoku, Sokoban, Tetris...

- LSP integration it's possible

Get some $10 pocket bluetooth keyboard and try it.

I tried Emacs, but realised I need NixOS to get the packages I depend on like git to download my config. I can't use stock emacs. There's a trick to get Emacs and termux to share packages, but not for nix-on-droid :/

You can do some signing hackery and allow Emacs to see executables from termux https://gsilvers.github.io/me/posts/20250921-emacs-on-androi...

For anyone who ends up here and curious.

Added to my list of things that will never be possible on iOS.

Not to defend it, but emulating Linux in WASM is possible and ought to work on iOS in a reasonably performance way. See https://webvm.io/

It will never be native though, which is the main point.

This can probably be upstreamed into podman. Podman already has supports using a VM using podman machine (uses different tech under the hood depending on the OS). This seems like it can be yet another backend for it.

That would be great

Is it possible to get the reverse of this working? (Waydroid with play services on Linux phones, such as postmarketOS)

I've been using Waydroid with microG on a Librem 5 with PureOS for years. Not extensively as I don't have a lot of reasons to boot Android, but when I do have one it's there.

I've seen some guides for installing Play Services in Waydroid, but personally I'm not interested.

The latest Waydroid beta is over three years old. Waydroid is dead and I haven't found an alternative.

The latest stable release of Waydroid is from little over a month ago. The Android image it uses by default is based on Android 13, which is fresh enough to do its job.

One could also try Android 15 and 16 on Waydroid: https://github.com/WayDroid-ATV/waydroid-builds/releases

Why wouldn't it? All you need is a binder device for Android IPC and root access to launch Waydroid. It should work perfectly fine when installed and used with Wayland.

I think this is great, I've wanted some sort of docker on android system and this does the job quite nicely all wrapped up in an apk. So there is definitely space for this in the current ecosystem. The new terminal built into android crashes whenever I try booting it up.

I just want a folding portable monitor now. We're getting so close...

I’ve heard Samsung makes something like that. :D

https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/galaxy-z-trifold/

I use xreal one pro for that, works well.

I want the opposite. And I want to behave like a true Android. Reason: My fucking useless bank that has a banking app that only runs on non-rooted Android only (cause fuck iOS/web according to them). My attempts to run their shitty app on emulators, virtual machines and the like failed. So currently I have a dumb phone that only has their crappy app on it and that's all. On a separate Google account, because I do not dare to link my main Google account to their name.

Any advice?

The QEMU TCG approach makes sense for isolation, but I'm curious about the traffic routing story. Does each container get its own network namespace, or does all traffic still go through Android's network stack? The latter would mean carrier-level DPI still sees everything the container sends — which matters a lot depending on what you're running.

tmux with proot distros exist though

what about the other way around?

i'm aware about waydroid but it has too many problems with nvidia. also require wayland.

I can't help you with nvidia, but the Wayland thing can be worked around quite easily by running it under a nested compositor like cage. (This is how I run waydroid under Xorg)

thanks. good to hear that. i just have to wait for nvidia support now.

Have you tried https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Waydroid#Software_rendering ? Obviously not ideal, but possibly functional.

There's for example redroid (https://github.com/remote-android/redroid-doc) which seems to be exactly that. Android inside a container.

X86 builds of Android are stuck at many generations back of the OS. Running Android in a VM on X86 is basically dead AFAIK. :(

I'm actually optimistic that this will improve. Google has apparently been working on replacing Chrome OS with android, which I have pretty strong opinions on but the upside is that if they want to go that route they're going to have to make Android officially work well on x86, at which point there's no reason that eg. LineageOS wouldn't be expected to follow suit.

You could run a windows VM and run windows subsystem for android.

Windows subsystem for Android is deprecated. There's a community maintained alternative but it seems to have a few problems wrt. Windows updates.

The community maintained version seems to work okay most of the time, but you're correct a better solution is needed.

Just tried it, the last 2 versions, I cannot continue after specifying the ram and cpu number.

How is it the other way around? What is the status of Waydroid?

Works.

I don't see the purpose to run containers on Android, the managed userspace provides everything I need, including code on the go apps, already sandboxed.

Also not a termux fan.

What are your concerns / objections to Termux?

People are holding it wrong.

Instead of embracing the Java/Kotlin userspace alongside C and C++ on the NDK, with the official APIs, they try to subvert into GNU/Linux.

First of all bionic isn't glibc, secondly the Linux kernel is only a matter of convenience for Google, which they could in theory replace by something else, while keeping the Java/Kotlin and the NDK C/C++ APIs.

Which is exactly termux isn't without issues on modern Android versions, not much different than using cygwin/mingw on Windows.

This is exactly Termux's point, to subvert Android into linux cheaply. Same for MinGW or MSYS2. I want to invest as few as possible on Andriod or Windows, while still able to use them in the way that I prefer.

I don't see cloning UNIX every piece of hardware with a CPU as positive, so it isn't a valid point for me.

As computer nerd I favour diversity just like I had the pleasure to enjoy during the 8 and 16 bit home computing days.

Vertical integration of computers with a soul, full stack experience.

“Using UNIX is the computing equivalent of listening only to music by David Cassidy.”

— Rob Pike

That's your use case.

Mine is that the Unix environment is a preferred one, particularly on a device which is nominally a Unix derivative (Linux -> Android) but which fails to deliver in its stock incarnation.

Termux doesn't solve that problem entirely, but it does remarkably well given the underlying limitations.

What code on the go apps do you have in mind ?

Pascal N IDE, C# Shell NET IDE, Pydroid 3, Shader Editor, the paid versions.

curious is this just software qemu(not sure what word exactly was) instead of virtualization acceleration, probably more overheads?

Yes, under How It Works:

> libqemu-system-aarch64.so (QEMU TCG, no KVM)

TCG means software emulation

I thought why is qemu used here? Why not use linux native namespaces and cgroups.

Permissions. Isolation.

so, like namespaces and cgroups?

Android kernel has the relevant kernel parameters disabled. It is entirely possible to run containers directly on android, but it requires enabled the relevant parameter (iirc no recompilation need, just a cmdline change). But this of course requires root.

https://github.com/ExTV/Podroid/blob/3f7d19dee63e24e0bd36c22... not sure

Itbsays it doesnt use kvm, so i thinj that meens no accel.

And local FS access is mediated how?

With this I could in theory do all my work from my Android phone.

I find the title very misleading. Linux containers typically means LXC, but when in readme you say it’s intended for running OCI-based containers.

What would be the usecases?

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

I find it somewhat amusing that it uses QEMU to emulate Linux in order to create a container with restricted permissions, even though it is already running on Linux with restricted permissions. I get the point while it is designed that way, but still funny.

Podman.....

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