Android apps arrive on Ubuntu

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 27 May 2009 at 10:56

Canonical is working on an "Android execution environment", that will allow Android applications to run on Ubuntu.

Android applications are built using Google's custom Java runtime, meaning there's no direct way to port an Android app to a Linux desktop.

Canonical's execution environment gets around this by compiling the Android code to Ubuntu's libc instead of Google's custom libc library. This allows it to run within Xorg alongside other Ubuntu-specific applications.

Canonical demonstrated a working prototype of the environment at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Barcelona, and will now work on stripping out the Android elements that applications won't require to run on Ubuntu.

The next step is to tailor the applications to take advantage of the increased processing power of the desktop and to accept mouse-based input, according to Canonical. The team's also looking at ways of opening the Ubuntu filesystem to the Android execution environment, allowing people to get at their saved files through Android apps.

Canonical plans to publish the source code for the environment "soon", as it looks to drive momentum behind the project. As this stage, it could be ported to other distros, meaning that soon any Linux distro will be able to run Android apps.

Speculation has also surfaced that the execution environment might surface in Karmic Koala, version 9.10 of Ubuntu.