Android @lemdro.id dragnucs @lemmy.ml 1 yr. ago

A good android distribution to use as a VM other than android-x86?

For all my needs of temporary android devices, I use a temporary VM instead. where I install android-x86. Now I am looking for alternatives to this distro. It is a bit slow to use and now dated. Still on android 9.

Any recommendation that are FLOSS? A guide how to install Lineage OS on QEmu or KVM is also a good alternative.

16 comments

BlissOS 15 is based on Android 12: https://blissos.org/
- I was finally able to running it on virt-manager with following settings: Display Spice and listen type set to "none". Open GL checkbox enabled. Overview: Firmware: UEFI x86_64: /usr/share/edk2/ovmf/OVMF_CODE.fd
- I am still batteling to get it to run with Virt-manager. I was able to run it with qemu from command line but I don't want that.
  
  Very slick thou. I like the default set of installed software.
I can only think of Waydroid if you are using Linux.
- Yes, Waydroid is a distro too so it should work in a VM
  
  https://waydro.id/
- Yes, I am on linux. I might give it a try. I'll look into installing it. Do you know by any chance a distro that has it preinstalled or install it in a easy way?
  
  Blend OS has it. Though I think waydroid can be installed on most distros somewhat easily
The one that you can download through Android Studio worked really well for me when I was an android developer. It uses KVM, and I found the performance to be pretty decent compared to the same VM running on Windows.

I'm not sure if it has all the features you need. Plus, their UI for installing it sucks. But they do have a supported way of choosing an x86 CPU and having Play Services installed.
I'm curious - why use a VM ? What is the context here? Are you using a Linux phone and need Android apps to fill gaps, or are you running this in a laptop and use Android in some way I don't understand?
- My use case it to simulate a burner phones to bypass app only subscriptions. I run there applications I don't trust to run on my own phone and would not afford to buy the a new phone for everything.
  
  Brilliant! I'm stealing that idea. I love it when I learn useful tricks!
grapheneos
- How do you install into a VM? Do you have a guide?

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