Android 5.0.2 live image for your PC?
I was reading the other day about a project that's currently receiving a fair amount of press on Sourceforge.
The AndEX Android x86 Lollipop live CD image is an .iso that enables the user to experience the newer Android OS on their PC as either a fully installed operating system or as a live system that's booted from a CD or a USB device.
There are already a few projects that allow Android to run on a PC, but most of them fall rather short of the mark when it comes to performance, practicality or anything even remotely resembling usability. This new project, from developer Arne Exton, promises to be the most stable and usable Android on a PC yet.
Apparently, it uses Arne's own custom Linux Kernal 3.10.58-exton-android-x86+, which has, according to the bumph I was reading, support for NTFS read and write and some standard PC driver support. The Android image comes complete with Google Maps, Aptoide apps store and all the usual things, such as the Android browser, music, gallery and so on.
However, Arne does mention that you'll need a fairly recent PC in order to get the best from the image, and you unfortunately won't be able to run it in VirtualBox - you can run one of his earlier Android versions in VirtualBox, though, should you wish.
Is It Any Good?
That's a good guestion. I did try to install it on the usual test laptop I have lying around for distro hopping and such, but it failed spectacularly when I tried to run the image.
After spending nearly an hour on getting it working, I decided that the best thing to do was to give it up and see if any of you lot would have better luck. If you do, then please let me know what you think of it.
It does make you wonder why, though. Arne states that, "If you like your Android phone and all the apps you have installed on it, I'm sure you will also like to run apps from your laptop. Bigger screen and better sound etc." That's a good enough reason as any, I suppose. And you could argue that it's projects like this that keep the community alive and well.
But this does put me in mind of the project to get Android on a Raspberry Pi. It sounds like a novel endeavour, but since Android runs perfectly well, more or less, on a £30 tablet these days, in an environment and on hardware it was designed for, it does seem like something of waste of time trying to get it to run on another system.
Emulation of other systems is great, don't get me wrong. And to successfully develop across different platforms, you'll need some way to talk between them. Perhaps, then, I've spent too much time trying to get something to work on a system it wasn't designed for and have become too cynical in my approach?
Either way, do let me know how you get on with this x86 Android spin. You can find the iso at goo.gl/atp8mb.