Google has enhanced the capabilities of the Terminal app, allowing the launch of a terminal emulator with access to a full Linux environment running in a virtual machine. During the development of Android 16, support for launching graphical applications compiled for Linux has been added to the Terminal.
In the virtual machine for Linux applications, graphic hardware acceleration tools have been implemented. To build the graphical environment, a compositor has been included. server Weston, which uses the Wayland protocol. Applications compiled for X11 are launched using the DDX component XWayland. A separate button and activity 'Display' have been added to the Terminal app for creating a graphical session.
The Terminal app is being developed in the AOSP (Android Open Source Project) repository, as part of the Android platform, but the changes related to launching graphical applications were not included in the first beta release of Android 16. Enthusiasts conducted an experiment using a build based on the fresh AOSP codebase and demonstrated running Doom in the Terminal on the Pixel 9 Pro smartphone. Among the present limitations, the lack of audio support was noted.
In addition to the graphical session, the installation process has been improved in the development of Android 16 in the Terminal, and a settings menu has been added, through which you can change the disk image size, enable network port redirection, and reset the environment to its default state.
The functionality of the virtual machine with Linux is being developed as part of the Ferrochrome project. Debian GNU/Linux 12 is run in the guest environment. The AVF (Android Virtualization Framework), based on the hypervisor, is used for virtualization. KVM and the crosvm tools. To activate the Terminal application in AOSP builds of Android, the option 'Linux terminal' must be enabled in the 'Settings > System > Developer' section. After this, the Terminal program appears in the application list, and launching it starts the virtual machine with Debian.
Source: opennet.ru
