Anbox Explained

Anbox
Anbox
Author:	Marius Gripsgard, Ricardo Mendoza, Simon Fels, Thomas Voß
Developer:	Anbox authors (4)
Discontinued:	Yes
Operating System:	Linux
Platform:	x86-64, ARM, ARM64
Genre:	Compatibility layer
License:	GNU GPL v3^[1]

Anbox is a discontinued free and open-source compatibility layer that aims to allow mobile applications and mobile games developed for Android to run on Linux distributions.^[2] Canonical introduced Anbox Cloud, for running Android applications in a cloud environment.^[3]

Anbox executes the Android runtime environment by using LXC (Linux Containers), recreating the directory structure of Android as a mountable loop image, while using native Linux kernel to execute applications. It makes use of Linux namespaces through LXC for isolation. Applications do not have any direct hardware access, all accesses are sent through the Anbox daemon.^[4]

Anbox was deprecated on February 3, 2023 as it is no longer being actively maintained,^[5] as development has shifted to Waydroid^[6] (formerly called Anbox-Halium).

See also

• Android-x86 - An open source project that makes an unofficial porting of Google's Android mobile operating system to run on devices powered by AMD and Intel x86 processors, rather than RISC-based ARM chips.
• BlueStacks has developed an App Player for Windows and MacOS capable of running Android applications in a container.
• The SPURV compatibility layer^[7] is a similar project developed by Collabora.
• Waydroid also uses Android (LineageOS) in an LXC container on a regular Linux system, using Wayland.^[8]
• Wine - A Windows compatibility layer for Unix-like systems.

External links

• Anbox
• Port to Sailfish OS (not maintained anymore)
• Port to Purism / Librem 5
• Port to postmarketOS

Notes and References

1. Web site: anbox/anbox. GitHub. 4 January 2023 .
2. Web site: Anbox: Run Android apps in Linux. Lynch. Jim. 2017-04-12. InfoWorld. en. 2020-04-13.
3. Web site: Lardinois . Frederic . 21 January 2020 . Canonical's Anbox Cloud puts Android in the cloud . 2020-04-13 . TechCrunch . en-US.
4. Web site: anbox/anbox. GitHub. en. 2020-04-13.
5. Web site: Add deprecation notice to README by morphis · Pull Request #2121 · anbox/anbox . 2023-03-14 . GitHub . en.
6. Web site: README: Important . 2024-08-13 . GitHub . en.
7. Web site: Running Android next to Wayland.
8. Web site: WayDroid brings lag-free Android app integration to the OnePlus 6/6T Linux port.