The goal of its developers is to make it so that every Android app and game can run on Linux. The entire project is open source and licensed under the terms of the Apache and GPLv3 license. Popular Linux distributions make no effort to be compatible with Android apps, so Linux users have to simulate Android devices on their computers using Android emulators or use an operating system that’s compatible with Android apps.Īnbox is conceptually similar to Wine (a free and open-source compatibility layer that makes it possible to run Windows applications on Linux) because it abstracts hardware access and integrates Android applications with the Linux operating system. When executed, the extracted files call certain functions of the Android operating system to access the file system, hardware components, and so on. They are essentially installer packages whose purpose is to extract files to certain specific locations. That’s because the kernel is just the core of an operating system, and it takes a lot more software than just the kernel to run the applications you interact with on a daily basis.įurthermore, Android APK files are not straightforward executables (like. Why Running Android Apps Don’t Run Natively on Linux?Ĭonsidering that Android and Linux share the same kernel, one might assume that it would be easy to run Android apps natively on Linux, but it isn’t.

Thanks to the hard work of some talented developers, there are now multiple ways to run Android apps and games on Linux, and we describe seven of them in this article.

The Google Play Store is now home to around 3 million Android apps and games, many of which are so useful or entertaining that many Linux users would like to run them on their favorite operating system. It’s been some time since Android smartphones came into our lives.

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