If you happen to enjoy the Android platform, give this a try and see how well your favorite mobile apps perform on the Linux desktop.It doesn’t matter which Android device you want to emulate you can find pre-configured images of different Android versions and device images without any hassle in Genymotion. Not only does this functionality extend the reach of the desktop, it empowers it to join the ever-expanding mobile generation. The ability to easily run Android apps on Linux is a real boon to the desktop. To demonstrate, I installed the Nest App from the Google Play Store to find it runs flawlessly (Figure 5). Click on the app you want to run to see how well it functions. Click on that and the newly installed apps will be ready to run. Open Chrome and you should see a button in the upper left corner labeled Apps. Running the AppĬhrome has a handy tool called Apps. That’s it! Now, if the app is usable on the desktop version of Chrome, it should be ready to run. Select the folder for the newly extracted APK.Right-click the downloaded APK zip file.This is done in the same manner as was ARChon. Retrieve the file and save it to your ~/Downloads directory on your Linux PC. Share the file in whatever way will best allow you to save it to your desktop (I opted for Google Drive).When the APK generation is complete, tap SHARE CHROME APPLICATION.Select the necessary options for the app (Figure 4).Select the app you want to install from the pop-up listing.Select Installed application and tap NEXT.I highly recommend you install the desired app onto your phone and then have ARChon Packager generate the APK from the installed app. With ARChon Packager, you can generate APKs from installed apps or from APKs within the phone’s storage. Install that app, and you’re ready to go. The app I prefer is called ARChon Packager and can be installed from within the Google Play Store for free. Thankfully, there are now apps for Android that can build APKs with a few taps. It used to be necessary to build APK files manually (which wasn’t always successful). Now we move over to the Android platform. Click Load unpacked extension… (Figure 3)ĪRChon should now appear in the listing of Chrome extensions.Click on what is often referred to as the Overflow Menu (three horizontal bars in the top right corner).This will enable you to finally run those Android apps on your desktop. Move the newly named folder to your home directory (right-click on archon, select Move To…, select Home, and click Select (Figure 2).Rename the newly created folder (right-click and select Rename) to archon.Right-click the ARChon zip file and select Extract Here.Open your file manager and navigate to the Downloads directory (or wherever you have downloaded the.Download the ARChon runtime for your architecture- 32-bit or 64-bit.This phase of the process is also quite simple: This is an Android runtime, created by Vlad Filippov, which brings a specialized version of the Android runtime that works on the desktop version of Chrome. The tool that will do the heavy lifting for this task is called ARChon. You should now find an entry for Google Chrome (unstable) in your Dash (Figure 1, above). When prompted, enter your sudo password.When the Software Center opens, click Install.When prompted, select Open with and make sure /usr/bin/software-center (default) is selected.From the download page, select the installer associated with your package manager and architecture (because I’m using Ubuntu, I’ll download a.Remember, you’re installing the dev channel (you can safely install all three channels-stable, beta, and dev-on the same machine). If you haven’t already installed Chrome, let’s walk through that quick process. I will be demonstrating on an Ubuntu 14.04 LTS installation. With that said, let’s dive into the process of getting Android apps running on Linux. apk file that will be used on the desktop. The third caveat is that, to make this process easier, you’ll also need an Android device to package the. As for other apps, the results can be hit and miss. That some apps do not function should not surprise you (you won’t be getting an app that requires the functionality of a phone service to run on your desktop). The second caveat is that not all apps will actually work. To make matters easier, you’ll need to be running the Chrome Developer channel. First and foremost, this is all handled with the help of the Chrome browser. Of course, this statement does come with some caveats. Fortunately, thanks to some crafty developers, it is quite possible (and actually easy) to run Android apps on the Linux desktop. During that time I have discovered plenty of really useful apps that would be great on the Linux desktop. I’ve spent a lot of time on the Google Play Store.
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