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Since Android is based on Linux (and I understand is only a Java layer on top of Linux), I wonder why Linux does not generally run Android applications.

Why is an Android compatibility layer, either with its own desktop or within X, not a standard feature of modern Linux distributions?

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    See this answer (from the Related list over there ->) for some reasons.
    – PM 2Ring
    Commented Nov 19, 2014 at 13:10
  • For the opposite thing, check out Maru OS or Complete Linux Installer!
    – Fiksdal
    Commented Jun 12, 2016 at 18:36

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Android is based on the Linux kernel. That, and a very stripped-down BusyBox. All the rest of GNU/X11/Apache/Linux/TeX/Perl/Python/FreeCiv is not present on Android. Asking why Linux doesn't emulate Android is like asking why trucks don't emulate airplanes — after all they're both big vehicles with wheels at the bottom.

Most Android applications are specifically designed to handle the limitations of a portable device: limited computing resources, energy consumption paramount, small screen, no external input device. There are usually similar applications for PC-style computers, except for location-related applications which are generally not useful outside of a mobile device.

You can run Android applications in the emulator provided by Google. This is a developer tool, because the main application of running Android applications on a PC-style computer is to test them.

There is some work on systems that combine Linux with Android (such as Ubuntu for Android, but it's been abandoned), mainly running on intermediate-format devices (tablets), but also on smaller devices (phones) to allow users of mobile devices to run existing applications from the larger-format world. Since the two operating systems have mostly compatible kernels, it's possible to run the rest of the operating system side by side (that's easier than rewriting the Android libraries to work on top of Linux/X11 or vice versa). There are significant technical difficulties, however. Probably the biggest one is that the GUI operate on completely different software: Linux uses the X Window System like other unix variants while Android has its own stack.

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  • That's a correct technical explanation of the differences between the systems but it doesn't answer the question.
    – Andrew J. Brehm
    Commented Nov 21, 2014 at 8:22
  • @AndrewJ.Brehm I thought it did. Why is compatibility not a common feature? Because it's a huge amount of work and not extremely useful.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Nov 21, 2014 at 10:59
  • Might be the best answer I can get. I still think an Android desktop running on alt-F8 would be great to play games and worth the effort. Hence I was wondering why there was no demand for it.
    – Andrew J. Brehm
    Commented Nov 21, 2014 at 11:47
  • @AndrewJ.Brehm If you want to play games that aren't too CPU-intensive, run them in the emulator.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Nov 21, 2014 at 12:28
  • Interestingly, Maru OS seems to have achieved this, but just the other way around.
    – Fiksdal
    Commented Jun 12, 2016 at 18:36
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It because the architecture of Android ist different and developed for mobile devices.

Look at this for more informations.

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