Collabora launches Spurv project to run Android apps on Wayland desktop
Collabora announced a new project that enables Linux users with Wayland Display Services to run Android applications on the desktop environment. As a result, running Android apps and even Android mobile operating systems on GNU / Linux computers is getting closer to reality. Andex Exton has released two versions to run the latest Android 9.0 Pie on PC or Raspberry Pi devices.
Collabora is known for its contributions to the Linux kernel, improvements to the Linux operating system and Android, and many other cool things. But recently, they focused their efforts on a new project called SPURV to support running Android applications on the Linux desktop.
SPURV is our experimental containerized Android environment, and this is a quick overview of what it is.
It’s aptly named after the first robotic fish since a common Android naming scheme is fish-themed names. Much like its spiritual ancestor Goldfish, the Android emulator.
SPURV is different from other Linux desktop integrations for Android since it offers direct hardware access to the Android application. This is a choice we made for performance reasons. But has drawbacks, especially when it comes to security.
Using direct hardware access does however grant us increased GPU and CPU performance, which is important since we’re targeting embedded platforms which can have very limited resources.
