DebianRunner: Running Desktop Applications on Android Smartphones
Author(s)
Gupta, Abhishek
Preston, Kurt
Rodriguez, Alejandro
Contributor(s)
King, Sam
Issue Date
2010-10-27
Keyword(s)
operating systems
Android
smartphones
Abstract
The Android operating system runs atop the Linux
kernel, yet lacks the ability to natively execute standard Linux desktop applications. Though efforts have
been made to enable this functionality, all approaches
to date require a user to switch to a separate desktop
environment, resulting in a substantial loss of interface
consistency and usability.
This paper describes DebianRunner, an Android
application designed to execute in a custom, root-
enabled Android build. It unlocks desktop Linux capabilities by mounting the full Debian Linux distribution into the file system, and provides a tool to simplify the installation and execution of Linux programs
from within Android.
Though functional, DebianRunner suffered from
poor performance as a result of limited RAM in the
HTC Dream used for testing. However, more powerful phones should be better able to exploit DebianRunner’s functionality, and the most of techniques
explored in this paper would be applicable to other
rooted Android phones.
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