Installing
Forget what you know – or what you think you know…
When installing software in popular distributions, we use familiar package managers such as apt, dnf and so on. However, installing software is sometimes achieved just by downloading a binary package, such as Anbox. It comes as a Snap, the standard that Canonical has developed and is still maintaining. Anbox is pre-alpha software and so even though the install will probably work, getting it to run is another matter. The standard way to emulate Android devices is to use the Android VirtualDevice package for Android Studio. It can be run without the Studio part in case you only want to run an application. Considering the resources required by Android Studio, this is a useful option. Installing the emulator is best done as part of the Studio, though. Android_x86 is created as a new distribution when you take down and install the rpm file. It installs an entry in the GRUB menu so at next reboot you can just pick it and run your current computer as an Android device. To run it while you do your regular tasks requires Virtualbox or qemu. Indeed, many of the emulators in this Roundup rely on Virtualbox for virtualisation.
The one that uses the most resources when it runs is Genymotion. However, installing it is a breeze, once you have Virtualbox installed. To install it, you download the binary installer and run it. When you run the application the first time, there are no virtual devices, so you need to pick one from an extensive list; the download and setup are all handled automatically.
Shashlik follows the same philosophy as Anbox, except that it uses the qemu emulator. Despite this, it’s fast and above has a simple install script for side-loading apk files. To install Shashlik, you can use the Debian package with the dpkg -i command. Once it’s installed you may need to change some parameters, such as using the GPU. To do this you need to open the shashlik-run python script.