Current releases based on Android 8.1 ship with Play Store access built in and a Desktop Friendly Taskbar launcher for the home screen.
It comes as a regular iso file which can be burned to a USB and installed like any other Linux distro on it's own, in multi-boot scenarios or in virtual-box. It's performance in virtual-box isn't great though.
It's also amenable to a quick and easy manual install for multi-boot that doesn't necessarily require separate partitions and has less risk of inadvertently breaking existing installed OS's. This tutorial outlines the manual install method.
Step 1 - Download the ISO
Download the current ISO from https://www.android-x86.org/download.html
For this tutorial I used the most recent stable 64bit release android-x86_64-8.1-r2.iso
Step 2 - Choose and create the install directory
You can use any location you like as long as it's not encrypted. You could install in your home folder, somewhere else in Mint file system, or on a separate partition. A fresh install takes up about 2GB of space in total. You''ll probably want at least 6GB available to allow for Android app installs.
For this tutorial I'll be installing into a dedicated directory added to Mint's root file system.
In a terminal create the directory to hold the installation. As I'm using the root partition I'll need to use sudo at this point, and then take ownership of the directory once created.
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sudo mkdir /android-x86
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sudo chown $USER:$USER /android-x86
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mkdir /android-x86/data
In your File Manager navigate back to the downloaded Android-x86 ISO, right click on it and open it with Archive Manager.
In Archive Manager select the 4 files as in the screenshot below before clicking extract.
In the folder selection dialog navigate to the
/android-x86
directory you created earlier and click extractYou should now have the following content in the
/android-x86
directoryStep 4 - Create a grub menu entry
For this stage of the process you will need to make a note the UUID of the partition that you have used for the installation directory along with the full path of the directory.
To check the UUID open a terminal and run
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lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,TYPE,MOUNTPOINT,UUID
/android-x86
directory has a UUID of d3abb04b-9d93-4004-a247-eff8481481d3
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steve@steve-Inspiron-5580:~$ lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,TYPE,MOUNTPOINT,UUID
NAME SIZE TYPE MOUNTPOINT UUID
sda 931.5G disk
└─sda1 931.5G part /mnt/backup_drive 7f5c52d4-a3ee-44b1-bbbe-230bdb1e6d13
nvme0n1 238.5G disk
├─nvme0n1p1 512M part /boot/efi 0C7C-3863
├─nvme0n1p2 29.8G part / d3abb04b-9d93-4004-a247-eff8481481d3
├─nvme0n1p3 59.6G part /home 464812ce-bfe2-4aae-8e50-66fc77f13bc2
├─nvme0n1p4 29.8G part 0dd54e55-0107-41e5-9c73-6dff95358456
└─nvme0n1p6 118.8G part /mnt/virtualbox_images 398e2ad0-3f28-414f-a71e-ea46c9b8a3a0
/etc/grub.d/40_custom
in a text editor.In a terminal run
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xed admin:///etc/grub.d/40_custom
/android-x86
directory and %DIRECTORY% with the full path to the /android-x86
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menuentry 'Android-x86' --class android-x86 {
insmod part_gpt
set root='%UUID%'
set DIR=%DIRECTORY%
search --file --no-floppy --set=root $DIR/system.sfs
linux $DIR/kernel root=/dev/ram0 androidboot.selinux=permissive quiet DATA=
initrd $DIR/initrd.img
}
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menuentry 'Android-x86' --class android-x86 {
insmod part_gpt
set root='d3abb04b-9d93-4004-a247-eff8481481d3'
set DIR=/android-x86
search --file --no-floppy --set=root $DIR/system.sfs
linux $DIR/kernel root=/dev/ram0 androidboot.selinux=permissive quiet DATA=
initrd $DIR/initrd.img
}
Open a terminal and run
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sudo update-grub
Reboot, access grub and select the Android-x86 menu entry. You should shortly be booted into Android. Have fun.