Debian And Android, In Perfect Harmony

Get the best of both worlds.

There have been a few instances over the years where a developer has tried to combine all the benefits of both Android and Linux into a single instance. Most of the time the projects barely get off the ground, while others fail or never really live up the expectations placed on them. However, this recent project appears to have mastered both operating systems and created a desktop where both exist side by side.

ValksPC is a distro that aims to give users an ARM-Debian setup where they can boot into an LXDE Debian build and use all the Linux desktop goodness that comes with that but with the option to hit the F7 key and swap to a fully functioning ARM, Android Jelly Bean desktop, thus allowing them to work within the most used mobile OS.

As the developer states in its blog, "We created a unified distribution that allows both Android and Debian LXDE/XFCE applications to run simultaneously at native speeds. On ARM, our distribution is based on a modified ARMHF Debian Wheezy rootfs."

There are a number of advantages here, running the two side by side, the obvious one being the development process, where you can swap between two different operating systems to test code, but also the benefits to web designers, who need to see how their sites look using different Oss.

Clever Demo

There's a demo of the system in operation that can be viewed on the VolksPC site at goo.gl/M5724f. The demo was run on a RK3066 dualcore mini PC, and Vasant Kanchan of the VolksPC project spoke to Phoronix recently regarding the setup. "1. Both Android and Debian apps run at native speeds. Debian apps don’t depend on Android unlike other implementation of Debian on Android which are based on VNC running on Android.
2. We did not change Android to implement this (other than start-up scripts). This means we have full compatibility with all Android applications.
3. MicroXwin provides the X-Wndows framework, and it is much faster, as seen running on ARM based Raspberry Pi".

This is certainly a project worth keeping an eye on. Should this work as well in real-world terms as in the demo, then I for one would be more than happy for a mobile device that runs a stable Android version, then can be docked with a screen, keyboard and mouse and with the press of the F7 key have Linux spring up to work on. Okay, there are examples of that already, but they don't feel quite as good as I envisage. The true PC in the pocket is now one step closer.

There are a number of advantages here, running the two side by side.