Android would soon have a native terminal Linux app

Estimated reading time: 25 minutes

It has only been 17 years, but developers can now cease looking for ways to port Linux onto its Android counterparts. Google is planning to include support of Debian Linux officially through a new Terminal app on Android, which can be as interesting as running Android Studio and other development tools natively on an Android tablet.

The work on the Terminal app was discovered hidden within the Android Open Source Project (via Android Authority). It appears Google engineers are actively developing a Terminal app that leverages the Android Virtualization Framework (AVF) to run a Debian virtual machine. It will allow users to execute Linux commands within a contained environment on Android devices.

This would be a game-changer for developers

The overall concept of Linux apps on an Android phone is kind of silly, but it’s a lot of fun for developers. They would be able to code and test the Android app on the fly using their phones and tablets and this will have a trickle-down effect on the whole Android environment as a whole. The problem that has troubled software development for many years, known as the Day One bugs, will vanish.

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The Terminal app is quite simple yet it is still under development. Recent changes to AOSP suggest that Google is at least looking at adding it right into the Android settings. There will be an option called ‘Linux terminal’ which will launch the app and with it, one can use it to download setup and run the Debian virtual machine.

The same commits suggest other features that can be expected in the future like disk resizing, port forwarding and partition recovery. This should all be available, the code says, on Chrome substantially, on Android tablets ‘reasonably soon’, and on Android Phones: ‘soon’.

Here’s why Google is using a virtual machine for the Terminal app

It is quite reasonable for Google to count on virtual machines in order to deliver Linux to Android. Google’s Chromebooks primarily come with x86 processors and can support a Linux distribution while Android devices are fashioned with ARM silicone which makes them unable to support most Linux distros. A virtual machine would do away with that. It is also another way through which Google is working on merging Chrome OS and Android.

Google has not commented at all on this new Terminal app. As for when it will be officially released, there’s no specific information but expect it to come bundled with Android 16 next year. This has to be something any Android developer will want to keep an eye on.