Credit: Android
This year, Google added Linux Terminal to the publicly available Android app, which lets you run a Debian instance in a virtual machine. Until now, users of the app were limited to working in the command line, but the Android Canary preview adds support for a graphical interface.
In order to use the Linux Terminal innovation, after launching the application in the new build, the user needs to click on the new button with the monitor icon in the upper right corner of the user interface, which launches the Display tool of the Terminal application. Here, a Linux fan on Android can enter the command “weston” in order to launch the corresponding graphical environment. It is worth noting that Weston is a reference (i.e. standard) implementation of a window manager based on the Wayland protocol, and is a pre-installed component of Linux Terminal for Android, i.e. nothing needs to be downloaded or installed separately.
GUI app support in Linux Terminal is a big deal because it will allow you to run Linux software that isn’t available on Android. This includes games like Doom, but there’s a lot of work to be done since most Android devices run on Arm processors. The feature debuted in a preview build of Android Canary, but it’s hard to say when GUI support in Linux Terminal will appear in beta or public versions of the system. It’s possible that it will happen with the second quarterly update of Android 16, which is scheduled for December. But there’s no guarantee that Google will actually do it.
