Recientemente the developers in charge of the Android-x86 project, in which the independent community is porting the Android platform for the x86 architecture (PC), have released the first stable version of the assembly based on the Android 8.1 platform.
This new release includes fixes and additions to ensure smooth operation on x86-based platforms.
For those who still do not know about the project I can tell you that Android-x86 is an unofficial initiative for Google's Android mobile operating system to run on devices with AMD and Intel x86 processors, instead of ARM RISC chips.
The project began as a series of patches to the Android source code so that it could run on various netbooks and ultra-PCs, particularly for the ASUS Eee PC.
And with the passage of time, the project has generated followers and gained great popularity with which it has a small community of users.
Main new features of Android-x86 8.1
With this new release of the system, We can highlight that in this comes an alternative interface for the operation of the taskbar programs, offered together with a classic application menu.
It has the ability to secure shortcuts to programs and the list that shows recently launched applications frequently used.
In this new version of Android 8.1, FreeForm multi-window support was added for simultaneous work with multiple applications, as well as the possibility of arbitrary positioning and scaling of windows on the screen.
The Linux kernel has been updated to version 4.19.15. Support is provided for 64-bit and 32-bit kernel assemblies and user space components.
On the other hand, eThis version makes use of Mesa 18.3.1 to support OpenGL ES 3.x with hardware accelerated graphics for Intel, AMD and NVIDIA GPUs., as well as for VMware and QEMU (virgl) virtual machines.
And the use of SwiftShader for rendering software with OpenGL ES 2.0 software for unsupported video subsystems.
Another important point to note about this release is that hardware accelerated codec support for Intel HD and G45 graphics chips has been improved.
This also benefits the system as experimental support for the Vulkan graphics API begins on systems with current versions of Intel and AMD graphics drivers.
As well as Mouse support when running Android-x86 on VirtualBox, QEMU, VMware and Hyper-V based virtual machines.
other developments
Finally, Other great features to highlight are the ability to boot in UEFI Secure Boot Mode and the ability to install to disk when using UEFI.
Of the other improvements and features that were included in this release we find the following:
- The presence of an interactive installer, working in text mode.
- Bootloader themes support in GRUB-EFI.
- Multi-touch support, sound cards, Wifi, Bluetooth, sensors, camera and Ethernet (DHCP configuration).
- Automatic mounting of external USB drives and SD cards.
- ForceDefaultOrientation option to manually configure the screen orientation on devices without the corresponding sensor. Programs designed for portrait mode can be displayed correctly on devices with a landscape screen without having to rotate the device.
- The ability to run on x86 environment applications built for the ARM platform, through the use of a special layer.
- The ability to update to version 8.1 of systems on which unofficial versions of Android-x86 are installed.
Download and test Android x86 8.1 Oreo
To be able to download this new version of the system You can go directly to the official website of the project where you can find the system image in its download section.
You can save the image with the help of Etcher on a USB.
Also, sets in the form of rpm packages are available to install the Android environment on Linux distributions.