5
nitwhiz
3y

Someone needs to explain these android terminal emulators to me.

As a kid I had something like it installed on my android 4 back in the days, too. And I was facinated by it and always thought yup, thats linux running right before my eyes.

Now I'm thinking: wait a sec, so you're telling me thats actually Linux running within this dalvik vm stuff on android? Like - how?

I know android runs on linux but is it really that these terminals access the drives/devices/files of the real linux under it?

Comments
  • 4
    Its linux, but the terminal apps are extrem restricted of what they can see. current versions even restrict listing the programs in the path.
  • 6
    Depending on what the app does, it's your Linux host kernel, running either a normal shell or a userspace chroot.
  • 1
    Probably still need root to run such emulators natively...
    I used to have Linux VMs in my phone just for fun.
  • 3
    They are restricted to the sandbox, but they execute native code outside of Dalvik/ART - the Java app just calls a native binary.

    There are even apps that give you a (mostly) complete Linux environment such the app Termux - of course still restricted to the apps sandbox.
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