Discontinued: This project is discontinued in favor of the new Local Desktop project, which is a Rust rewrite aimed at making the application more stable, portable, and better suited for development directly on Android.
Polar Bear helps you run a desktop Linux environment on your Android device.
Note: It is expected that you already have a usable desktop experience, i.e., a large enough display (tablet or DEX), a physical keyboard, and optionally a mouse/trackpad. Polar Bear aims to bridge the gap between the two platforms, not trying to "simulate" the desktop experience by introducing inconvenient interactions.
- An Arch Linux ARM64 filesystem is set up inside the app's internal storage.
- Proot is used to mount the filesystem and "chroot" into it.
- A built-in Wayland backend is started inside Android via NDK.
- Weston is started inside Linux and renders to the Wayland backend as a nested Wayland compositor.
Proof of Concept: A Pixel Tablet running the Weston compositor inside a Proot-based ARM64 Linux environment. No configuration is required; just install and go.
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Standalone: Polar Bear is not a set of instructions on how to setup a Linux environment using Termux. It is a standalone app that provides a streamlined Linux experience on Android.
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Rootless: Polar Bear does not require root access to run.
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FOSS: Polar Bear is free and open-source. A paid version might exists to fund development and maintenance. There is no runtime difference between the free and paid versions.
- Android 8.0 (Oreo) or higher (minSdk 26).
- ARM64 architecture (unless you're using an emulator, you're probably fine).
Polar Bear is open-source and available under the GNU General Public License v3.0. See LICENSE for more information.