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Installing Android Apps on Debian

By: For: ComputerMentor Published: 29 Juni, 2016 Modified: 8 August, 2016

People are awesome. Someone actually made a program so you can install your Android APK files on your Linux machine, and run the Android apps within Linux. There is a 1080p YouTube video on the bottom of this page if you want a more visual guide.

Dependencies

  • KDE Plasma 5 environment
  • Shashlik

Proficiency Level

Beginner

Time Required

6 Minutes

How it works

How it actually work is better described from the creators. Quote: "Shashlik provides an incredibly stripped down Android base which boots directly into the loaded app, but with a running activity manager and daemons so that intents still work correctly." Quote end.

They use the KDE Plasma 5 environment when they make the program. I tried this using a Debian machine and the XFCE envirement and did not manage to get the Android apps to start. If you fail using anything else than KDE, that might be your issue aswell. Just a sidenote.

Getting and installing the latest .deb

The latest one per today when this tutorial was written is V0.9.3 and is found here. To be sure you get the lates you are better off finding your download link at the official website. To do the actual thing you type the following:

Terminal - ComputerMentor@GuidePC

su

wget http://static.davidedmundson.co.uk/shashlik/shashlik_0.9.3.deb

dpkg -I shashlik_0.9.3.deb   NOTE: Capital i to find dependencies


apt-get install dependencies   NOTE: Install missing if any is found

dpkg -i shashlik_0.9.3.deb

Installing and starting the Android apps

I assume you already have a few Android APK's downloaded. If not, Google is your friend. There seems to be alot of sketchy webpages out there with modified APK's who dont even start to install using Shashlik. if you find a reliable source of APK's dont hesitate to tell it in the comment section below for your fellow Android/Linux users to enjoy

Type the following in the same folder you have your APK's stored. No sudo or root user needed. Exit su mode if you are still in it

Terminal - ComputerMentor@GuidePC

/opt/shashlik/bin/shashlik-install name_of_apk_file

To start it change out shashlik-install with shashlik-run. Or click on the shortcut created on your Start Menu under

This is still in Beta, and alot of apps probably dont work. You will need to get APK's written for x86 and not ARM.

Hope you made it! YouTube video below if you want a more visual tutorial

Hope you learned something!
If you find any typos, got questions or just want to say hi, please do so in the comment section below :) Dont forget to like and share
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