The Windows Subsystem for Linux might soon include Android support, too

Enlarge / Microsoft's "Your Phone" app can display Android apps via remote desktop, but soon we might have native Android apps.

If the release of the Surface Duo wasn't enough of a sign that Microsoft is cozying up to Android more, how about this? A report from Windows Central claims that Microsoft is working on building Android app support into Windows 10.

The effort is codenamed "Project Latte," and according to the report, it would "allow app developers to bring their Android apps to Windows 10 with little to no code changes." The Android-on-Windows apps would be packaged as an MSIX file and would be distributed through the Windows Store.

A lot of the hard work for this is already done, thanks to the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) that already ships in Windows 10. WSL is a virtualized Linux kernel in Windows, making it easy to run developer-centric Linux tools through the Windows command line. Microsoft is also testing support for Linux GUI apps in WSL, and GPU acceleration. Android, which runs the Linux kernel, is expected to plug into the WSL for app support, so Microsoft mainly needs to implement a version of the Android Runtime (ART), which already runs on Linux, is open source, and has x86 compatibility. Unofficially, it is already possible to run Android apps on WSL with Anbox, a project meant to run Android apps on full GNU/Linux.

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments