A while back I got curious - I wonder if anyone has ever tried to install google's android "smartphone" operating system on their PC. A google search turned up Andriod-x86.org . Yup, someone has tried it. Their builds were initially targeted for devices such as Asus Netbooks. I downloaded one of the Live CD images and tried it on my Compaq Presario C700 Laptop. Not good. It was super slow.
A few weeks ago, I got curious again. This time Anrdoid-x86.org had released a generic x86 build of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. I followed the instructions for making a live USB from a linux terminal, shoved the USB stick in the C700 and fired it up. Wow! This is definitely an improvement! It was speedy and booted in 24 seconds from a compressed file system (requires decompression at boot).
So is Android a viable operating system for a PC? Mostly.
Pros:
OPTIMIZED FOR LOW HARDWARE
Android is optimized for minimal hardware. Chances are that old PC that is gathering dust in the basement is on par with your smartphone as far as speed goes. I have Android installed on a Pentium 4 PC that my employer was getting rid of. I've also tried it on a Celeron laptop, a dual core laptop and dual core desktop as well as other Pentium 4 PCs and I am suprised by how fast it runs on each of these.
I did a little test on a few of these PCs to quantify speed. I used a stopwatch to time how long it took from operating system to startup to loading up facebook in a browser window. Here are the results:
Dell Precision 370 Pentium 4 3.2GHZ
- Peppermint (lightweight Linux) = 1 min 1 sec
- Android from IDE Hard Disk = 46 seconds
- Android from USB stick = 59 seconds
Compaq C700 Laptop Dual Core 1.7 GHz
- Windows Vista = 2 mins 1 sec
- Peppermint = 46 seconds
- Android (compressed file system) 53 seconds
Generic AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 3GHz
- Windows 7 = 1 Min 1 Sec
So, the functional equivalent of Browsing Facebook is actually faster with Android on a Pentium 4 than with Windows 7 on a Quad Core AMD. Who knew!
You really don't even need a hard drive in the PC to run Android. It will install on a 250MB USB stick (compressed) or a 500MB USB stick (read-write).
USER INTERFACE
Android's user interface is beautiful, simple and more intuitive than Windows systems and has a small learning curve. Overall you'll get things done faster with Android. Some PCs will even be able to run some live wallpapers.
Of course, Android is meant to be used with a touch screen. So how does it work with a mouse and keyboard? Pretty well.
There is a pointer for a mouse, with support for the scrollwheel but no right clicking that I have found yet.
My multimedia keyboard controls volume, launches the music player, email, calculator, the back button, forward button (browser only), the home button, menu button and probably more I haven't discovered yet. The delete key (backspace only?), home and end keys don't seem to do much which has been a little frustrating as I am typing this on my Pentium 4 with Android Persistent USB stick. (This seems to be an android browser problem. Firefox for android - available for Android-x86.org - made good use of them.)
Where Android really shines is on a trackpad/touchpad. It not only functions as a mouse, but also as a quasi-direct-manipulation interface (touchscreen). Simply tap the trackpad them swipe away as if with a touch screen. It takes a little getting used to but you'll make your way around Android easier this way. This also works with the mouse, but its a little more difficult.
Cons:
ARM-ONLY APPS
Being that Android was designed mostly for portable processors based on the ARM achitecture and not the Intel (x86) architecture, you will find that some apps won't work on your PC with Android. Noteable apps are Android's Music Player, Angry Birds, Netflix and Redbox. Other apps will run on some PCs and not others. There are enough apps out there to fill in the Gaps for the most part, though. There has been an ARM translator available in previous releases. Let's home this gets implemented soon in Jelly Bean x86.
DESIGNED FOR PORTABLE APPS
Let's not pretend that Android would be the ideal business operation system. You won't use it to create spreadsheets or presentations... at least not yet .. who knows what the future will bring.
There are still things I need to do that I'd rather do on a full-fledge operating system (like adding the pics to this post)
Android for PC tips:
1. Try it! Download the latest .iso from Android-x86.org and burn it to a CD or USB stick. You can try it without installing. It will install to your RAM and everything you do will be gone when you turn off the PC. If you like it install it!
2. If you're having monitor trouble, press tab at the LiveCD/LiveUSB boot screen to edit the boot command line. Remove "quiet" and "video=-16" and add "vga=ask". It will ask you what video mode you would like to use. Try the 16-bit (HxWx16) modes in your monitors native resolution. If you're still having trouble try adding "nomodeset" and then also "xforcevesa".
3. If it seems a little slow, this may just be a visual issue. Go to the developer settings and turn off the animations (set animation scaling to none).
4. You can install it in the same partition as windows or another operating system. It will install in a subdirectory on the partition you chose. A menu will ask what operating system you want to start up.
5. Open the development settings and make sure the display never sleeps. If it does, you will have to power down the PC to get back to Android. Suspend and Resume aren't currently supported in Androidx86
6. If you like Android and love windows try Android on a Virtual Machine. I didn't have success geting the jb-x86 distrobution to work, but I found an AndroVM site that had a good one all setup up for download.
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