⚡ WhatsApp and Anbox: the most popular messaging app now runs on Linux phones

As seen in several previous articles, almost all tuxphone-oriented distributions are actively working on supporting the Anbox abstraction layer in order to integrate Android apps quasi-natively with Linux ones. With Ubuntu Touch, postmarketOS, PureOS and Mobian supporting it, the project is getting a new wave of users from this segment of the Linux device market.

The layer works quite flawlessly once it is properly set up, and may just require hardware acceleration support for better performance. As seen in the tweet below, it looks like even complex applications like WhatsApp are finally working without issues, except for the lack of push notifications, on it.

Needless to say, WhatsApp will work as well on all Anbox supported-distributions, and it looks like it has already been supported for a while on Linux desktops with this method already. In fact, from our tests it appeared that almost all Android apps are already working perfectly in Anbox, probably thanks to its reliance on a real Android image, with the exception of those using particular hardware-related APIs, such as Bluetooth beacons or advanced services.

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