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Little Android guy? How did you get in there? [credit: Ron Amadeo ]
The surprise of Microsoft's Windows 11 announcement was that the new OS would also run Android apps right alongside Windows apps, but the keynote was light on details. Was this purely emulation like a developer SDK? Would Windows' existing Linux support be involved? We got our answers shortly after the keynote thanks to a follow-up developer talk that dove into some details.
The feature is officially called the "Windows Subsystem for Android" (WSA, I guess?), which should tell you a lot about how it works. Windows currently has a "Windows Subsystem for Linux" (WSL), which uses a subset of the Hyper-V functionality to run Linux apps on a real Linux kernel, side-by-side with your Windows apps. (Hyper-V lets a second guest OS access the bare metal hardware, instead of running on top of the host OS with less access to resources.) Real Android phones use the Linux kernel, and for the Windows Subsystem for Android, Microsoft is building an Android framework on top WSL. It sounds like we're basically getting x86 Android running on Hyper-V.
Android apps under Windows should feel just like native Windows apps, with a top-level window, taskbar entry, and the ability to be pinned to the start menu. During the presentation, Microsoft said, "Behind the scenes, we actually create a proxy native app that handles the bridge between the Android app model and the Windows app model." Presumably, that means providing things like a start menu shortcut, icons, entries in the app uninstall lists, and other minor Windows wrappings that will make the app feel native.
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source https://arstechnica.com/?p=1776088