[Atl42] Run Android on Your Netbook or Desktop

[Cassisi]

  Sent to you by Cassisi via Google Reader: Run Android on Your Netbook
or Desktop via the How-To Geek by Matthew Guay on 7/22/10

Would you like to try out Google’s Android OS on your netbook or
desktop? Here’s how you can run Android from a flash drive and see how
fast Android can run on real hardware!

Install Android On Your Flash Drive or Memory Card

First, make sure you have a flash drive or memory card inserted into
your computer with around 256MB or more storage space. Remove any files
you may need off of the drive, so you can use it to run Android on your
computer.

Now you’re ready to download and setup Android on your drive. Head over
to the Android x86 download page (link below), scroll down to the
StableRelease section, and click View under android-x86-1.6-r2.iso.
This will start the iso file downloading to your computer.



In the mean time, head over to the UNetbootin site (link below), and
download it as well.



Once your downloads are complete, run UNetbootin. Click the bullet
beside Diskimage, then click the “… “ button and select the Android ISO
file you just downloaded. Finally, select the correct flash drive or
memory card in the menu on the bottom, and click Ok.



UNetbootin will now copy the files to your flash drive. This may take a
few moments, depending on your flash drive’s speed.



Once it’s finished, it will ask if you wish to reboot. If you want to
go ahead and run Android, you can click Reboot; otherwise, just exit
and run Android from your flash drive when you want.



If you want to try Android on a computer that has a CD/DVD drive, you
could just burn the ISO to a disk and boot from it. Netbooks don’t have
CD drives, and even on a desktop, it can be nice to not waste a CD just
for this. If you want to burn it to a disk, you can do it easily from
Windows 7 or with a free program such as ImgBurn.



Using Android-x86 On Your Computer

Now you’re ready to run Android on your netbook, laptop, or even a full
desktop computer. Simply reboot your computer with the USB drive, and
select to boot from it. Not all computers will automatically boot from
a USB device, so you may have to press F2, F10, or another key,
depending on your computer, and change the Boot options in the bios.



Now, when you boot from the USB drive, select Live CD – Run Android-x86
without installation.



You’ll see a text prompt for a few moments as Android begins to load.



Then you’ll see the Android boot screen, though we only saw it for a
moment, as our computer booted really fast into Android.



After a couple seconds, you’ll see the Android desktop … on your
netbook or computer! You can quickly access one of the apps on the home
screen, or open the menu to see more options.



Click and hold to open a context menu, such as to change the background
or add a desktop widget.



Or, press your mouse’s right button to open a menu, such as to open a
new tab in the browser.



It works very good as a quick way to get online; the Android browser is
actually quite capable for normal browsing, and worked very well in our
tests. With a 10 second or less boot time, you may enjoy using this as
an alternate to Puppy Linux or other light distros for a quick way to
get online securely.



You can even install new applications with the included AndAppStore,
though these will only be installed while this Android session is
running. If you reboot your computer, you’ll only see the default
applications and settings again.



Android x86 supports all of the hardware, including cameras and Wi-Fi,
on several Netbooks and laptops; check the link below to see if yours
is supported. In our test, our camera wasn’t supported, and we
additionally had to connect to the internet via Ethernet since it
didn’t detect our Wi-Fi card.



For the most part, Android was very responsive, but anything that would
fade out the desktop such as opening a dialog box or a menu would run
very slowly and even make the mouse feel jerky. Additionally, we
couldn’t get it to boot on our desktop with an AMD processor. You could
install Android to your hard drive, but we wouldn’t recommend it
considering the limitations and issues it has. But, it is very fun to
play with from a flash drive or memory card, and you may even feel
adventurous enough to try installing it. Be warned, though; this isn’t
for the weak of heart!

Conclusion

If you’re curious about how Android works and would like to try it out
on a real machine, this is a great way to see how fast a mobile OS can
be on a netbook or desktop. We wish it was more stable and could
actually store programs and settings on the flash drive, but it did
work as a nice substitute for Puppy Linux or other light, Live CD
distros. It runs much faster on a real computer than in the emulator.
Since you’re running it from a flash drive, you don’t have to worry
about messing anything up, so go ahead and try it for research or fun.

Or, if you’d rather just try out Android from inside Windows, check out
our articles on How to Test Drive Android in the Android Emulator and
How to Enable the Android Market in the Emulator to try out the best
Android has to offer.

Links

Download Android x86

Download UNetbootin

See if Your Netbook or Laptop is Fully Supported




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