DISCONTINUED! Application has been replaced by similar project — vShell, which is available in repositories under my account.
Alpine Term, aka Alpine Linux Terminal, is a virtual machine running the Alpine Linux — a security-oriented, lightweight Linux distribution based on Musl libc and Busybox. Application started as Termux fork, aims to cover as much as possible of its functionality as well as provide an experience of the true Linux-based system.
VM setup details:
- QEMU monitor console to manage VM.
- CPU: emulated 4-core (3 cores offline by default) x86 64-bit. (1*)
- RAM (2*): 32% of host memory + 8% for QEMU TCG buffers.
- HDD: 128 GB, paritioned & bootable.
- Optional support for custom HDD/CD-ROM images.
- Host storage: via 9P file system, mount tag
shared_storage. - Network: user-mode via SLiRP.
- Operating system: Alpine Linux installed on HDD with lots of packages.
- Emulated CPU has only one core online by default. Having more is pointless from the performance side because QEMU internally handles them in a one thread.
- RAM allocations beyond 40% - 50% are not safe due to increased probability that Android will kill application to reclaim memory.
Requires a high-end device with at least 6 GB of space on internal storage and also some knowledge in the shell scripting and Linux system administration.
Disclaimer: neither Alpine Term application nor its author is affiliated with the Alpine Linux project. Operating system is provided as-is and vShell author is not responsible about bugs in the software packages.
Alpine Term relies on the source code of the following projects: