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What are the differences between Userland, Linux Deploy, AnLinux and Alpine ?

What I think I know so far:

I think all of them use proot and termux to make Linux distributions run on Android. And Alpine is a small and efficient Linux distribution.

Termux seems to be an app that runs a simple terminal emulator and uses the Linux kernel provided by Android.

"PRoot is a user-space implementation of chroot, mount --bind, and binfmt_misc. This means that users don't need any privileges or setup to do things like using an arbitrary directory as the new root filesystem."

Ok so with this, it is possible to run an entire OS from a directory in Android.

So I install Termux, then PRoot, then a whole Linux distribution, Alpine for example.

How are Userland, Linux Deploy, and AnLinux different from that ?

Do they include a tiny distribution ? Do they package Termux and PRoot ? Are they faster ? slower ? How do they overlap ? Why are there so many when they appear to do the same thing ?

Ernest Bunbury
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2 Answers2

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Ok.

A1:this is not "run" distro but a container,what chroot mainly do is to pretend you root dir is under the rootfs's dir,It provides file-level isolation, however the process,etc,share the resource of your system which running currently.

Userland is an app to help you set up a container and run applications in it quickly using proot,likes desktop environment Same with what Linux deploy (same with userland but using chroot not proot) did,but proot doesn't need your phone to be rooted because it doesn't need root authority.

And anlinux is a guide app to let you set up a container in termux using proot manually

Alpine is a distro,which is lite and fit the needs of container,other distro likes debian and Ubuntu can also run in a container too

A2:Yes they do,what they do is to set up a container with distro installed quickly and easily

A3:No, Userland is build on termux,Linux deploy is a app using it's own code which helps you set up container with distro installed using chroot quickly,and anlinux is just a guide app to help you with set up a container in termux(proot) quickly

A4:They have no difference on speed, because they use the same tech (at least on how they works, nearly)

A6: because you want to do ,and you can do, fork it or make a new one, that's opensource

Tsing Kwai
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Termux is a terminal emulator that allows you more functionality than what Android typically allows, including installing packages from the Internet. However, their most recent versions have dropped support for Android 5 and 6.

Unless you need a GUI or have a device using Android 5 and 6,there is little need to look at the other options.

UserLAnd seems to be a fork of an older version of Termux that allows you to install numerous Linux distributions, and still supports Android 5+. It does not require root access.

AnLinux (requires Android 5.0+) requires Termux to already be installed, and allows you to install a Linux distribution.

Linux Deploy installs and runs GNU/Linux, and seems to be the best option if you have root access.

Alpine Linux is a Linux distribution.

Kovaelin
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