AnLinux

AnLinux sets up a Linux userland on an Android device without requiring root. It does this indirectly: the app presents a choice of distributions and then produces the shell commands and installation scripts needed to unpack that userland, which the user pastes into a terminal emulator such as Termux. The resulting environment runs alongside Android rather than replacing it, so the phone continues to boot as usual.

Once the userland is in place, the session behaves like a shell on a small Linux machine: a package manager, standard command-line utilities, compilers and interpreters if they are installed. AnLinux also covers the steps for adding a desktop environment reachable through a VNC client, for work that needs a window rather than a prompt.

The app is licensed Apache-2.0. Its role stops at generating and documenting the setup, so a terminal emulator is a prerequisite, and the environment stays in user space: there is no kernel replacement, no access to hardware that Android does not expose, and performance depends on the device.