Software Update: Android-x86 8.1-r1

The Android-x86 project focuses on porting Android to the x86 platform. In addition, it does not emulate Android, like BlueStacks App Player, Nox App Player and Genymotion do well. The developers released Android-x86 8.1-r1 based on Android 8.1.0 Oreo MR1 few days ago. Google released this Android version in December 2017 and it took some time to get it stable on the x86 platform. The abbreviated announcement of the Android-x86 8.1-r1 release looks like this:

Android x86 8.1-r1 (Oreo x86)

The Android-x86 project is glad to announce the 8.1-r1 release to public. This is the first stable release for Android-x86 8.1 (oreo-x86). The prebuilt images are available in the following site: https://www.fosshub.com/Android-x86.html

Key Features

The 8.1-r1 release is based on the latest Android 8.1.0 Oreo MR1 release (8.1.0_r60). The features include:

• Support both 64-bit and 32-bit kernel and userspace with latest LTS kernel 4.19.15.
• Support OpenGL ES 3.x hardware acceleration for Intel, AMD, Nvidia and QEMU(virgl) by Mesa 18.3.1.
• Support OpenGL ES 2.0 via SwiftShader for software rendering on unsupported GPU devices.
• Support hardware accelerated codecs on devices with Intel HD & G45 graphics family.
• Support secure booting from UEFI and installing to UEFI disk.
• A text based GUI installer.
• Add theme support to GRUB-EFI.
• Support Multi-touch, Audio, Wifi, Bluetooth, Sensors, Camera and Ethernet (DHCP only).
• Auto mount external usb drive and sd card.
• Add Taskbar as an alternative launcher which puts a start menu and recent apps tray on top of your screen and support freeform window mode.
• Enable ForceDefaultOrientation on devices without known sensors. Portrait apps can run in a landscape device without rotating the screen.
• Support arm arch apps via the native bridge mechanism. (Settings -> Android-x86 options)
• Support to upgrade from non-official releases.
• Add experimental Vulkan support for newer Intel and AMD GPUs. (Boot via Advanced options -> Vulkan support)
• Mouse integration support for VMs including VirtualBox, QEMU, VMware and Hyper-V.

Known issues

• Google Play Service may crash sometimes on the 32-bit image.
• Suspend and resume doesn’t work on some devices.
• Nvidia GPU (nouveau) may hang sometimes.
• 3D support of VMware is broken. (only non-accelerated mode works)
• Taking photos doesn’t work if Vulkan is enabled.