20090103

Android on the EEE PC

I have to admit, since the first time I saw it on android-porting, that people were talking about porting Android to x86, I was very skeptical.

Then, apparently one of the engineers at Google confessed on the list that there actually was an x86 port that someone had been working on internally (not the Qemu-based emulator, but a full-fledged port).

Now, as it turns out, a couple of people have actually run Android on the EEE PC 701 !!

Personally, I probably wouldn't put this on my own EEE, which currently runs a heavily tweaked version of Gentoo Linux, but maybe on Erin's :)

A couple of things will definitely need to happen first though - one is full browser integration, with a flash player, adobe pdf reader, etc, and the other is an office suite. On an x86, like the EEE PC, the best bet for the office suite would be OpenOffice.org but it's very unlikely that Google will port OOo to their framebuffer-driven UI, especially considering that they have their own network-based office productivity suite. If Google's office suite was available as a stand-alone app, or a Dalvik appication, then I could see Android on the EEE and potentially other MIDs.

The people responsible receive an A+ for novelty though :)

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