Programming on Android via Linux

Before trying to go through the process would like to know if it is possible... I haven'the yet rooted my android phone but am thinking about it so I can run linux on it. From there would download the unity 3d Linux software. I wasn't clearly able to find out if it was possible to do the actual programming via this method. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

 

If I'm reading you correctly you want to run Unity on your android phone by installing Linux on it.

Unless you have an x86 CPU in your phone this won't be possible. Almost all Android phones ship with an ARM CPU. I'm not even sure you'd be able to run it on an Android with an x86, but it would be far more feasible.

 

Fantastic, thank you... I do indeed have an ARM cpu on the droid. If you have a bitcoin account would love to buy you a beer The clarification on this is greatly appreciated! If you can think of any way to run unity on an s6 that would enhance my day even more.

 

Well, technically, you can run a Windows virtual machine in Android and install Unity to that virtual machine. In practice, however, that'd be atrociously slow for any usage.

What's the point of having Unity Editor on a phone anyway?

 

Thanks ZimM. The virtual machine notion is intriguing I might give it a try and report back how it goes... For reasons I won't get into I spend quite a bit of my time away from my laptop leaving only my smartphone to program with. Bitcoin beer on me if you want to provide email or wallet address... your thoughts are appreciated!

 

Well, that's purely theoretical. Unity editor requires at least Windows XP SP2 to run, and Android devices struggle to emulate even Windows 95 with reasonable performance because of different CPU architectures. Also, none of the emulators available on Android support hardware GPU acceleration, so even if you'll be able to run Windows XP - you won't be able to run Unity. Well, maybe you can use some kind of software GPU emulation, but that's just another level of emulation... All in all, even if you manage it to work (technically), you'd be very lucky to get 1 FPS in Unity on a top Android device