Termux is an excellent choice for smartphone power users. People have used it to run Minecraft servers on their smartphones and to develop Python scripts from their Android terminal emulator. The Nestbox by XDA senior member kdrag0n, which is available on their Patreon page, goes one step further with the original Pixel 6 or regular Pixel 7.
What is Nestbox?
You can create containers with Nestbox and run real virtual machines on your smartphone, but it requires a recent Google Pixel smartphone in order to work. Since Nestbox uses pKVM (PCircle Karenell-based VReal Machine), which is available on Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 series smartphones using the Android Common Kernel, its compatibility is not an issue. Esper says. Since pKVM is not enabled out of the box on the Pixel 6 series, K Mishal RahmanRoot is required.
It’s basically a beefed-up version of Termux. It’s already possible to run Docker containers on your smartphone with Termux, but with virtualization, you’ll be able to run most power user use cases. Even though it’s completely fair, some people may find it hard to adjust to. With Nestbox, you get kernel access and root access to your containers, which is more than you get with Termux.
Nestbox installation and setup
The Nestbox app for your Google Pixel can only be used if you support kdrag0n’s Patreon. The steps will be slightly different on the Pixel 6 series, but we tested it on a Google Pixel 7 Pro. The app requires root access on Pixel 6 devices at the moment, but kdrag0n says this may change in the future.
You’ll likely have to configure the Pixel 7 the same way Shizuku did. Connecting to your phone over wireless ADB, choosing your Linux distribution, and configuring the maximum container size are all the steps you need to take. The virtual machine will be downloaded, configured, and then executed.
Nestbox: what can you do with it?
Basically, you can do whatever you think of. The container is a Linux one, but I had to install many tools before I could do anything with it. This is a barebones setup, so I need to use the advanced package tools (apt in Ubuntu) to install wget and curl. After that, you can add anything you like. At present, virtual GPU support isn’t available, and kdrag0n says it won’t support it in the future.
From your phone, you can host a web page or Minecraft server. Even though both work, you can’t really access them from outside the container. According to kdrag0n, there is currently no port forwarding, and it is not possible to interact with these instances outside the container. The situation will change in the future, however, when port forwarding is implemented, which he hopes to do soon.
Nestbox can be purchased from kdrag0n’s Patreon if you want to give it a try. Because of network constraints, it’s currently pretty limited, but once those limitations are removed, you’ll be able to connect your container outside and host web pages, game servers, etc.
