Running Linux Containers on Android Without Root

The Podroid project allows running Linux containers on Android without root access. The solution works on devices with Android 9 and arm64 architecture, using QEMU emulation to create an Alpine Linux virtual machine.

The software provides a container runtime environment for Podman with a built-in terminal. The source code is written in Kotlin and distributed under the GNU General Public License v2.0 on GitHub.

The following components are used for the system to function:

• Termux** — used as a terminal emulator
• Limbo Emulator** — a QEMU-based emulator for Android
• Podman** — a tool for running an Alpine Linux container

A key feature of the project is the ability to forward ports from the container to the actual Android system via SSH. Additional technical documentation and the source code are available at GitHub.