The objective of this article is to share my phone emulation setup, which works reasonably well for me, in the hopes that it is useful.
This setup neatly solves the majority of “I’m unable to install certain apps!” problem that most have on Linux, by adding “ARM Translation” as part of the installation process.
We do this because some phone apps are written for the ARM architecture exclusively. This is the major cause of being unable to run certain apps in genymotion.
This is confirmed to work on Linux Mint 20 and Linux Mint 21. Your mileage may, but hopefully doesn’t, vary.
In the newer Genymotion updates, the first step is now optional. Genymotion can now use qemu in addition to VirtualBox for virtualization.
1: If using Virtualbox, install your distribution’s version of VirtualBox.
If your terminal output indicates that you need to do something, do it. If you’re not sure how to, search “virtualbox install output ‘your output here'”. The most common problem is needing to modprobe vboxdrv.
2: Download Genymotion Desktop https://www.genymotion.com/download/
3: Open your terminal, navigate to the download directory, and run sudo ./genymotion.bin. The file isn’t going to exactly be called this, type the first part and hit tab to autocomplete the file name.
4: Once you’ve installed and run the program, create a phone image.
4.1: Make absolutely sure the Android API version is one that has an ARM translation pack, found in the next step.
5: Download the correct translation tool for your Android API version https://github.com/m9rco/Genymotion_ARM_Translation
6: Drag this file to your running phone emulator. When it asks to flash, say yes. This is why we start with a new image, so if something goes wrong we lose very little.
7: Restart the phone. Install Open GApps to get the Play Store app.
Congrats, now you’re capable of running ARM native apps.
Updated on Feb 27, 2023, since qemu emulation is now possible.