Portable software on a portable device (Android)

[webfork]

Its not here yet, but there's been some encouraging work recently. iPhone is a much more closed system and has quite a few barriers, but Android improved a great deal. With the coming ChromeOS, this could be an important first few steps.

There's some positive moves in this direction:

• The major hurdle for the WINE folks was x86 hardware.
• Happily, x86 emulation is available and can run DOSBOX.
• As the poster points out, its possible from here to actually run Windows, probably one of the less processor and hardware-intensive versions (maybe 98 or 2K).
• A smaller x86 Linux + WINE could be run in this mode.

Portable software is especially suited for this type of hack as the self-contained nature is much less likely to run into snags.

Current major issues with this:

1. This is all early-stage stuff.
2. Even basic programs are reported to run slow.

Hopefully the software will improve or x86 processors will make this process easier.

Conversely, there's some software coming out that allows Windows users to run Android programs. No idea if its portable.

Update: Running Linux underneath Linux is possible, but you can also just install Ubuntu in place of Android and run an x86 emulator from there. This would likely go a lot faster.

Update 2: A relevant WSJ article on how desktop and laptop platforms are falling to the side in wake of mobile apps and devices.