For those who have too much time on their hands, or are plain curious or have more practical requirements for installing Android on their PC, the x86 project has come up with the ‘release candidate’ of Lolipop version of the mobile operating system.
Release candidate is the final version of the software under development, with the idea being that it would be the final release unless something big bug turns up.
This will be the first instance of Android Lolipop being put out by the project for PC users and those using x86 (intel/AMD) processors. The project already has KitKat software suitable for use on such computers and servers.
The software can be downloaded from the sourceforge website and byte-copied on to a USB drive. The computer should then be configured to start from the USB drive (instead of the internal disk, which is usually the default boot destination.)
Android Lolipop 5.1 for PC comes in two versions – 32 bit (or ISO) and 64-bit (img) file.
Android was initially developed for processors that use simple or reduced instruction sets, such as those from ARM.
However, with the entry of Intel Atom processors into the tablet and mobile market, Android started being used on PC (or x86) processors as well.
This version uses Linux Kernel 4.0 and has support for the opensource EXT4 filesystem format in addition to NTFS and FAT.
It also has OpenGL-based hardware acceleration for graphics processors from Intel, AMD and Nvidia.