Install Android in Visual Studio

How to Install Android Marshmallow in a Virtual Machine

This tutorial requires Windows 8, 8.1, or 10 Pro/Enterprise. Any version with Hyper-V available.

Search "Turn Windows Features on or off" and run the program highlighted.

Find Hyper-V. Check the box next to it.

Press OK once it is checked!

Click Restart Now

Once you've rebooted, visit
https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/features/msft-android-emulator-vs.aspx
Click Download the Emulator

Once the download is complete, double click the vs-emulator setup file.

Press Install and enter your login details if necessary.

Let it run for a while

Now click close

Search or run Visual Studio Emulator for Android (It's in your programs)

Click the arrow pointing down next to the 10.1" Marshmallow 6.0.0 XHDPI Tablet

It will take a little while, and it may ask for you to install a few more things, so just press yes or OK until the bar disappears.

Press the green arrow.

It may ask you to sign out first, so if you have any issues, Sign Out.

Reopen Visual Studio Emulator for Android and press the green arrow once again.

Press Retry if this alert appears.

Wham! You are now emulating Android Marshmallow.

Click the browser and check if everything works! 

You may notice that Google Play services like YouTube, Play Store, etc. aren't currently available.

Go to http://www.teamandroid.com/gapps/
Click gapps-600-base-20151016-1-signed.zip (Direct Link)
Click Download

After making you wait for 30 seconds, press Click to Download. 

Gapps may take a while to download.

Drag the gapps.zip file into the Virtual Machine.

Press Install and shut down

Start back up the emulator and check all apps. You should see the Google Play store. Have fun with your new Android Marshmallow PC!

MORE: HOW TO INSTALL ANDROID MARSHMALLOW ON A LAPTOP OR PC

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How to Install Android Marshmallow on a Laptop or PC

Android x86 - Installation

1. Download Android-x86 from Sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/android-x86/)

This will take a while for some, so I recommend doing it first.

The official downloads link to Sourceforge unfortunately

2. Format your USB drive to FAT32 

Tutorial: http://www.wikihow.com/Format-a-Flash-Drive

3. Download UNetbootin. (http://unetbootin.github.io/)

Looks straight out of the 90's!

4. Search partition on the start menu and open "Create and format hard drive partitions"

5. Right click the drive you want to put Android Marshmallow onto and click Shrink Volume...

6. Choose the size of the drive in MB. 64000 MB is about 64 GB, just add 3 zeros after the amount of gigabytes you want available. Now click Shrink.

7. You've now created a hard drive partition! Now time to download GParted. (http://gparted.org/download.php)

The name may be different, but it ends in .iso

8. Run UNetbootin. Choose Disk image, click the three dots and navigate to the .iso you downloaded titled gparted-live-0.xx.x.x.i686.iso. Choose your USB drive and click OK.

If a pop-up appears, press yes.

9. Enter your boot menu. (If you are not sure how, read below)

1. Restart the computer.
2. Repeatedly press F12 until a menu displaying devices appears
3. Use the arrow keys to move up and down, and select the device you want to boot into.
4. Press the Enter key.

Suggested Guide: HOW TO ACCESS THE BOOT MENU

10. Use your arrow keys to navigate the menus from now on. Select your flash drive with the arrow keys and press enter to click it.

Enter/Return is to click and the arrow keys navigate the menus

The name of the flash drive corresponds to the flash drive manufacturer

Boot menu on a Lenovo laptop rather than a desktop PC

11. After seeing some text, this menu should appear. Hit enter when GParted Live is selected. If anything else pops up, keep pressing enter until you see a window open.

12. GParted should pop-up in a window.

I had to go to the GParted menu, Devices, and select the drive I wanted to install Android on.
You should probably not have to do this.

On your unallocated partition, right click and then press new.

Make sure the file system is ext4, and then press Add.

Now press Apply to make the change.

Press Apply once again, remove the USB, then reboot. 

13. Run UNetbootin. Choose Disk image, click the three dots and navigate to the .iso file you downloaded titled android-x86-6.0-20151202.iso. Choose your USB drive and click OK.

Android should be ready to boot after this!

14. Once again, go into the boot menu and select the flash drive. UEFI if possible.

Boot menu on a Lenovo laptop rather than a desktop PC

The name of the flash drive corresponds to the flash drive manufacturer.

15.  The Android-x86 menu will appear!

Select Installation with your arrow keys and press enter

First choose the ext4 partition

Press Do not format. If you don't, you could mess it up.

Choose Yes

Choose Yes

Choose Yes

VERY IMPORTANT: Choose NO

Choose Yes

Allow it to write, this could take a minute

Remove the USB drive and reboot

16. Congratulations! You have installed Android alongside Windows!

You can choose which system you want to boot into with your arrow keys and enter!

Set it up!

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How To Install Chromium OS

How To Install Chromium OS:

Required: Windows (for this guide), a formatted 4GB+ USB drive, and a hard drive you're comfortable formatting during the process.

1. Visit http://arnoldthebat.co.uk

2. Download the latest compatible image of Chromium OS

Make sure to chose a special build if you have a laptop with a Synaptics trackpad (Most commonly Lenovo laptops) and not the specialty build for a Rasperry Pi 2.

3. Extract the zip file and move the chromiumos_image.img  to a folder you can easily find

4. Download Win32 Disk Imager and install it. Run the program once it's installation is completed.

If you have a Mac, use ApplePi-Baker (Tutorial)

5. Click on the folder icon and find your chromiumos_image.img file in the folder you placed it in.

6. Choose the drive letter of your flash drive and press write.

7. Reboot and press the key that corolates to your boot menu. Try Esc, F11, F12, whatever lets you choose a boot device.

8. Select your Wi-Fi network and do NOT PRESS ANYTHING ELSE. (If you do just reboot)

Side note: If your trackpad does not work, use tab to move through the options and the arrow keys to navigate the wifi selector

9. Press Ctrl + Alt + F2 (Press Fn+Esc if it doesn't work and then try again)

10. A terminal interface will appear. Type chronos for the username and password as the password. Anytime it says enter the password or username, these will be them.

11. Type sudo su (for super user)

12. Enter your password again. (password)

13. Type curl -L http://www.brash.ca/flash.sh | bash

14. Type restart ui

From here you can use Chromium OS from the flash drive. Continue if you want to install it on your computer. If you continue, your hard drive will be wiped and Chromium OS will be installed.

15. Press Ctrl + Alt + F2 once again

16. Type sudo su (for super user)

17. Type chromeos-install --dst/dev/sda 

18. Let this run until it's complete. Ignore the GPT errors or warnings, it isn't important.

19. Type shutdown -r now (this will reboot the computer)

20. Remove the USB drive before the computer boots and it will boot straight to Chromium OS!

Leave a comment if you have an issue!

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Firefox for iOS Day 1 Review

from mozilla.com

   A new browser for iOS has been unveiled, surprisingly from Mozilla. A year or two ago, they said that they would not bring Firefox to iOS, saying "We refuse’ to bring Firefox to iOS until Apple lets us use our web engine" back in April of 2013. Alas, Apple still refused to allow their web engine to be brought to the platform and Mozilla made the browser anyway. Here are my thoughts.

   After a day of using it heavily as my main browser, it was surprisingly disappointing. It is just ugly in my opinion and does not look much like the desktop counterpart. The animations became choppy in some cases and it was just slower than Safari. I was hoping more settings and possible add-ons would make this browser the best, about the same reasons as why I use it on the desktop. I could possibly see this as the best browser if I used Firefox on every platform, as it integrates Firefox sync which I found very useful. It remembers your passwords like Safari and iCloud, but I found the latter much quicker and more useful than Firefox's function. I am deeply integrated within iCloud, with hundreds of passwords and contacts that just sync between each device, which makes this browser hard to justify. I like how well it works with my history and passwords from my Windows devices, but I don't feel that it works well on iOS because of how it feels like a sandbox. It is not connected to any other service besides itself. I cannot search for links with Siri on it, define or search the page for a word, or use Open In... functions without opening in Safari first. Open in desktop mode is not an option, and it does not feel finished.

   My last thoughts are that Firefox for iOS has potential, but it is too new and lacks too many essential features for me to justify switching from Safari or Chrome.

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Windows 10 ISO Files from Microsoft

Loads of sources claim the only way to get the official ISO is through the Download Tool, which is what I had previously thought as well. Now I know that their is an official direct download to the ISO files, which each also double as both Home and Pro versions, I decided I had to make it known. Above are some images of the site, but if you would like to check it out for yourself, go ahead with the link provided below.

If you want Build 10525, the latest Windows Technical Preview build, see here Winareo.

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