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Sorry if there are any spelling or grammatical errors, I’m learning English… :)

Before I start, Let me explain what google android is, taken from android official distribution.

Android is a software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications. The Android SDK provides the tools and APIs necessary to begin developing applications on the Android platform using the Java programming language.

Pre-Installation

You must have Java and Apache Ant installed to make android fully works(especially for development). You can refer to my other article about installing Java and Apache on Ubuntu Linux here:

• How to Install Java on Ubuntu Linux
• How to Install Apache Ant on Ubuntu Linux

My Environment

• My $HOME is located in /home/astadev
• I put android package in $HOME/archive/a
• I extract the package to $HOME/programs
• My Android SDK version is 1.1 Release 1

Installation

Download the latest version of Google Android at http://www.android.com/. I save it to $HOME/archive/a. The archive in ZIP format. So we need to extract it using unzip command.

$ unzip ~/archive/a/android-sdk-linux_x86-1.1_r1.zip -d ~/programs/
$ cd programs
$ ln -s android-sdk-linux_x86-1.1_r1 android

The last command is to make symbolic link to directory android-sdk-linux_x86-1.1_r1. So, you can also access the directory in $HOME/programs/android. It will make directory more easy to read and quite useful in development.

Running The Emulator

The easiest way to test your installation is to run the Android Emulator. The emulator located inside the tools/ directory. Follow the instruction below to run the emulator.

$ cd ~/programs/android/tools/
$ ./emulator

Note: Be patient, it takes quite longtime to be fully loaded even with my Intel core2 duo and 1GB of RAM.

As an alternative you can create a launcher(short-cut) on your Desktop. I assume your Desktop is using GNOME. Although it will be quite similar to other Desktop like KDE or XFCE.

1. Right click on your desktop
2. Choose Create Launcher…
3. Fill “Android Emulator” in Name field
4. On Command field fill it with “/home/astadev/programs/android/tools/emulator” (without quote and make sure the path is point to the correct directory of your android installation)
5. Click OK
6. Double click the launcher to test it

Here’s the screenshot. To flip the orientation of the emulator use combination of CTRL+F11.

Reference:
Android Official Site