Want to emulate Nexus, Galaxy, or other Android Phone/Tablet on Ubuntu Desktop? Well, you may already know the handy tool Genymotion.

Genymotion is a complete set of tools that provides a virtual environment for Android. It can be very useful for developers, testers, salesman or even gamers. Genymotion is free for personal use. For full features, you need to buy a license.

Features:

• OpenGL acceleration to achieve the best 3D performance
• Enable full screen option and improve your experience
• Be precise in your UI development with the “pixel perfect” functionality
• Start multiple virtual device at the same time
• Override virtual device identifiers
• Directly command virtual devices sensors with Genymotion Shell
• Fully compatible with ADB. You can control your virtual device from the host
• Manage sensors: Battery level / status, GPS, Rotation, Camera

Since 2.1:

• supports copy/paste from the host to the virtual device, or from the virtual device to the host using Android builtin copy/paste feature.
• Android 4.4 support

Screenshots:

Install Genymotion:

1. This Android Emulator requires Virtualbox, so first search for and install virtualbox in Ubuntu Software Center.

2. Register https://cloud.genymotion.com/ (free).

3. Download the installer after your login the website. Not sure Linux 32 bits or 64 bits? Go to System Settings -> Details and you’ll see the OS type:

4. If you save the installer in the default Downloads folder, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal. When it opens, run below commands one by one:

cd ~/Downloads/

chmod +x genymotion-2.1.0_x64.bin

./genymotion-2.1.0_x64.bin

It first navigate to Downloads folder, then give executable permission, and finally start the installer. Of course you need to change the file-name to yours.

5. According to the previous picture genymotion has been installed to “/home/handbook/Downloads/genymotion”.

So run below command to start it:

/home/handbook/Downloads/genymotion/genymotion