the one thing linux really hasnt been made on par with winblows yet is the dreadful amount of options for android simulation -the most popular choice seems to be Waydroid, but its such an unneeded hassle to set up at all -genymotion is just slow -and than you have things like android x86 which entirely defeat the point of an emulator
no it isn’t, it isnt that at all, that is so far off the mark it’s extraordinary. Android x86 is as it’s name implies, a generic x86 iso. you can install it to physical hardware or a VMM equally the same, in fact, it’s literally the exact opposite of highly customized.
it’s explicitly as generic as it can be
Apparently you never had a look at it. Getting Android to run on x86 is by far not trivial these days. To make it work, Android-x86 has a lot of modifications over AOSP, including drivers, HAL and a lot more.
Just checkout their Git to see what they had to do to get it working.
I am intimately familiar, it is not highly customized for VMs, it is as generic as it can be. a lot of work was put into making it work on x86 as a whole, but not just VMs.
Ever seen a single instance in the real world where this is running outside of a VM?
Yes. Many. Blisslabs has partnerd with EIDU to work on tablets for low income countries. I personally have sold android boxes with Bliss. Ax86 has a large number of sponsors that are/were casinos. There are people working on using it in cars. 2-In-1s. ETC.
VMs are the minority use case…