Microsoft took the developer (or at least the Windows ones) world by storm when it announces multiple “bridges” that allow developers of other platforms to port their apps more easily to Windows, two names from which stood out: Islandwood for iOS apps, and Astoria for Android.
While Islandwood continues to get attention and even has projects to show for it (think Candy Crush), Astoria seems to have been left on the wayside. The final nail in the coffin was when Microsoft removed the Android subsystem it has built into Windows 10 Mobile that allowed the OS to run Android apps via emulation.
Native Android apps on Windows seems a nigh impossible future, at least until now. A new discovery made in Windows 10 Redstone build 14251, which graced us with its presence not too long ago, may mean a very different course of action from Redmond.
The discovery was first made by tweeter @h0x0d, who found lxcore.sys and lxss.sys subsystems in Windows 10 build 14251. The naming convention is very similar to the Android subsystem from Project Astoria, ADSS.SYS. The “lx”, however, can only mean one thing: Linux...