If you want to try out Android on your laptop or computer you can download the most recent version from the Android-x86 Download Section. As the time of writing, this would be an Android 4.3 test version.
You can now burn this ISO-Image to a CD or put it on a bootable USB device. However, you can also extract the content of the image to an arbitrary folder on your local hard drive and boot from there with the help of Grub2. I extracted the contents of the image to the folder:
/android-4.3
Append the following entries to the Grub2 configuration file in /etc/grub.d/40_custom while replacing #X with the number of the hard drive (starting at 0) and #Y with the number of the partition (starting at 1). Example: sda1=(hd0,1) or sdb2=(hd1,2).
menuentry "Android 4.3 Live" { set root=(hd#X,#Y) linux /android-4.3/kernel quiet root=/dev/ram0 androidboot.hardware=android_x86 acpi_sleep=s3_bios,s3_mode SRC=/android-4.3 initrd /android-4.3/initrd.img } menuentry "Android 4.3 Install" { set root=(hd#X,#Y) linux /android-4.3/kernel quiet root=/dev/ram0 androidboot.hardware=android_x86 acpi_sleep=s3_bios,s3_mode SRC=/android-4.3 INSTALL=1 initrd /android-4.3/initrd.img }
Update Grub with sudo update-grub and reboot. Choose from the new menu entries in Grub for either trying it out by selecting the Live entry or installing it by selecting the Install entry. Be reminded, that anything you do in the Live system won’t be permanent.
Installing Android is a fast and easy process with the text based installer. After you have successfully installed it, you have to add a new menu entry in Grub again to boot into your newly installed Android. Check the partition you installed Android on: there should be a single folder containing the files of the Android system. We need the name of the folder for the new Grub entry. In my case, this folder is named android-4.3-test. So the new entry goes like this:
menuentry "Android 4.3" { set root=(hd#X,#Y) linux /android-4.3-test/kernel quiet root=/dev/ram0 androidboot.hardware=android_x86 acpi_sleep=s3_bios,s3_mode SRC=/android-4.3-test initrd /android-4.3-test/initrd.img }
Don’t forget to replace #X and #Y again with the correct hard drive / partition you installed Android on and correct the folder name matching your own (if different). Now update Grub again and reboot into your Android installation. Have fun playing around!