“File types” like avi, mp4, etc are container formats. Codecs encode video streams that can be held in different container formats. Some container formats can only hold video streams encoded with specific codecs.

Looks like Google is calling it Play Integrity these days: https://developer.android.com/privacy-and-security/safetynet/deprecation-timeline

But it’s this: https://developer.android.com/google/play/integrity

It’s an API that ensures you’re running apps on the hardware and Android ROMs Google approves of. It can also ensure that apps are not running on rooted phones.

Developers can integrate it into their apps. Banking apps do it, for example, and won’t run in Waydroid as a result. More and more apps integrate it over time.

You can use QEMU’s usermode emulation to transparently run ARM binaries with binfmt_misc on x86.

You can test Linux out by using a live USB instance or in a VM. You can also dual boot so you’ll always have Windows available if you need it.

You can also install WSL on Windows or something like Git Bash or MSYS2 to get a Linux-y environment on Windows.

Will never happen because of SafetyNet. Google does not want you running Android apps on anything other than their approved Android ROMs.

The hell that was configuring XFree86

I think more serious and organic discussion isn’t necessarily going to be positive all the time.