Ika vs Tigress

Ika is a free, open-source Android desktop for Linux hosts. It runs an Android 16 build based on LineageOS 23.2 inside a Cuttlefish virtual machine. Android apps open in separate resizable desktop windows, can appear in the host app menu, and preserve DPI settings when the display changes size. GPU acceleration uses OpenGL ES and Vulkan. Game mode can launch games fullscreen with gamepad passthrough, alongside documented keyboard, mouse and touch input. Builds may include MindTheGapps, microG, or a de-Googled ROM without an app store. The project provides separate host-application and Android-image packages, with Fedora RPM, Debian or Ubuntu DEB, and Arch packages; ARM64 availability varies by distribution. Native builds target Apple Silicon and x86-64 systems. Source compilation needs at least 16 GB RAM and 300 GB storage, may take 3–6 hours or more, and Debian or Ubuntu require Mesa 26.1 or newer.

Tigress is a C obfuscator that changes source code to make static and dynamic reverse engineering harder. Users choose sequences of command-line transformations and options; one input program can produce multiple distinct outputs. Its transformation families cover control flow, data, functions, integrity, and anti-analysis. Tigress supports C99 and targets Linux, Darwin, Android, and Windows, as well as Intel, ARM, and WebAssembly, with 32- and 64-bit output. It supports GCC, Clang, Emscripten, and cl, and cross-compilation can be configured through compiler and environment options. Input must be a single C file, so multi-file programs need to be merged first. The maker offers it free to nonprofit organizations at free. Commercial use in a for-profit organization requires a license from the University of Arizona; pricing is on request, and users may try it for any length of time before deployment. The source is not generally open source. The maker notes that generated code may be slow, particularly for huge programs, and advises assessing security needs before using software-protection techniques.