Many. I've used Android-x86(.org) on KVM which worked so well I didn't pursue others. There is some semi-commercial fork called Remix OS that's more polished.

If you only need to use an app and not the rest of the environment you can also run it as a Chrome plugin under ARC and not mess with virtualization at all.

I can't connect to bdownload.fosshub.com, which hosts the Android-x86 images. Are those download links working for you?

Fosshub was owned and trojaned some days ago, be careful with that site. The other download link should work (there are checksums in release notes).

They also mirror releases to Sourceforge: https://sourceforge.net/projects/android-x86/files/

Thank you, both!

Look at Genymotion, I'm using it on Ubuntu 16.04 to test Telegram and Messenger bots without having to do it on my phone. There are some hops to go through to install Google Play but they are documented. I'll post some links when I go back to my computer with my notes.

Edit: instructions.

I downloaded Genymotion from https://www.genymotion.com/pricing-and-licensing/ (Individual, Basic, which costs no money). It's enough to run Android but you don't have Google Play.

I followed these general directions to install it https://inthecheesefactory.com/blog/how-to-install-google-se...

However the filetrip link didn't work (and I don't know if I want to trust it) and the google apps failed to install. I googled and eventually downloaded these files:

ARM to x86 translation: http://forum.xda-developers.com/android/general/guide-genymo...

Google Play: https://www.androidfilehost.com/?fid=24591023225177410 (banks_dynamic_gapps)

The latter is for Android 6 so you should run an Android 6 image on your emulated device.

My computer is still fine after installing those two files in the Android emulator but I don't take responsibility. Don't know how verified they are.

There is a way to run Android apps in Chrome [1], which I refused to believe until I tried it with a random APK and worked perfectly.

[1] https://developer.chrome.com/apps/getstarted_arc

There are multiple ways to run phone apps in a VM on Linux. If you just want to try something, the quickest would be to download Android Studio or Eclipse and use the built-in VM meant for development.