It has been a very long time since we last covered Android x86, but the project is still alive and kicking. If you're not familiar with it, Android x86 is a port of Android to x86-based PCs and Macs, with almost no changes to the interface (for better or for worse). The first stable port of Android 7.1 has just been released, so you can enjoy Nougat on your PC or virtual machine of choice.

There have been two previous release candidates for Android x86 7.1, one in June 2017, and the other in October. Now the project believes 7.1 is stable enough for most people to use on their computers, and there have been some changes since the last release candidate. Here's the full changelog:

Android-x86 installer was improved a lot including: Create EFI boot entry to efibootmgr. Add auto-installation function which is useful to install Android-x86 as the only one OS. Provide more information on disk and partition selection menu. Add advanced options to provide more boot options. Save the last choice in grub2 menu.

Update kernel to the LTS kernel 4.9.80 with more patches from AOSP.

Add a new HAL for iio type sensors.

Show poweroff menu by ctrl-alt-del.

Fix a lot of bugs.

I fired it up in VirtualBox, and once the VM's mouse integration was disabled, it worked pretty well. The developers even included Taskbar as a launcher option, so you can easily take advantage of Nougat's multi-window capabilities. The Play Store works perfectly as well. Unfortunately, there's still not an easy way to disable the on-screen navigation bar.

You can download Android x86 for both 32-bit and 64-bit PCs at the source link below.