Using the standard VM approach isn't substantially more heavyweight. It performs well and is much more robust and compatible. ChromeOS isn't currently using virtualization for performance reasons but they really should be doing it that way. As is, it turns ChromeOS into Android.
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There's not really that much difference between using Android with Chrome in the app sandbox or using ChromeOS with Android inside a container. The kernel is the same, verified boot and update system is comparable, and security between apps and Chrome is essentially the same too.
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Yes, but I don't want any of that. Not their kernel, not verified boot, etc. Stock Linux kernel (or in the future, something better) and ability to run legacy apps safely.
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Anbox depends on having an Android kernel, i.e. having the Android modules like Binder. You are effectively running a whole Android OS since you've got an Android kernel and the whole userspace within namespaces. It's separated to some extent from the rest of the OS, but poorly.
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Unlike ChromeOS, they aren't actually implementing a proper isolation boundary around it with the namespaces and bridging. It has moved towards that, but it's not at that point. Even the ChromeOS implementation is really just properly separated / contained, not so much sandboxed.
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If you want to avoid turning your 'host' OS into Android, you pretty much need either a virtual machine or another approach to intercepting all the system calls. github.com/google/gvisor uses either a ptrace (quite slow) or KVM (without running another Linux kernel) backend.
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I don't think gVisor is close to the point where it could run Android inside it though. It would need a fair bit more work to reach that point. ChromeOS and Anbox are taking the short cut of just turning the host OS into Android, with Anbox also not doing meaningful isolation.
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That's not what I said. I said that you need the host to have an Android kernel. They use modules to make it into one if it isn't built with Android support included:
github.com/anbox/anbox-mo
The Android container uses the host kernel directly including the Binder module.
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It's how it works on ChromeOS too, but on ChromeOS, I'm quite sure they preserve the usual sandboxing / security model / kernel attack surface reduction that's done primarily via SELinux. Anbox disables Android's SELinux usage, which is how a lot of the security model is done.
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What I'm interested in needs no internal security model because it's single privilege domain (one app). Only isolation from host.
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The internal security model protects the kernel from apps, and hides a lot of information leaked from the kernel to apps. By disabling SELinux, it's substantially breaking down the separation between the kernel and the app, making it less isolated than it would be even normally.
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