this post was submitted on 11 May 2024
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I used to hate android emulators, since the ones I'd tested on Windows were ad-ridden, slow bloatware.

The other day I needed to run an android app on Fedora 40.

I tried Waydroid and it worked very well. The app ran supersmooth as if it was running natively.

Also the cli syntax was very sane an user friendly.

waydroid app install|run|list ...

So if you need an Android app on linux the experience might be better than what you think it would be.

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[–] GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml 38 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I think a part of your positive experience is also thanks to Linux. Android emulation works better on it because the difference between Linux and Android is not that big and definitely not as big as between Windows and Android. Though Waydroid rocks anyways

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 23 points 4 months ago

It took a long long time until Android emulators on Linux worked even close to what has been available on Windows.

[–] d_k_bo@feddit.de 19 points 4 months ago (2 children)

The documentation says:

Waydroid uses Linux namespaces (user, pid, uts, net, mount, ipc) to run a full Android system in a container and provide Android applications on any GNU/Linux-based platform.

To my understanding this isn't even emulation but regular container technology.

[–] lemmyreader@lemmy.ml 11 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Yes, Waydroid uses lxc containers.

[–] alteredEnvoy@sopuli.xyz 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Wouldn't some Android Apps require specific builds for x86 architectures? Does Android take care of that?

[–] progandy@feddit.de 15 points 4 months ago

If you need arm, then you probably have to install libhoudini https://github.com/casualsnek/waydroid_script

[–] Zangoose@lemmy.one 8 points 4 months ago

A lot of android apps are built using Java/Kotlin, so you don't actually need to care about architecture since the JVM supports both x86_64 and arm64.

There are exceptions to this though, since some apps need to run native code. Those apps would need some sort of emulation/translation layer for the arm instructions.

[–] beyond@linkage.ds8.zone 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Android emulation works better on it because the difference between Linux and Android is not that big

To be clear, the difference between Linux and Android is about the same as the difference between Linux and Fedora, in that they are both Linuxes. That's why this works, and why the reverse (running GNU/Linux apps and even entire systems on Android) is possible as well.

[–] GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I meant a desktop Linux distro, not the kernel itself. And Android has a ton of bloatware on top of it so it's not really the same thing. Android has like a double decker kernel

[–] tfowinder@lemmy.ml 11 points 4 months ago (4 children)

I just tried it 3 days ago on Fedora 40, Did not run for me.

Followed their wiki

How did you setup?

[–] mfat@lemdro.id 6 points 4 months ago

I don't remember tbh. I installed it a couple of years ago but used it for the first only recently.

[–] Plaksys@mander.xyz 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

At what point did it not work for you? I just got it running on Fedora 40 following their wiki.

[–] tfowinder@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)
Failed to get service waydroidplatform

on doing waydroid app install myapk.apk

ERROR: WayDroid container service is already running

IT says already running on doing sudo waydroid container start

[–] Plaksys@mander.xyz 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I got it into android "desktopt" previously, but now after rebooting and trying to install an apk it seems to no longer be opening at all. Sorry :/

Edit: I just uninstalled and reinstalled via the software Center and now it works and I could install F-Droid.

[–] caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 months ago

You need a custom kernel, or a kernel module plus DKMS and kernel headers for your current kernel.
You also need the package that handles whatever filesystem they use for their containers.
Then, you need to be running it on Wayland or else it doesn't work.
The part that I'm stuck on is running games, which gives an error about not being able to find libmain.so, which might be an architecture mismatch problem. Maybe I can virtualize that part? But at that point I might as well just buy a phone.

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[–] HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I had a similar positive experience with Gamescope, which tamed a game that freaked out every time I moved the moude onto the other monitor.

Maybe Wayland's healthy place is as a secondary window system you launch inside your normal X11 session.

[–] axum@kbin.social 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Maybe Wayland’s healthy place is as a secondary window system you launch inside your normal X11 session.

Yeah you've got that perfectly backwards.
Wayland allows X11 apps to open using XWayland. Not the other way around.

Xorg's life is running short and will be largely abandoned in the near future.

[–] HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 4 months ago

I think I'd be a lot more excited about Wayland if I felt like I can get a compositor that matches my tastes.

I want to iconify things to the desktop, not relying on a taskbar-alike. Nothing seems to offer that. Hell, the taskbar is often a third party program.

I want to double-click to shade. Labwc just added this, a feature that X11 window managers have been offering since the 90s.

I want an aesthetic that's got real depth and skeumorphism, rather that flat and featureless. Maybe something offers that, but there are plenty of X11 choices that have beveled buttons out of the box.

The charm of Unix systems used to be flexibility, buy Wayland seems to be an extinction-level event for traditional window management. Nothing fills the gap of FVWM or WindowMaker. But gosh, I can get 92 flavours of tiling compositor and windows that ripple when dragged.

[–] caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I admire your optimism but some governments are still using floppy disks.

[–] axum@kbin.social 2 points 4 months ago

I don't see how this matters lol, as govt will happily used abandoned media and software.

We're here talking end users and homelabs, not IBM mainframe maintainers 😛

[–] Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 months ago

Used it but couldn't play any media on it, which was going to be my use case. Nvidia!!!!!. But the devs and the community are quite patient and helpful in their telegram channel.