Running Android apps on Linux: It's very close, but...

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Download the State of Enterprise Linux Security Management Report here: tuxcare.org/ponemon_report

[@SunIsLost]

Yes

[@mskiptr]

what

[@johannoas1]

I wonder how it compares to Anbox I mean Anbox does more of a Wine not an emulator way afaik

[@Logilype]

bro you really just teleported closer to me in the end because i have sponsorblock

[@molamola5260]

NO.

[@robotdowning963]

honestly one of the most frustrating things in the linux community is when asking if something works or how to get something to work being confronted with a "but why would you want to use that?". its a computer, a tool capable of so many different tasks so actually discussing if and how something works is always great to see. thanks for the great videos man!

[@zonebro6205]

True dat

[@doctahjonez]

Literally this

[@JoeMemes]

people who believe they are superior to other people and making fun of them for not knowing what they know are not superior at all

[@breakfast7595]

Yeah, as much as I hate Android, there are just certain things that are only available through android apps.

[@neroetal]

well said

[@apa5749]

Nick, just wanna tell you that Android doesn't use Dalvik anymore since Kitkat (4.4). It has been replaced with Android runtime (ART)

[@carlod1605]

@@Real-Name..Maqavoy What do you mean? I cannot understand your message

[@EthanHalsall]

Haha was just about to comment this 😂

[@venvanman]

@@carlod1605 well it is a note to self

[@therealjesusofficialhd]

But you are still (almost) always told in guides to wipe your dalvik cache in TWRP when flashing a ROM, even on Android 10+… Why?

[@miruee]

@@therealjesusofficialhd I'm interested in the answer for this question

[@amansetia8655]

i used waydroid on my terrible AMD A8 APU with radeon 5 graphics and 3.3GB RAM, and it was actually very good and did run the UI and apps fine af, waydroid is truly amazing

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Yeah the performance is incredible

[@vaisakh_km]

@@TheLinuxEXP does it have any chance of working in raspberry pi... :)

[@infernocrusher7573]

@@vaisakh_km it works on ubuntu touch which also use ARM

[@suryaiyer13]

Indeed! I have the same terrible AMD A8 APU which worked fine for me for 4 years since i bought it but it was quite slow and lackluster. Then windows 10 updates since 2019 broke GPU drivers from AMD as well as HP's release drivers, then rolled back to windows 7 which was some reason buggy and would occasionally throw blue screen. Finally i gave Ubuntu a try and my laptop has become way useful again since then and was a good companion through COVID times.

[@lthmltbgt3984]

What is your distro? 3GB usually isn't much even for phone, i think

[@cerealkiller69420]

Streaming apps would never work because of lack of widevine drm support (which those apps use). Even if they could add support, it would probably be only L3 widevine meaning only 480p/540p. L1 widevine for 1080p streaming is extremely unlikely

[@SunIsLost]

Yea, it may take 100 years (maybe) to do that

[@kote315]

Yes, this is most likely the reason. The funny thing is, it's a shot in the foot. The services are trying to fight piracy, the side effect is that the services become unusable, which is why honest users abandon the services and ... download pirated copies instead.

[@cromefire_]

This is probably not even the (primary) problem as Netflix for example should allow 720p on uncertified devices. Probably the bigger problem is Google SafetyNet that will detect Magisk and waydroid will also fail the Hardware attestation anyway and that's what most streaming apps, banking apps and apparently even McDonald's check.

[@csolisr]

Unfortunately the workaround involves, among other things, tricking the system into spoofing hardware authorization, which involves tinkering with the Anbox/Waydroid image file with tools like Magisk - good luck with that!

[@michak.6325]

Also heard that they won't work on x86 processors, so Netflix might not even appear because of your processor.

[@PrecariousPosition]

Just installed waydroid a couple minutes ago, what a timely video. Great content as always!

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Thanks :) Great minds think alike!

[@naveendukiya8552]

Some Comments - 1. 12:18 you don't need to start the service every time you boot your computer, just do "sudo systemctl enable waydroid-container" and it'll start on boot. 2. 12:23 I believe you can setup waydroid with a GAPPS image of android by running the init command with '-s GAPSS' option upon setup. It previously did not work on fedora I believe, but the copr maintainer just updated it to work today so unfortunate timing I guess. 3. Custom images of android don't pass play store's security test and also don't have widevine L1 certification. Media and Banking apps will either not show up in the play store at all or will not work properly as you experience. It is also not trivial to get around that.

[@TKFeather]

I thought about enabling the systemd service, but I wonder how heavy it is on your system resources... Keeping the Android system running constantly in the background must take quite a bit of RAM, I figured that's the reason why they don't enable the service on install

[@naveendukiya8552]

It is upto you thought. My point was that not being able to run ob boot was presented as a criticism.

[@KuruGDI]

_Installing an app and crossing your fingers that it is going to work_ - Well, that describes my experience so far with non-native apps on Linux in general

[@YonatanAvhar]

I'd love to see this project take off, imagine a future where your phone runs proper Linux, with a touch friendly UI, with support for all of the support Android phones get

[@luigimaster111]

We're almost there already, I loaded Waydroid on my Pinephone Pro, it has a glitch where you can't have hardware acceleration enabled, but it worked, got NewPipe running, it was very choppy, but it ran.

[@YonatanAvhar]

@@luigimaster111 very cool, how well does it work for apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, Moovit (navigation app, idk if it's popular outside of my country), and other apps that could be deal breakers if they don't work?

[@m0r73n]

@@YonatanAvhar You have the same limitations as any custom roms on a Android phone has and some apps might not work that well, its still experimental but it really looks promising

[@luigimaster111]

@@YonatanAvhar I really only managed to test NewPipe, waydroid as a whole was just too choppy without hardware acceleration for me to really view any further testing as necessary. Once that bug is ironed out I'll delve back into it. Others have got Waydroid working on the original Pinephone, and it may be the case that Waydroid doesn't get a lot of hardware access, so apps that use things like the GPS, Microphone, and Camera extensively might be useless. Also it prevents the phone from suspending while the service is running, so your phone chomps through battery even when the screen is off unless you kill that service. With that particular issue most messaging apps are kinda unusable. Also, removing Waydroid corrupted my Linux install for some reason, might have been user error but I can't fathom where I screwed up, couldn't get to a terminal at all so I had to do a fresh install. Still early days for linux phones, in terms of them being a fully viable alternative I think we are very close, possibly only off by a few years.

[@ThePery123]

This gives me so much hope ❤🎉🎉🎉

[@Neucher]

I tried waydroid on both an amd and intel gpu. Intel was almost perfect while on amd it was prone to stutters and micro freezes. Kinda funny since the latter is probably 10x more powerful.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Yeah I had stutters on AMD as well

[@talkysassis]

AMD virtualization tools are not so good.

[@ArunG273]

Intel Linux drivers are superior.

[@zPackss]

Strange that it seems common I had no problems at all on amd, maybe architecture? I run it on a Vega 8

[@talkysassis]

@@zPackss The gpu has nothing to do with this. Is the Intel's ISA that's just better

[@lzlxleldorado8646]

i think people must donate to this project this is so cool android support must be on linux and if android games worked like windows omg we could get more audiences more software more apps it should bee

[@DivSharp]

@@terrydaktyllus1320 WTH

[@DivSharp]

@@terrydaktyllus1320 I didn't understood your point. Running Android apps as Isolated apps in Linux how can it affect your privacy? It will be equivalent of having a Android phone. It can't get what your doing in your Linux. And yes it will collect data if only you installed Gapps in your Android. And yes it won't affect your privacy as I think apps installed in Wayland can't access your Linux data. If i am wrong correct me. 🤔 And about "English" I could see tha clearly.

[@kennystrawnmusic]

Re 8:50 - Arch-based distros do seem to have a simpler way to get the Google apps installed in the form of the “waydroid-image-gapps” AUR package. But because it’s Arch-specific, not exactly something that users of anything else can take advantage of.

[@TazerXI]

I think that this would be much better if it was: 1. A flatpak or something 2. In the settings, it has a place to add Google apps/comes with something like F-Droid by default. Having to open a terminal once means your app has failed at being user friendly imo. The terminal is great, but it should not be the only option to do something. There are exceptions to this, with things like more "pro" user tools, but a simple app/feature should be able to be done with a gui.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Absolutely agree

[@realtimestatic]

Im not sure they can legally include an option to add google services

[@Kiaulen]

@@realtimestatic you can often get around something like that by just including a link to instructions.

[@SkyyySi]

You know this requires custom kernel modules, right? And they provide very clear instructions on what you have to do. If you want to do something like this which requires tinkering, but you don't want to use the terminal because... you can't read(?), I'm not sure where the issue lies. Of course, the terminal is inaccessible and all that stuff because apparently, zooming, screen readers, eye trackers, etc. don't exist... but really?

[@cronchcrunch]

@@SkyyySi Installing and using an Android app should not be seen as "tinkering" If any tinkering is involved you've already lost most people, which matters a lot of you want to have more than a couple hundred users to attract contributors and enough donors to make it worth spending your time on. Also using the terminal to access gui applications makes for a dogshit experience. Idk why you're so against people's opinions on what could be improved.

[@Uejji]

Another comment pointed out that Android doesn't use Dalvik anymore. I also wanted to mention that Dalvik is not a Java virtual machine. Dalvik is a register-based bytecode virtual machine, while Java is stack-based. Dalvik was designed alongside the tool "dx" that converted Java bytecode into Dalvik bytecode. There has been a lot of a lot of misinformation about Android from the very beginning that it runs on Java or that it runs Java applications, but neither of these is true. You can write software for Android in a Java IDE (though now Kotlin is preferred), but that all gets converted to Dalvik bytecode before it ever touches an Android device. There's no reason why you couldn't write Android software in any other language, assuming the libraries and APIs you needed were ported over and the tools existed to compile it into Dalvik bytecode. On modern devices ART recompiles the Dalvik bytecode to native CPU binary code during installation, but still having Dalvik in the .apk allows legacy devices to still run your app. I guess maybe this sounds nitpicky, and I don't mean for it to. It's just that some brilliant engineers went to great effort to build a portable virtual machine designed to run on a variety of hardware and architectures without the bloat of J2SE or the limited feature set of J2ME, and it's a shame that everyone ignores what they accomplished and just calls Android "java-based."

[@IanSlothieRolfe]

My use=case for running Android apps on Linux would be to allow the random apps that come with so many gadgets these days, manufacturers seem to think that you don't mind filling up your phone with apps to configure your router, that remote security camera you might use every few months. It seems every bit of hardware, even ones that don't attach to a phone, have an app, and in many cases the app supports options that aren't available through other configuration routes, if there are any. This system looks promising, so maybe soon it may become a little more useable. It's definitely worth keeping an eye on - although I'd need Nvidia support given all my PC's and laptops have Nvida graphics....!

[@IanSlothieRolfe]

@@terrydaktyllus1320 If you'd watched the actual video, you'd see that the waydroid program currently doesn't work well with Nvidia video drivers, and its stated it works best with Intel video drivers.. This is discussed at some length, so maybe you need to watch the video again. Also, as an example I have a netgear repeater that recenttly I had to stop using because it can only be configured with the "app" because for some reason the web interface decided it was using an obsolete version of TLS. Unfortunately my phone is too old for the app to work properly, so its going to landfill. Yes, normally I would choose devices that contain standard configuration interfaces, but sometimes it would be nice to just run up the android version of the app if it were possible. In a "containerised" environment it might even be possible to tell if it is trying to "phone home", which would be useful information not available to you if you run the app on a phone. As to what video card I choose to use on my PC and Laptop, I would say that was my choice, and one I have made based on the experience I have had over the 18 years I have been using Linux and my main operating system, and the games and CAD systems I choose to use.. I suggest it is possibly you that doesn't know what they are talking about, respectfully or otherwise.

[@IanSlothieRolfe]

@@terrydaktyllus1320 maybe don't make assumptions about how other people use their systems and their time if you are trying to "help" them. . Nvidia drivers have always worked very well for me, I have used other video cards including AMD and Matrox, and they have had their benefits and problems. I have never had any problems with the software I use and Nvidia drivers so perhaps I am just lucky. You "assume" I use my video card for games but actually I only really play Minecraft and puzzle games which hardly stretch the GPU, mostly I use 3D CAD programs, KICAD, drawing programs, rendering suites that use the CUDA cores for acceleration and such, which is where I find the Nvidia cards work best for me. I did not contradict myself. You can sit through a video and not actually understand it, as you obviously missed the part where it said waydroid only worked well with Intel cards and then went off on some tangent about " What Android apps are you expecting to run on your PCs and laptops that would require NVIDIA support?" which had nothing to do with what I said. To explain it to you, the Android apps don't need the Nvidia support, Waydroid does. So perhaps you should watch the video again, and perhaps understand how waydroid works. Its in a container. If your only option is to use an app its possible that the containerisation would allow you to sandbox it and assess risks. You should know that. I use my computer to do things, so yes I don't always keep up with the latest in Linux. I am glad you do, although I feel sorry for your customers who have to face your judgemental attitude if your comments to me are anything to go by. I didn't suggest you didn't know what you were talking about because of lack of experience, I worked that out from what you said in your comments.

[@IanSlothieRolfe]

And where did I complain that "Every bit of hardware didn't work on Linux" - I very specifically was referring to Waydroid.

[@Bronek0990]

Wait until you need the NVidia app for Android to configure your NVidia card.

[@prabhatmaurya6663]

8:50 there is no need to do that long step to install gapps. Waydroid already has a image build with gapps. You just need to modify the init command as follows "sudo waydroid init -s GAPPS -f " and you are good to go. No need to run any extra scrips or blunders. 😉

[@dnawalahmed2979]

Or you can go with aurora services

[@prabhatmaurya6663]

@@dnawalahmed2979 yes but play store feels better.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

It didn't work, it told me the image disnt exist :)

[@prabhatmaurya6663]

@@TheLinuxEXP I have installed it almost 2 months ago maybe the dropped support for that.

[@dnawalahmed2979]

@@TheLinuxEXP THAT'S WHY AURORA SERVICES ARE BETTER (joking)

[@EeveeEuphoria]

something I should point out is that waydroid works on pinephone, which is great since it increases the usability of Linux phones by a buttload

[@Woodywoodah]

I have a Microsoft Surface Go 2 running Fedora. This could be amazing for that device! I could have the power of a full blown Linux distribution and the convenience of Android tablet apps all in one.

[@AninoNiKugi]

Except there are barely Android apps optimized for tablets :P

[@ThePery123]

@@AninoNiKugi lol or so you think, times have changed ever heard of the chrome book

[@IhateCCP]

i am installing this on my asus transformer mini. i also am running fedora.

[@yuvrajsingh099]

​@@AninoNiKugiGoogle,Oneplus,samsung, xioami , honor ,huwai all are selling android tablet. Don't you think google forced developer to make android and android apps run better on tablet.

[@stephan6530]

Some apps won't work on an x86 desktop because they are specifically built for arm / aarch64 architecture, but it should work on a Raspberry Pi.

[@mirage809]

This is a really cool system for running Android apps on the desktop, but you are totally right. The terminal is cool and go a million cool things, but it is something that the average person will shy away from. A flatpak/snap/appimage version with F-droid preconfigured and the kinks ironed out could be an absolute boon for developers and anyone else that wants to use Android apps on their computers.

[@robertvideochannel]

You are a Genius. Your KZbin ads are VERY well invested. More Amazing Topics i beg you < 3

[@ozrencupac]

I think you could set up the waydroid service to start up automatically as part of the boot process

[@t8db]

Yea, that's just systemctl enable (rather than start. Just note enable doesn't start, but it does on reboot)

[@hitorishinda5118]

I don't think you'd want to always want to start the android emu at bootup, a better way in my opinion would be to add alias android='systemctl start whatever' In your ~/.bashrc in a new line so you can open it with a short easy to remember comman

[@whydoyouaskdude]

@@t8db just append - -now to the enable command and it will enable + start at the same time

[@cyberp0et]

Debian :)

[@YonatanP2]

Actually Netflix not appearing in the play store is a common problem with lineage os, the play store classifies your phone as "unprotected" and because Netflix fears DRM security it won't appear. However on my phone, installing a slightly outdated netflix apk works like a charm, I don't know about waydroid though.

[@obvious_giraffe8386]

Netflix playing hard to get when its hard to want

[@rittalisa4916]

Strange, I got no issue on Grapheneos maybe it's due to Google Sandboxing compare to the use of MicroG on lineage and many other ROMs.

[@aperture0]

@@obvious_giraffe8386 Netflix be like that cheerleader girl

[@FrDismasSayreOP]

One indirect benefit is accessibility: you can render it larger on a screen with lower resolution.

[@ebsolas]

100% agree. GUI is better for single instance install/downloads. For power use, command line CAN be faster, but only if you really know what you're doing and aren't a casual user (seriously linux users, stop hating the normies). Looking forward to a flatpak future. It's better for security, and modern computers are powerful enough to take the performance hit.

[@grapefruitnetwork]

The fact that Linux is still having the GUI v. Command Line Debate is what keeps it from being adopted by "Normies" App Stores and Web Downloads (and previously CDs) won out because of the ease of installation.

[@Deniil2000]

"Why would you need a mobile app on a desktop?" is such a wrong mindset. Ideally, there should be an operating system that runs on everything, that will allow you to install same apps across all of your devices, be it mobile/tablet/laptop/desktop. FuchsiaOS is an interesting contender in that direction, its smart and well-designed Flutter-based UI API can make any apps automatically conform to the available screen size on any device. Isolating computing expiriences just because they are "desktop" doesn't make sense, we should strive towards same computing expirience on all devices.

[@schnitzelsemmel]

that was basically the idea of Java back in the day as well. problem is that you stiöö have to implement all the apis properly and it obviously comes with a performance hit. but with Android apps now running on windows, windows apps on Linux, web apps running html/js and even some Linux tools that run on termux Android, we are coming closer to a world where the OS doesn't matter

[@engelsteinberg593]

Why clutter the Desktop with shitt Mobile bullshit.

[@engelsteinberg593]

And Fuschia is pretty bullshit a lot of diabolic architecture.

[@ChristianYoga]

@@engelsteinberg593 Well, because not every application available for PC.

[@Deniil2000]

​@@engelsteinberg593 If app is mobile, it doesn't mean that it's automatically going to be shit on desktop. It depends on implementation, there are many UI frameworks that allow developing adaptive interfaces that look great on mobile and desktop screens. We should strive towards unified computing, the fracture between desktop and mobile that we have today is not a good thing.

[@jfftck]

Android tablets are not that different from iPad when it comes to apps that force portrait mode (these are apps that support padOS and are not iOS apps as those apps can be letterboxed while displaying in landscape), I would prefer if both would allow users the ability to override this setting. There are apps that allow this on Android, but as far as I know, Apple gives the users the middle finger. I bought one of their keyboard cases and it feels like an insult when it forces portrait. The biggest issue I with padOS is that fact it has 3 different modes for apps: fluid, developer restricted, and iOS. There is no indication to which kind of app you are downloading. I understand that games might want you to play in portrait only, but there are apps that shouldn’t be allowed to force orientation since they should not be any more complex than a website. My whole point is that iPads are no better when it comes to proper support and I can’t understand why Android tablets get as much negative reviews as they do, my only guess is all the cheap ones are dragging the satisfaction down and those are the ones that people remember. I would buy an Android tablet again if they would build ones with the latest version of Android and use high end SoCs.

[@takmhz4918]

Having grew up with a Samsung Tablet for 5 years, then using an iPad from 2018 till now, I was patient with my slow old Android tablet but when I got my iPad dang it was fast and smooth, I almost became an Apple fanboy but my wallet doesn’t support that. I thought that Android tablets were still slow but Android smartphones have improved so obviously Tablets also improved. Now after a few years with Apple’s keyboard cover for the iPad Pro, I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND IT to anyone. Mine’s already really tethered (even my mom’s keyboard cover is falling off tho it mostly sits on the shelf) and it doesn’t work anymore after a year (iirc) probably because of corrosion on the folds (there’s a youtube video fixing it with copper tape). I also have a few scratches but that’s my fault since I use it for school and moved it around a lot but besides the keyboard (which was good but not on the long term), the iPad user experience is great. I wish to go back to Android for the customizability (why did I update to iPadOS 15 where I can’t jailbreak it thus can’t run VMs smoothly) but with hardware as good as Apple (also the price)

[@jfftck]

@@takmhz4918 I am glad to hear that someone else loves Apple hardware but not the software.

[@StaceyAyodele]

Another awesome video. Keep up the great work, Nick!

[@PaperBenni]

2:15 Dalvik was actually replaced by the android runtime vm in android 4.4 (damn, remember minor updates that were bigger than the major updates of today xD)

[@SriHarshaChilakapati]

I'm surprised it is working that way, mainly because Android uses Linux users and group IDs to contain applications in the sandbox. When you install an app, a new Linux user is created just for that app. Btw, Dalvik VM is dead a long time back. ART (Android Runtime) is it's replacement. Kernel is stripped of a lot of drivers as space is a constraint in mobile hardware and instead, pluggable drivers are implemented. Android device manufacturers will include drivers for the hardware that they are using. LibC is gone, partly due to un-needed extra functionality and mainly due to licencing issues. Instead, Google's own implementation called as Bionic (which offers a subset of LibC) is used. So there is still a long way to go on that part. One thing as an Android app developer I could make use of this, is to automate instrumented test cases for applications that I develop, which is possible if WayDroid exports the ADB interface, as often times, we would like to have these tests running in the CI/CD pipeline and it is hard to hook real devices there. We do have other working alternatives such as Roboelectric for that matter though, or we can simply mock Android APIs with mocking frameworks. Other than that, I don't see a proper need. If you are lazy to reach your device and would like to run your apps on system, then a better alternative would be to keep an actual device, and then mirror it to the desktop using Scrcpy, which is a FOSS tool. You get a window which mirrors your device, and your physical keyboard and mouse can be used to simulate touch events and key events there. Since the processing is going on a real device, you won't get into a ton of issues either. There is also a Flatpak for this one, which makes installation pretty easy.

[@lala-jy4kz]

I suggest to firstly use Genymotion on Linux. Although not opensource, it is very stable. We could patiently wait until a stable open source project. However, there is a kind of issue I could not solve. I want the emulated phone to scan the QR code on computer screen, with a virtual camera streaming the screen image. But I failed. Although there are many tutorials about this, I still could not configure it on my Ubnutu 20.04. You may ask why I need to sreaming the QR code? The QR code on my computer screen refreshes to a new image every 2 or 3 mintues. If you want to use an image file, you have to take a screen shot, transfer the file to the emulated phone, and select the image on the phone. This entire process is time consuming, you have to be in a hurry to scan the image before refreshing. The hurry behaviour makes the using experience terrible, and tortures your patience.

[@obvious_giraffe8386]

I just use scrcpy with a raspberry pi so i can use a phone (any without hdmi out) while it is charging and you have keyboard and mouse control over your phone

[@Tachi107]

3:41 worth mentioning that Andbox, the thing Waydroid is based on, works on Xorg 6:00 I get that you like universal packaging formats, but they are not the solution to everything... The convuluted installation process has little to do with the packaging format. Classic distro packages can automatically run the required command during package installation. Waydroid only needs to improve its packages, or better, shouldn't make it necessary to run "waydroid init" at all. Also, Flatpaks and Snaps are containerised formats and usually don't work well with containers manager themselves. It's just that Waydroid is still in development, that's all. 8:50 you should make it clear that that script installs a bunch of stuff that could be harmful to normal users, like Magisk (a root manager)! By the way, a more user friendly approach to installing the Google Play Services would be preinstalling a compatibility layer that would allow users to install the Play Store like any other app (kinda like GrapheneOS, a custom Android version, already does). No random, unsafe scripts involved :)

[@harshsrivastava9570]

1. unfortunately, anbox is severely dated, and for the most part superseded by waydroid (waydroid claims to be its successor) 2. waydroid init is what sets up the container itself and all necessary files, so making it execute automatically may be cumbersome, especially for power users 3. yup :)

[@Tachi107]

@@harshsrivastava9570 1. Yeah, but still better than nothing 2. I actually don't know much about how waydroid works. Is waydroid init supposed to be executed only once? If so, the installation script could run it automatically. If it had to be run on every reboot / every time you restart the container, why can't it be put in ExecStartPre= in the systemd unit? Why would it create issues for power users?

[@jasnix]

Interesting… the case for making the jump from windows to Linux is getting better. Wish the same was true for iCloud/macOS path, but small steps

[@AnzanHoshinRoshi]

Thank you, Nick. There are some great Android apps and it would be great for Linux adoption. But I don't think I'd use any.

[@amansetia8655]

waydroid as flatpak would be awesome... but the kernel modules might cause issues, it would still not be one-click like other flatpaks

[@SomeRandomPiggo]

whats wrong with it being a normal binary?

[@amansetia8655]

@@SomeRandomPiggo it needs some kernel modules which aren't included by default and is also modular with variants like vanilla, gapps, magisk

[@bereck7735]

Flatpak wouldnt actually work, as flatpak itself is a container, your container will not get root access to the host system, which waydroid requires, ( waydroid is also a container in itself ), there is an issue on the waydroid repository about flatpak support and currently its not feasible, as waydroid as a flatpak, would be technically a container inside a container.

[@mircobandini]

I installed Waydroid on ubuntu 22.04 but looks like internet is not connected. If i try to switch wifi on it will turn off right after. How could i solve ?

[@Caellyan]

I think a very good use case for waydroid is using it in conjuction with something like postmarketOS on actual mobile devices. That would allow us to run Android apps whilst not sacrificing privacy and functionality, like we're forced to currently with Android.

[@Lumpology]

Waydroid is running nicely on Ubuntu Touch

[@Kalasklister1337]

There are some pinephone pro videos on yt where they showcase functioning apps. The "only" hurdles that need to be fixed for acceptable use are 1. waydroid apps to work when phone is in standby mode (progress being made alreay) 2. fixing hardware acceleration (will enable graphics intense apps to be used as well, not just simple ones). I'm already sold on these being fixed in the coming months so i ordered my pinehone pro developer edition :)

[@brostoevsky22]

@@Lumpology This was my first thought. I'd like to get away from the Android Googleplex in a meaningful way on my mobile device, but some non-Google apps will be needed for daily usability. This is the missing link to a daily driver Linux-powered smartphone.

[@ThatLinuxDude]

9:58 I'm assuming this means Waydroid FAILS SafetyNet checks. SafetyNet checks usually partially fail in custom ROMs of Android, especially if a rooting module is present (and is not masked), and applications like Pokemon GO, the Play Store, and so on are said to use it to restrict application availability in the Play Store (and softlock the whole UI in Pokemon GO's case) at the developers' discretion. Therefore, Netflix wouldn't be there as it is a well-known case of an application in the Play Store set to hide on SafetyNet-failing Android devices. You can check SafetyNet's status by getting *SafetyNet Test* from the Play Store.

[@MaryamMaqdisi]

Really good video Nick! I don't particularly care about running Android apps on my desktop but it's fun to think about it.

[@wallyhackenslacker]

Wasn't Dalvik deprecated with Android 5.0 and replaced with the Android RunTime (ART) java vm?

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Yeah, it was, my bad!

[@silan2335]

@@TheLinuxEXP Here is a good explainer-video on the difference between Dalvik and ART, since I also struggeld in the beginning with the differences: kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZnuUk6BrbZqIecU

[@MaloryHovell]

Does it consume ~800MB of RAM in the background like Windows Subsystem for Android?

[@cuikho210]

It doesn't work on ubuntu 22 or pop-os 22, the python3-gbinder package is not supported yet

[@notthedroidsyourelookingfo4026]

Hey Nick, after watching your video on CLI apps, I already installed tldr, ranger, autojump and thef*uck, and they're really quite cool! Also, they're all in the fedora repos, so it was extremely easy.

[@ducky1681]

3:48 I wanted to say that no, I couldn't switch to Wayland and I really want to, due to the reason that Wayland doesn't really have a way that I could find that can reliably disable VSync on every implementation. Plus there's also the problem of fragmentation. (for example how there's different implementations like WLroots and Mutter, etc.) I'm on AMD so that's not the issue here.

[@skelebro9999]

That sponsor segment was smooth, Nick. Kinda reminded me of Linus a bit.

[@FireDrage]

If I'm not mistaken I think you can't find Netflix because it uses a kind of drm which waydroid may not emulate and therefore is not listed as it sees your "device" as incompatible. I am not 100% certain though.

[@dylon4906]

this is so perfectly timed. just last night I was wondering if there was a way to run the Xbox android app natively on Linux so I can talk to my friends on party chat while gaming. my current workaround is to run an androidx86 vm with my mic passed in but as you might be able to tell it kinda sucks. I also just so happen to be using wayland as well. I really hope this works

[@PaperBenni]

The setup process of waydroid is NOT solved by changing the packaging format. Given that it probably interacts a bunch with other parts of the system, the one thing that snaps, flatpaks and to some extent appimages are exceptionally bad at, it would probably decrease stability and speed by a ton. Most likely the devs couldn't be bothered because there are more urgent problems that need solving. A GUI setup using polkit is really easy and simple to implement, I'm guessing it will definitely happen as the project matures

[@Rohambili]

4:47 today i dont see the nvidia gpu dont work... msg in the install instructions... :) maybe you can update on this... topic... maybe on waydroid and microg ...? ... there is a script on github which can install you gapps and microg and more...

[@breadmoth6443]

I hope so, I would like to have a pure linux phone - i only would need access to one or two android apps anyways, so if we can get proper support (not emulated) and it runs as fast as on android, i would love to switch to something like pinephone.

[@randomname2437]

Ever since I switched from windows to Linux, I couldn't stop watching this channel ty for the content

[@daddie212]

10:05 this can be for the safetynet and selinux with magisk is solvable but it can't flash zip on waydroid

[@euphanasia210]

Your videos are the s***! Topics, and production quality are insane. Thank you!

[@JustByteMe]

I love you man, I moved from manajro to fedora two months ago...loving it

[@naraydaniels7832]

Funny, The reason why I left Linux was because I needed android to read manga and my installation of manjaro gnome broke after installing Virtualbox (No seriously a simple pacman -Ss Virtualbox left gnome in an unusable state where i could only see my wallpaper). Currently I do have debian Gnome on my SD card so I'm going to check on it now

[@obvious_giraffe8386]

Try scrcpy and just use your phone on full screen while its charging

[@ChristianYoga]

I recall Tachidesk is now exist. It's compatible with Tachiyomi reader derivative, and support all website extension.

[@naraydaniels7832]

Y’all two have some nice app suggestions, I might check them out but the device I’m referring to is my surface go 2, which kinda nerfs both Apps. Scrcpy is implying I’m going to carry around my android and connecting it to my computer which is good when I’m at a desk or something but when I’m reading berserk on the train my LG (which I don’t even carry around anymore) has a loose usb c port, and though I’ve got a long cable, even connecting my external hdd on the train is weird sometimes. And tachidesk sounds really good, like really really good, I’m a Mac user so I can actually prop that up in my 27” iMac and get to reading without even having too boot into windows (stupid proprietary bluestacks) but Linux has bottom tier touch support, like Debian is quite literally my best touch experience on Linux and it still equates to 1/2 as good as windows 10’s experience, I will try both of them out though

[@amansetia8655]

nice, waydroid needs more yt coverage

[@ssela]

Netflix and other app don't show up because device is not certified by google play protect and probably device also not pass safety net check.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

It says it is certified, though

[@prakhars962]

Hi Nick, I regularly watch your videos. Recently, my university offered remote connection to their computers via RDP. It turns out that they have RDP with MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) which none of the Linux RDP clients support. In Windows its very easy, however, in Ubuntu none of the existing RDP softwares help me. Have you happened to come across such an app?

[@Joetorres3]

is very usefull. Specially with stuff like authentication apps. Some apps like twitch are better to see the chat then the desktiop.

[@attomic5319]

I'm excited for this to become more mainstream and polished. I can think of a lot of instances where the desktop versions of mobile apps are just much worse. I really hope this project grows into something much bigger and easier to use.

[@bandito241]

Sometimes there are not even desktop apps.

[@jorgegarciar]

Just a note: Android apps don't run on Dalvik anymore

[@michadybczak4862]

But you can use enable command so it would start automatically: sudo systemctl enable xxxxx.proces Anyway, although commands are simple, it's too raw and too tiring, so the app is not appealing at the moment.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Yeah, it's not finished yet

[@encrypt3d587]

I mean you can just throw the commands into a shell script. If you don't even want to open a terminal to run the script, just put it on your desktop so you can double-click it (or make a shortcut for it).

[@Kris-od3sj]

Fyi: it works on Nvidia by switching Waydroid to software rendering in a config, but it's a terrible experience and you can just run an Android x86 VM instead at this point

[@Kris-od3sj]

@gu4t4f4c Technically yeah, but I thought it's worth mentioning to make things clear. All in all, if there was no software rendering option it wouldn't run at all, so it definitely isn't an insignificant difference

[@rayanekch]

certain apps don't work/show up in the play store because the system doesn't pass the safetynet check. idk if it passes by default on waydroid but it definitely won't pass with magisk installed. it can be bypassed easily with dedicated magisk modules

[@alankjohn9263]

why do we have to start the service everytime cant it just be enabled using systemd?

[@AP-kx4yw]

Yes, you can: sudo systemctl enable waydroid-container.service

[@marcely1199]

12:15 Couldn't you just run "systemctl enable waydroid-container" to make it auto start with each reboot

[@haroonrehman8156]

A Very Good Channel for the Linux Guys who want to see some features about Linux. You Always Upload very Good Content about Linux and show how interesting the Linux is.

[@sunnyleung7118]

Last time I tried Waydroid it can not install ARM apks, and looks like it still do not have out of the box ARM emulation supported yet.

[@MichaelSiejak]

Fyi, Android apps no longer run on dalvik. Dalvik was replace with the Android Runtime a while ago

[@fastshuther]

I'm on Linux Mint and for some reason even after downloading it correctly the app just doesn't pop up, i have the app installed but it does not want to run

[@muhamadrizkyananda]

If Waydroid can be installed in Win10's WSL too? Also if Waydroid can be keyboard mapped as well?

[@xinceras-6542]

You know you're in the bubble when "it doesn't work on Nvidia GPUs" is just a minor "caveat."

[@valorix]

I use X11 and I still can use Waydroid. All it takes is just using some nested Wayland compositor, like Weston for example. Weston runs in a window, so I don't even have problems with portrait-oriented apps.

[@jonathanh9585]

Sometimes I want to play Minecraft bedrock with my sister without going back to windows 10 but I cannot have a buggy / early dev app in my computer unless it's stable and have all apps I want to download

[@anon_y_mousse]

Neat, and on the subject of the portrait mode apps, couldn't you just bind some shortcut keys to use xrandr and force the screen rotation?

[@dinithaw]

There's no X86 android version of some apps like netflix. those apps are unvailable on waydroid

[@technology-man]

You don’t have to start the service on every boot you can systemctl enable waydroid-container

[@abdelkarimbenaouda4768]

The following packages have unmet dependencies: python3-gbinder : Depends: python3 (>= 3.9~) but 3.8.2-0ubuntu2 is to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

[@oliverform]

Yeah same error here

[@abdelkarimbenaouda4768]

@@oliverform Linux Mint ?

[@oliverform]

@@abdelkarimbenaouda4768 Ubuntu 22.04

[@abdelkarimbenaouda4768]

@@oliverform let me know if u find any solution

[@arozendojr]

do you know how to configure "adb connect ip-waydroid" ? So far I haven't been able to get it to work.

[@AaronM-zh4ug]

I was thinking maybe i could attempt to make an installer gui myself, but that would be quite the hassle since I'm a student with limited time and experience making this kind of thing.

[@januhlir7800]

Very practical use case - WhatsApp. This is mobile first app. And it shows. It's widely used for audio and video calls but video calls are supported only only by the Android/iOS clients. It has a web client, but that has no support for calls. It has a native linux client, but that one also has no support for calls; and is generally not well maintained. Being able to make video calls from WhatsApp on Linux would hugely improve desktop experience there. Yes, we have Skype but that's not widely used any more.

[@jamesclow108]

Definitely a shame about the lack of NVIDIA hardware support. I hope that this is something that will be possible in the future!

[@wtt9809]

Stop complaining and do something about it.Such as make one gpu, I mean seriously，lol。

[@muhammadusmankhan6761]

Hey is there a key mapper to play games? i have a spare laptop with Intel graphics. I want to try games

[@Daniel_VolumeDown]

9:57 maybe netflix is not showing becouse of that or because of wrong architecture of CPU, but also it probably won't work because of safetynet... I am not sure if safetynet is passing on waydroid but I guess it is not, so netflix, pokemno go, banking apps and other apps checking for safetynet won't work (this is main reason why you won't want to install custom roms on your smartphone. 10:58 I see thet you installed Aurora Store. It is a good app if you dont't need apps which rely on google play services (although even these maybe will work when someone has "microg"). Unfortunately, the creators of Aurora Store do not recommend logging in to "your" google account in their application (and from what I know in microg, it may not be a very good idea).

[@LeftyPencil]

Pretty sweet on steam deck. Hope there's a way to force a portrait (not rotated like Duolingo) app to landscape

[@CIA_FOLLOWED]

Great video,, very helpful as usual, thank you! Have you tried installing Outlook app, does it work? I cannot find any normal replacement for Office 365 client on linux and I was wondering if I will be able to use the android app.

[@JacobP81]

7:12 I'm surprised it doesn't have a graphical way to install apks and I'm surprised you have to restart it after an apk install. Google Android and Kindel do not have those limitations. You can turn on apk install ability and just directly install the apk and it automatically adds the program right away.

[@brunoais]

Nick: Have you tried anbox? It works differently but it works on XOrg. However, it seems to require NVidia or AMD dedicated GPU, unfortunately.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

I did, but performance was always really bad for me

[@brunoais]

@@TheLinuxEXP I see... Thanks for sharing, m8. For me, it works well. Performance is fine. I only use for stuff that I can't get desktop app or website for, though. (Even through outrageous app, whatsapp is one of them) Only if I try playing games performance starts failing.

[@raviolimavioli]

You can run Waydroid in X11, you have to install "weston" first and run Waydroid inside weston container, it's just 3 simple commands

[@rohitdoestech]

this is something I've been waiting for ages!

[@ducky1681]

9:55 Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think, at least this is the case on my rooted android phone, that it actually chooses not to display Netflix because Google's SafetyNet deems your device not trustworthy.

[@raoufbakhti7786]

What is the distro you use in vid

[@davidwayne9982]

I'm trying out ANBOX but it won't work right either.... I've installed and RE- installed it-- CORRECTLY both times and it STILL won't work right. I"m tired of using my PHONE for the control---- PHONES are for CALLING--- and besides, I'm 67, one eye now and have trouble seeing the small phone screen correctly... need them on my BIG screen.

[@interceptor001]

Could you make a video on how to install NVIDIA drivers on Fedora 36 once it releases? I am struggeling so much with this. They really need the one click install like ubuntu.

[@brunorcabral]

Distro "Big Linux" comes with Waydroid pre-installed running on Weston

[@Bread-je6dc]

What distro are you using in the video?

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Fedora

[@anobodyscontentstream5347]

Fantastic overview of Android versus GNU/Linux

[@josealejandroconcepcion2025]

Its impossible to install it on Ubuntu 22.04, You get an error like this: "The following packages have unmet dependencies: python3-gbinder : Depends: python3 (< 3.9) but 3.10.4-0ubuntu2 is to be installed"

[@_ianjms]

Same error when I tried it on mine. Too bad Wayland is the default there..

[@t1k2y]

Just a heads up, Netflix not appearing in the play store is probably a result of google detecting magisk root

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Hmmm might be!

[@poohhappy4548]

good video but it can be better with the mention of required kernel modules ashem and binder