the one thing linux really hasnt been made on par with winblows yet is the dreadful amount of options for android simulation -the most popular choice seems to be Waydroid, but its such an unneeded hassle to set up at all -genymotion is just slow -and than you have things like android x86 which entirely defeat the point of an emulator
To do Android development, I got myself a Banana Pi, which is a Raspberry-Pi like single-board computer. They provide you with a rooted Android OS image that you can flash onto the device, and you can install whatever else you want onto it. I give it it’s own display and keyboard, but can also SSH-into it and control it from my other computers.
I have not tried it but BlendOS claims native apk support iirc.
E: Ok, perhaps native is incorrect terminology, I just checked it and it seems to use WayDroid which was already mentioned in the thread. They ship with Aurora store and F-Droid, you can probably make those work on your distro too.
blendos sounds nice and all but its claim of being able to install any package from any distro just sounds like a nightmare to maintain, there have to be issues coming from this right?
could you perhaps sell that distro to me?
I can’t sell you something I haven’t used, even the components (distrobox and waydroid) I have not tried since I have personally no usecase for them. I mentioned BlendOS purely because from my passing look at it the android app support stuck in my memory.
The beautiful thing with linux is, you could just burn the live USB and boot the live environment to test it out for yourself, without practically any hassle or run it in VirtualBox.
As I gather you run Endeavour but then complain about the hassle of doing things in Linux. Endeavour is basically arch with a GUI installer + some extra tidbits, realistically it is as close to being arch as you can be without actually calling it arch. Arch is not a system for people who like things to just work withou “hackerma solutions”. Just look at Arch Wiki FAQ , specifically sections 1.2 and 1.6. If you want something simpler, perhaps try another distro.
endeavor was the least trouble i ever had in regard of never having any hassle, i had to jump through far more hoops trying to get certain things working in say…linux mint, than i ever had with endeavouros it makes arch actually usable instead of a nightmare to install
i just have to type 3 letters and it updates everything, no hassle, speedy and actually easy (for once)
thanks for the arch wiki link but 3 out of 4 times i have to force myself to use it, i eventually give up and search for the proper answer somewhere else cause i dont want to read the entire history of binary to understand it
I totally get what OP is asking and am constantly annoyed by the same thing.
There’s a ton of software that can ONLY be run on a mobile OS, and rather than deal with the nightmare that is a physical Android phone with all of its limitations and restrictions, it would be nice to have these things running in a VM that I can fully control. There’s software that demands access to insane and ridiculous permissions, and I’m not going to install those to my physical Android phone and deal with the privacy problems. But a completely isolated VM with burner accounts that I can run in a window on the desktop I’m already using most of the time anyway? I’ll take that. Also, I don’t see the need to shell out the ridiculous price premiums for phone models with the most storage space when I only use a handful of apps when I’m mobile anyway. An app I might need two or three times a year still takes up that space on my phone when it could easily live on a VM and be used only when I need it at home.
Also, when Android releases new version updates and my phone manufacturer doesn’t keep up? Why should I have to go out and buy a new phone just to appease the handful of apps that decide THEY want to be cutting edge and THEY’RE going to be the ones to force me to waste money? I should be able to just spin up another VM with the new Android version and use those sporadic apps on there until I decide to upgrade my phone in my own good time.
Also, Android X86 is fine, but the most problematic apps that mess with users and force apps to newer Android versions for no other reason than being “cutting-edge” aren’t made by the kinds of companies with the forethought or customer focus to provide x86 compatible apks.
Basically, I don’t see why it’s so hard to run a full virtual, sandboxed ARM emulated vanilla Android environment, or why people aren’t clamoring for this. It’s the most practical, straightforward solution to the fragmentation/bad vendor update model that physical hardware forces on us and I assume most of us hate.
YES THANK YOU i always feel like im alone in wanting an easy to use solution like this
You are DEFINITELY not alone. Every 6 months or so I come back to this and hope someone has done something, and every time I’m disappointed. I’d do it myself, but my username isn’t an ironic joke.
Do you mean emulators such as the Android emulator that comes with Android Studio, or is the latter lacking features that other software on windows possess?
android studio is painfully slow and has not exactly a friendly userinterface (its been a couple of years)
Waydroid works at native speeds for me and on NixOS installation constituted adding virtualisation.waydroid.enable = true; to my config, running waydroid init -s GAPPS and then registering it on Google’s website with the code it gives. Might be able to do it with just the nix package manager and not full blown NixOS but not sure about that
Unsure of the difficulties installing it but when it works it works flawlessly
Man! I was super excited about this, being a big NixOS fan, but then I realised that the “Way” bit is going to kick me in the nuts. I haven’t made the switch to wayland yet; I keep thinking about switching, but last time I checked being tied to i3 and nvidia hardware scared me off (although I’m aware sway is a drop-in alternative to i3, but it’s an extra complication). Another reason to make the switch when I can though!
Out of curiosity, how do big media apps treat something like Waydroid? Like, I imagine Netflix and co being awkward with anything like this in a misplaced attempted to prevent “piracy”. Do you find apps treating you like a second class citizen?
I’ve not found this yet but I’ve only used it for a few things so far, haven’t tried Netflix. Will give it a go for you in a moment
The apps I have used (plato, teams, office) have worked without a hitch so far (once I figured out I needed to install it with play services enabled)
Can’t imagine banking apps would work at all though
Wayland with Nvidia is patchy. I’ve managed to get around the issue by running integrated graphics with offloading for intensive stuff, at least with Wayland gnome I’ve found integrated is indistinguishable performance from using the GPU anyway
Just installed NixOS with Wayland and Gnome the other day on my laptop with Nvidia card. I had to tune the config a bit, but it works flawless now – notably also with the offload command. That’s fine for me though because it saves considerable energy if the GPU only runs on request.
That could be a 2 birds one stone situation for me. My daily driver is a laptop with Nvidia hybrid GPU setup and it’s hella-twitchy with X. If its more stable with Wayland that’s yet another reason to try switching.
