why are android emulators either nonexistent or utterly useless?
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
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.
ARM emulated vanilla Android environment
Android Studio does exactly that. The x86 images are the default but they do have ARM images available too.
Running Bliss with houdini or NDK should give you a good coverage of arm applications, some still won't work because they have various anti-emulator crap which just pickups x86 stuff. if new version is an issue, Bliss has you covered as it's currently running A12L with A13 work underway
This is fascinating, and the first I've heard of this. I'll look into it!
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Apps “forcing” you to update are the result of developers doing their jobs. Just because you decided to buy a cheap phone or a free Android distro that doesn’t come with any update guarantees doesn’t mean they have to pour in money to keep things working for you.
I absolutely refuse to spend that much money on a platform with so little respect for users. You shouldn't even NEED an update guarantee. You don't go out and buy a computer and check for guarantees that it's going to include OS updates... you KNOW it's going to continue updating until the hardware physically can't handle it anymore and you get sick of it and go upgrade it. The Android system and its heavy ROM customization and reliance on vendor updates is fundamentally broken, and it is NOT a problem to be pawned off on USERS to fix by throwing more money at it. The only reason there's ANY difference in the Android environment vs X86 computers is because people tolerate it for whatever reason. This is a problem to be fixed, and the first responsibility for fixing this is on Google, and failing that responsible app developers should be developing for the lowest still supported Android version for SEVERAL reasons.
There are good reasons to update an app to use a new Android version. Complacency in a broken environment of continuous obsolescence as a money making scam isn't one of them.
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.
That's all well and good for development, but there are other use cases than development. There are emulation solutions focused on development already, of varying quality. But there's nothing for Android END users who simply want to be able to run software an Android environment without having to be tied to a piece of hardware and all the limitations and sacrifices that come with that.
That's not to say this isn't a useful option, but that's still ONE Android environment tied to ONE piece of physical hardware.
To give an equivalent comparison... if you wanted to run multiple operating systems on your PC to have fine tuned control of different environments, you could just install a different Linux distro or Windows to multiple different VMs.
If I want to do the same thing with Android, the solution is always "Buy another device". That's insane. If the solution to wanting to run Debian alongside Fedora was "get a second computer", people would be up in arms with how ridiculous and wasteful that is. But for Android, people just accept it for some reason.
Well there's Blend OS which comes with built in Waydroid integration.
The generic answer is usually that someone hasn't felt the need to create and release one.
Open source basically means you get whatever someone else felt like creating, and they'll usually create it to suit themselves first and foremost (which may mean having a poor user interface, or certain limitations or performance quirks).
BlueStacks is cross platform, but I have never used it so no idea what the performance is gonna be like.
"The problem is Bluestacks has not been developed for Linux so some users are thinking what is the system they should adopt to emulate Android applications on Linux.
Fortunately an alternative exists if you need a system that can do that, now we will give you the keys to install something equivalent to BlueStacks that works correctly. Genymotion"
from their website
My apologies, I saw:
BlueStacks is the famous Android emulator for PC that can now be downloaded for the Ubuntu Linux operating system but we also refer to other distributions like SUSE, Debian or Linux Mint.
And that reads clearly as being available.
But you are correct, and it's not. That entire blog looks like a Google translate trainwreck.
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?
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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
I use Waydroid on EndeavourOS just to run Apple Music. Waydroid basically virtualises an x86 build of Android and uses containers rather than emulating an entire ARM device. The most difficult thing was getting firewalld to let Waydroid access the internet.
There's one that you can download through Android Studio. It's pretty good if you have Linux as your host OS, as it will share your Linux kernel rather than emulating it. I guess by definition that's not an emulator, though, so it technically doesn't answer your question.
I haven't used it with Windows as my host OS since around 2016, but it was not very good back then.
android studio does not share the linux kernel on host. it uses KVM, but the perf I doubt would be here, could be virgl?
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Ah, I'm not sure. It's been a few years since I have been an Android developer. My memory is getting fuzzy. KVM sounds right, tbh. But I know that when switching from Windows to Linux made my performance (on the same hardware) go from damn near unusable to nearly perfect.
Perhaps because scrcpy exists? It's very easy to mirror an Android device on the PC with it and control it with mouse and keyboard, and everybody has an Android device around. So why bother emulating one.
The ones with the most need to emulate are app developers and Android Studio does have an emulator included iirc.
mirroring is hardly the same as emulating tho is it
Yeah... I feel the intent here isn't to use the same Android installation on a bigger screen - it's about taking back control and setting up Android environments on your own terms without unnecessary hardware. It's a totally different use case.
While I appreciate the difference between mirroring and emulation, @lemmyvore@feddit.nl might have a point in so far as scrcpy and other options that aren't emulation, may still be part of the reason why no one is making polished emulation options.
If a dev can get by with a bunch of physical devices connected and controllev via adb, scrcpy and the like, or a passable emulator in Android Studio, then there's less reason for them to build or contribute to an emulator for their needs, and consequently op (and the rest of us) don't get a shiny open-source emulator.
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.
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)
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How is waydroid a hassle? also literally all android emulators ARE just android x86 in a VM, the VM of choice is typically virtualbox
installing some random kernel that has the modules waydroid needs watching what gpu you have, which changes the instructions a little and even than its pure luck if waydroid even manages to use these binders
id call that a hassle
Waydroid will work out of box if the kernel has binder or binderfs enabled, which I believe ubuntu based, pop, fedora all have it OOB, on arch, you have linux-zen in the main repo, this covers the large majority of linux installations, I would recommend asking your kernel packagers for your distro to enable binder/fs. at this point, I would classify that as a distro issue.
I’ve been meaning to try this:
That's a pretty sketchy project with a lot of paywalling and data collection
docker huh? i might try that one out, keep me updated on how its going for you if you dont mind
just tried it, not only doe it run in a browser , it runs like absolute ass, can barely open chrome, and the interface around the interactable window is genuinely bad
Try shashlik
Instead of an emulator, what about a VM? Does that option exist?
What would you put in the VM? Each Android ROM is highly hardware dependent and each device's internal storage is highly fragmented into a couple dozen partitions configured in proprietary formats.
Theoretically a GSI ROM is supposed to be hardware-independent thanks to Treble but you would still need a common base to go with any GSI ROM and I'm not sure a generic one has been made specifically for use in a VM.
What would you put in the VM? Each Android ROM is highly hardware dependent and each device’s internal storage is highly fragmented into a couple dozen partitions configured in proprietary formats.
Android x86 and derivatives are as generic as possible, like any other linux ISO you can flash it to most any computer assuming the kernel is new enough, Bliss OS is up to date with the latest LTS kernel based on xanmod, and android 12L