Instead of an emulator, what about a VM? Does that option exist?
this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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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.
Just androidx86.That's an Android distro highly customized to running in a VM.
no it isn't, it isnt that at all, that is so far off the mark it's extraordinary. Android x86 is as it's name implies, a generic x86 iso. you can install it to physical hardware or a VMM equally the same, in fact, it's literally the exact opposite of highly customized.
it's explicitly as generic as it can be
Apparently you never had a look at it. Getting Android to run on x86 is by far not trivial these days. To make it work, Android-x86 has a lot of modifications over AOSP, including drivers, HAL and a lot more.
Just checkout their Git to see what they had to do to get it working.
I am intimately familiar, it is not highly customized for VMs, it is as generic as it can be. a lot of work was put into making it work on x86 as a whole, but not just VMs.
Ever seen a single instance in the real world where this is running outside of a VM?
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.