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I tried using Waydroid on Linux Mint (Edge) only to have it not work and realized that it requires Wayland, and Mint uses X11. So I used VirtualBox to install Fedora 40 Gnome which does use Wayland.

I installed Waydroid as per the instructions and am having seemingly the same issue as on Mint. After downloading "Vanilla" Android and clicking "Done" everything exits out. So I launch the Waydroid application but nothing ever happens.

I then try to manually start Waydroid in terminal but always get "ERROR: WayDroid container service is already running". Then I skip to the second step "waydroid session start" but receive "OSError: container failed to start".

Am I doing something wrong? Is it simply because the VM is causing the issues? Or does WayDroid not work well on Fedora? Thanks

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

If you're going to run waydroid in a VM, why not just run Android in a VM?

Also why. The. Hell. Are. People. Still. Using. Virtualbox? What is this? 2005? You're already running a kernel with built in world tier type 1 virtualization.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Also why. The. Hell. Are. People. Still. Using. Virtualbox?

Couldn't get any Qemu-manager to work (and no time to master running it with scripts) and Vmware can use KVM as hypervisor. Virtualbox not?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

No, VirtualBox is a Type 2 hypervisor.

I'm not sure what qemu-manager is, but virt-manager works out of the box on Debian at least. There are no scripts needed, it's a UI.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

use the terminal qemu noob (/s)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Also why. The. Hell. Are. People. Still. Using. Virtualbox? What is this? 2005? You're already running a kernel with built in world tier type 1 virtualization.

Honestly, for me, it's probably just momentum at this point. I've been using Virtualbox for at least 15, maybe 20 years now. I don't use it much anymore with how good docker, etc. have become. Any recommendation on what I should be using instead?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Qemu, which is the standard KVM front end. Also does emulation when you need other architectures (great for prepping Pi images for example). If you need a UI virt-manager is a UI for libvirt that supports Qemu and lxc (even remotely through ssh). It's been around since 2009.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Is there an easy way to run Android in a VM?

It's been a long time since I looked, but I never had great success. The only AMD64 builds I could find were ancient. Getting apps installed was difficult. And my understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) is that Waydroid delivers apps in windows without a whole Android UI around them.

The best option I found was using the Android Studio simulator.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

https://blissos.org/

But yeah you won't get rootless windows obviously. But OP wasn't going to either running. VM to get waydroid working

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for the link! Latest version is based on Android 13, which is not bad at all.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I'm trying to run blissos now in hyperv with no luck.

Did you make any progress?

I'm trying to find a bluestacks alternative

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

currently hyper-v has no graphics, qemu reccomended but hyperv should work if you force sofware rendering for gpu

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Not really. I tried in AQEMU and also VirtualBox. I got the installer to run, but I never got it to boot into a GUI, either in the LiveCD or installation. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. Maybe I should try the stable 12L build instead of 13.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

For now I tried Google play games beta. It's a type 1 vm instance instead of bluestacks being type 2.

Super easy to setup. At least Google is the one spying on me instead of china.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Waydroid is made for Wayland.

You can however run it on X-Server,
through a Wayland session window
(e.g. KWin_Wayland, Cage, Weston, ...):
https://docs.waydro.id/faq/setting-up-waydroid-only-sessions

I wrote a tool to help improve the user experience on X-Server,
however currently it only supports KDEs Kwin_Wayland:
https://github.com/Rikj000/XWaydroid

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This is interesting though at first glance seems a little over my head. I'll read more into it. Thank you.

PS. This is another comment I can only see and reply to in my inbox. I can't see it on my post. I don't know if this is a Lemmy, server, or Voyager issue.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

For the record, I'm able to see the comment you responded to.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

I have waydroid working great in the latest Mint. You need Weston so Waydroid has a Wayland to connect to.

e: or use the experimental Wayland in 21.3 but it's not ready for daily driving

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

Here's the script I use to start and stop Waydroid:

#!/bin/bash
PID=$(pgrep "weston")
if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]; then
    waydroid session stop
    kill $PID
    exit
fi
weston --width=1920 --height=1080 --socket=wayland-1 &>/dev/null &
sleep 2
WAYLAND_DISPLAY=wayland-1 XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland waydroid show-full-ui

Change the resolution to whatever you need it to be. Run it once to start, again to stop. It just lives on my desktop.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I thought about 21.3 but don't want to use something experimental. What is Weston? It's good to hear that it works on Mint

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Weston is basically Wayland within an X11 app. You can run Wayland stuff with it but it'll be constrained to that window.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Check out the Waydroid script I posted, it'll help you with figuring out how to run Wayland programs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I will. Thank you very much

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

ArchWiki Waydroid should help you even if you're not on Arch.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

You need a GPU.

First, ditch VirtualBox as it isn't a type 1 hypervisor. Next setup virtual manager and then enable GPU.

If you need more help let me know.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I will look into this virtual manager. Thanks

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I have WayDroid running here with Arch Linux and GNOME without VirtualBox or QEMU. For Arch it requires the zen kernel, or compiling the kernel yourself. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Waydroid In the past I had no luck with WayDroid on I think Ubuntu, Debian and what not.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Not sure what issues you had in Debian, works great for me under both testing and Mobian.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

Good to know, however I don't wish to use Arch

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I was able to get Waydroid to work in a Debian VM, so unless there's something weird about how VirtualBox handles things, Waydroid shouldn't care whether it's running in a VM or not.

What happens when you run waydroid status or waydroid show-full-ui?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm not on my computer currently but I did try show-full-ui. I just remember it didn't work correctly either. Good to know it can work in a VM though.

PS. I can see your comment in my inbox and reply from there but when I'm on my post your comment doesn't appear. Some odd Lemmy thing?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

PS. I can see your comment in my inbox and reply from there but when I'm on my post your comment doesn't appear. Some odd Lemmy thing?

I have no idea why that would happen. Probably something weird about Lemmy.

As for Waydroid, it's kinda finicky in how to start. Use something like btop or ps aux|grep waydroid to check whether you have multiple processes that are all running waydroid session start. It should just be two processes: /usr/bin/waydroid -w container start and /usr/bin/waydroid session start. I remember I had multiple /usr/bin/waydroid -w container start that I had to kill before it worked for the first time.

The devs behind Waydroid also have their own distro set up for Waydroid. You can try that as well: https://waydro.id/#wdlinux

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Waydroid works inside of Avian perfectly fine, but I would still generally recommend either just using Bliss OS or the native host. You can run Waydroid using something like Cage or Weston if you're on X11.

If you are running on something like VirtualBox, you may need to disable hardware acceleration for GPUs. QEMU has working GPU acceleration.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

WayDroid has a section about VMs, did you see that ? https://docs.waydro.id/faq/get-waydroid-to-work-through-a-vm

[–] [email protected] -4 points 6 months ago

Maybe try disabling SELinux ?