6 ms·

Bringing Desktop Linux GUIs to Android: The Next Step in Graphical App Support

48 points by sipofwater 1y ago

kirito1337 1y ago
Unfortunately, the Linux app devs for Android 16 have locked out the GPU support.
sipofwater 1y ago
"Motorola moto g play 2024 Smartphone, Android 14 Operating System, Termux, And cryptsetup: Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS) Encryption/Decryption And The ext4 Filesystem Without Using root Access, Without Using proot-distro, And Without Using QEMU": https://old.reddit.com/r/MotoG/comments/1jkl0f8/motorola_moto_g_play_2024_smartphone_android_14/ https://old.reddit.com/r/MotoG/comments/1jkl0f8/motorola_mot... (old.reddit.com/r/MotoG/comments/1jkl0f8/motorola_moto_g_play_2024_smartphone_android_14/)
- Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
  Damn Today I learnt that termux doesn't in fact run through proot or is an emulator like userland but that it somehow does it natively using android-ndk I was using userland which is doing emulation from what i know, my phone for god knows what for some reason doesn't work through termux but now I kinda want to patch an app with termux or something and publishing it to f-droid :p
sipofwater 1y ago
"Motorola moto g play 2024 smartphone, Termux application, and QEMU running under Termux: Booting "Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)" with debian-12-nocloud-amd64.qcow2": https://old.reddit.com/r/MotoG/comments/1mkyers/motorola_moto_g_play_2024_smartphone_termux/ https://old.reddit.com/r/MotoG/comments/1mkyers/motorola_mot... (old.reddit.com/r/MotoG/comments/1mkyers/motorola_moto_g_play_2024_smartphone_termux/)
andsoitis 1y ago
Desktop interaction paradigms (mouse/keyboard) and UI layouts do not make sense on a mobile phone.
- Zigurd 1y ago
  Microsoft has demonstrated with Windows for touchscreen PCs that it's not just a problem with small screens, but small touch targets in mouse oriented user interfaces. The other side of the coin is with everybody trying to cram AI features into an existing touch UI, touch targets are shrinking and buttons and hard to differentiate gestures are getting overloaded. It used to be that I could tell people that touch UI was great because a toddler could readily master it. Try telling a toddler about edge gestures. Those days are gone now.
  - wongarsu 1y ago
    Windows 8 set out to change that by redesigning the UI to make most touch targets much bigger, and add lots of padding around them. And many highly visible parts of Windows (and other MS apps) still live with these design compromises. It can be done. Many would even call this "modern" and "clean" design.
  - thewebguyd 1y ago
    > touch targets are shrinking and buttons and hard to differentiate iOS 26 went overboard in this direction, especially on iPad. They took what used to be a great touch screen experience and made it only usable with mouse and keyboard. The traffic light buttons are horrible touch targets, as is the menu on top of the screen. Even on iPhone the long press menus have been crammed so full and their font size reduced that they are much worse touch targets. This OS that used to work great on a 3.5" screen is now difficult to use on a big 6.5" screen. We've gone totally backwards.
- xnx 1y ago
  You can plug a keyboard, mouse, and external display into Android via a USB-C hub.
- jcelerier 1y ago
superkuh 1y ago
Since when does a UI need GPU acceleration to be smooth? It certainly doesn't on the linux desktop. Many smartphones are powerful (non-general purpose) computers these days; is it just energy/battery restrictions preventing them from being useful computers? But also: why does this matter? Android is a dead ecosystem. Smart phones are a dead ecosystem. Google literally just announced that no one is allowed to develop for it and actually have random people run their applications without paying a protection fee and doxing yourself for future leaks and/or government crackdowns. Just like Apple. On your "own" smartphones you won't even be allowed to run your own software. The only reason anyone would ever keep developing software for such platforms is if someone is paying them. And that leads to crappy software. The smartphone platforms will be entirely commercial and lose all the "scratch my own itch" software. Becoming merely a fancy bank/video/navigation/shopping terminal you have no control over.
- rf15 1y ago
  afaik at least half the things you said are simply not true. Android is not dead. It might be dead to you based on your values, but that doesn't change the fact that loads of people use it and develop for it. Stop exeggerating, please.
  - superkuh 1y ago
    >Becoming merely a fancy bank/video/navigation/shopping terminal you have no control over. Eh? I'm pretty sure I qualified my statements and you're just agreeing with the qualification I made. Yes, people will continue to use them. Yes, corporations will continue to develop for them. But they're not general purpose computers anymore. And if you're a human person geek I doubt you're going to want to use them for computing. But it'll take a bit for everyone to wake up to the new situation. Just like it took a bit for everyone to wake up to the social media problems. https://xkcd.com/743/ https://xkcd.com/743/
- intrasight 1y ago
  >Android is a dead ecosystem. Smart phones are a dead ecosystem. Smartphones are going to become our legal digital identity. While I'm not greatly happy about that, I do see it's inevitability - as no good alternatives have emerged. At least there are two platforms and not just one.
user_7832 1y ago
I saw someone else mention this, it would be ironic if it were easier to run software of your choice via a VM on Android than simply install an apk. Nonetheless, I would love to see gpu acceleration being well supported. It's already insane how many old games can be emulated, and being able to run even just desktop versions of apps is excellent.
- thewebguyd 1y ago
  > it would be ironic if it were easier to run software of your choice via a VM on Android than simply install an apk That seems to be the road we are heading down, but I think some of it may be intentional. It's a way to shut up the masses without relinquishing control of the OS back to the user. Google's way of going "Here, we'll just "let" you run Linux" but it's also getting people used to the idea that Linux is just an "app" you run, the underlying OS still remains locked down as ever. The dangerous parts of Google's change isn't just not being able to run your own software, it's device attestation and the power that gives them (and Governments) to control what your computer can and cannot do. If Microsoft ever implements similar changes to Windows I'll view WSL the same way. It's just an illusion of freedom to placate us nerds.
  - gizmo686 1y ago
    That's the world we are in. Operating systems in modern computers are pretty much just sandboxed apps being run by the firmware. On lower end phones, it is already common to have the OS that the firmware runs be a realtime hypervisor that multiplexes Android with a higher priority realtime OS to help drive the radio. > device attestation and the power that gives them (and Governments) to control what your computer can and cannot do. Device attastation is probably the least scary form of this. You still get to run whatever software you want; all you lose out on is the ability to interact with external services that demand attestation. This is a much more pro-consumer way of implementing DRM than actually locking down computers, which looked to be the way the industry was heading for years.
    - thewebguyd 1y ago
kotaKat 1y ago
All of this is just adding the capabilities needed to lock down the future Android-powered “Chromebooks” and just give you a walled Linux shell garden and say it’s “just as good” as running the real thing on the metal itself.
throawayonthe 1y ago
can't wait to be able to use GrapheneOS for my desktop tasks :D
M95D 1y ago
Very good, but I was hoping for the reverse: Android GUI on Linux.
- cogman10 1y ago
  https://waydro.id/ https://waydro.id/
  - M95D 1y ago
    No, not like that. Not in a container and display through wayland. Native and instead of wayland.
    - righthand 1y ago
      Native instead of Wayland is just called Android.
    - cogman10 1y ago
      Containers are native. They aren't (usually) emulators. They are shipping the entire OS with the runnable, but the runnable is still ultimately working with the host kernel and the host memory spaces. As for Wayland v X11. Wayland has gotten pretty nice over the last year or so. It's much more straight forward to work with vs the old fiddly xorg.conf files.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
        > As for Wayland v X11. Wayland has gotten pretty nice over the last year or so. It's much more straight forward to work with vs the old fiddly xorg.conf files. I don't think they wanted Xorg, I think they were asking for SurfaceFlinger rendering directly to hardware with no intermediate layer.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
      It's not hard to run waydroid on cage as the whole desktop, at which point I don't think there's a meaningful distinction.
tiku 1y ago
Is there someone who knows if there is a good solution to running new android virtual? I want to be able to use my smartphone as a dumb terminal to log into the real phone at home. Here in the Netherlands internet is so fast that is must be doable. Haven't found a good emulator yet.
- WhyNotHugo 1y ago
  I’ve been wanting to run an Android VM for a long time. It’s a workaround to keep Android apps isolated in a Linux phone (or tablet). But there’s really not much in this space. It seems that nobody is running Android on VM… or those that do aren’t sharing how they do so.
  - npodbielski 1y ago
    I think it is called emulator.
  - fsflover 1y ago
    > It seems that nobody is running Android on VM… or those that do aren’t sharing how they do so. On GNU/Linux mobile, Waydroid allows to run Android apps. On desktop, Qubes OS runs everything in VMs for security, and they have related guides: https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/waydroid-template/23356 https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/waydroid-template/23356 https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/android-vm-options-and-blissos-installation-in-a-raw-vm-i-e-no-qubes-integration-collecting-all-related-information/27582 https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/android-vm-options-and-blissos-... https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/android-x86-qube-installation-guide/22747 https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/android-x86-qube-installation-g...
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
  Depending on what you're trying to do exactly, you may have some luck with waydroid. Whether that counts as virtualized Android is an argument of semantics, but it would let you run many Android apps on a normal desktop in a way that can be exposed over VNC or whatever.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
Heck it's hard enough bringing desktop Linux guis to desktop Linux
claudiojulio 1y ago
Android is over. Linux on mobile is the future.
- npodbielski 1y ago
  I hope so. I would buy glasses with monitor and some gloves that allow me to manipulate ui that runs on my phone.
gdulli 1y ago
The worst thing we could do is start to rely on Android/iOS for desktop work. As soon as it starts to become normalized that your desktop environment can forbid you from running code that isn't blessed by their app store, it's over.
zb3 1y ago
Note that Google doesn't allow you to install your distro of choice there - it's only the debian OS prepared by them.. maybe today you'll have root access inside that VM, but tomorrow you might not.. And of course to run a VM (if you wanted to make a competing app for example) you need a special system permission which you can't get without your device losing "integrity" status.

48 points by sipofwater 1y ago

Unfortunately, the Linux app devs for Android 16 have locked out the GPU support.

"Motorola moto g play 2024 Smartphone, Android 14 Operating System, Termux, And cryptsetup: Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS) Encryption/Decryption And The ext4 Filesystem Without Using root Access, Without Using proot-distro, And Without Using QEMU": https://old.reddit.com/r/MotoG/comments/1jkl0f8/motorola_moto_g_play_2024_smartphone_android_14/ https://old.reddit.com/r/MotoG/comments/1jkl0f8/motorola_mot... (old.reddit.com/r/MotoG/comments/1jkl0f8/motorola_moto_g_play_2024_smartphone_android_14/)

Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
Damn Today I learnt that termux doesn't in fact run through proot or is an emulator like userland but that it somehow does it natively using android-ndk I was using userland which is doing emulation from what i know, my phone for god knows what for some reason doesn't work through termux but now I kinda want to patch an app with termux or something and publishing it to f-droid :p

sipofwater 1y ago

"Motorola moto g play 2024 smartphone, Termux application, and QEMU running under Termux: Booting "Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)" with debian-12-nocloud-amd64.qcow2": https://old.reddit.com/r/MotoG/comments/1mkyers/motorola_moto_g_play_2024_smartphone_termux/ https://old.reddit.com/r/MotoG/comments/1mkyers/motorola_mot... (old.reddit.com/r/MotoG/comments/1mkyers/motorola_moto_g_play_2024_smartphone_termux/)

andsoitis 1y ago

Desktop interaction paradigms (mouse/keyboard) and UI layouts do not make sense on a mobile phone.

Zigurd 1y ago
Microsoft has demonstrated with Windows for touchscreen PCs that it's not just a problem with small screens, but small touch targets in mouse oriented user interfaces. The other side of the coin is with everybody trying to cram AI features into an existing touch UI, touch targets are shrinking and buttons and hard to differentiate gestures are getting overloaded. It used to be that I could tell people that touch UI was great because a toddler could readily master it. Try telling a toddler about edge gestures. Those days are gone now.
- wongarsu 1y ago
  Windows 8 set out to change that by redesigning the UI to make most touch targets much bigger, and add lots of padding around them. And many highly visible parts of Windows (and other MS apps) still live with these design compromises. It can be done. Many would even call this "modern" and "clean" design.
- thewebguyd 1y ago
  > touch targets are shrinking and buttons and hard to differentiate iOS 26 went overboard in this direction, especially on iPad. They took what used to be a great touch screen experience and made it only usable with mouse and keyboard. The traffic light buttons are horrible touch targets, as is the menu on top of the screen. Even on iPhone the long press menus have been crammed so full and their font size reduced that they are much worse touch targets. This OS that used to work great on a 3.5" screen is now difficult to use on a big 6.5" screen. We've gone totally backwards.
xnx 1y ago
You can plug a keyboard, mouse, and external display into Android via a USB-C hub.
jcelerier 1y ago

superkuh 1y ago

Since when does a UI need GPU acceleration to be smooth? It certainly doesn't on the linux desktop. Many smartphones are powerful (non-general purpose) computers these days; is it just energy/battery restrictions preventing them from being useful computers? But also: why does this matter? Android is a dead ecosystem. Smart phones are a dead ecosystem. Google literally just announced that no one is allowed to develop for it and actually have random people run their applications without paying a protection fee and doxing yourself for future leaks and/or government crackdowns. Just like Apple. On your "own" smartphones you won't even be allowed to run your own software. The only reason anyone would ever keep developing software for such platforms is if someone is paying them. And that leads to crappy software. The smartphone platforms will be entirely commercial and lose all the "scratch my own itch" software. Becoming merely a fancy bank/video/navigation/shopping terminal you have no control over.

rf15 1y ago
afaik at least half the things you said are simply not true. Android is not dead. It might be dead to you based on your values, but that doesn't change the fact that loads of people use it and develop for it. Stop exeggerating, please.
- superkuh 1y ago
  >Becoming merely a fancy bank/video/navigation/shopping terminal you have no control over. Eh? I'm pretty sure I qualified my statements and you're just agreeing with the qualification I made. Yes, people will continue to use them. Yes, corporations will continue to develop for them. But they're not general purpose computers anymore. And if you're a human person geek I doubt you're going to want to use them for computing. But it'll take a bit for everyone to wake up to the new situation. Just like it took a bit for everyone to wake up to the social media problems. https://xkcd.com/743/ https://xkcd.com/743/
intrasight 1y ago
>Android is a dead ecosystem. Smart phones are a dead ecosystem. Smartphones are going to become our legal digital identity. While I'm not greatly happy about that, I do see it's inevitability - as no good alternatives have emerged. At least there are two platforms and not just one.

user_7832 1y ago

I saw someone else mention this, it would be ironic if it were easier to run software of your choice via a VM on Android than simply install an apk. Nonetheless, I would love to see gpu acceleration being well supported. It's already insane how many old games can be emulated, and being able to run even just desktop versions of apps is excellent.

thewebguyd 1y ago
> it would be ironic if it were easier to run software of your choice via a VM on Android than simply install an apk That seems to be the road we are heading down, but I think some of it may be intentional. It's a way to shut up the masses without relinquishing control of the OS back to the user. Google's way of going "Here, we'll just "let" you run Linux" but it's also getting people used to the idea that Linux is just an "app" you run, the underlying OS still remains locked down as ever. The dangerous parts of Google's change isn't just not being able to run your own software, it's device attestation and the power that gives them (and Governments) to control what your computer can and cannot do. If Microsoft ever implements similar changes to Windows I'll view WSL the same way. It's just an illusion of freedom to placate us nerds.
- gizmo686 1y ago
  That's the world we are in. Operating systems in modern computers are pretty much just sandboxed apps being run by the firmware. On lower end phones, it is already common to have the OS that the firmware runs be a realtime hypervisor that multiplexes Android with a higher priority realtime OS to help drive the radio. > device attestation and the power that gives them (and Governments) to control what your computer can and cannot do. Device attastation is probably the least scary form of this. You still get to run whatever software you want; all you lose out on is the ability to interact with external services that demand attestation. This is a much more pro-consumer way of implementing DRM than actually locking down computers, which looked to be the way the industry was heading for years.
  - thewebguyd 1y ago

kotaKat 1y ago

All of this is just adding the capabilities needed to lock down the future Android-powered “Chromebooks” and just give you a walled Linux shell garden and say it’s “just as good” as running the real thing on the metal itself.

throawayonthe 1y ago

can't wait to be able to use GrapheneOS for my desktop tasks :D

M95D 1y ago

Very good, but I was hoping for the reverse: Android GUI on Linux.

cogman10 1y ago
https://waydro.id/ https://waydro.id/
- M95D 1y ago
  No, not like that. Not in a container and display through wayland. Native and instead of wayland.
  - righthand 1y ago
    Native instead of Wayland is just called Android.
  - cogman10 1y ago
    Containers are native. They aren't (usually) emulators. They are shipping the entire OS with the runnable, but the runnable is still ultimately working with the host kernel and the host memory spaces. As for Wayland v X11. Wayland has gotten pretty nice over the last year or so. It's much more straight forward to work with vs the old fiddly xorg.conf files.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
      > As for Wayland v X11. Wayland has gotten pretty nice over the last year or so. It's much more straight forward to work with vs the old fiddly xorg.conf files. I don't think they wanted Xorg, I think they were asking for SurfaceFlinger rendering directly to hardware with no intermediate layer.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
    It's not hard to run waydroid on cage as the whole desktop, at which point I don't think there's a meaningful distinction.

tiku 1y ago

Is there someone who knows if there is a good solution to running new android virtual? I want to be able to use my smartphone as a dumb terminal to log into the real phone at home. Here in the Netherlands internet is so fast that is must be doable. Haven't found a good emulator yet.

WhyNotHugo 1y ago
I’ve been wanting to run an Android VM for a long time. It’s a workaround to keep Android apps isolated in a Linux phone (or tablet). But there’s really not much in this space. It seems that nobody is running Android on VM… or those that do aren’t sharing how they do so.
- npodbielski 1y ago
  I think it is called emulator.
- fsflover 1y ago
  > It seems that nobody is running Android on VM… or those that do aren’t sharing how they do so. On GNU/Linux mobile, Waydroid allows to run Android apps. On desktop, Qubes OS runs everything in VMs for security, and they have related guides: https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/waydroid-template/23356 https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/waydroid-template/23356 https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/android-vm-options-and-blissos-installation-in-a-raw-vm-i-e-no-qubes-integration-collecting-all-related-information/27582 https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/android-vm-options-and-blissos-... https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/android-x86-qube-installation-guide/22747 https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/android-x86-qube-installation-g...
yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
Depending on what you're trying to do exactly, you may have some luck with waydroid. Whether that counts as virtualized Android is an argument of semantics, but it would let you run many Android apps on a normal desktop in a way that can be exposed over VNC or whatever.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago

Heck it's hard enough bringing desktop Linux guis to desktop Linux

claudiojulio 1y ago

Android is over. Linux on mobile is the future.

npodbielski 1y ago
I hope so. I would buy glasses with monitor and some gloves that allow me to manipulate ui that runs on my phone.

gdulli 1y ago

The worst thing we could do is start to rely on Android/iOS for desktop work. As soon as it starts to become normalized that your desktop environment can forbid you from running code that isn't blessed by their app store, it's over.

zb3 1y ago

Note that Google doesn't allow you to install your distro of choice there - it's only the debian OS prepared by them.. maybe today you'll have root access inside that VM, but tomorrow you might not.. And of course to run a VM (if you wanted to make a competing app for example) you need a special system permission which you can't get without your device losing "integrity" status.