W H E R E A N D R O I D

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on /r/linux_gaming

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  • waydroid

    Waydroid uses a container-based approach to boot a full Android system on a regular GNU/Linux system like Ubuntu.

  • I've first tried Anbox, but its revolting interface and snap-based nature have thrown me off, and when at some point it just broke due to something, I ditched it. More on why I haven't tried it ever again later. Then Waydroid caught my attention with its flashy and well-designed website, and an impressive-looking installer and featurelist. What I've experienced is an incoherent buggy mess that was painful to use, that required a lot of tweaking and community-bothering to even run a simple home control widget app, and when it did it was so horrible I again had to stop using it. I've finally resorted to BlueStacks, the leading solution for Windows, but I've harly managed to get it to install (in Wine), and most unsurprisingly, it didn't even launch properly, let alone run any games. Then, after reading tierlist after tierlist I've attempted ARC Welder, Genymotion and Android x86, but the former has been taken down and discontinued, and a quick Google search brought me nothing useful but this totally legitimate and not suspicious extension that I would definitely install on my Chromium. Really not shifty in any way, yeah. Oh and it also does neither support Play Store nor .obb cachefiles, so no games. Genymotion was very promising at first, but it was here when I've come to a final understanding. All these emulation projects don't actually emulate an ARM cpu, they just port the system and the binaries, recompile them, and call it a day. And most Android games use native binaries. Genymotion actually did some work on emulating a proper CPU, but it's so abysmally goddamn slow compared to an actual phone it's eye-watering. But BlueStacks had somehow managed to pull this off efficiently, and Linux's similarity to Android could be probably used to improve on that result, not to flop. But then again, it is unwise to ask too much about gaming of a commercial development emulator I haven't even bought a proper subscription for, just downloaded the official but still local version (AFAIK the cloud one runs on the real deal ARM so it's better). And it is even more unwise to demand commercial-level performance of what is basically a glorified chroot in a cgroup. Not that Waydroid, Anbox or their relatives are worthless, soulless, effortless projects that are hastily slapped together, no, they're probably great, it's just that I've managed to get games up and running on those.

  • anbox

    Discontinued Anbox is a container-based approach to boot a full Android system on a regular GNU/Linux system

  • I've first tried Anbox, but its revolting interface and snap-based nature have thrown me off, and when at some point it just broke due to something, I ditched it. More on why I haven't tried it ever again later. Then Waydroid caught my attention with its flashy and well-designed website, and an impressive-looking installer and featurelist. What I've experienced is an incoherent buggy mess that was painful to use, that required a lot of tweaking and community-bothering to even run a simple home control widget app, and when it did it was so horrible I again had to stop using it. I've finally resorted to BlueStacks, the leading solution for Windows, but I've harly managed to get it to install (in Wine), and most unsurprisingly, it didn't even launch properly, let alone run any games. Then, after reading tierlist after tierlist I've attempted ARC Welder, Genymotion and Android x86, but the former has been taken down and discontinued, and a quick Google search brought me nothing useful but this totally legitimate and not suspicious extension that I would definitely install on my Chromium. Really not shifty in any way, yeah. Oh and it also does neither support Play Store nor .obb cachefiles, so no games. Genymotion was very promising at first, but it was here when I've come to a final understanding. All these emulation projects don't actually emulate an ARM cpu, they just port the system and the binaries, recompile them, and call it a day. And most Android games use native binaries. Genymotion actually did some work on emulating a proper CPU, but it's so abysmally goddamn slow compared to an actual phone it's eye-watering. But BlueStacks had somehow managed to pull this off efficiently, and Linux's similarity to Android could be probably used to improve on that result, not to flop. But then again, it is unwise to ask too much about gaming of a commercial development emulator I haven't even bought a proper subscription for, just downloaded the official but still local version (AFAIK the cloud one runs on the real deal ARM so it's better). And it is even more unwise to demand commercial-level performance of what is basically a glorified chroot in a cgroup. Not that Waydroid, Anbox or their relatives are worthless, soulless, effortless projects that are hastily slapped together, no, they're probably great, it's just that I've managed to get games up and running on those.

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  • scrcpy

    Display and control your Android device

  • For a bit more latency, my solution has been to just use an actual android phone, and use scrcpy (screen copy) also by Genymobile to mirror it. It's not ideal, but yeah.

NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

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