EDIT to add: I also think packaging up an application plus the compatibility layer using flatpak[0] is a really nice idea; it lets you 1. make those apps available in a way that nearly appears native, 2. lets you get users/testers on your compat layer easily, while 3. scoping it to a single app at a time to make it easier to do things like "well we've got this one app working, but how do we tell people that without them expecting other things to work that aren't implemented yet?". Excellent symbiosis:)
[0] Strictly speaking there shouldn't be anything requiring flatpak here... I think there's no technical blocker preventing you making a debian package for the ATL and another for NewPipe and sticking them in a repo/PPA that people could add. But I do somewhat feel that flatpak lends itself to this usecase.
Services ? Binder. Intents (even internal ones) ? Binder. Play Services / microG which 90% of apps use ? Binder. Permissions ? Binder.
I'm pretty sure the overhead for something like Windows Subsystem Android is a few percentage points max, assuming the video card supports the proper OpenGL subsystem (so doesn't require software fallbacks). In fact, given that most x86 laptop CPUs and GPUs offer much more performance than most phone ARM chips, it's basically a moot point. The big problem is finding packages built universally or specifically for x86 (not sure what the status is for WSA on Windows ARM, but that could be an option too).
I'm still waiting for the day Linux offers something similar. Or FreeBSD does something similar to their Linux ABI compatibility.
Edit: looks like WSA is being ended in early 2025:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/android/wsa/
Due to not being able to integrate a store and make revenuue:
https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/here...
What a shame.
You mean a full VM?
It seems like there were changes made to Binder between the version in Linux mainline and the one in Android.
Until that is properly synched up then using something else will be easier.
But I feel I don't know much about binder/kernel/IPC: maybe I overestimate what that means?
A few years ago we stopped distributing on Linux outside of Flatpak. It was tiring getting bug reports that were only reproducible on certain drivers and setups, not to mention the weekly "how do I install this on <new distro here>".
We've seen people complain about the extra space it takes on disk, but after deduplication and compression the tradeoff to have Linux apps "just work" is worth it (imo)
See https://gitlab.com/android_translation_layer/android_transla...
The problem with Waydroid is that you need to boot up a whole Android system, which is not great for app startup time.
$ android-translation-layer some-app.apk
I tried a few (F-Droid, Spotify, Megalodon) but they all failed with various issues, looks like there's a lot of API surface still not covered. Hopefully a lot of it is fairly easy to add now that the foundational work has been done!
Never heard of Freetube, but it looks pretty snazzy.
I've used it for several months now and am very happy with it. I'ts a Electron app, however, so don't expect it to be small; I hope they will consider rebuilding it using Tauri, which would reduce its size drastically.
Having said that, newpipe is not only a youtube client but also a soundcloud, bandcamp and a few others too.
https://gitlab.com/android_translation_layer/android_transla...
I wonder how well this approach works over anbox/waydroid's approach.
Note; FreeTube is also a good client. Though at three times the size due to Electron, I like NewPipe more. It feels way more snappy to use.
Pity, I love Newpipe on my phone.
Especially because there aren't many Linux apps that are touch friendly. Everything kirigami/touch friendly apps in KDE is very much work in progress and are barely good enough for daily usage. Electron apps are no-go because they don't work with a virtual keyboard. Flutter apps are useless because they don't support high dpi on Linux. Gnome has bad support for fractional scaling, issues in some menus for touchscreens, and the space for fonts in the launcher doesn't scale making them display as "Firef..." on a high dpi. I am running Debian Bookworm by the way.
So I wasn't happy to see that android_translation_layer uses Gtk, but I think scaling is improved in Gtk4. Looking forward to try it out either way.
I have discovered Obtainium[1] not too long ago. Allows you to install and update apps from pretty much any source you want (e.g., directly from GitHub releases, as in NewPipe's case).
