why are android emulators either nonexistent or utterly useless?

Mandy@beehaw.org to Linux@lemmy.ml – 121 points –

the one thing linux really hasnt been made on par with winblows yet is the dreadful amount of options for android simulation -the most popular choice seems to be Waydroid, but its such an unneeded hassle to set up at all -genymotion is just slow -and than you have things like android x86 which entirely defeat the point of an emulator

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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.

That was the main reason I did it too, GPU just isn't necessary for most tasks

That could be a 2 birds one stone situation for me. My daily driver is a laptop with Nvidia hybrid GPU setup and it's hella-twitchy with X. If its more stable with Wayland that's yet another reason to try switching.