this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2024
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I tried Waydroid on Arch and its amazing. It runs Android apps flawlessly. And with a touchscreen device, I feel like I have an Android tablet running inside my Linux machine.

But I still don't know what to use it for...

What apps do you use with Waydroid? What use cases do you have for it?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

F1tv, Amazon music and that's about it more or less. I'll occasionally use it on my steam deck for some android games but I don't play more than maybe 3 or 4 android games total and that's rare.

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

Can you explain the benefit of using F1TV app this way, instead of the browser? I'm genuinely curious if this gives a better experience in some way

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Yeah, Multiviewer is a huge PITA to use on steam deck since it gets wiped on updates, Brave, my browser of choice is explicitly blocked from the web version and I'm used to the android interface so it seemed right on my main PC since I already needed to do it this way on my deck.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Side point, is it possible to install the google play store on waydroid? Aurora keeps crashing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

You already answered this in your question description :) With a touchscreen laptop and Linux and WayDroid you can have a Linux tablet. (Unfortunately (?) the choice of a DeGoogle ROM for Android tablets is minimal and you never know when the ROM developer will buy a new phone, change their life priorities and drop the ROM development) Compared to an Android phone you'd have a much larger screen. What do I use WayDroid for personally ? Just to test some programs, to see what's new in F-Droid, and sometimes use LibreTube.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Does it still run Roblox? Since it stopped working under wine (again) I read it was the only way to get Roblox on Linux.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

I use it to play visual novel type android games.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (6 children)

Was straight up asking myself this the other day and still couldn't come up with a good answer. I keep reading for 2fa or my passwords but that's not really a reason IMO. Why not just have a copy of your totp seeds (any good android totp manager should let you export) and then use a desktop manager like keepassxc, the same with your passwords. The only reason i can personally think of are games but even then which games are worth keeping on your desktop that don't already have a port? Another application that might be worth emulating could be like Shazam but not sure how good the desktop alternatives are

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I went through the same process of thought.

I'm using Aegis and it exports an encrypted .json backup automatically whenever I change or add something, so I can sync that backup somewhere off the phone and the desktop app OTPClient can open it directly from the backup dir.

For playing games (or for any other native app) you can use scrcpy to see the actual Android screen on your desktop and use mouse and keyboard with it, sort of like vnc.

There are a few games that are unique to Android that I like playing this way, like Battleheart or Puzzle Retreat.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

To make my system less secure lol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It is true that Waydroid isn't super secure. that being said, it is still just a mostly stock android (unless you download gapps). Root is not exposed to the container so unless an exploit is found it is reasonably secure. There are measures waydroid can take to make it more secure. but as it stands it's "not bad"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Android relies on SELinux for its app sandbox. On Fedora the Waydroid package has some SELinux rules, but not sure if they are as good.

Daniel Micay answered under a Waydroid issue and at least on Android I fully trust his knowledge.

I dont know about exposed root, but Waydroid uses LXC containers and not rootless Podman/Docker.

The best solution would either be:

  • only run it on Fedora (no Problem for me)
  • harden the SELinux policy when needed
  • switch to a rootless container
  • or on other Distros, use a VM where you can fully control the environment
[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

as far as I know the SELinux container is configured, whether or not the distro uses it isn't up to waydroid but the packaging and host configuration. If there are issues with the SELinux implementation they need to be brought up.

Waydroid also supports apparmor for some protections when SELinux is not available. OFC it's not as good as selinux (and currently it's set in warning mode so it doesn't actually offer protections out of box, please we need people testing this) https://github.com/waydroid/waydroid/pull/906

If you want to use a VM, and anyone who needs a highish level of security should. Bliss OS is a much better option. Though it doesnt offer "native integration" with the host.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

My friend asked me to use xbox live chat so I'm probably going to try using waydroid for that

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