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this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2025
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I'd like to use a Linux phone, but it has to run Android apps though. They Gotta find a way, else it's never gonna happen.
I mean Waydroid runs Android apps on linux. Its currently the only way to play Roblox on linux with only 1 layer of trust (Roblox itself) (Sober exists but theres no source code, meaning you have to trust Roblox and SoberDevs code)
SailfishOS can do that. They have a sandbox for android that you should not really notice as a end user.
How good is it with background activities?
About the only thing holding me back is that my phone runs a continuous glucose monitor, constantly connecting with a small sensor in my arm. That all quietly dying in the background would just... not be an option.
I'm always surprised more people still don't know about it but FuriLabs does have an offering which I've heard does this pretty well: https://furilabs.com/shop/flx1/
And some more info. (albeit, 9 months old): https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1fa1ljn/furilabs_flx1/
It is using Halium but, otherwise, it's proper GNU+Linux with decent spec.s.
I really want one of these.
You and me both, swelter; you and me bothβ¦
A phone I'm excited for is the Bigme Hibreak Pro. Its got an e-paper screen that refreshes at a tolerable speed, and you can install apps from the Google Play store which run just fine. Will it ever play video smoothly? Fuck no. Is it cool? Also no. Is it horrifically expensive? Surprisingly, also no.
Bigme has also made some exciting (but way too expensive) progress in the desktop computer world by making a 60hz eink monitor. It frankly is terrible at most things people do on their home computers, but it can keep up just fine with the boring work stuff like Vim and the MS Office Suite. Am I willing to pay almost $2k for a monitor for work? Absolutely not, but I'm glad it exists.
I'd honestly like to have an e-ink monitor because I do a lot of coding and writing, without 60hz, just like e-book with speedy updates over empty space. It can be a secondary one dedicated to just these tasks. But the lack of demand makes it too exclusive for my pocket.
It'd theoretically be possible to run a straight GNU/Linux tablet or laptop with a 5G cell modem for data, use SIP service and a GNU/Linux dialer, and then run Waydroid for any specific Android apps that one has to run.
Idle power usage is gonna be a lot higher than on a phone, though.
And a lot of Android apps are made with a touch interface and small screen in mind and are aware of things in a cell environment, like "only update X when on WiFi". Not really common for GNU/Linux software to do that.
"GNU/Linux" is the full way to say what sometimes gets shortened to "Linux"
a family of operating systems based on the Linux kernel and a lot of software from the GNU project. This explicitly distinguishes it from Android, which also used the Linux kernel.
The former is not, in 2025, typically used to run smartphones. The latter is the most-common smartphone operating system in the world. If you buy a smartphone that isn't an Apple smartphone, it almost certainly runs Android.
5G is the current generation of cell phone radio protocols. Communicating directly via voice over this protocol is not something that I believe is available to GNU/Linux in 2025. However, it can send non-voice data.
SIP is a protocol for running voice over a data connection to the Internet. If you have an Internet connection, you can use SIP. There are companies, SIP service providers, which will, for a fee, provide a phone number at which one may be called or call others from a computer that can make use of SIP.
A dialer is the piece of software that on a smartphone, a user would probably call something like "the phone app".
Waydroid is a piece of software to run Android apps on a GNU/Linux system.
Phone hardware and software has had a lot of work put into optimizing it for very low power usage. A larger device, like a laptop or tablet, will probably also have a larger battery, but it will consume more power as well.
Smartphones, due to physical space constraints in one's pocket, typically have an entire side be a touchscreen. They do not have a keyboard. In general, software optimized for this works somewhat differently from software optimized for use with a keyboard and mouse.
Most GNU/Linux software is written with the intent that it be used on a system that almost certainly has a mouse and keyboard available. Most Android software is written with the intent that it be used on a system with a touchscreen available.
This means that even if one can run GNU/Linux software on a phone, much of the (large) collection of GNU/Linux software available will not be designed with an interface ideal for use on a phone.
Smartphones have two widely-used mechanisms of accessing the Internet
connecting to the often slower cell network, or to a much-shorter range, but faster, WiFi network. Many people connect their smartphone to a WiFi network at some times and a cell network at others. Because this is so common, a lot of Android software has behavior designed to support this and act more-appropriately, like having an option to only transfer lots of data when on a WiFi netwprk. This is not the case for most GNU/Linux software.
Oh you misunderstood, I already know all this.
The comic is to point out why it's difficult to grow adoption of a non-android / Apple smartphone.
Even what you think is a simplified explanation is, unfortunately, too complex for most as well. Tech literacy is REALLY bad in many places. Most don't know what an "operating system" is, in many cases don't know what a hard drive is (of any kind). Software is basically magic to them. Your explanation is great for people who already know the basic concepts, but sadly most of the population isn't even at that level.
And this isn't only the elderly btw, younger people are just as clueless these days because many schools don't do computer classes anymore.
I feel like its implied by being on lemmy that you already know the basics and most of what was described in the reply though, making your point seem out of place without prefacing you meant the general public being able to use Linux phones and not just lemmings
Most Linux software only updates when the user tells the package manager to update it.>
I think you're misunderstanding it. Most mobile apps have sensible defaults regarding data and battery usage, for instance, not updating (their feeds/server status/whatever networked service the app uses) if not in WiFi.
No, I think they understood. Android needs those settings because the process is automated. A Linux device would probably not automate updates like that and let users choose when to do so, which means they can just not do it until they get to WiFi.
Package manager update >< background information update
Unless your chat app requires a package manager update to retrieve new messages, we're talking different things.
I'm talking about stuff like pulling down new podcast episodes and such.
oh yeah it's weird how we've never figured out how to do that on pc
Arr can do it
I know Gnome has an option to mark a connection as metered, no idea what exactly that does though.
Idle power usage is not a lot higher...
I dunno, man.
Android and all its apps have had a lot of work done on keeping stuff low-power.
The GNU/Linux laptop I'm currently typing this on is drawing about 10W (granted, with the screen on, which is larger). The Android phone in my pocket is drawing (checks) a little under half a watt.
Granted, I didn't choose the laptop hardware to try to minimize power usage; you can certainly get laptops that will draw less. But there have been a lot of engineers banging on Android power usage for a long time.
And stuff like auto-suspension of background apps using CPU time and stuff doesn't have a GNU/Linux analog that I'm aware of.
There's a GNU/Linux phones community here on the Threadiverse at !linuxphones@lemmy.ca. Even the phones they talk about there
where the hardware is much less powerful than typical current Android hardware
don't have amazing battery life as phones go.
My tablet draws 4.5w at peak, at low loads it draws almost nothing (x86_64 tablet), maybe it's the design of the laptop/tablet, but mine just consumes the same even with waydroid on, maybe setting efficiency in the BIOS help, but idk. On windows it just consumes a power plant every minute, linux is just efficient.
Waydroid works to run android apps on my ubuntu touch
A program like Wine, but to run Android apps on a Linux machine would be great. It would use a lot less battery power than a virtual machine.
You mean...waydroid? It's literally a translation layer running on a container, AFAIK. Then you can add an additional ARM emulation plugin for specific apps that don't have x86 versions.
Oh I thought Waydroid was a VM. But still, it's a lot more recent than wine. So is it really fully compatible with most apps?
It's....kinda like a VM? But without the VM part. It runs in a container, AFAIK, so it's using a lot less resources than a full blown VM. It works for a lot of apps. And the ARM emulation plugin helps a lot, too. But then again, I usually stick to mostly FOSS apps, and refuse to install the gapps suite. So, no Play Store. I can still install apps via Aurora, but there's a problem there between Waydroid and Aurora, which leads to frequent crashes (of Aurora) when trying to install an app. But once the app is installed (you can download it by other means, and just install it into waydroid by running something like 'waydroid app install myfile.apk'.
https://gitlab.com/android_translation_layer/android_translation_layer
waydroid?
Waydroid with a ROM with GAPPS? I use lineageos on my linux tablet, a lot of android games run just fine.
Wait... can you please explain?
Waydroid is a android translator(?) for linux on wayland, it runs android applications in a translation layer (android has linux under it), so you can install a ROM (there's a default one without google applications like google play services, but you can search a ROM with it) and run android applications like any phone with a custom ROM.
Edit: The tablet with waydroid running:
Muito interessante, valeu!
!suddenlycaralho@lemmy.eco.br moment.
Pqp, fui descoberto.
adorei que essa comunidade tambem existe no lemmy π
Can waydroid run on postmarketOS?
Yes.