Comment by Joe_Cool 4 days ago
Hard disagree. You can run the same programs on any DE or Window Manager or even without one (on pure X11 for example). That's not a hurdle it's a feature.
Users who don't know about the feature can just use a pre-configured system like Mint Cinnamon and never know about any of these things.
Nope.
Linux user for decades, but headless since the early aughts. Decided to dip my toes back into the desktop space with Mint Cinnamon.
I can mirror or run lots of phone apps on Windows or macOS, but ironically, not Linux. I decide to run an Android emulator so I can use some phone-only apps.
I read up on reviews, then download and install Waydroid as the top contender.
Does Waydroid work? No. It fails silently launching from the shortcut after the install. Run it from the command line, and, nope, it's a window manager issue. Mint Cinnamon uses X11, not Wayland, and Waydroid apparently needs... Wayland support.
OK, I log out, log into Mint with Wayland support, then re-launch Waydroid. My screen goes into a fugue state where it randomly alternates between black and the desktop. Try a variety of things, and I guess this is just how it is. Google and try any number of fixes, end up giving up.
Yes, that's my old pal Linux on the Desktop. Older, faster and wiser, but still flaky in precisely the same ways.
You can't run X11 programs on Wayland without Xwayland.
Likewise you cannot run Wayland programs on X11 without a wayland compositor like Cage (a wayland kiosk) or Weston. Both run as a window on X11 inside of which Waydroid works just fine.
It's an odd complaint that incompatible software is incompatible.
You read the parent I was responding to, no? You're reinforcing my point.
"Users who don't know about the feature can just use a pre-configured system like Mint Cinnamon and never know about any of these things."
> OpenGL, Vulkan, Glide or DirectX on Windows either without having the proper hardware and software installed
Windows will run at least basic OpenGL and DirectX in software if you don't have hardware to accelerate that, and those software renderers are included as part of the OS. It'll run like garbage, but it will run.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/direct3darti...
I think that type of user wouldn't go out looking for an Android compatibility layer.
Bluestacks works fine for this on PC and Mac, and I've seen casuals use that because they want to play their gacha game on a bigger screen.
Waydroid compleatly fails in comparison, while giving you no pointers on what the problem might be or how to solve it unless you're already a Linux power user.
Headless daily driver? Hardcore. What do you use for a browser?
I've tried it as a challenge for a couple of days (lynx, mutt, some other TUI stuff) and it made some things like Vim stick (although that may have as much to do with that challenge as Tridactyl did). But I couldn't last longer than a week. It does free you from the burden of system requirements. CPU: Optional.
> And my laptop battery runs for 8 hours
I imagine your display is almost entirely black for the majority of the time, with your (most probably) LCD backlight blasting away, trying its hardest to get a few thousandths of its light output through the few pixels on the screen that it can escape! XD
Brightness down, LAN card disabled (the media sense on RTL cards sucks about 1.5W with no cable plugged in, wtf? Thats more than the Wifi needs)
And powertop (great piece of software, thanks Intel) tuned to the max + powersave scheduler. All that on Windows or KDE results in about 4-5h of battery though. So fbdev must be somehow really frugal.
That's cause you're using a distro like mint which is using older builds of stuff.
Get yourself a most recent plasma 6 Wayland setup with pipewire for audio. It even has rdp server now.
What's most likely happening is your user space app wants the newer API but you're running old builds from two years ago.
It will continue to degrade for you unless you fully switch to a Wayland DM.
Anything built on X11 is basically deprecated now and no one is building on it anymore.
> That's cause you're using a distro like mint which is using older builds of stuff.
The context here is that I was commenting on the parent's assertion that one "can just use a pre-configured system like Mint Cinnamon and never know about any of these things." Nope!
> It will continue to degrade for you unless you fully switch to a Wayland DM. Anything built on X11 is basically deprecated now and no one is building on it anymore.
That's my impression as well, and again, with the 2nd most popular Linux distro using X11 by default and with "experimental" Wayland support, that only reinforces my rebuttal of parent's claim.
Yeah I wanted to say, for people who don't care, there's Linux Mint. (I used to spend all my time tinkering with the DE, now I prefer to spend zero!)
Except even with Linux Mint you have to choose which one ;)