18 comments

  • yjftsjthsd-h2 天前
    I feel like the interesting part is mostly https://gitlab.com/android_translation_layer/android_transla... which is probably an alternative to waydroid, but maybe more like WINE so it doesn't need the binder kernel module?

    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.

    • sigh_again2 天前
      Trying to reimplement Android without Binder is a doomed plan. Everything about Android is so intrinsically linked to having Binder available that you're just going to end up piling hacks on hacks to have anything working. At this point, an x86 Android image will be better and more reliable. Somewhat just as fast.

      Services ? Binder. Intents (even internal ones) ? Binder. Play Services / microG which 90% of apps use ? Binder. Permissions ? Binder.

      • phh2 天前
        I disagree. Apps barely use Binder directly, but mostly call framework jar (which yes will do binder, but since they are reimplementing framework jar that's fine). Intents and permissions can be implemented without binder as the API is quite semantic. It may happen that the app uses Binder for same-app IPC, but since app does ser-des itself, you can easily replace Android.os.binder by whatever IPC you want, The only "real" issue I can see , and you're right there, is Play Services. I think that handling that case specifically later (once floss apps/apps that don't require play services work properly), is not too horrific (it basically needs to compile the aidl into not calling binder, but redirecting it to a custom lib)
        • sigh_again2 天前
          So, as I said, hacks on top of hacks on top of hacks :D If you're going to shim and reimplement, piece by piece some APIs like Binder... Just use Binder, that is already upstreamed in the kernel for so long.
          • phh2 天前
            You're confusing shiming with rewriting.

            DirectX uses direct hardware access. DirectX uses direct hardware access. That doesn't mean you can't rewrite a DirectX-API implementation without direct hardware access. Likewise, Android's original implementation of MediaCodec uses binder. That doesn't mean that a reimplementation of MediaCodec API requires binder. The vast majority of Android public APIs do not assume binder. The only exception is Service binding, and even then, it's an assumption in name: It assumes that android.os.Binder will provide you an IPC. Most usages of android.os.Binder will be local to an app, so you can easily replace it with any IPC. Even the usage towards multiple app (whose only real usage would be Play Services) doesn't actually require binder. The requirement on that part is just the ""stable"" ser-des.

            As an app developer, you (should) never connect directly to /dev/binder, because its API/ABI isn't stable. (it changed like 3 times in the last 6 years?)

            • kllrnohj1 天前
              > Most usages of android.os.Binder will be local to an app, so you can easily replace it with any IPC.

              I'd be absolutely shocked if that was even a little bit true. Android's binder & AIDL generated code will absolutely do in-process passthrough to avoid the syscall for local calls, but ~nobody is bothering with AIDL unless it's to enable IPC. So that local pass-through is almost certainly rarely if ever used except on "accident" when components nominally support being passed over IPC, but in some cases aren't. An example would be Android's Surface + SurfaceTexture. Normally you're using Surface over IPC either to the display or to media codec or from camera. But if you're using SurfaceTexture, then in that rare scenario it might be local to the process.

              But that's definitely a lot less common than IPC binder + AIDL.

              All that said, you could almost certainly make a Binder driver shim that just uses unix domain sockets. Heck, Android itself even has one: https://cs.android.com/android/platform/superproject/main/+/...

              What'd be a lot harder is handling some of the more advanced graphics & multimedia features. Android's gralloc HAL in particular is likely borderline impossible to implement on Linux as it assumes tight integration between all of the camera, media/video, GPU, and display stacks, and also largely assumes it's on unified memory.

      • mappu2 天前
        For most of Wine's life it was sufficient to implement the system library ABI, but recent developments mean they also have to trap the (unstable) syscall ABI with ptrace. You could mimic Binder in userspace the same way, without the kernel module. But even that's not a problem since Binder is upstream and enabled by default in many distro kernels now.
        • ronsor2 天前
          When did WINE start doing this? I always love a good read on ptrace hacks.
            • quotemstr2 天前
              > Games avoiding the Windows API and performing system calls directly is an increasingly common occurrence by modern Windows games, seemingly in the name of Digital Rights Management schemes and similar protected modes.

              Yuck. Windows system call numbers are not contractual. At all. Microsoft should try harder to kill any code outside ntdll.dll that makes a system call. It's obnoxious for a developer to deliberately use unstable interfaces and then demand indefinite compatibility.

              • lxgr1 天前
                > demand indefinite compatibility.

                Not infinite – long enough for the game to bring in most revenue is enough.

                Who cares that it stops running one or two Windows updates later for totally avoidable reasons? Definitely not the publisher. (In fact, isn't it about time for an HD remaster again?)

                • quotemstr1 天前
                  Microsoft cares, though, because if a game stops working when you upgrade Windows, you blame the Windows upgrade, not Microsoft. So now Microsoft has to maintain these legacy system calls even though they never signed up to do that.
              • int0x291 天前
                There is now at least one public windows kernel call listed on MSDN: __fastfail

                https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/intrinsics/fastfail?vi...

                • quotemstr1 天前
                  I'd call that a special ABI feature, not a stable system call. Note that it's a software interrupt, not a regular SYSENTER. But sure. Maybe I'm splitting hairs.
        • augusto-moura2 天前
          I don't think binder is upstream, nor is the default in many distros. AFAIK support is very limited as not a lot of people use it. In arch it is provided only as a community package (AUR) [1]. This was a major blocker for me when trying to install anbox or waydroid, custom compiled kernel modules is a no-no for me, not because of security issues (which could exist), but because they can break a lot of stuff and fixing kernel modules is not a stroll in the park.

          [1]: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/binder_linux-dkms

      • deaddodo2 天前
        > At this point, an x86 Android image will be better and more reliable. Somewhat just as fast.

        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.

        • yjftsjthsd-h2 天前
          > I'm still waiting for the day Linux offers something similar.

          Waiting? Waydroid is several years old at this point, and you've always been able to run Android in a VM via either Google's official device emulator in the SDK or just running https://www.android-x86.org/ et al. in whatever hypervisor you prefer.

          • cyberax2 天前
            Android-x86 is dead. The last commits are from years ago.

            Waydroid is slightly more alive, but only barely. And it itself is a fork of now defunct Anbox.

          • deaddodo1 天前
            Sorry, I should have rephrased that:

            I'm still waiting for Linux to offer a good version of that. I currently use waydroid, and it's barely functional.

        • surajrmal2 天前
          Google launched the play store on Windows without wsa. I assume that's a big reason it collapsed.
      • stuaxo2 天前
        I always have trouble with AnBox and Waydroid - when it comes to Binder.

        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.

      • yjftsjthsd-h2 天前
        > At this point, an x86 Android image will be better and more reliable. Somewhat just as fast.

        You mean a full VM?

        • sigh_again2 天前
          No, merely using the standard Android emulator, as well as the x86_64 images that have been available for a while (or the ARM64 ones if you're on an M1 and others). With hardware acceleration properly setup, it's a nice experience. https://developer.android.com/studio/run/emulator-commandlin...

          It does tend to be very unhappy when the system gets under load though, and might be sluggish if you're running a dozen IDEs on the side.

          (Which, as comment under says, is technically a VM. But QEMU gets a pass at pretending not to be a VM and rather just black wizardry that makes bytes happy)

          • NoahKAndrews2 天前
            The Android Emulator is a full VM under the hood. Waydroid is a lighter-weight alternative that uses the Binder implementation in the Linux kernel.
      • refulgentis2 天前
        Binder is upstreamed into Linux.

        But I feel I don't know much about binder/kernel/IPC: maybe I overestimate what that means?

        • yjftsjthsd-h2 天前
          Binder is in mainline Linux, but I was under the impression that most distros aren't building it by default?
      • quotemstr2 天前
        Plus, Linux itself should adopt binder. It's already upstream and actually pretty good.
      • pjmlp2 天前
        Drivers? Binder. App extensions? Binder.
    • Cloudef1 天前
      The project seems to be built on top of my android2gnulinux project from way back. Nice to see someone picking up the pieces and making it more functional.

      https://github.com/Cloudef/android2gnulinux

    • charlieboardman2 天前
      I have been hoping for compatibility layer + application flatpaks for a while so it’s nice to see someone doing it. My dream is to have a bunch of flatpaks for the Microsoft office suite
    • irunmyownemail2 天前
      I don't use flatpak, snap or appimage so it's good that it doesn't need flatpak or similar.
      • OsrsNeedsf2P2 天前
        Can I ask why?

        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)

        • yjftsjthsd-h2 天前
          > Can I ask why?

          I dislike the way flatpak is effectively a second distro on top of whatever else I'm running; it eats a rather lot of additional disk space (and network bandwidth), requires that I run updates for it in addition to everything else, and I'm not sold on its security patching story (last I looked, it strongly favored everyone effectively vendoring most dependencies and I don't trust them to keep up with patches like my actual distro).

          To be fair, there's also a list of reasons I do like it, just... both pros and cons.

          > It was tiring getting bug reports that were only reproducible on certain drivers and setups

          I'll give you userspace, but drivers should be like the one thing that flatpak doesn't help with? It's the same kernel, not a VM.

        • SXX2 天前
          Not someone you asked, but I personally tend to avoid it because it makes my system less transparent to me.

          Isolated self contained containers are cool for enterprise setting with huge fleets of machines, frequent updates, etc. But it's not optimal for desktop Linux atm because no one secured any of desktop APIs and there are no easy way to inspect WTF each container is doing and why. Is it ships outdated deps? Is there crypto miner in or its just random hung process eating 100% of one cpu core?

          Basically each app in self contained container have its own universe and you will never figure out what exactly its doing. So its turn your system into a black box.

          As maintainer of OSS software and game developer I totally get the appeal, but as user I love Linux exactly because it's give me more transparency and I dont want to lose it.

        • pmontra2 天前
          I have no idea if all flatpack apps update their own vulnerabilities once they are discovered. The distribution usually does it. Then I hate the idea of having boundaries between apps and imperfect integration with the desktop environment. Furthermore I don't really need any app distributed as flatpack so far, so I don't care. When I see one I only miss giving it a try but I don't miss using it to do my daily job. I could even said that flatpack is a good thing for me because it encapsulates all the possible distractions and makes them unreachable.

          Anyway, I'd rather use flatpack than snap. I left Ubuntu for Debian because of it. I hope it goes the way of the other Canonical's unsuccessful attempts at building their own proprietary system and moat.

        • irunmyownemail22 小时前
          I read through the commenters who responded before I saw your question this morning and feel they all did a great job with their answers and agree with them.
        • kaba02 天前
          Not the parent commenter, but I feel it mixes sandboxing and a non-ideal packaging method together.

          Something like nix solves the second problem so much more elegantly.

    • bubblesnort2 天前
      It's conceptually similar to wine, but rather a reimplementation of the reference Android, which is AOSP.

      See https://gitlab.com/android_translation_layer/android_transla...

    • pantalaimon2 天前
      What’s wrong with binder?

      The problem with Waydroid is that you need to boot up a whole Android system, which is not great for app startup time.

      • xelamonster1 天前
        I keep my Waydroid session running in the background, managed by a systemd user-level service. Works great, and if it increases resource usage I don't notice--this is on a converted Chromebook so pretty low specs.
    • NoahKAndrews2 天前
      Definitely. I'd never heard of this one before; I'd love to read a full comparison between the two.
  • clfdev2 天前
    If you have a device running postmarketOS or Alpine Linux you can try this out yourself with other Android apps. Just "sudo apk add android-translation-layer" and then run

    $ 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!

  • antics92 天前
    Why would one want NewPipe on desktop when there's https://freetubeapp.io/
    • ravenstine2 天前
      Perhaps because one is accustomed to the NewPipe experience and would prefer consistency across devices?

      Never heard of Freetube, but it looks pretty snazzy.

      • squarefoot2 天前
        > 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.

        • abnry2 天前
          I know a lot of people hate on the recommendations homepage on YouTube, but I discover a lot of content I like watching there. However, I can't watch all of it and what to save what I see there and otherwise find and search for in a playlist, but the watch later playlist is not user friendly. Does Freetube improve playlist management too? That would be a big plus.
          • squarefoot2 天前
            I never used the playlist on FreeTube, but just gave it a look and the use seems straightforward to me. It probably depends a lot on user needs, anyway operations look lightning fast compared to the "original".
      • prmoustache2 天前
        I don't know, it makes sense that UI between desktop and mobile would be different. I use Freetube on desktop and newpipe on mobile.

        Having said that, newpipe is not only a youtube client but also a soundcloud, bandcamp and a few others too.

      • ugjka2 天前
        I tried it, it didn't feel like what you get on android and had ui glitches
        • mastazi2 天前
          I have been enjoying the new version that just came out yesterday, they implemented a new video player and IMHO the user experience is much improved, if the UI glitches you mentioned were related to the player, maybe you could give it a try.
      • anthk2 天前
        Parabolic it's far better for desktop users.
        • master-lincoln2 天前
          That seems to be a tools for downloading youtube videos, but the others presented here were for browsing it and watching videos as well
    • Timber-65392 天前
      Freetube is terribly unoptimized. Even though it supports hw video playback, I decided to skip it as it had too much CPU overhead.
    • 3np2 天前
      You know you could drop a recommendation without being so damn submissive of OP. Let a thousand alternative clients bloom.
      • antics91 天前
        It was an actual question for the community as these kind of questions usually generate perspectives and alternatives. There’s no need to read anything else into it.
    • mixmastamyk2 天前
      Doesn’t work well on Wayland unfortunately. Don’t know if this one does but worth a shot.
      • EffrafaxOfWug2 天前
        I have used FreeTube on wayland now for a long time without any issues. Electron still uses x11 as the default on wayland so you need to enable the wayland mode manually. You can easily do that by setting the ELECTRON_OZONE_PLATFORM_HINT=auto environment variable.
        • mixmastamyk2 天前
          Thanks, that fixed the resolution issue! I also had to give it access to the dbus system socket and wayland for it to work. Wasn't sure how to do that but the flatseal app made it easy.
      • BadHumans2 天前
        I use Freetube on Wayland with 0 issues.
        • prmoustache2 天前
          Same here.
          • mixmastamyk2 天前
            They fixed a few bugs already I think. But it still looks like crap (lower resolution?) on my tablet and I have to force the onscreen keyboard on manually (normally comes on by itself).

            Oddly enough the video itself looks fine when playing, but not the browser interface.

    • yownie1 天前
      no "fast-foward through silence" feature
    • yownie1 天前
      in one phrase "skip silences" feature!
  • KetoManx642 天前
    Very cool stuff! I wonder if you can switch out the newpipe app for the Tubular (https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular) fork which has SponsorBlock and ReturnYoutubeDislike built into it.
    • yownie1 天前
      He can't but you probably can.
    • gbraad2 天前
      Waydroid needs to run a full OS; this is just a single application; the first approach allows you to integrate well with other apps you might use. Though for ATL, when you open in a browser, it will open your actual desktop browse. Downloading will happen to your chosen folder on the desktop. It feels more like APKs for a desktop; like Google's "ARC Welder" without using the browser as the runtime.
  • gbraad2 天前
    I have finally been able to install it and have to say I am really impressed how well this works. Sure, you can not really 'fullscreen'? There are some glitches; margins. But mostly it just works. It is so much more efficient than starting up Waydroid... I am even considering trying this with some of my other go-to applications.

    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.

    • brnt1 天前
      I see tons of glitches: cant load settings, loading a vid may work or not, and the gui gets glitchy regardless.

      Pity, I love Newpipe on my phone.

      • gbraad18 小时前
        Running it on Fedora. You? (Also use it in Bazzite from a Legion Go; touch input only) Graphics, like buttons are problematic (small, misplaced), but functional
  • jansommer1 天前
    Great news! I'm fiddling way too much with a Surface Go 2, and a translation layer for Android is perfect when all you have is a touchscreen, very little ram, an incredibly slow eMMC, and a battery that'll last 8 hours if you're lucky.

    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.

  • whoisthemachine2 天前
    Exciting. I'd love to see AppImage [0] builds of applications produced with this library.

    [0] https://appimage.org/

  • mbeex1 天前
    Mmmh, I'm using it on Android for some time now, installed as F-Droid app. Problem is, there is some friction regarding Countermeasures of YT and a new version adjusting to them. Often, I'm unable to use the alternative Client on Android for months until this is fixed. Will this be a problem on Linux too?
    • m3Lith1 天前
      The problem is that F-Droid takes time to review new releases, when they're already available from other (direct) sources.

      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).

      [1] https://obtainium.imranr.dev/

    • pixelN1 天前
      have a look at NewPipe's own fdroid repo: https://newpipe.net/FAQ/tutorials/install-add-fdroid-repo/
      • mbeex1 天前
        Thanks! Shows the same version as the installed app from the main F-Droid repository - but this one works.
    • 1 天前
      undefined
  • reify2 天前
    for me freetube in the arch repo works great

    https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube

    • ugjka2 天前
      I think it is in the AUR not arch official repos
  • sureglymop2 天前
    This is amazing! Have been using Newpipe for years because of its ability to group subscribed channels into different feeds.
    • throwaway815232 天前
      On the desktop, youtube in the browser is tolerable with ublock origin, so I use it in preference to youtube because of the ability to show search results most recent first. Newpipe (maybe due to technical obstacles, idk) doesn't do that and it makes things harder.
      • adamddev12 天前
        Ya that's always been a frustration of mine with Newpipe. I wish you could sort search results by date.
  • omeid22 天前
    On this topic, similar to Wine, there is also Darling which brings Darwin to Linux.

    https://github.com/darlinghq/darling

  • dazld2 天前
    Semi related, there is a Minecraft Bedrock Launcher that ports the Minecraft for Android app to *nix.

    https://flathub.org/apps/io.mrarm.mcpelauncher

  • ninalanyon1 天前
    3.6 GB installed! This is why I dislike Flatpak.
    • Thorrez1 天前
      The page says "Installed Size ~60.95 MiB". Is that inaccurate?
      • janice19991 天前
        That figure does not include the dependencies like org.freedesktop.Platform and org.gnome.Platform which can add up to GBs.
        • brnt1 天前
          But they are shared between apps, and those platform packages are almost certainly used by most of your apps.
  • yownie1 天前
    I've wanted this for several years now solely for the "fast-forward through silences" feature that newpipe has.
  • yownie1 天前
    YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
  • rubing2 天前
    [dead]
  • Gunzo2 天前
    [flagged]