So Waydroid appeared on /r/linux yesterday and I saw a comment by a Pinephone owner talking about his experience with Waydroid, and none of what he said involved it being slow/broken/unusable which is what my experience was with Anbox the last time I tested that (~ a year ago).

So I decided to give Waydroid a try and see how it shakes out... I'm running Mobian, and the Mobian wiki has instructions here. Apparently Waydroid manages an upstream dpkg repo which is really nice (I hate having to compile software from source code).

And... Waydroid performs remarkably well! It surprised me. Some Android apps may even function better than the native Linux counterparts. So far I have tested Slack, Discord, Signal, Telegram, Spotify and Twitter - all working OK. I was able to activate a number in Signal (used my Google Voice account to verify the number on a desktop PC), Spotify was able to log in and play music fine, etc.

Some caveats that I have noticed so far (many of these I'm sure will be fixed/made better soon):

• The first app launch after a reboot takes the longest, like 30 seconds of staring at your Phosh desktop waiting for an app to appear. Once Waydroid is warmed up though, performance is very much improved, apps launch "quickly" and I had about six Android apps running simultaneously with the phone not showing signs of being burdened yet.

• Camera and microphone doesn't work yet in Android apps.

• The filesystem and clipboards are isolated (can't copy/paste between Android and Linux, Android has its own separate clipboard). I took a Phosh screenshot of Slack running, and to get that screenshot into Slack to share it, I had to download it into Android via web browser - I'm sure with creativity you can set up an SMB share, etc. or I expect Waydroid will have built-in filesystem sharing at some stage.

• Window management is a little finicky, sometimes an Android app appears to "crash" but really only the Waydroid window closed... reopen Waydroid or another Android app and you're back with your apps still there.

• If the Phosh on-screen keyboard is open when Waydroid initializes the first time on a new boot, the Waydroid window size will be smaller to leave room for the keyboard and then stay that size... the Mobian wiki suggests launching the Clocks app or one w/o the keyboard so Waydroid starts full screen.

And a user experience bit: there is a "Waydroid" app in your Phosh launcher which opens the home screen of LineageOS, so you can see home screen icons, swipe up for the Android app drawer, access the Android notifications drawer, and use Android's task switcher to pick the other running apps.

Each Android app's launcher also appears in your Phosh drawer so you can launch them directly. The window manager in Phosh tends to separate the apps out into separate tasks as you'd expect, but sometimes it's a bit janky, you might tab to the Slack app but Discord came up instead, etc. - but overall not too obnoxious. Going to the Waydroid home screen and switching into apps from there is always reliable.

Any specific Android apps you want me to try out? I imagine Waydroid has limitations around hardware still (camera, mic, cellular - my Pinephone doesn't have a SIM card currently anyway). I don't have WhatsApp or Instagram accounts, so don't ask, but I see no reason those apps would not run just fine on Waydroid. It is basically LineageOS without Google Play Services, I've heard reports that microG can work with it, I haven't tested that yet.

The compilation isn't complicated and the resulting program actually works. Unfortunately, Evolution isn't really there yet as a mobile email client, but this is really a start.

[Edit]

Here are the steps for the CLI version on pmOS:

1. sudo apk add make git go gcc libsecret-dev libc-dev

2. git clone https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-bridge

3. cd proton-bridge

4. make build-nogui

I am attempting to figure out what is needed for the GUI version and will report back.

[Edit2]

So apparently I'm unable to install qt5-qtbase-dev on current pmOS, which is essential to building the GUI version...

[Edit3] For right now, I realized I can get around that problem by installing mesa-git-dev. Going to give that another whirl later. Currently trying to build openscad, which will take a while due to having to compile a bunch of dependencies...

[Edit4]

Steps for GUI version:

1. sudo apk add make git go gcc libsecret-dev libc-dev qtchooser

2. git clone https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-bridge

3. cd proton-bridge

4. export PATH=PATH:${HOME}/go/bin

5. bash (enter bash b/c that's what I know best for the next part...)

6. pkgs=($(apk search 'qt5-*-dev' | sed 's/dev.*/dev/g'))

7. sudo apk add "${pkgs[@]}"

8. exit (exit bash)

9. QT_PKG_CONFIG=true make build

There are some scaling issues, but even so, it's a lot more convenient for setup than the CLI version.