Waydroid: Android on X11 (and Wayland) with RK3588 ARM 64bits computer (aarch64) - 2025-08-10
Using Android on a Linux computer, especially on ARM 64bits (Also called Aarch64) where all appliations will work natively.
As XFCE still doesn't work (at least in my case with Wayland, and that's my prefered desktop, I still use X11. I want to use some Android application on my Desktop computer. However, Waydroid, the Android virtual machine for Linux is made for Wayland display (so the name Way(land) + (An)droid). Weston is of good help to make it working.
Update 2028-09-01, I managed to have XFCE4 working on Wayland on this hardware, probably due to recent XFCE updates. It use labwc as compositor, that depend itself on wlroots. Still have some limitation (keyboard forced to english, no mean to switch (keyboard and iBus should depend on labwc or wlroots layers), parameters not available at least on menus, no screensaver/locker, see also one of the XFCE4 author's blog entry for more details), so I will wrote a new article about some tweaks in this case
WARNING!! Waydroid start some components at root level, it may contains some Google ads/private data or NSA spies, that's probably better to use it on a VM or a system without sensitive content
If you have other Aarch64 hardware you can skip this, but in my case, I use since about 6 month now a Rockchip RK3588 based (ARM 64bits) Radxa ITX board as main computer There is relatively good management of Vulkan 1.4 and Zink since this summer in GIT version, a stable base is available in Mesa 25.2.0 since 2025-08-06) for the Mali-G610 MP4 GPU included in the SoC. the RK3588 NPU start to be managed by the Rocket driver since 2025-07-28 in mainline Mesa, will be available in this first state in following release of Mesa.
Table of Content
- Compilation of Mesa driver if needed in case of RK3588
- Run Waydroid on X11
- Waydroid in a window on Wayland
- Android reboot and network problem after resizing window
- Copy APK in the Waydroid directory
LXC on Arch Linux and elsewhere - 2025-01-05
The Linux kernel containers (LXC) is a nice and efficient mean to run containers. Far lighter and more efficient than Docker ones, it is well integrated in GNU/Linux system environment.
LinuxContainers developers community followed, Aleksa Sarai Incus interface, a fork of Canonical's LXD. It have both a cli and a web interface, like the very powerful Proxmox, maybe not reached the same level (in january 2025), but can be installed on your own linux, instead to having to work on a proxmox specific server. Both have their pros and cons.
I will present here all installation process step by step on Arch Linux to make LXC container working:
- In unprivileged mode (for security)
- With both busybox, the very light Alpine Linux as container (8 MB rootfs, thanks to light Musl libc and Busybox), Arch Linux or Debian.
- Crossarchitecture compatible containers (ARM (32/64-bit), RISC-V (32/64/128-bit), and x86 (32/64-bit), should work the same way with Loongson or PowerPC, as soon tempaltes are available.
Disclamair:
- The official Linux container documentation, Getting Started that could be really generic and miss some point in my case.
- The official Arch Wiki give lot of possibilities, that could lost the user, I have to navigate and search myself to found a working solution that fit my needs and willing.
- This Stan's blog blog tutorial helped me resolved some not well documented parts about the bridge.
Table of Content
- Main LXC cli commands
- Base Installation
- Launch and use containers
- Containers as non-root user
- Distrobuilder to make templates
Work in progress, this part is not finished
Bootstrap Arch Linux by chroot - 2024-11-10
How to install Arch from a Debian or derivative (or other arch), using bootstrap archive and chroot.
Also added some tips for Manjaro-keyring problems, this arch derivative is well known for that.
The command pacstrap also help to install arch, the official tutorial explains how to use it
- This one too, but has an error at least on EFI mount point (boot/efi partition must be mounted in /boot, not /boot/efi and contain an efi (or EFI, FAT is not case sensitive) directory.
- Another one UEFI with LUKS encryption
WIP: Still doesn't manage to have a bootable UEFI+GPT, systemd-boot UEFI Boot Manager, bootable system (See also Archiwiki systemd-boot dedicated page)
As XFCE still doesn't work (at least in my case with Wayland, and that's my prefered desktop, I still use X11. I want to use some Android application on my Desktop computer. However, Waydroid, the Android virtual machine for Linux is made for Wayland display (so the name Way(land) + (An)droid). Weston is of good help to make it working.
Update 2028-09-01, I managed to have XFCE4 working on Wayland on this hardware, probably due to recent XFCE updates. It use labwc as compositor, that depend itself on wlroots. Still have some limitation (keyboard forced to english, no mean to switch (keyboard and iBus should depend on labwc or wlroots layers), parameters not available at least on menus, no screensaver/locker, see also one of the XFCE4 author's blog entry for more details), so I will wrote a new article about some tweaks in this case
WARNING!! Waydroid start some components at root level, it may contains some Google ads/private data or NSA spies, that's probably better to use it on a VM or a system without sensitive content
If you have other Aarch64 hardware you can skip this, but in my case, I use since about 6 month now a Rockchip RK3588 based (ARM 64bits) Radxa ITX board as main computer There is relatively good management of Vulkan 1.4 and Zink since this summer in GIT version, a stable base is available in Mesa 25.2.0 since 2025-08-06) for the Mali-G610 MP4 GPU included in the SoC. the RK3588 NPU start to be managed by the Rocket driver since 2025-07-28 in mainline Mesa, will be available in this first state in following release of Mesa.
Table of Content
- Compilation of Mesa driver if needed in case of RK3588
- Run Waydroid on X11
- Waydroid in a window on Wayland
- Android reboot and network problem after resizing window
- Copy APK in the Waydroid directory
The Linux kernel containers (LXC) is a nice and efficient mean to run containers. Far lighter and more efficient than Docker ones, it is well integrated in GNU/Linux system environment.
LinuxContainers developers community followed, Aleksa Sarai Incus interface, a fork of Canonical's LXD. It have both a cli and a web interface, like the very powerful Proxmox, maybe not reached the same level (in january 2025), but can be installed on your own linux, instead to having to work on a proxmox specific server. Both have their pros and cons.
I will present here all installation process step by step on Arch Linux to make LXC container working:
- In unprivileged mode (for security)
- With both busybox, the very light Alpine Linux as container (8 MB rootfs, thanks to light Musl libc and Busybox), Arch Linux or Debian.
- Crossarchitecture compatible containers (ARM (32/64-bit), RISC-V (32/64/128-bit), and x86 (32/64-bit), should work the same way with Loongson or PowerPC, as soon tempaltes are available.
Disclamair:
- The official Linux container documentation, Getting Started that could be really generic and miss some point in my case.
- The official Arch Wiki give lot of possibilities, that could lost the user, I have to navigate and search myself to found a working solution that fit my needs and willing.
- This Stan's blog blog tutorial helped me resolved some not well documented parts about the bridge.
Table of Content
- Main LXC cli commands
- Base Installation
- Launch and use containers
- Containers as non-root user
- Distrobuilder to make templates
Work in progress, this part is not finished
Bootstrap Arch Linux by chroot - 2024-11-10
How to install Arch from a Debian or derivative (or other arch), using bootstrap archive and chroot.
Also added some tips for Manjaro-keyring problems, this arch derivative is well known for that.
The command pacstrap also help to install arch, the official tutorial explains how to use it
- This one too, but has an error at least on EFI mount point (boot/efi partition must be mounted in /boot, not /boot/efi and contain an efi (or EFI, FAT is not case sensitive) directory.
- Another one UEFI with LUKS encryption
WIP: Still doesn't manage to have a bootable UEFI+GPT, systemd-boot UEFI Boot Manager, bootable system (See also Archiwiki systemd-boot dedicated page)
How to install Arch from a Debian or derivative (or other arch), using bootstrap archive and chroot.
Also added some tips for Manjaro-keyring problems, this arch derivative is well known for that.
The command pacstrap also help to install arch, the official tutorial explains how to use it
- This one too, but has an error at least on EFI mount point (boot/efi partition must be mounted in /boot, not /boot/efi and contain an efi (or EFI, FAT is not case sensitive) directory.
- Another one UEFI with LUKS encryption
WIP: Still doesn't manage to have a bootable UEFI+GPT, systemd-boot UEFI Boot Manager, bootable system (See also Archiwiki systemd-boot dedicated page)