this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2025
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509
TIL about Android Translation Layer (ATL), a way to port Android apps to Linux Mobile (gitlab.com)
submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by Canuck@sh.itjust.works to c/technology@lemmy.world
43 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I was searching for YouTube clients on my KDE Plasma Bigscreen GNU/Linux TV box, and found NewPipe, a popular Android YouTube frontend. Turns out this tool is how they moved it over.

Great solution alongside projects like Waydroid, as you can post individual apps to Flathub or other Linux storefronts, rather than needing to install a whole ROM to get your Android apps to appear in your Linux app tray.

It doesn't work like Wine, but I suppose the goal one day is to be able to click .APK files to install like you can with .EXE files with Wine. Currently developers need to integrate it for their (or their favourite open source) apps to install on Linux.

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[–] Ek-Hou-Van-Braai@piefed.social 84 points 5 days ago (1 children)

This would be a game changer, like how Steam brought games to Linux, that could bring mobile apps to Linux.

I wish Linux mobile becomes a real option soon

[–] Canuck@sh.itjust.works 18 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Steam could make this happen faster if more of their user base requested the ability to play (x86 compatible) Android games on their Deck.

[–] addie@feddit.uk 4 points 4 days ago

The Android dev kit includes a copy of QEMU that's set up to emulate ARM with a selection of popular screen sizes and revisions of the OS, so that you can test your app on a variety of 'potential phones' before you upload it to the marketplace. Snapdragons are amazingly performant CPUs for how gently they sip at the battery, but they're not that strong in the big scheme of things - any random x86 processor should be able to emulate them while using fifty times the power. A Steam deck ought to be able to do it; the request will then be 'we'd like to play Android games better', which to me is a much more reasonable ask.