I want to run an Android app on my Tumbleweed Gnome Wayland laptop. Is there a containerized or VM way to do this? I’d rather not install a bunch of weird apps in order to do this.
Should I do this using virt-mngr or VirtualBox? Or is there a pre-built Docker/Podman container to do this?
I’m a noob so I know very little about containers and have never used them. And I’m ready to learn.
Anyone here already done this?
@invalid_user_name I use qemu, but would depend on the android version you need… see the script here https://forums.opensuse.org/t/emulador-android-para-tumbleweed/166275
No flatpak version?
You’re asking if there’s a flatpak version of the Android app I want to run? Unfortunately no.
@invalid_user_name Correct… So what is the application?
The app is called OneAssist. It’s used to manage warranties.
@invalid_user_name So did you try the qemu route?
Depending on which Android apps you want to use, the Ferdium flatpak might be all you need. Check out their project here: https://ferdium.org/
I use it for WhatsApp and a few others.
Does your app need some specific Android version (e.g. Android 8 or later)?
I used Android-9-x86 with virtualbox to test WhatsApp on my openSUSE Tumbleweed system. It worked but i found it “too clumsy” for every day usage.
I tried to install Ubuntu in virt-mngr but it failed. When I get a moment I’ll try to research and fix the issue.
The app info page says it needs Android 5 and up. I’m guessing the closer I can get to Android 14 the better.
Does Ferdium have an Android service that allows me to use the Google Play Store to install the app I need?
@Pieter_v Update, I checked and looks like Ferdium does not directly run Android apps. So why is Ferdium recommended? I’m a noob so I must be missing something.
The Android app I want to run does not have a desktop version.
I didn’t know which app you waned to run, and Ferdium is an easy way to use certain apps normally used on a smart phone, such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Reddit etc. However it seems then that you really do want an Android environment of some sort to run the app you need.
Yes, that’s correct. What is the easiest noob friendly way to do this? Waydroid? Something else? Anyone here is invited to answer this.
I can set up Ubuntu or some other distro in VirtualBox or virt-manager if that will help me achieve this goal.
Why setup Ubuntu?
As I told you in post #7 you can install Android x86 in virtualbox on your openSUSE Tumbleweed system.
When you said it was “too clumsy” that kinda scared me off. I translated clumsy as buggy.
I can try it but it looks like it’s abandoned (over 2 years since last update) so likely buggy and security holes. I would only try it in a VM of some kind. Right now my VirtualBox and virt-manager are not working, so I gotta get them fixed first.
@invalid_user_name you don’t need a vm, qemu will suffice…
#!/usr/bin/bash
# Create and image file for android to run on;
# qemu-img create /data/applications/android/image/android_x86_64-9.0.img 20G
qemu-system-x86_64 \
-enable-kvm \
-m 4096 \
-smp 4 \
-cpu host \
-device virtio-tablet-pci -device virtio-keyboard-pci \
-boot menu=on \
-net nic \
-net user,hostfwd=tcp::5555-:22 \
-monitor stdio \
-vga qxl \
-hda /data/applications/android/image/android_x86_64-9.0.img
# \
# Add below to point at image for install
# -cdrom /data/applications/android/iso/android-x86_64-9.0-r2-k49.iso
Hmmm… Looks doable. Is the drive space and number of CPU cores specifiable?
I’m off to bed now so will try it tomorrow. yawn 
Sorry that was my fault!
Androids UI is designed to be used with a touch screen. Using it with mouse+keyboard on a 15" 4K laptop screen (and I did not find out how to get the scaling done properly) wasn’t something I would like to do eight hours a day.
So “clumsy” refers just to my individual handling experience.
@invalid_user_name yes, configure away… It will use your network connection as an internal wifi connection with the -net user,hostfwd=tcp::5555-:22 bit…
