VMs and Containers on Ivon's Blog

Install ReDroid for playing Android games in Docker containers on Linux PC, with GPU acceleration

infoivonblog.nkfjt@aleeas.com (Ivon Huang) — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 22:00:00 +0800

ReDroid (Remote anDroid) is an open source and self-hosting “cloud phone” solution. By running Android in containers on Linux PC, we could access Android desktop by using Scrcpy. And the container could be accessed remotely.

Here is my demonstration of what “self-hosting cloud Android phone” looks like. In this video, I install Scrcpy client on iPhone and connect to Linux PC using Zerotier to play Android games remotely. (sorry my video is in Chinese)

ReDroid is also one of the few solutions to run Android APP on Linux with open source software. Many Android simulators, not to mention cloud phones, are closed source. In contrast, ReDroid is an open source solution except for the ARM translator. Even better, ReDroid supports GPU acceleration plus ARM translations, so you can play more mobile 3D games!

ReDroid is much light-weight and easy to deploy than Android-x86 VM.

If you ask me, there is already a similar, container-based solution, which is known as Waydroid for playing Android games. Why do I choose ReDroid over Waydroid? Well freak Nvidia. Waydroid does not work on Nvidia GPU.

In this article, I will discuss how to use ReDroid to play mobile games on Linux PC. We will setup a ReDroid container, and add ARM translator + Google Service Framework to the ReDroid image for the best experience.

1. Requirements
#

Any Linux distribution should be fine.

It is recommended to use a Linux PC with x86 architecture to run Redroid. The ARM architecture support is not very good.

If you have a x86 PC, it can only run x86 architecture Android APPs. However, many mobile games only have ARM architecture versions, so you needs to install the ARM translator (libndk or libhoudini) in the ReDroid container.

To play mobile games, it is recommended that the computer has at least 8GB of RAM, because sometimes ARM takes up a lot of RAM when translating it into x86 instructions.

For GPU acceleration, it is recommended to use Intel or AMD GPUs. 3D acceleration is available out of the box. Nvidia is not recommended.

Regarding the Android version, the redroid:11.0.0-latest and redroid:12.0.0-latest image files released by the Redroid developer have built-in ARM translator libndk developed by Google. I have tried only Android 11 which is relatively stable. GApps It can also be used, so in this article I will uses the Android 11 image .

2. Install dependencies
#

ReDroid’s Github has installation instructions for other Linux distributions. I used the Ubuntu.

First, prepare the binder kernel module. On Ubuntu 24.04 execute the following commands to install the kernel modules:

sudo apt install linux-modules-extra-`uname -r`

sudo modprobe binder_linux devices="binder,hwbinder,vndbinder"

Make the modules load automatically at boot

sudo cat <<EOT >> /etc/modules-load.d/redroid.conf
binder_linux
options binder_linux devices="binder,hwbinder,vndbinder"
EOT

Install Docker
Install the ADB tool
Finally install Scrcpy.

If you want to integrate the graphical Scrcpy interface with key mapping, you can modify QtScrcpy. You can also try the web version of ws-scrcpy.

How to install Linux desktop on WSL2 on Windows 11

infoivonblog.nkfjt@aleeas.com (Ivon Huang) — Sun, 19 Nov 2023 07:00:00 +0800

閱讀中文版文章

Running a Linux desktop environment and playing audio in Windows WSL.

WSL supports running graphics programs through WSLg. For example, if you install the firefox package in WSL, type firefox command, the program will open in Windows, and you can enjoy GPU hardware acceleration.

Furthermore, you can also use WSL to run GNOME, XFCE, KDE, LXQT, Cinnamon and other desktop environments to experience the feeling of using a Linux computer.

For example, the picture below shows KDE Plasma desktop is running on WSL Ubuntu. You can seamlessly switch between Windows and Ubuntu, and the performance is better than that of a virtual machine.

Video demo

Please note that there are lots of differences between the desktop functions in WSL and the actual Linux machine, and various weird bugs may occur.

If you want to experience the complete Ubuntu desktop, I still recommend that you install Ubuntu on a physical machine, such as dual booting Windows 11 and Ubuntu

1. Environment
#

Windows 11 22H2
WSL 2.0.9.0
WSL Ubuntu 22.04

By default, WSL allocates half of your computer’s RAM to Linux. If you want to run a graphics environment, it may be resource intensive. It is recommended to leave at least 4GB of RAM for Linux. You can adjust wslconfig to allow WSL to allocate more hardware resources.

2. Description
#

Please first look at the WSLg architecture diagram provided by Microsoft.

Why not just use WSLg to display the Linux desktop? Well… WSLg uses the Wayland display protocol and already has its own window manager. It can only launch “single window” programs such as Firefox mentioned at the beginning of the article, but cannot launch new desktop environments.

When you start Firefox, the window will be “snatched” by WSLg. But I hope that after opening a Linux desktop environment window, all Linux programs will stay in that window.

So it is better to run a separate X server. All X programs run in the same window.

There are three choices for X server:

Run independent X server programs such as VcXsrv and X410 outside WSL
Running Xephyr in WSL
Running XWayland within WSL

I choose to run Xephyr or XWayland within WSL. This is equivalent to running a nested X server in WSL’s Walyand.

For the audio, since it is very complex to run standalone Pulse Aduio sever on Windows, we will use the built-in audio server of WSLg to play WSL audio.

Since WSLg uses Wayland, below we will use environment variables to force all Linux programs to use X instead of Wayland display to prevent them from running in WSLg windows.

3. Install desktop environment packages
#

[Guide] Playing Android games on Linux PC with Android-x86 VM + QtScrcpy

infoivonblog.nkfjt@aleeas.com (Ivon Huang) — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 20:15:46 +0800

🇹🇼 中文版

This guide is about installing Android-x86 9.0 QEMU virtual machine on x86_64 Linux host, so you can play Android games with 3D acceleration, keymappings on Linux PC. Google Play is also included.

Tested on Gentoo Linux (gentoo-kernel-bin 5.19.16) and Arch Linux (linux-zen-6.0.3) .

1. Prerequisites
#

A x86_64 Linux PC
4-cores CPU
Intel or AMD GPU. Nvidia proprietary driver does not support VirGL (virtual OpenGL renderer).
8GB+ RAM
64GB+ storage

2. Install required packages
#

Install QEMU, Libvirt, Virt Manager on your Linux host.

Enable libvirtd services:

sudo systemctl enable --now libvirtd

Make sure KVM modules are loaded:

lsmod | grep kvm

3. Install Android-x86 VM
#

Note: You can try advanced Bliss OS instead of vanilla Android-x86. The installation procedure is similar to each other.

Download Android-x86 ISO from official website. Choose Android 9.0-r2 64bit.
Launch Virt Manager. Clcik Creat a new VM.
Select Manual Install
Select Androd-x86 9.0
Allocate 8GB RAM (minimum 4GB) and 4 cores.
Create a 64GB hard drive
Check Customize configuration before install
Click Overview. Select Q35 for Chipset and UEFI x64 OVMF_CODE for Firmware. Apply.
Click IDE Disk, switch Disk bus to VirtIO. Apply.
Click NIC, switch Device model to virtio. Apply.
Click Display Spice. Swtich Listen Type to None. Check OpenGL and select Intel GPU. Apply.
Click Video QXL, switch to Virtio. Check 3D acceleration. Apply.
Click Add Hardware, click Storage, switch Device Type to CDROM. Switch Bus Type to SATA. Click Manage and select Android-x86 ISO. Finish.
Click Boot options. Change boot order to SATA CDROM.
Click Begin Installation. Use keyboard arrows to move selection. First move to Installation, enter.
Select Create/Modify partitions
Use GPT
Move selection to [New], enter.
Enter. Next type +512M
Type ef00 then name the parition EFI
Next, move selection to the third one. Select [New], enter for 3 times.
Name the partition Android.
Move the selection to [Write], type yes. Then move to [Quit].
Select vda2
Format vda2 to EXT4
Install EFI GRUB
Format the EFI partition
Select Yes. Make /system mounted as Read & Write.
Boot into Android-x86.
Conect to VirtWifi. Setup the Android-x86 device.
Launch Terminal Emualtor in Android-x86 VM. Type su, grant root permission:
Type dmesg | grep virgl to check if VirGL is loaded.
Click bulb icon, remove CDROM from Hardware list.

4. Install libhoudini for Android-x86
#

It’s recommened to install x86 APK for stability, Google Play would filter x86 apps for you. However many games only support ARM architecture. In order to run ARM apps on a x86 machine, we need a ARM translator/Native bridge.

VMs and Containers on Ivon's Blog

Install ReDroid for playing Android games in Docker containers on Linux PC, with GPU acceleration

1. Requirements #

2. Install dependencies #

How to install Linux desktop on WSL2 on Windows 11

1. Environment #

2. Description #

3. Install desktop environment packages #