Lepton appears to be the new official name for Valve’s version of Waydroid (Android in a Linux container).
We still don’t have a whole lot of details about how this is all going to work, outside of Lepton enabling Android APKs for developers on the upcoming Steam Frame VR kit, but it’s now that little bit more official with a proper name and even a logo.
I can’t wait to use this on a Linux phone
This seems like a big deal
It was a big deal when they announced it several weeks ago. It just flew under the radar for some reason. This is just putting a name to it.
it can eventually turn into one if the project gets a lot of support. the problem is the current intention is to help occulus rift devs port their games to steam, and VR is a reletively niche audience, so its not going to get the development time it needs if it wants to explode.
tangently related, I do see a future where valve goes the route of game native and opens up steam officially on android, but its not quite there at the moment.
It could bridge the app gap when Linux phones become viable daily drivers
Waydroid is GPLv3 and that’s great. Hopefully contributions will be upstreamed. Waydroid, Wine, FEX… Valve is contributing to great things!
At this point, Valve is just trying to bridge the tech gap that’s getting ever-wider between platforms thanks for proprietary gate-keeping. Linux/Valve is gonna be the duo that sets us all free! Linux will give us the framework and Valve will give us the ease!
Biggest two issues with Waydroid are x86 to ARM translation and correct GPU passthrough:
https://github.com/waydroid/waydroid/issues/2115
In theory, you should be able to just play Fortnite on linux this way, but I haven’t been able to get it to launch like this guy did.
People have also been calling Waydroid dead for a while now which I dont know how true it is.
This is more for their VR headset that’s coming out. It will be running ARM, so no concerns there. It will allow devs to port their existing Meta Quest games (which are Android APKs) very easily.
In reality meta quest games use their Platform SDK (for things like user entitlement check, match making, leaderboards, DLC) I’m not sure it’ll be an easy port for Quest games because you’ll be missing Meta’s services that run on the quest itself.
It wouldn’t be a completely effortless port but that stuff is pretty minor especially for single player games.
For ARM to x86 I was using LibHoudini, for x86 to ARM I don’t see the point. I mean, most apk are built for ARM.
Ah I said it backwards lol.
Yeah same with libhoudini. Problem is I could only get fortnite to execute with libndk, but it would crash when trying to do stuff with Vulkan. Would seem to complelty ignore libhoudini which was weird.
And before anyone asks, not because I want to play Fortnite, but because I inadvertently left some poor kid on Fedora where they can play all of their favorite games perfectly fine except fortnite lol.
In theory, you should be able to just play Fortnite on linux this way, but I haven’t been able to get it to launch like this guy did.
I was able to get it to launch but got an anticheat error when I tried to join a game ):
Latest release was 2 weeks ago. Not sure how “dead” that is.
Aw man, at first I thought this was an Android desktop OS. Android being in Google’s pocket is trash, but you gotta admit the Android permissions system would be an enormous privacy/security upgrade over nearly all other Linux distros, especially factoring in ease of use/understandability (speaking as someone with a functional Qubes setup).
I think it would be easier to beef up Flatpak’s permissions system than to become reliant on Google
Doesn’t flatpak achieve similar? Won’t ask for permission at runtime though.
Lepton to match Proton, I guess? Very interesting! I wonder what they’re going to do next…Boson? Photon? Gluon? Graviton?
Electr- no, wait.
I think they should’ve called it Electron, since a Proton is a specific particle (or more accurately specific combination of 3 Quarks = Baryon) while Leptons are a whole class of particles (electron, myon, tauon, Neutrinos).
I know Electron is already taken by the JavaScript Software Framework Tool, but still.
Gluon would be a great name to combine all these different tools with each other, where the correct Proton/Lepton/FEX or other (future) translation layers are used automatically, so the user doesn’t need to know that there a different technologies under the hood depending on what your trying to run
An interesting looking frog there. No doubt an in-joke from a certain Linux developer Discord server.
?
I’m not used to the Android ecosystem. Are there any good Android games I would want to play on my PC?
No :)
Idk maybe, but it might be interesting for non game applications like AR apps and such
First thing that comes to my mind is that one-off unmantained and cant be played anymore Dead Space game. Heard that it was great before they killed the support for it.
I play so many interesting touch screen rhythm game that simply not being released on PC :)
There are also region-locked games from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and other region if you like specific multimedia franchise which you can get via QooApp or other third-party store.
I recommend starting your game search here friend. https://f-droid.org/en/categories/games/
Thank you. I am decently underwhelmed.
