Hi I’m have Manjaro installed on both a Pi 400 and a Lenovo Laptop. (The Pi version is to see whether it is worth buying a PinePhone).
While the Lenovo is quite viable as a main machine, (once I discovered AUR and flatpack), the Pi is not. This is not down to performance but lack of essential apps. (AUR attempts to do its job but says the platform is not supported). Apps I can’t use are Chrome, Viber and Session.
Since it would seem this lack of apps is in the control of the app devs, and a major port of the OS is for a mobile phone, I would like to see Android App support included. (AOSP, F-Droid level. not the Google stuff) as an option.
I feel this would close the app gap and make the Pi version a viable daily driver. (And presumably help the PinePhone version too)
Android is a completely different OS, although based on linux. Not very realistic expectation.
You can have more success if you try to convert arm .deb package if that is available for arm debian, but not in manjaro rep.
But generally there is less software for arm. Manjaro cannot do anything about it - each software developer should compile his thing for arm or provide source (then you can coplile/cross compile, but it is pain in the ass to cross compile, trust me).
For a consolation, there is virtually NO arm software for windows. And no sources of course.
The situation will change in the next years, now that apple traced the path and intel is in decline, i think we’ll see more desktop arm cpus and then software. But it will take time.
As I understand it there are at least a couple of options. (e.g. Waydroid) I was more requesting bundling one of them with the OS (just as you might bundle LibreOffice) rather than rewriting the OS so it supports them natively.
I didn’t understand what you mean, sorry. So you actually want making an arm package for android vm like for example waydroid (like it is with wine or vmware or virtualbox on the desktop version). That would be nice. But probably not trivial, when i read the method for manuall installation here. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Waydroid
Manjaro is a community project where the founder and a longtime teammember has teamed up to run their own company offering commercial support for Manjaro.
Even so it is still a community project with the limititations that follows from this.
Apps build for Andriod are Android exclusive - just like Apps build for macOS runs exclusively on macOS.
As someone that has had pretty much every possible device except linux phone and apple pc…
If i have to choose between arm linux/windows/chromeos/android in a laptop form factor, i am on par between some linux and chromeos. I just use too much of google stuff.
Arm in a phone - the sensible choice is still only android or ios, unfortunately.
As i said, i think interesting times are coming and we will see the rise up of arm in the desktop/laptop. And the software will come.
Thanks for the reply, but the question was intended to ask for something like waydroid to be an optional install component (in the way some distros include an emulator, for example) to reduce the problem of the arm version missing some vital apps. (especially since the lack of apps would make the pinephone a non-starter for me.)
My aim is to be able to use Manjoro on a Pi 400 as a main machine, as opposed to just using the 400 with different OSes.
With the editing option, I notice when trying to install from AUR the apps would be compiled and there is an edit option. Would this work with your suggestion? If so and an app builds successfully, should it work, or can it fail?
I tried it a while back, and I couldn’t make it work. (which was why I made this request; to have a working version included). However the version appears to be updated, so I’ll try again. thanks