Any interest in exploring running F-Droid on Windows 11?

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It’s what I said with Flatpak by email, but…

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F-Droid appears to work quite well on WSA on Windows 11.

WSA itself currently is pretty clunky. The Amazon App Store that it requires doesn’t appear to have much in it (but it will load up apps that are in my account left over from an abandoned Kindle Fire.

The OTHER issue is that apps install under F-Droid interfiled in the Windows 11 start menu without any indicators that they are Android. Using Simple App Launcher to drive around that limitation so I can keep track of them.

I run Transistor from F-Droid so I have the same streaming radio on everything I use. Primitive ftpd was used to upload the stations from my phone.

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In Linux there’s software to install and boot Android x86 based on LineageOS.
It requires Wayland and it integrates in the system.

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Update: I am experimenting with Discreet Laucher vs Simple Launcher. It has the advantage of staying open after the selected app is started – whether that’s beneficial is likely a matter of personal preference. I already use DL on my phone so now I am looking at the same launcher in both places.

What BOTH of these do is expose underlying functions that are otherwise a nusiance to get at. Like the Android settings and the native android Contacts app. The Contacts app is connected via DAVx5, which also appears to work fine. Now I can see my phone contacts on the PC and have the the same group functionality as my Nokia phone and Samsung tablet.

What WSA does is open up possibilities for interoperability between Windows and Android for ordinary Windows PC users. All it requires is side-loading an app store like F-Droid and skipping anything that requires Google Services and you are off and running. What I’ve tried that works well on my tablet appears work fine in WSA.

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Final update for the benefit of anyone else who is interested in trying F-Droid on WSA - what I have settled down to using in parallel with tablet and phone:

Discrete Launcher
Material Files
primitive ftpd
DAVx5
FairEmail
Transistor
Several SECUSO games
ImapNotes3

ImapNotes3 solves a long-standing problem in Windows where there was no offline access to the notes feature in my Fastmail account.

The native android contacts app continues to work fine.

Have tried Simple Contacts but that doesn’t appear stable under WSA. I have also abandoned Simple Launcher. WSA just updated to Android 13 and the launcher quit scaling icons properly. Other Simple Apps also appear to currently have issues.

There doesn’t appear to be any native calendar function in WSA. I am currently using Business Calendar 2 Pro (via the Amazon Appstore). This is probably my one concession to closed source for interoperability with Windows.

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All good things must come to an end. Much mention of genteel mutual fingerpointing:

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Still there are other solutions to run Android apps on Desktop:

  • Emulators:
  • Container based
    • Waydroid a LineageOS compiled for x86 and started in LXC container. Works only on Linux and only with Wayland (GNOME, Unity) but also doesn’t work on Nvidia GPU.
  • Full OS: run in a virtual machine or dual-boot
    • Android x86
    • BlendOS is a Linux distro that already have pre-installed Waydroid with F-Droid and Aurora stores. See Demo
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The Waydroid is part of BlissOS so it may be better to try it first