Waydroid uses software rendering, and needs a modified build of the Waydroid Android image with mali blobs, so currently malior-droid is recommended instead.
Waydroid is an Android compatibility layer that runs on top of Linux. This allows some Android apps to run on your ARM-based SBC.
Waydroid relies on the Wayland compositing engine in Linux. The Linux graphical engine can run on top of the legacy X11 compositing engine, or the newer Wayland compositing engine. It is important to note that Waydroid only works on the Wayland compositing engine.
The Armbian downloads for the Nova allow the compositing engine to be selected at the login screen.
We haven't been able to get Waydroid to run successfully yet. This is what we've tried so far.
Open a terminal by pressing CTRL + ALT + T. Enter the following commands:
sudo apt install curl ca-certificates -y
sudo curl --proto-default https --tlsv1.2 -Sf https://repo.waydro.id/waydroid.gpg --output /usr/share/keyrings/waydroid.gpg
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/waydroid.list
In the waydroid.list file, enter the following line at the beginning:
deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/waydroid.gpg] https://repo.waydro.id/ jammy main
Save and exit from nano.
Enter the following commands into the terminal:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install waydroid -y
sudo systemctl enable --now waydroid-container
sudo waydroid init
At this point, we are greeted with:
[20:07:52] Failed to load binder driver
[20:07:52] modprobe: FATAL: Module binder_linux not found in directory /lib/modules/5.10.110-rockchip-rk3588-indiedroid
[20:07:52] ERROR: Binder node "binder" for waydroid not found
[20:07:52] See also: <https://github.com/waydroid>
From our understanding, the kernel needs to be compiled with some additional modules enabled. We're hoping some of the OS developers can help make this happen soon.