First and foremost, I am an Android developer and use Windows primarily as my OS, although I have been a casual, on-and-off Linux user since ~2006. I’ve been wanting to completely move to Linux, but, every time I try to, I always encounter something that makes me go back to Windows. It may be a software that just isn’t available on Linux or that doesn’t have a good-enough equivalent. Or most of the time, I break my Linux installation because of some changes I made.
I think that, after all these years, Linux has become much more stable, and less prone to breaking when you tinker with it. And with these new immutable versions, I think there’s even less chances of breaking it.
I have tried Fedora Silverblue and Kinoite before. But, I found it such a pain to install some of the tools I need for Android development (among other stuff).
I’m not really well-versed in these new immutable Linux OSes and “container-based development”. And correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like these setups are geared more towards web development than Android/mobile app development.
So, would it benefit me if I use Bluefin-DX or Aurora-DX (or any of the development-focused immutable variants) for Android development? Are there any Android developers here who uses any of these immutable OSes as their daily development driver? How is the experience for you?
We built these with container focused development in mind, but if we suck at android development it’s because no one on the team has experience with this and we also haven’t really had anyone try.
Happy to make whatever adjustments are necessary, we just need detailed notes on what to enable, etc.
OK, wow. Thanks! I got a reply from the man himself. I’ve recently discovered your Youtube channel and have been watching your videos about Bluefin, and it got me really interested in this project.
Anyway, one of the issues I encountered when I tried Silverblue and Kinoite was regarding VM/hardware acceleration for the Android emulator. When you install Android Studio and the Android SDK, it will ask you to “configure VM acceleration” for the emulator. They (Android/Google) only have instructions to do this for Ubuntu. But, I found some unofficial instructions for Fedora-based systems here. But, the issue is, I cannot run those (dnf) commands in Silverblue/Kinoite (I think the term is “layering”?) and I don’t know the rpm-ostree equivalent for achieving those. I also doubt configuring acceleration in a toolbx container would work.
Maybe I’ll give Bluefin-DX a try first and see how it goes.
I download the tar.gz package from the Android website and just unpack that somewhere in my home folder. I don’t like using the Flatpack/Snap versions because (1) they’re not really officially from Google and (2) they’re often a few versions behind.
You should install Android Studio via JB Toolbox, it’s a faster and better way to update it. And as for Android emulation, I already tried it on Aurora-DX (same underlying stuff as Bluefin, just different clothes ) and it works beautifully on my laptop.
Thanks to all those who answered. Yep, I read the docs more thoroughly and discovered Jetbrains toolbox can be installed. So I did that and installed Android Studio through that.
+1 for installing through JB toolbox (installed with ujust install-jetbrains-toolbox). Very seamless, super fast, and the emulator works great! Maybe we should add a section to the docs about Android development?
I’ve recently discovered your Youtube channel and have been watching your videos about Bluefin, and it got me really interested in this project.
) and it works beautifully on my laptop.