Hi all, I have an old surface SP7 that I want to wipe and install linux on. I’ve been having fun playing with Waydroid on my other machine, but it is running Mint and the wayland implementation is not very mature. Obviously for a touch screen device being able to run android apps is really beneficial.

I learned about blendOS and it seems like a fun distro to try, looks like waydroid is set up nicely out of the box. Looks cool being able to install packages for all linux flavours. But I wonder if it being immutable will make it more difficult to install the surface kernel. I’m sure its possible, but I don’t want to spend forever messing about with it.

Separate question, anyone had success running GApps on BlendOS waydroid? It was trivial when manually installing, but looks like Blend’s preconfigured to use Aurora or F-droid only

  • @mellejwzEnglish
    2•7 months ago

    I’m not familiar with Blend OS, but if your goal is being able to run Android apps you can also install Waydroid yourself in multiple distro’s. I’m running Debian with Gnome on my Surface Go 2 using the Surface kernel and Waydroid with Gapps. It runs really well.

    • @1111OPEnglish
      1•7 months ago

      Thanks! I actually decided to give up on Blend and try Nobara, which integrates the required surface kernel changes out of the box. I chose the version with KDE Plasma 6 Wayland, and have had no bother getting Waydroid to run. I’m actually having a blast using a machine with full Android and full Linux functionailty

      • @mellejwzEnglish
        1•7 months ago

        Great! Used Arch for a while, with KDE. I’m now using Debian with Gnome permanently.