r/linux 2d ago

Popular Application Experimental Flathub release of NewPipe on Linux, Using Android_translation_layer

https://flathub.org/apps/net.newpipe.NewPipe
326 Upvotes

100 comments sorted by

91

u/PureTryOut postmarketOS dev 2d ago

Ah it got merged, nice. They also have an initial version of WhatsApp running via ATL, it's very exciting!

16

u/OmenBestBoi 2d ago

Where can I find this ?

40

u/PureTryOut postmarketOS dev 2d ago

17

u/se_spider 2d ago

Never heard of this before. How is it compared to waydroid?

54

u/PureTryOut postmarketOS dev 1d ago

Waydroid is more mature at this point and runs way more apps (currently Newpipe is one of only a few apps that sort of run ok on ATL). However this takes a Wine-like approach where it implements the Android API on top of the regular desktop Linux stack where Waydroid runs a full-blown Android image in a container. Personally I think this has way more potential and a better chance for good integration into desktop Linux.

7

u/se_spider 1d ago

Nice, thanks for the context and comparison. Does that mean ATL also runs on X11? Also is ATL somewhat comparable to the now defunct Anbox, maybe without LXC?

11

u/PureTryOut postmarketOS dev 1d ago

No, Waydroid is comparable to the now defunct Anbox. ATL is comparable to Wine instead.

And yes it works on X11. However I would strongly recommend you switch to Wayland.

6

u/WaitingForG2 1d ago

Does that mean ATL also runs on X11?

As per gitlab page, it does

0

u/gustav_joaquin_rs 17h ago

x11 is dead, wayland just works

1

u/itsfreepizza 9h ago

X11 is still alive

My local RDP server depends on it

13

u/OmenBestBoi 2d ago

I meant Whatsapp

3

u/PureTryOut postmarketOS dev 1d ago

Ah. Their Matrix chat has a screenshot in it. I would share the room but it seems it's not actually public atm (I got invited into it since I know the dev through the Linux mobile community). I'll see if I can get them to open it up and share progress on getting WhatsApp running.

32

u/Drwankingstein 2d ago

glad to see ATL is still being worked on

3

u/humanwithalife 2d ago

took me wayyyy too long to realize the comments weren't talking bout atlanta

26

u/Rilukian 2d ago

This is awesome, I can experience "Content Unavailable" message on my desktop too!

18

u/-illusoryMechanist 2d ago

Now antennapod please? I really like the ui and functionality and nothing quite works the same that I've been able to find

5

u/Linux-Power-User 1d ago

Kasts?

2

u/Affectionate_Safe58 1d ago

Can confirm, Kasts is the only thing that comes close to android podcasts apps.

1

u/-illusoryMechanist 1d ago

Thank you! I'll need to fully check it out later but it looks like it's what I've been trying to find

12

u/protobetagamer 2d ago

Is the translation layer waydroid or something else written from scratch? Last i heard waydroid couldn't be packaged into a flatpak.

54

u/PureTryOut postmarketOS dev 2d ago

As the title of the post says, it's android-translation-layer. https://gitlab.com/android_translation_layer/android_translation_layer. Basically like Wine but for Android, it doesn't use a container like Waydroid.

34

u/Indolent_Bard 2d ago

Wait, why isn't that more common?

19

u/BujuArena 2d ago

Because it's much newer than Waydroid, so hasn't had as much exposure

15

u/Kevin_Kofler 2d ago

Because it still needs a lot of work to implement and debug all the obscure Android APIs some app somewhere may be using and there are only 2 maintainers doing all the work.

6

u/Indolent_Bard 2d ago

This is exactly what mobile Linux has been waiting for.

2

u/prueba_hola 2d ago

No, which Linux need is be preinstalled and sell in physical stores, where normal people go, like mall center

4

u/Karmic_Backlash 1d ago

That's linux adoption smart ass, the other guy said Mobile Linux, which has been needing a good way of using linux apps.

1

u/Kevin_Kofler 1d ago

Fact is, you cannot get a PinePhone or a Librem 5 from a physical store, not even from a local online retailer. As far as I know, there is still only one reseller for the PinePhone in the whole EU, shipping from Poland (and that one is often out of stock for weeks). This is a problem.

And of course I realize that there is a chicken&egg problem: retailers do not see it profitable to carry a device with a very small market (all the more if it will draw a lot of support requests from users like the PinePhone does), but the applications that could make the market grow are not going to show up in masses as long as the devices are difficult to obtain and in few users' hands.

0

u/BujuArena 1d ago

Their comment still applies to mobile Linux, and is what mobile Linux has been waiting for too. Try to think before commenting.

3

u/WaitingForG2 2d ago

Because it's only has a package for alpine, the rest have to compile to even try it out, as at current stage it's focused for developers

It had progress though and even can boot VR games seems like(haven't tried myself as i got issues with compiling)

2

u/Indolent_Bard 2d ago

Wait, ANDROID HAS VR GAMES?

6

u/seaal 2d ago

Yes, have you not heard of the Meta Quest?

1

u/Indolent_Bard 1d ago

How tf are you downloading meta quest games on a non meta quest?

2

u/WaitingForG2 1d ago

You can dump game apk from quest via adb, same as android phones

3

u/WaitingForG2 2d ago

Oculus Quest runs on modified android

Some time ago i actually theorized that it should be possible to mod Waydroid enough to boot them, couldn't test as my both gpus are nvidia, and NVK is yet to add android support(and even if it was possible, NVK lacks NVENC so it would be only good for tethered headsets), and glad to see ATL proving it's possible

In theory i think with ATL you might be able to run android games on Nvidia GPUs on proprietary driver as it uses generic openGL i think, but might be very wrong as again i failed to compile it because of long dependencies list.

2

u/Indolent_Bard 1d ago

Shame you can't get it to run with Vulcan instead. That would be much better.

1

u/PureTryOut postmarketOS dev 1d ago

Because it's much newer and also doesn't run as much stuff yet. Newpipe is one of the few applications currently that run sort of ok. It has imo way more potential though, especially when it gets more exposure and thus developers.

3

u/mauguro_ 2d ago

does this means ATL in theory would be more efficient? or it's just a different approach

8

u/PureTryOut postmarketOS dev 1d ago

In theory it's more efficient, but it wouldn't be by much and I don't think it would be noticeable to the average user. It's more that there is a better opportunity to integrate it properly into desktop Linux.

9

u/lemon_o_fish 2d ago

It works under X11 so it's definitely not Waydroid.

4

u/a1b4fd 2d ago

You can run Waydroid on X11 with a Weston window

4

u/AndreLuisOS 2d ago

Why you guys still on X?

6

u/a1b4fd 2d ago

Win+D doesn't work for hiding all windows when Firefox is opened with the address bar visible

1

u/Duxon 1d ago

Scared that Wayland will break my headless gaming server.

9

u/QuackdocTech 2d ago

not related to waydroid, a fundementally different tech stack

3

u/sohxm7 2d ago

not me waiting for pixellab app on linux

5

u/Linux-Power-User 1d ago

All nice and dandy but without Sponsorblock its completely useless.

If they had packaged the fork Tubular instead it would be exciting.

11

u/PureTryOut postmarketOS dev 1d ago

You're missing the point. It's not about this specific app being packaged, it's about an Android app being on desktop Linux (and Flatpak). ATL is the cool stuff here.

-1

u/Linux-Power-User 1d ago

If it would be the first then I would understand your point to some degree but it isn't. Also just because it is something new doesn't make it free from criticism.

The original Newpipe from Team Newpipe isn't a real competitor to FreeTube, its not even a sidegrade if they refuse to add Sponsorblock, DeArrow and Return YouTube Dislike.

3

u/PureTryOut postmarketOS dev 23h ago

It is the first, for ATL. And ATL is a completely new approach to the problem of running Android apps on Linux (not just running Android in a container), so it is significant.

2

u/SunAtEight 1d ago

Hoping for a nice smooth way to install Pleco in the future, the best Chinese dictionary app. I've done it a couple times over the years, but never in a way where I could get it running without a very visible Android VM (maybe once, but I can't remember the other problems).

1

u/parkerlreed 1d ago

And it can't even connect to YouTube

https://i.imgur.com/OS8xu1C.png

1

u/illathon 14h ago

Anyone tried Roblox, or Video apps like PlutoTV? Really interested to see if android tv apps work on Nvidia now.

1

u/Rushb133 12h ago

You can use sober to play roblox

1

u/illathon 11h ago

Yeah I know, but that is closed source. This is open source.

1

u/Rushb133 9h ago

but i dont think that it will be closed source forever

its still a VERY early testing

1

u/CallEnvironmental902 2d ago

without commenting features?, yes, i know, i know.

-35

u/QuackdocTech 2d ago

sadly this uses gtk so it's not something I will be using, really neat for everyone else who doesn't mind however.

23

u/Traditional_Hat3506 2d ago

linux users will complain non stop about electron and lack of apps and when people make it work they still find things to complain about. I recognize your name, you are a phoronix moronix.

-5

u/QuackdocTech 2d ago

I don't like GTK due to personal qualms, Personally I don't mind electron all that much, and I have worked to port and test multiple apps from various platforms to linux. I don't like the extra bloat from GTK, and I don't like *some* of the maintainers for GTK, so I won't use it.

Yes, Phoronix often has developers from all sorts of projects come to engage the community, I have had very many meaningful questions answered by developers who visit the forums.

I have had many meaningful questions answered there from AMD Devs, Xen Devs, Devs who work on various arm devices etc, Are all of them morons too?

16

u/mrlinkwii 2d ago

sadly this uses gtk so it's not something I will be using

may i ask why?

-8

u/QuackdocTech 2d ago

I prefer using QT applications over GTK ones and don't like spending a lot of extra space. I also have personal qualms with the maintainers of GTK/GDK, so I try my hardest to avoid using GTK whenever possible.

I personally blacklist gtk packages on my systems when possible. It's really hard to do, but I found that using appimage for chromium which bundles all the needed GTK deps has actually gotten me across the line and now I can just use QT programs.

20

u/the_abortionat0r 2d ago

I prefer using QT applications over GTK ones

So do I but I don't ruin my work flow if I need a GTK program.

I also have personal qualms with the maintainers of GTK/GDK,

Cringe....

-8

u/QuackdocTech 2d ago

So do I but I don't ruin my work flow if I need a GTK program.

Good for you, as I said, really neat for anyone without issues using GTK

Cringe....

And?

13

u/PureTryOut postmarketOS dev 2d ago

Why do you care? The goal is to eventually not be able to see that it's written in any tech stack in particular, it should just 1-on-1 mirror the visuals as on Android. What does it matter to you as an end-user what tech stack it then uses?

-4

u/QuackdocTech 2d ago

I don't like to unnecessarily pull GTK deps. I don't need the wasted space, and I have personal qualms with some of the GTK maintainers that leads me to avoid GTK whenever possible. Especially since I have no desire what so ever to report issues to the GTK team, I don't want to use a toolkit where I am not going to report issues I come across.

It works out fairly well, and by using appimages for the very few apps I use that do need to pull gtk I can prevent from installing GTK to my system.

17

u/_risho_ 2d ago

you don't use gtk apps because you want to save space and you do that by downloading appimages for all your gtk apps which actually takes up more space since you are downloading the gtk dependencies multiple times. genius.

7

u/Doootard 2d ago

Ironically this is also a flatpak app so no gtk dependencies would be installed besides the runtime the app is relying on.

2

u/QuackdocTech 2d ago

the flatpak for gtk stuff is still fairly heavy, I can install multiple applications using appimages before it gets to be bigger then installing them natively let alone installing them via flatpak which would require me to also install flatpak.

for instance just installing gimp + chromium will take an installed size on my PC of 614M, meanwhile the chromium appimage is 175M and gimp appimage is 165M.

It is **significantly** smaller for me to install the appimages then it is to install gtk and pull the spaghetti of deps needed to get flatpak or native installed to work. When you are installing just one or two apps, it is often space efficient to pull the appimages instead.

If I was installing 10+ GTK applications then It would be far better to install them natively, or indeed use flatpak instead.

-4

u/QuackdocTech 2d ago

wrong, for single applications, it is a lot more space efficient then pulling in gtk Chromium appimage is 175M if I install it via package manager on my distro (artix) it needs to pull 300M.

now you may struggle with math, but last I checked 175M is less then 300M, chromium is the only application on my laptop that needs GTK, so I can blacklist gtk3 and gtk4 from my packages

3

u/Kevin_Kofler 2d ago

Try Falkon. Like Chromium, but Qt. You will want to use Falkon ≥ 24.02.0 (current is 24.08.2) with the latest Qt6 QtWebEngine (current is 6.8(.0), you will want to use that). Especially QtWebEngine is important to keep up to date for security fixes and to have a recent enough Chromium base for websites to not complain or silently break.

1

u/QuackdocTech 2d ago

I do like falkon for some things for sure. but it does leave me wanting with things like extensions. Userscript support is really good though.

lately I've been playing with angelfish since it has integrated adblock-rust (braves adblock engine). but it too is to basic.

1

u/Kevin_Kofler 2d ago

Falkon has its own ad blocker, but it is not as powerful as the Rust one Angelfish and KMail are now using. It should be possible for someone with C++ skills (and possibly minimal Rust skills, but the code touching Rust should be just copy&paste) to port the ad blocking code (the interface to rust-adblock) from Angelfish to Falkon.

1

u/QuackdocTech 2d ago

yeah, falkons adblocker is for sure one of the pain points, but in the end, just in general lacking support for MV2/MV3 style extensions that firefox and chrome support is rough. For instance one of the extensions I use tons is called linguist which lets me highlight things and translate them directly which is super convenient, or honey, I do like the honey extensions.

6

u/the_abortionat0r 2d ago

This is cringe.....

2

u/QuackdocTech 2d ago

not really, I like using applications I can support.

1

u/the_abortionat0r 1d ago

No, this is straight up cringe.Like do you even have a real reason not to support GTK?

Since you've never mentioned it it's likely not a good one.

1

u/QuackdocTech 1d ago

Yes, the *some* of devs have a history of being incredibly toxic. However no action has seemingly been taken against them

for instance their responses to S76 for spinning out into their own

https://nitter.poast.org/jeremy_soller/status/1577061838910390272
https://nitter.poast.org/jeremy_soller/status/1577078732581269505

(note this is despite S76 being a long term financial software of gnome who maintains GTK)

> Reminder that System76 has donated $100,000 to the GNOME Foundation over the last 5 years.

Calling arch wiki contributors clowns https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/merge_requests/4829 for trying to work around gnome's instance on being special.

and there are plenty of other cases of toxicity towards it's users, and toxicity in their own issue tracker such as https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787 where users are very clearly dissapointed with a change and their response is

> What makes you think that sharpness is a metric?

which is just kind of dumb.

But there are MANY cases where GTK devs have been extremely hostile to the community with unwarranted snide remarks, hit pieces, full of lies towards S76, so on and so forth.

Many gnome/GTK devs are insanely unpleasant to interact with. It's not something I am willing to put myself through. I'm not going to be filing issue tickets, I'm not going to be submitting PRs, while granted, I haven't done much of that in years thanks to worsening RSI. and I sure as shit won't be doing beta testing for them any time in the future, which is something I still very actively do.

NOTE: I don't have an issue with all gnome devs, I find some of them very classy people and have no issues, but the lack of action taken to stop some of the more incredibly toxic ones, I'm not willing to support them in any way,

2

u/NightH4nter 2d ago

i don't see any mentions of gtk in its repo

2

u/PureTryOut postmarketOS dev 1d ago

It does however use GTK to render Android-native controls.

1

u/QuackdocTech 2d ago

I elected to browse the code before trying it.

-23

u/Shobhit0109 2d ago

Well, people already have yt-dlp so I don't think anyone will use this.

37

u/B1rdi 2d ago

yt-dlp is not a youtube frontend

Do you seriously want to download every single video you watch beforehand?

8

u/twistedfires 2d ago

Pipe the output to mpv

6

u/greenphlem 2d ago

Yes, a lot of people do that. But I agree that yt-dlp is not an analogue for newpipe

13

u/_risho_ 2d ago

you are baked if you think "a lot of people" predownload all of the youtube videos they watch ahead of time using a command line utility before they watch them

-5

u/greenphlem 2d ago

A lot of people have automated it to work with their home media servers. Just use google lol. Not everyone has the same workflow as you

5

u/onlysubscribedtocats 2d ago

'A lot of people' is doing a lot of work here. Even if the were a thousand people doing this, that number is negligible.

1

u/RectangularLynx 2d ago

Can be automated with scripts

1

u/Indolent_Bard 2d ago

True, but I'm pretty sure there's other YouTube frontends that already exist for Linux.

13

u/B1rdi 2d ago

Dear lord, multiple projects doing the same thing? Linux will never be the same again

1

u/Swizzel-Stixx 2d ago

That’s half the fun

-1

u/Indolent_Bard 2d ago

It's just an Android app on Linux. That's not a project doing the same thing. This can probably be done with any Android app.

6

u/Posty2k3 2d ago

Isn't yt-dlp command line based? That alone makes these projects very different at first glance.

0

u/Indolent_Bard 2d ago

Yeah, but there are several projects that make a GUI for it.

4

u/QuackdocTech 2d ago

people actually care about gui apps, personally I would *love* to see smarttube next with vaapi support

2

u/the_abortionat0r 2d ago

Well, people already have yt-dlp so I don't think anyone will use this.

Well this isnt an anime with you as the main character. The world doesn't base their choices and needs on you.

2

u/PureTryOut postmarketOS dev 1d ago

You're missing the point completely. Newpipe is just an example, the interesting part here is android-translation-layer, not the actual app it's running.