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Applications: Waydroid, TrueNAS, FFmpeg, and GNU/Linux Package Management
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XDA ☛ Linux is the best way to run Android apps on your PC, and it’s not close
Over the years, there have been plenty of solutions for running Android apps on your PC, especially on Windows. Microsoft took its own whack at it with the Windows Subsystem for Android on Windows 11, but even before that, we had solutions like BlueStacks that enabled the same thing, and usually better.
Running Android apps on PC is a fairly popular activity, but what you may not know is that the best way to do it is actually to just use Linux. Thanks to Waydroid, Linux is easily the best method for running Android apps on a PC, and it's very easy to set up. Here's why.
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XDA ☛ TrueNAS just made sharing files from your NAS as easy as a Google Drive link
I'm a big proponent of having a NAS in your home, even if the setup is rudimentary, as opposed to paying for cloud services. A NAS allows you to keep your files secure in your own network, though it does come with downsides when it comes to file sharing. Setting up access to files on your NAS can be a complicated process if you don't want to risk exposing your entire server to the internet, which is a major security risk.
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HowTo Geek ☛ FFmpeg 8.1 upgrades the best open-source media converter with a splash of Vulkan
Even if you’ve never used FFmpeg, you’ve almost certainly used a video editor or media conversion tool based on it. FFmpeg is one of the most popular tools for recording, converting, and streaming audio and video, and version 8.1 has arrived with some Vulkan-powered enhancements.
For some media codecs, FFmpeg has multiple options for encoding and decoding files, which can improve performance with the right hardware. The past few releases added Vulkan Compute as an option for H.264 (one of the most common video formats), HEVC (a newer format common with Apple devices and media streaming), ProRes RAW, and FFv1. The latest FFmpeg 8.1 release is adding DPX decoding and normal ProRes encoding/decoding to that list.
You probably know Vulkan as a graphics API powering many modern games and 3D-accelerated applications, but it can also handle some general computing tasks. The Khronos Group, which maintains the Vulkan standard, explained, “FFmpeg uses Vulkan Compute to seamlessly accelerate encoding and decoding of even professional-grade video on consumer GPUs — unlocking GPU compute parallelism at scale, without specialized hardware. This approach complements Vulkan Video's fixed-function codec support, extending acceleration to formats and workflows it doesn't cover.”
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XDA ☛ Linux package managers are the main reason I’ll never switch back to Windows, ever
If there's one thing I really appreciate about Linux, it's the package managers. Honestly, it's something that cannot be overstated enough when comparing the OS against Windows to those who have yet to try using one. Once you've spent some time with Linux package management, returning to anything else feels like stepping back onto a more chaotic front with less control, security, and, worst of all, sanity. Look, installing software on Windows is perfectly fine for most people, but it's not the best way to do it.
Linux package managers are essentially tools for automating the process of installing, updating, and removing software. It's entirely different from how Microsoft handles each process on Windows. With Microsoft's OS, you'd need to download some executable file from a website or other destination, launch it, wait for the progress bar to finish, click through some menu screens, and you're done. With Linux, it's all centralized and curated through repositories.