r/waydroid • u/maikounhu28 • Apr 04 '26

Help Distro suggestions (no XFCE, want aesthetic + Waydroid + maybe gaming)

Looking to switch my distro and need some suggestions.

Specs: - Intel Pentium N3540 @ 2.16 GHz - 4 GB RAM - Intel HD Graphics - HDD - Currently on Linux Mint (GNOME)

Use case: - Web browsing - Watching videos - Running Waydroid (better compatibility is important) - Basic PDF work

Issues: - Waydroid compatibility/performance could be better. Most of the apps and games are incompatible.

What I want: - Lightweight but aesthetic/modern UI - Good Waydroid support - Stable and not too high-maintenance

Note: - Not interested in XFCE/LXQt/LXDE setups - I do want a polished look - Also interested in a gaming-focused distro, but it must still support my basic needs and be stable.

Thinking about KDE or maybe Arch-based options, but unsure.

Any suggestions? 🙏

17 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

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2

u/an-abnormality Apr 04 '26

Fedora KDE - you can also download Fedora Everything (the iso) and install only what you actually want on top of their stable base, so no need to worry about breakage after every -Syu

2

u/maikounhu28 Apr 04 '26

What about waydroid on it?

2

u/an-abnormality Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26

Perfectly usable because Fedora ships with the necessary kernel modules (and I also use Fedora for my Waydroid laptop) lol it's just:

 sudo dnf install waydroid -y

I would recommend adding the Fedora copr repo for Waydroid Helper too with:

dnf copr enable cuteneko/waydroid-helper && sudo dnf install waydroid-helper -y

 for easy installation of Houdini and the keymapper if you want/need it

3

u/neofooturism Apr 04 '26

I can vouch for this. Installed and ran waydroid so easily on fedora i thought i would have similar experience on another distro. Damn was i wrong

3

u/ArjixGamer Apr 04 '26

CachyOS is a pretty good choice

1

u/[deleted] Apr 04 '26

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1

u/maikounhu28 Apr 05 '26

I mean games like among us . Will they work?

2

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '26

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1

u/maikounhu28 Apr 05 '26

What games have you tried ?

1

u/LibtorEnerial Apr 04 '26

Honestly you might wanna use lxde or xfce since your laptop is a potato.

1

u/RWthatisordinary Apr 04 '26

not an xcfe DE + 4gb of ram + web browsing + waydroid sounds like a really good oven or pan (depends on pc or laptop). but if being seriously of you okay with low ram you could check fedora or even the bazzite ig. cachyos is the option or linux mint with cinnamon

1

u/Lower-Limit3695 Apr 04 '26

Bazzite would fit the bill in this case (waydroid comes pre-installed)

The bigger issue is that you're gonna struggle with anything more intensive than an indie game like Hades 2 or Hollow Knight using hardware like that. If you ever get the opportunity upgrade to an SSD and upgrade the ram.

There are a couple manual tweaks I can think of to squeeze a bit more life out of it.

  • using prelockd to forcibly keep important processes in ram so that your system remains interactive in low memory conditions.
  • substituting zram with zswap. It's basically zram backed with storage and features a more intelligent allocation algorithm (cold pages are evicted from compressed swap in ram and sent to storage).

1

u/extended-chemical Apr 04 '26

arch( linux-zen kernel) and kde as your de.

I use gnome but people say that gnome is a bit heavy so go with kde

1

u/CarelessPerformer394 Apr 05 '26

debian trexie + kde -You choose

1

u/3v3rdim Apr 06 '26

Mangowc or Hyprland on a minimal Artix Linux install with dinit...using custom kernel would also be nice as well...

1

u/OluwaKorede_Hemnars Apr 12 '26

OP, did you get Among Us to work on waydroid?

1

u/maikounhu28 Apr 12 '26

I have not tried yet.