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Tess's Android Wayland Compositor enables rootless Linux GUI apps with hardware acceleration
It lets developers run unmodified Linux graphical programs on Android phones using the native graphics stack without needing root access.
This removes the barrier of needing privileged containers or complex chroot setups to run Linux desktop software on mobile devices. Engineers can now leverage existing Linux toolchains and graphical applications directly on their phones for development, testing, or productivity.
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The project uses tawcroot, a single-process replacement for PRoot, to run a full Linux distribution rootlessly on Android.
A Smithay-based Wayland compositor, XWayland, and a forked libhybris provide hardware-accelerated graphics for both Wayland and X11 apps using the phone’s GLES/Vulkan drivers.
Integration features include a Termux widget launcher, home-screen shortcuts, app-switcher visibility, a built-in task manager, and storage binds for accessing Android data from Linux programs.
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