My girlfriend has a roughly six-year-old laptop that still performs well for her main use: playing a few Hoyo mobile games. She currently uses Windows 10, but increasing update prompts, odd settings issues, an unreliable system clock, and a possibly failing battery have made us consider switching the laptop to Linux. A Fedora live session worked well and none of those Windows problems appeared there.
The main concern is game compatibility. Hoyo games generally do not have official Linux versions, and she is worried about being banned because she has spent money and years of time on her account. I have managed to run Genshin through Steam, but I am unsure about the other games.
Would Waydroid be a practical way to play these Android games on Linux without excessive lag? Are there any known account or anti-cheat risks, even when playing normally? The laptop has an RTX 2060. If Waydroid is unreliable, are there other Linux-friendly options worth trying?
2 Answers
Waydroid compatibility seems to vary by game. Genshin has been reported to start and run, although the available graphics settings may not look ideal on a large monitor. Zenless Zone Zero was less reliable and crashed during an in-game transition. Hoyo's anti-cheat makes guarantees difficult, so there is always some account-risk uncertainty outside officially supported platforms.
Hardware and graphics-driver support matter a lot. Waydroid tends to work best with Intel or AMD graphics; an Nvidia card may require more setup, and using integrated graphics could be worth testing if the dedicated GPU causes problems.
The RTX 2060 should be capable enough from a performance standpoint, but the GPU and driver stack are more important than the age of the laptop. Waydroid is not automatically guaranteed to support every game, so testing from a separate Linux installation or live environment first would be sensible. For Genshin specifically, the Steam-based desktop setup may be the simplest option.
Genshin also works for us through Steam using the desktop version, and it has continued working through several updates. I will compare that with the other launcher options.