Trierarch

中文 | English

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Download: latest APK → GitHub Releases.

Demo

| KDE Plasma (Wayland) | Firefox (inside proot) | |------------------------|-------------------------| | | |

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Trierarch is an Android app that runs an Arch Linux rootfs using a proot-style container, with a custom Wayland compositor (development and tuning focus on KDE Plasma (Wayland)). The goal is your own Arch + KDE Plasma 6 (Wayland) mobile desktop.

1. First launch: automatic rootfs download

• If there is no usable rootfs under data_dir/arch at first launch, the app downloads and extracts the Arch Linux aarch64 rootfs from proot-distro (~156 MB). Network required.

2. Before the desktop: install Plasma inside proot (and basics)

In the Arch shell inside proot, update first, then install the desktop (example; adjust packages as you like):

pacman -Syu
pacman -S plasma-desktop dolphin konsole

3. Side menu and Display (open menu, enable Wayland, run Display)

• Side menu — Two-finger swipe from the left edge of the screen toward the right to open it. Below: side menu in the terminal/Wayland view vs after entering the desktop.

| Side menu (terminal / Wayland view) | Side menu (desktop session) | |-------------------------------------|-----------------------------| | | |

• First, turn Wayland on in the side menu.

• Display — Long-press to edit the Display startup script; short-press to run it and start Plasma. If a Wayland client is already connected, the app does not run the script again.

Recommended script (session D-Bus via dbus-launch, then Plasma Wayland; redirect output so the script doesn’t block):

dbus-launch --exit-with-session startplasma-wayland > /dev/null 2>&1 &

4. After Plasma starts: View Settings and terminal ↔ desktop switching

View Settings

Open View Settings from the side menu to tune the compositor and pointer behavior:

• Pointer / mouse mode — e.g. touchpad-style (relative) vs tablet-style (absolute).
• UI size vs clarity — Resolution and Scale can be combined: Resolution lowers output resolution to reduce compositing load and adjusts on-screen element size; Scale resizes via scaling without changing the backing resolution to keep text/UI sharp. There’s no single “correct” mix—tune until it fits your device and habits.

Switching between terminal and desktop with Display

After Plasma is running, tap Display again to return to the terminal / Wayland view; swipe the side menu open from the left again → Display to go back to the desktop. The side menu and Display work in both the shell view and on the desktop.

5. Keyboard and input (side menu Keyboard, GTK / Qt)

The side Keyboard entry can invoke the soft keyboard.

In GTK apps you can enter non-ASCII characters (Chinese, emoji, special characters, etc.); input is completed automatically via the Ctrl+Shift+U path.

Qt apps often don’t support that path: type in a GTK app first (Mousepad), then copy/paste into Qt. The Android soft keyboard and Plasma clipboard are not integrated—copy/paste inside Linux using the mouse or shortcuts (e.g. Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V). You can use a full soft keyboard such as Unexpected Keyboard (GitHub).

6. In-rootfs tuning (trierarch-optimize) and Arch documentation

Topic guides for tuning apps inside the rootfs desktop are in trierarch-optimize/README.md (中文), with links to articles (Firefox, non-ASCII input and fonts, etc.).

For general Arch Linux setup, packages, and troubleshooting, use ArchWiki and the Arch Linux Chinese Wiki. This app provides proot + Wayland on a phone; many Arch steps match a normal desktop install, but kernel features, full systemd sessions, etc. may differ.

To build from source, see README_DEV.md. Contributing & security: CONTRIBUTING.md, SECURITY.md; changes in CHANGELOG.md; releases: docs/RELEASING.md.

Acknowledgments

Trierarch stands on many open-source projects. Thanks to their authors and communities, including (non-exhaustively):

• PRoot and the Termux ecosystem; Arch rootfs from proot-distro releases
• Wayland and wayland-protocols (under trierarch-wayland/)
• libffi · Rust · Kotlin · Jetpack Compose · Android / NDK
• The KDE Plasma and Arch Linux communities
• Unexpected Keyboard (third-party keyboard mentioned in this README)

Bundled third-party code includes its own license files in-tree (e.g. COPYING, LICENSE under vendored paths). This section is a thank-you, not a complete legal notice.