AlaskaLinuxUser's Scratchpad

Setting up Android Studio on a HP Compaq 6715b AMD Turion X2 processor was far from simple. I followed numerous guides online, read dozens of articles on Stack Overflow, and yet, I was still stuck. Until I finally got it going (Praise God!). So, what made it so difficult? Well, let me tell you:

It all started when I bought a technical book from Amazon for kindle. Somehow, that book got me a reference to a course on Udemy called “The Complete Android Developer Course” By Rob Percival. Normally, the course was $200 plus, but for some reason it was on sale for a mere $17! The course said that it was designed for what I call “zero to hero” students, or those who knew little to nothing about the subject to train them to know enough to be dangerous, er, uh, useful. Needless to say, I purchased the online course.

In the course, which is a bit older now, Rob is using Android Studio 1.1 and suggests that students could use newer versions, but that they could also use AS 1.1 if they want everything to look and act the exact same way as in the course material. So, I downloaded AS 1.1. There were so many problems getting that to run, that I will not even discuss those here, for fear of nightmarish flashbacks.

So, I downloaded the latest version for Linux, 2.2. It launched first try. I followed instructions from a blog here:

http://ridz1ba.blogspot.com/2015/07/how-to-install-oracle-java-and-android.html

Which worked to get Android Studio to start. However, after following along through the course, it was time to launch my first app, which did not launch. Instead I received the following error:

[CODE]
glxinfo
libGL error: unable to load driver: swrast_dri.so
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast
X Error of failed request: BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)
Major opcode of failed request: 155 (GLX)
Minor opcode of failed request: 24 (X_GLXCreateNewContext)
Value in failed request: 0x0
Serial number of failed request: 38
Current serial number in output stream: 39
[/CODE]

This lead me on a painful search, from which I would like to save you similar users from doing and afflicting yourselves with. Here was what I did in the end:

I thought that for my model/make of processor, I could not use the x86 version of the emulator, so, when I set up a new device, or create a new virtual device, I needed to click on the “other” tab and choose an arm variant. This did not solve the issue, the same error happened when trying to launch my app.

Then I realized that I needed to install more dependencies. I used aptitude search and found that I also needed to install these:

[CODE]$ sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa-swrast-dev libgl1-mesa-dev -y [/CODE]

Then, when I pressed launch, the android phone would appear, but it stayed blank. Finally, I found taht I had a graphics issue, which I could resolve by creating a new virtual device, and choosing “advanced features”. In those features is the option to use software graphics instead of hardware graphics. After selecting that, launching my app made the phone appear, AND it began to boot.

Now I can boot using the arm version or the x86 version. However, in the arm version, it is so slow that it is practically unusable. In the x86 version, it is also very slow, but usable, and I receive these errors:

[CODE]
WARNING: The Mesa software renderer is deprecated. Use Swiftshader (-gpu swiftshader) for software rendering.
emulator: WARNING: Host CPU is missing the following feature(s) required for x86 emulation: SSSE3
Hardware-accelerated emulation may not work properly!
[/CODE]

The first start up took a while, but now, when I make changes to my app, from pressing launch to actually seeing my app on screen takes 2:27 (m:ss), which is a bit slow, but reasonable on an older laptop. Hopefully, this will help others trying to use Android Studio on older laptops running Debian 8 with a Turion X2 processor.

Linux – keep it simple.