Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Blink Shell for iOS, an Open-Source, Mosh and SSH Terminal for Pros

blink.sh

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 108 posts

Re: Show HN: Blink Shell for iOS, an Open-Source, Mosh and SSH Terminal for Pros

#61

Post by zejay »

carloscabanero wrote: post #11
ehPReth wrote: post #7

Does it allow you to verify fingerprints? [Hopefully with the new & improved case-sensitive SHA256 format as well? :)]

If I remember, fingerprint was verified using libssh2, but I do not think they do SHA256 yet. Tried to look in their documentation but didn't find it. Would be a great addition too.

Right now it seems to show an SHA1 hash encoded in hex, which is very inconvenient because ssh-keygen displays either MD5 in hex or SHA256 in base64. It should at least tell the user what hash algo was used, I found that out by trial and error.

Re: Show HN: Blink Shell for iOS, an Open-Source, Mosh and SSH Terminal for Pros

#62

Post by mark_l_watson »

carloscabanero wrote: post #4
rhinoceraptor wrote: post #2

How does it compare to Panic's Prompt?

Three things: - Mosh & SSH support: In Prompt and any other iOS ssh client, connections break every 3 minutes. With Mosh that isn't a problem. - Full external keyboard support: Alt as Esc, Caps as Ctrl, you can have your terminal as you do in your desktop/laptop. - Speed and rendering: Blink uses Google's HTerm, so it is faster and you can add your own themes and fonts.

Looks like a nice app. One correction through: I use Prompt a lot and have been for a long time. I don't have connections break when I use it.

You might provide a video clip of a demo to help make a purchase decision.

Re: Show HN: Blink Shell for iOS, an Open-Source, Mosh and SSH Terminal for Pros

#63

Post by carloscabanero »

eridius wrote: post #57
carloscabanero wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mosh and technologies involved actually have an iOS exception that makes it compatible as long as the resulting project is GPL'd too. In the case of VLC they had to relicense, so a process very similar to this one.

Does Mosh itself not depend on any other GPL'd code?

Other libraries are system libraries and BSD licensed like protobuf.

Re: Show HN: Blink Shell for iOS, an Open-Source, Mosh and SSH Terminal for Pros

#64

Post by nfoz »

I'm a bit annoyed by the name "Blink Shell" because I think this is a Terminal Emulator and not a shell? But maybe I'm wrong?

But maybe I'm just being too restrictive in what I mean by the term "shell", which has multiple uses (e.g. "Desktop shell")..... so I guess the command-line shell is a program that one runs in a UI shell, the latter of which might be a terminal / terminal-emulator?

Re: Show HN: Blink Shell for iOS, an Open-Source, Mosh and SSH Terminal for Pros

#66

Post by carloscabanero »

adolph wrote: post #60

Does Blink have high function key numbers like F-17? The lack in Prompt forces some ungraceful exits for Epic Cache admins. Also, does it have a method of emulating the non-numeric characters generated by the numeric keypad of a big old keyboard?

I can definitely increase the number of F keys either on the on-screen keyboard and the F keys mapping.

Blink also supports Cursor keys and remap of those (by default Cmd + Arrow).

My plan is to have some kind of "special keys maps", like iTerm does, to emulate any other key through defined combinations. That I guess should cover the rest of the special keys you might need.

Re: Show HN: Blink Shell for iOS, an Open-Source, Mosh and SSH Terminal for Pros

#67

Post by seanp2k2 »

rahoulb wrote: post #51
isomorphic wrote: post #16

The US$19.99 price is a bit steep to buy sight-unseen. That's more of an App Store problem than Blink's fault. Obviously the price is fine if it works better than Prompt.

Personally I love it and feel it's absolutely worth the price

I used to like and recommend Prompt until I found out that they came out with a new version and offered no upgrade path -- it was a separate app on the store. They never bothered to update the old version with post-iPhone-4S graphics, so all the buttons are huge and it's low-res. I didn't buy the new version.

Re: Show HN: Blink Shell for iOS, an Open-Source, Mosh and SSH Terminal for Pros

#68

Post by evilduck »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #62
carloscabanero wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three things: - Mosh & SSH support: In Prompt and any other iOS ssh client, connections break every 3 minutes. With Mosh that isn't a problem. - Full external keyboard support: Alt as Esc, Caps as Ctrl, you can have your terminal as you do in your desktop/laptop. - Speed and rendering: Blink uses Google's HTerm, so it is faster and you can add your own themes and fonts.

Looks like a nice app. One correction through: I use Prompt a lot and have been for a long time. I don't have connections break when I use it. You might provide a video clip of a demo to help make a purchase decision.

They meant if you close it and, say, want to read or follow along with a book in iBooks and not use split view, you have to multitask back to Prompt every 3 minutes or iOS will suspend the app, killing your SSH connection in the process. Since Prompt is closed source and on the App Store, they can't use mosh which solves this problem.

Re: Show HN: Blink Shell for iOS, an Open-Source, Mosh and SSH Terminal for Pros

#69

Post by carloscabanero »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #62
carloscabanero wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three things: - Mosh & SSH support: In Prompt and any other iOS ssh client, connections break every 3 minutes. With Mosh that isn't a problem. - Full external keyboard support: Alt as Esc, Caps as Ctrl, you can have your terminal as you do in your desktop/laptop. - Speed and rendering: Blink uses Google's HTerm, so it is faster and you can add your own themes and fonts.

Looks like a nice app. One correction through: I use Prompt a lot and have been for a long time. I don't have connections break when I use it. You might provide a video clip of a demo to help make a purchase decision.

iOS only allows background connections to be maintained for three minutes. That means if you keep the app in the background longer than that, for example while checking Safari, the connection breaks. Every app has this limitation (TeamViewer, etc...) and it is usually solved by showing a notification to make the user switch to the app again. It is described on Prompt's KB too.

Blink also has this problem, but Mosh is able to recover gracefully.

Re: Show HN: Blink Shell for iOS, an Open-Source, Mosh and SSH Terminal for Pros

#70

Post by carloscabanero »

nileshk wrote: post #56
sirn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool, thanks. :-) I just bought the app and play with it for few minutes, here's some quick feedback: 1. Love the fact the interface is just a CLI! 2. But would be nice if content of `help` was shown by default. `blink>` wasn't very helpful ;-) 3. Ability to bind Caps Lock to "ESC on tap, Ctrl on Hold" would be really cool. Otherwise I really like what I'm seeing so far. Finally Mosh client on my iPad Pro! Edit: and…

Regarding Bluetooth/external keyboards: The last time I tried an iOS terminal app, iOS had limitations on many key combinations, such that I couldn't effectively use Emacs with normal mappings (or Bash with default Emacs-style keyboard shortcuts). Has Apple changed this and if so, does Blink or any other app work properly in this regard? I'm not concerned with changing modifier keys, just want standard Ctrl and Optio…

You can do that on Blink, and it was one of the reasons why I started the project. Option as Meta and Cmd as Ctrl :)
Post reply on HN