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

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

#81

Post by frostburg »

stormbeta wrote: post #59
jlgaddis wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not "knocking" this app by any means. Just from the comments here, it's obviously a great tool for a lot of people. > ... if I only had a cell phone and my servers were down. I just use my cellphone as a hotspot, my MBP connects to it, and I'm online. Several of my co-workers do the same thing. Is that uncommon? I kinda just assumed that's what most people do (assuming they have a laptop with them, of course).

Ditto. The idea of doing any kind of professional work in a shell via an iOS device doesn't make sense to me at all, and making the shell fancier wouldn't help.

I occasionally use Prompt. It's for when you get a call about something being broken and you're on a train with only a phone, not for scheduled work.

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

#82

Post by rcarmo »

Bought it even though it apparently has no agent forwarding (also, see my other comment here about 1Password and mouse - yes, mouse! - support).

Pretty good, refresh seems faster than Prompt, especially when using htop and tmux on the LAN (something that always bugged me about Prompt).

Hope it gets Citrix X1 mouse support, and there's something else I'd love to see that doesn't require buying exotic hardware to test - external display support.

Yes, you can render independent displays on an iOS device. Being able to have two terminals open or a terminal and a browser on independent displays would be (even more of) a killer app.

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

#83

Post by shakna »

nfoz wrote: post #64

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?

If you want to go down this track, it runs mosh, which is a shell, in the same way as Secure SHell.

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

#84

Post by carloscabanero »

rcarmo wrote: post #82

Bought it even though it apparently has no agent forwarding (also, see my other comment here about 1Password and mouse - yes, mouse! - support). Pretty good, refresh seems faster than Prompt, especially when using htop and tmux on the LAN (something that always bugged me about Prompt). Hope it gets Citrix X1 mouse support, and there's something else I'd love to see that doesn't require buying exotic hardware to test…

Thanks for giving it a try and please check this out! https://mobile.twitter.com/dcab/status/789838892753117186

It was done by one of our collaborators (advantages of open source), and it allows for multiple terminals just as you mention :)

Having a browser within the app has also been suggested, yo transform it in a nice dev tool instead of a terminal. We are still thinking what this could really be in the future,so any feedback and forward thinking is really appreciated!

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

#85

Post by carloscabanero »

matt-attack wrote: post #72

Would be great if it used the swipe up/down/left/right to do arrow keys. Super handy feature in a competing terminal/ash iOS client. Swipe up for quick access to history, and swipe left/right for quickly moving your cursor around.

Thanks for the idea, I tried it out but always end up long passing what I'm looking for due to inertia. I would like something smarter like iTerm with the cursor though.

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

#86

Post by carloscabanero »

rcarmo wrote: post #82

Bought it even though it apparently has no agent forwarding (also, see my other comment here about 1Password and mouse - yes, mouse! - support). Pretty good, refresh seems faster than Prompt, especially when using htop and tmux on the LAN (something that always bugged me about Prompt). Hope it gets Citrix X1 mouse support, and there's something else I'd love to see that doesn't require buying exotic hardware to test…

Also, Agent Forwarding and ProxyCommand are definitely in the roadmap. The former was only recently added to Mosh, so hopefully useful on both!

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

#87

Post by OJFord »

rahoulb wrote: post #75
seanp2k2 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They can't really offer an upgrade path though; as I understand it the closest they can do is switch to subscription pricing.

In-app purchase?

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

#88

Post by goerz »

While I'm personally fine with the $20 price tag, it does seem a bit steep for more casual users (ignoring the fact that they can also get it for free if they compile it for themselves). I wonder if this might hinder adoption. On the other hand, I think the value that Blink provides is potentially so large that it might make sense to get revenue also from donations (one-time or recurring).

Blink's value derives not just from the excellent design of the app, with highly accurate and fast rendering, or it's features (mosh, most importantly). To me, the way in which Blink really blows the competition (e.g. Prompt) out of the water its open source development process. As a beta tester, I have found Carlos to be highly responsive to feature requests and bug reports on Github. This gives me the feeling that as a user, I actually have influence over the features of Blink, unlike other software, where maybe I can beg Panic Inc via a tweet to implement port forwarding. I would be happy to donate something like $5/month to the continued and highly responsive development of Blink. I think true open source on iOS is so rare that we should make a point of proving that it can be commercially viable.

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

#89

Post by goerz »

carloscabanero wrote: post #54
eridius wrote: post #53

I thought GPL was incompatible with the App Store? Wasn't VLC famously pulled from the App Store over a complaint about this? I know VLC eventually got back on, but I'm having trouble finding any info about how they resolved the problem.

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.

So that means Blink is actually dual-license? I was actually a little bit confused about how Blink makes the GPL App-store compatible. It would be interesting to see a blog post or some extended discussion on the website about the licensing issue, both to assure users that Blink is "safe" from being kicked out of the store, and to give some discussion on how GPL can actually make it into the App store. It would certainly be nice to have more iOS software follow Blink's example.

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

#90

Post by goerz »

stormbeta wrote: post #59
jlgaddis wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not "knocking" this app by any means. Just from the comments here, it's obviously a great tool for a lot of people. > ... if I only had a cell phone and my servers were down. I just use my cellphone as a hotspot, my MBP connects to it, and I'm online. Several of my co-workers do the same thing. Is that uncommon? I kinda just assumed that's what most people do (assuming they have a laptop with them, of course).

Ditto. The idea of doing any kind of professional work in a shell via an iOS device doesn't make sense to me at all, and making the shell fancier wouldn't help.

I can only speak for myself here, but for me having Blink means that I can travel for a week and not bring my laptop. Other apps like Prompt were pretty decent, but Blink has brought all the pain points (compared to my Macbook) to (almost) zero, through faster rendering and its amazing support for shortcuts and remapping the keys an the Smart Keyboard. I mostly do development of numeric software, so even when I'm working on the Mac, I'm always just connected to the development server or cluster nodes, with tmux + vim.
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