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Termux and Android 10

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31–40 of 329 posts

Re: Termux and Android 10

#32
post #15
post #11

I installed Termux on my Chromebook a few years ago to try and create a local development environment per this article[0]. It seemed to work okay, but I never liked how janky and unsupported the whole thing felt. I couldn't bring myself to try and build a workflow around it long-term. And here I guess that's vindicated. Whether now or in a few years, the whole concept of Termux is not long for this world. I guess the…

When we need to quickly diagnose and fix some sudden server issue from anywhere, Termux is indispensable. I even bought a tiny Bluetooth USB keyboard because of it.

Agreed, I had been using JuiceSSH[1] but then it seemed to no longer be supported (though I see it just got an update) so I then switched to Termux to be able to ssh from my phone (which is running Android 10, I guess I haven't run into these problems since I don't generally do much with the local filesystem).

1: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sonelli.ju...

Re: Termux and Android 10

#33
post #4

I'm really starting to despise most OS's for having such an overbearing security policy. I think it's really why I've stuck with Windows for so long. For sure Windows is not as user-stupid as something like macOS, iOS, Android, etc... but for me as a power user it's just about as powerful as I need to be. I'm not even considering *nix distros here because honestly the market for every day users for something like Ubu…

For every day users, that is those wanting access to email, social media, an office suite, etc I will argue that Ubuntu or Mint is fine. Even for other users, the most frequent issue that I've seen being mentioned is Windows-only software. If there is no such thing then the aforementioned distros should be fine. Also, there was never unlimited access in Android unless you had a rooted device. Probably there will be a…

> For every day users, that is those wanting access to email, social media, an office suite, etc I will argue that Ubuntu or Mint is fine.

Yes, it is fine, but that doesn't mean people actually use it. I'm just highlighting that Linux is generally not thought of as a large market for most consumers.

The point about root is a good one.

Re: Termux and Android 10

#34
I get why Android is doing this, even if they're not openly writing it: they want to get in control of malvertising which downloads untrusted binary code that is not in the APK and thus scannable for the Play Store security scanners.

What I don't get: why aren't they creating a separate entitlement for runtime code execution that requires manual approval in the Play Store?

Re: Termux and Android 10

#35
post #28
post #4

I'm really starting to despise most OS's for having such an overbearing security policy. I think it's really why I've stuck with Windows for so long. For sure Windows is not as user-stupid as something like macOS, iOS, Android, etc... but for me as a power user it's just about as powerful as I need to be. I'm not even considering *nix distros here because honestly the market for every day users for something like Ubu…

> I hate that macOS is starting to go the iOS route of only letting me run applications that are Apple certified. No, I do not want to open system preferences every time I want to launch something. I am a power user. Yeah, such a power user that you can't use any one of the easy, documented ways to deal with that? You're not exactly helping your case here. > Put it behind some shell command or something... but have i…

Ah, see, now that's good. I don't use macOS enough so I've not known about that.

> It'd be nice if Apple had functionality to easily have your own root signing setup alongside theirs, so that we could take advantage of all the signing mojo as well.

Yeah, that would be very developer friendly without breaking their shields too much.

Also no argument that macOS isn't modifiable. However with the general dismantlement of things like AppleScript I feel like we've already passed the golden age of the OS.

Re: Termux and Android 10

#36
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we need to quickly diagnose and fix some sudden server issue from anywhere, Termux is indispensable. I even bought a tiny Bluetooth USB keyboard because of it.

Agreed, I had been using JuiceSSH[1] but then it seemed to no longer be supported (though I see it just got an update) so I then switched to Termux to be able to ssh from my phone (which is running Android 10, I guess I haven't run into these problems since I don't generally do much with the local filesystem). 1: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sonelli.ju...

I migrated from JuiceSSH to Termux because it allows you to run remote diagnostic locally, ping, traceroute, schedule crons and even vibrate your phone and display notifications to alert you. It also allows you to port forward ssh, whereas in JuiceSSH you have to pay for that.

Re: Termux and Android 10

#37
What's the actual restriction? If it's literally just exec on apps outside the app directory, why not shim the dynamic linker and rewrite calls to exec to use that instead? Are there additional W^X protections that prevent mapping executables outside the app directory PROT_EXEC? (Note I have no idea how Android works so I may be missing something very basic).

Re: Termux and Android 10

#38

What's the actual restriction? If it's literally just exec on apps outside the app directory, why not shim the dynamic linker and rewrite calls to exec to use that instead? Are there additional W^X protections that prevent mapping executables outside the app directory PROT_EXEC? (Note I have no idea how Android works so I may be missing something very basic).

Part of the problem is precisely that no one knows how these restrictions might evolve in the future. There's no such thing as forward compatibility when it comes to Android API levels.

Re: Termux and Android 10

#39
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tablet companies really need to realize that a decent tablet with a decent dev experience is going to lead to an explosion of developers on their platform and result directly in way higher quality apps and therefore way better sales and brand. Imagine if websites couldn’t be developed on normal desktop computers and you had to run an extremely inefficient emulator every time you wanted to make a small notification.

That would be ChromeOS tablets. Full linux terminal in container and all. Hasn't really made any difference.

Also Microsoft Surface.

Re: Termux and Android 10

#40
post #4

I'm really starting to despise most OS's for having such an overbearing security policy. I think it's really why I've stuck with Windows for so long. For sure Windows is not as user-stupid as something like macOS, iOS, Android, etc... but for me as a power user it's just about as powerful as I need to be. I'm not even considering *nix distros here because honestly the market for every day users for something like Ubu…

I totally get and agree with you, but the notion of Windows not having an overbearing security policy makes me laugh. MacOS is frustrating in some ways, but at least when I do 'sudo __' it generally allows me to do whatever I want.

Windows, on the other hand.... the amount of times I've yelled "I AM THE ADMINISTRATOR!" at my PC is too damn high. Getting a "You do not have permission to access that file" even when I'm logged in as an Administrator is my bane.

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