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Termux and Android 10

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Re: Termux and Android 10

#131

Post by kllrnohj »

asveikau wrote: post #5
bla3 wrote: post #2

Please refrain from using titles that are more alarmist than the original title. If linking to something with an alarmist title (not the case here!), use a more neutral headline for your submission.

I don't think it's very alarmist or an overstatement though. An android 10 app is no longer allowed to do what termux does. I guess with more reading they are saying they need to declare themselves as targeting android 9 or lower until they find a solution. At some point, I imagine, that will not be an option. To some degree it should also be on Google to ensure that tightening security (or perceived tightening of se…

The title is that Android 10 is killing Termux. But it's not, it's killing exec() on writable files.

There's alternatives Termux could take, which the Google issue tracker already mentions such as bundling the executables in the APK & using extractNativeLibs=true so they can be exec'd ( https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/128554619#comment4 ). They could use a loader that mmap's the code with PROT_EXEC but not PROT_WRITE, that also works (this is how JIT's work, and Android is obviously not breaking JITs anytime soon)

It's not entirely clear why Termux hasn't seemingly made any move on the alternative approaches raised a year ago (that's how old the issue is: https://github.com/termux/termux-app/issues/1072 ), and there's a bunch of nonsensical alarmist bullshit muddying up the waters which isn't helping.

Re: Termux and Android 10

#132

Post by fwip »

sxp wrote: post #13

I really hope they figure out a good solution for this problem. One way I distinguish between a "real" computer and a toy or appliance is whether you can use the device to write software for it. With Termux, you can write Linux-style programs on the Android device itself or even build full Android apks. One of the other awesome things about Termux is that you can use it to setup a pretty complete ARM Linux environmen…

If you had a non-terminal-based app that included a code editor and could compile code, does that still count as a "real" computer?

Or do you want access to the whole terminal experience?

Re: Termux and Android 10

#133

Post by tedunangst »

zozbot234 wrote: post #129
Arainach wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Crostini, you can write and run full Linux apps in a full Linux environment. No bootloader or dev mode shenanigans required.

Does this "full Linux environment" support e.g. audio? I've seen reports that early versions of Crostini didn't even support that.

Yes. You can use youtube-dl to get videos and ffplay to watch them.

Re: Termux and Android 10

#134

Post by robertoandred »

pathartl wrote: post #35
xoa wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

You don't use it enough, and yet you felt qualified to criticize something you clearly knew nothing about.

Re: Termux and Android 10

#136

Post by mst »

jfkebwjsbx wrote: post #51
tmpz22 wrote: 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.

Why would anyone want a tablet if a laptop is an option?

I carry an 8" android tablet and a 10" bluetooth keyboard w/trackpoint in my jacket basically any time I leave the house.

The tablet functions as a messaging device and phone, and then if I want to sit in a coffee shop and code I break out the keyboard.

Admittedly so long as I could get mosh as an app I'd probably survive without termux, but it wouldn't be nearly as nice a setup.

Re: Termux and Android 10

#137

Post by Dahoon »

pathartl wrote: 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…

>there's going to be some apps that just need pretty much unlimited access to my device

That is what root access is for. Non-root should never have "pretty much unlimited access" to a device.

Re: Termux and Android 10

#138

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

djsumdog wrote: post #94
zozbot234 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux phones are nice since they provide things like mainline kernel support which is important for the long term, but many cheap Android devices can be modded to run custom firmware. (The PostmarketOS is working on providing "baseline" Linux installs for those devices.)

I am a big fan of PostmarketOS, but that being said, you still need to patch the Mesa libraries to get hardware acceleration working on an old Nexus 7. They want to do a lot more work, but it's difficult with all these garbage/trash ARM devices out there. If Google gave a shit about e-waste, they'd mandate UEFI+ARM like Microsoft did with their phones (except without the locked bootloader). Trying to get drivers to l…

> they'd mandate UEFI+ARM like Microsoft did with their phones (except without the locked bootloader)

I approve, but is that sufficient? UEFI gives you a better booting situation, but I thought you still needed device tree or something to handle device enumeration? Or does UEFI do that?

EDIT: In an attempt to answer my own question, I dug up https://elinux.org/Device_Tree_What_It_Is#UEFI which implies that UEFI can replace device tree and give you an actual uniform platform. If I'm getting that right, then that does look like the best possible solution.

Re: Termux and Android 10

#139

Post by ketzu »

swiley wrote: post #73
larrik wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has been on Linux a long time, but still has to support family members using Windows, here's my perspective: 1) Linux is usually easier in the "happy case", where everything works as it should, and it supports everything that the user needs. 2) Linux is way way way less likely to just change something and break the whole system while the user is sleeping. (This was REAL fun with my grandparents-in-law…

>It's way easier to find someone you know to help you on Windows than Linux, for now. Really? Windows seems to be losing developer mindshare pretty fast and I’m not convinced this isn’t already the case. In college the capture the flag group had a serious problem finding people familiar with windows development and most junior software engineers I’ve met are much more familiar with GNU/Linux than windows.

Windows support for family members is not limited to developers, it includes the son, niece, brother or cousin that likes to game on their windows machine and is just more used to it. (And I am not sure about the mindshare declining rapidly either.)

Re: Termux and Android 10

#140

Post by on_and_off »

asveikau wrote: post #5
bla3 wrote: post #2

Please refrain from using titles that are more alarmist than the original title. If linking to something with an alarmist title (not the case here!), use a more neutral headline for your submission.

I don't think it's very alarmist or an overstatement though. An android 10 app is no longer allowed to do what termux does. I guess with more reading they are saying they need to declare themselves as targeting android 9 or lower until they find a solution. At some point, I imagine, that will not be an option. To some degree it should also be on Google to ensure that tightening security (or perceived tightening of se…

Another title could be : "termux failed to update to Android changes for 2 years"
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