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Termux and Android 10

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Re: Termux and Android 10

#201

Post by Koshkin »

neilalexander wrote: post #142
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…

> Linux is way way way less likely to just change something and break the whole system while the user is sleeping I take it you have never had to try and correct a system broken by seemingly innocent-looking aptitude or RPM package upgrades. :-) > Fixing a Windows problem can involve having to go into the registry, which can't be copy/pasted and is extremely difficult AND dangerous. (There probably IS a way to copy/p…

> broken by seemingly innocent-looking aptitude or RPM package upgrades

Not on Slackware, no.

Re: Termux and Android 10

#202

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #175
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 9) The few times I've gotten family members to try Linux, they called me LESS often for support. Even on laptops! This is so true. All my family members are on Ubuntu, and it just works without any support. For many many years. Sometimes when I visit them I click on update to the next LTS. By the time I have to leave it is updated and runs again for 2 more years.

Where supporting Ubuntu falls over is when I try and support "power users". There's like an uncanny valley of competence, between completely naive users who just let things run and experienced users who know where the red lines are when using sudo. So far I've seen the following breakages: - completely fuck up apt somehow such that it refuses to update or fix itself - overwrite packages with their own compiled versio…

yes, true. But what alternative do we have? If such a power user breaks windows registry in a _really_ bad way, the fastest solution, by far, is to just reinstall anything. And, again, if you are smart about having your /home folders on a separate partition, reinstalling Ubuntu is way faster. So even in this worst case scenario Windows loses.

Re: Termux and Android 10

#203

Post by coronadisaster »

sub7 wrote: post #195
AsyncAwait wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only "real" solution is to get an actual Linux phone, such as the PinePhone[1] or Librem 5[2]. 1 - https://www.pine64.org/pinephone 2 - https://puri.sm/products/librem-5

Unfortunately these tiny side projects are not the answer. They'll never get traction because they're not better devices. The answer is to either hack Android/iOS so you can patch out all the bundled bs or to regulate them and force them to offer a "clean" OS version.

"luckily", that is not the truth

Re: Termux and Android 10

#204

Post by cft »

lucb1e wrote: post #188
cft wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point these restrictions to exec() will be enforced on the OS level, rather than on the API level.

Isn't that the same thing in Android? SELinux, which I read elsewhere in this thread is where this is built into, is part of the system in which your app runs.

Yes, but the configuration of SELinux can be changed.

Re: Termux and Android 10

#205

Post by mey »

skissane wrote: post #170
mey wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what you mean by limited here? You have quite a few options are your disposal these days. (Depending on how you scope "power user") Cygwin (OSS compiled to Win APIs) Powershell (Native Windows fun) WSL 1 (Linux ABI Bindings to Win Kernel) WSL 2 (Thin Hyper-V running a full Linux Kernel, with Plan9 FS mappings to Windows filesystem) (Insider Preview, should be releasing this quarter) Hyper-V DOSBox Docker (Hy…

> DOSBox Much as I love DOSBox, I don't think it belongs on your list. In fact, DOSBox's command line capabilities are weak compared to genuine MS-DOS (which is already quite weak to begin with) – it doesn't fully support COMMAND.COM's syntax, it lacks many of the commands/utilities that come with MS-DOS, etc. – it is just the bare minimum to get most game launcher batch files to work. And that's unlikely to ever cha…

Fair point. I leave the post as is for posterity. I wonder if https://github.com/Microsoft/MS-DOS will improve that situation.

Re: Termux and Android 10

#206

Post by blackfawn »

Koshkin wrote: post #198
Dylan16807 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're opening up and messing with the hardware, why not remove the write protect and flash the firmware instead?

...Or completely replace the innards with a Raspberry Pi Zero W. (Not sure if it’s actually possible.)

Various pi boards have been retrofitted into laptops but a Pi Zero in particular is a downgrade in performance from just about any relatively recent laptop/Chromebook. As some of the sibling comments mention, there is more involved with resetting than an accidental non-action during boot.

Even better you can switch to coreboot and load Linux, there's even a Chromebook-specific distro, https://galliumos.org/

Re: Termux and Android 10

#207

Post by jlarocco »

tmpz22 wrote: post #17
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…

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.

I don't buy that argument. Game console developers don't develop on the device they're targeting, and it hasn't really hindered them. So why do mobile devs need to develop on those devices? Mobile form factor and UI just isn't suitable for software development, and the companies making them realize it.

There's a lot wrong with Android development (IMO), but the lack of an on-device dev environment isn't one of them...

Re: Termux and Android 10

#208

Post by wazzaps »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #202
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where supporting Ubuntu falls over is when I try and support "power users". There's like an uncanny valley of competence, between completely naive users who just let things run and experienced users who know where the red lines are when using sudo. So far I've seen the following breakages: - completely fuck up apt somehow such that it refuses to update or fix itself - overwrite packages with their own compiled versio…

yes, true. But what alternative do we have? If such a power user breaks windows registry in a _really_ bad way, the fastest solution, by far, is to just reinstall anything. And, again, if you are smart about having your /home folders on a separate partition, reinstalling Ubuntu is way faster. So even in this worst case scenario Windows loses.

Pop!_OS has a recovery partition with a "reset installation", which keeps the home directory (I believe) but reinstalls everything else

Re: Termux and Android 10

#209

Post by pojntfx »

Projects like these were doomed from the beginning. Buy a real Linux phone, like the PinePhone or the Librem 5 + a backup phone (I’m on Apple for that) for the proprietary nonsense. Simple, straight-forward and clean. It’s time to stop hacking on existing non-free platforms and time to use libre hardware. You have nothing to loose but your chains!

Re: Termux and Android 10

#210

Post by mondoshawan »

sub7 wrote: post #195
AsyncAwait wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only "real" solution is to get an actual Linux phone, such as the PinePhone[1] or Librem 5[2]. 1 - https://www.pine64.org/pinephone 2 - https://puri.sm/products/librem-5

Unfortunately these tiny side projects are not the answer. They'll never get traction because they're not better devices. The answer is to either hack Android/iOS so you can patch out all the bundled bs or to regulate them and force them to offer a "clean" OS version.

I think this is the third time I've seen this kind of comment on HN about this. Seems like an uptick, but these aren't side projects.
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