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

Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment app with no rooting

termux.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 217 posts

Re: Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment app with no rooting

#11

Post by muxator »

sigmonsays wrote: post #2

what do people use this for? While I was really excited when i encountered it, I didn't find any practical uses.

Just a few days ago I thought about using termux-api to do a quick poc for a monitoring application. Namely, I wanted to send an SMS when an event occurred.

Termux-api used to offer this [0], but apparently some time ago google decided to make it impossible:

> Usage of this API is no longer allowed by Google and we had to disable it to prevent delisting of Termux:API application from the Google Play.

It's my device, my SMS plan over a (supposedly) open source system. But it's the vendor's platform, and a huge part of it is proprietary (the play services).

This is the windows monopoly all over again, but in our pockets and with deep analytics backed in.

OK sorry, this ended being a rant. Is there an escape hatch? When will we have a credible free software mobile operating system?

[0] https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Termux-sms-send

Re: Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment app with no rooting

#12

Post by lytedev »

muxator wrote: post #11
sigmonsays wrote: post #2

what do people use this for? While I was really excited when i encountered it, I didn't find any practical uses.

Just a few days ago I thought about using termux-api to do a quick poc for a monitoring application. Namely, I wanted to send an SMS when an event occurred. Termux-api used to offer this [0], but apparently some time ago google decided to make it impossible: > Usage of this API is no longer allowed by Google and we had to disable it to prevent delisting of Termux:API application from the Google Play. It's my device,…

You can buy Linux phones right now!

Re: Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment app with no rooting

#13

Post by MarkusWandel »

sigmonsays wrote: post #2

what do people use this for? While I was really excited when i encountered it, I didn't find any practical uses.

Syncing photos off. Termux has sshd (you have to start it manually once, then it stays running until Termux is killed or the phone is rebooted).

With ssh-copy-id it takes a single command (1-line script) to rsync the phone's DCIM directory to my main machine for further processing. Nothing needs to be done on the phone at all other than to lightly nudge it to wake it up so sshd sees the connection attempt.

Downside: Android security clampdowns mean termux can't see the SD card. So I can only sync down the phone's internal camera directory and that's where I have to store the new pictures and videos. This means space occasionally runs low and I have to move stuff to the SD card. But in the future, they probably won't allow Termux to even work any more in its current form - no "exec" of executables that werent' installed as part of the apk.

Why do all this? Because I'm old school. My phone is an extension of my data ecosystem, which lives on (redundant and backed-up) hard disks in my home computing setup. I don't even let the phone sync the photos to the cloud.

Admittedly I've found no other practical uses for it; all the interesting stuff is blocked by Android security (e.g. back up or otherwise process your call/SMS history).

Re: Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment app with no rooting

#14

Post by knaik94 »

sigmonsays wrote: post #2

what do people use this for? While I was really excited when i encountered it, I didn't find any practical uses.

This takes some setup, but you can add ffmpeg and python, and from there youtube-dl. There's a url handler so I can download podcasts and other things by using the built in android share function from page links.

People also use it on chromebooks for dev work that doesn't require low level compiling. I have seen NPM and webdev work being done using termux and I have seen people use it for Jupyter Notebooks too.

It also integrates with Tasker (another android automation app).

Re: Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment app with no rooting

#15

Post by jeromenerf »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #9
rmorey wrote: post #3

see also: iSH for iOS ( https://ish.app/ )

The key caveat being that iSH does x86 emulation to achieve this, but otherwise it seems to looks pretty darn nice. I have yet to try it but now that I've switched over to iOS I may just download it to compare usage vs Termux.

It is great but slow and 32bit.

Re: Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment app with no rooting

#16

Post by knaik94 »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #13
sigmonsays wrote: post #2

what do people use this for? While I was really excited when i encountered it, I didn't find any practical uses.

Syncing photos off. Termux has sshd (you have to start it manually once, then it stays running until Termux is killed or the phone is rebooted). With ssh-copy-id it takes a single command (1-line script) to rsync the phone's DCIM directory to my main machine for further processing. Nothing needs to be done on the phone at all other than to lightly nudge it to wake it up so sshd sees the connection attempt. Downside:…

If DCIM syncing from external SD card is an issue, I would suggest looking into FolderSync. I've used it personally for music syncing. I'm old school too when it comes to curating my own music library.

Re: Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment app with no rooting

#17

Post by _underfl0w_ »

muxator wrote: post #11
sigmonsays wrote: post #2

what do people use this for? While I was really excited when i encountered it, I didn't find any practical uses.

Just a few days ago I thought about using termux-api to do a quick poc for a monitoring application. Namely, I wanted to send an SMS when an event occurred. Termux-api used to offer this [0], but apparently some time ago google decided to make it impossible: > Usage of this API is no longer allowed by Google and we had to disable it to prevent delisting of Termux:API application from the Google Play. It's my device,…

Termux:API is available on F-Droid. Maybe the functionality exists in that version?

Re: Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment app with no rooting

#18

Post by noja »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #13
sigmonsays wrote: post #2

what do people use this for? While I was really excited when i encountered it, I didn't find any practical uses.

Syncing photos off. Termux has sshd (you have to start it manually once, then it stays running until Termux is killed or the phone is rebooted). With ssh-copy-id it takes a single command (1-line script) to rsync the phone's DCIM directory to my main machine for further processing. Nothing needs to be done on the phone at all other than to lightly nudge it to wake it up so sshd sees the connection attempt. Downside:…

Alternatives:

Resilio Sync: use it in backup mode to sync photos to your desktop pc/mac/nas. Delete photos from phone when you want to free space. Also lets you access and edit normal files, either on demand or by sync. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.resilio.sy...

PhotoSync: sync your photos to pretty much anything. https://www.photosync-app.com/home.html

Re: Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment app with no rooting

#20

Post by jhbadger »

sigmonsays wrote: post #2

what do people use this for? While I was really excited when i encountered it, I didn't find any practical uses.

Programming on the go. Ruby, Python, Rust, Go, Nim, and many other programming languages are available for it. As are editors like Emacs and Vim.
Post reply on HN