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Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment app

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Re: Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment app

#141

Post by matheusmoreira »

dredmorbius wrote: post #113
freedomben wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> vexed that it's enabling a platform I despise. Do you despise Android? How come? What's your preferred alternative?

Answering your first: absolutely, and suprised anyone need ask. It's a Trojan horse serving manipulation, advertising, surveillance, and propaganda. It's also intentionally crippled in numerous ways. The applications-store model is horrendously broken from not only this perspective, but in terms of utility, quality, and trust. Alternatives: For mobile compute: a Linux laptop. An ultralight sacrifices some features, b…

> I've watched the alternative-OS tablet space for well over a decade, and there's been vanishingly little to get excited about.

GrapheneOS got me pretty excited. I actually bought a Pixel because of it.

There's also postmarketOS. I'll try to port it to my current phone once I have my new one set up.

Re: Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment app

#142

Post by bhawks »

a_e_k wrote: post #45

Termux is great. One of my favorite tricks is sharing a photo to it, then running a quick `python -m http.server 8000` while on wifi. It makes it dirt simple to send a photo from my phone to any local machine on my network without the hassle of cloud services (including generation loss from recompression), incompatible apps, bluetooth pairing, etc.

Just use https://wormhole.app - it is end to end encrypted, privacy preserving and network friendly.

Re: Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment app

#143

Post by latenightcoding »

ngai_aku wrote: post #122
schemescape wrote: post #104

Is there any sort of reputable, non-subscription (and open source, while I’m listing wishes) SSH client for iOS/iPhone? I ran across Blink (which is subscription-only) and Prompt ($15—-not unreasonable if you’re sure you’ll use it often), but I’m curious to hear recommendations from here.

Would `ish` work? https://github.com/ish-app/ish

Last time I tried ish it would freeze during any serious coding task. Can't remember if I was using an interpreted language or C.

Re: Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment app

#144

Post by pjmlp »

saagarjha wrote: post #131
pjmlp wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is prevented by killing any process that makes API calls not part of the official set of public NDK APIs and file locations. Which is one of the reasons why Termux has issues on modern Android versions. https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/wiki/Termux-and-An...

> It is prevented by killing any process that makes API calls not part of the official set of public NDK APIs and file locations. This is not something Android does.

How much Android experience do you happen to have actually?

"Starting in Android 7.0, the system prevents apps from dynamically linking against non-NDK libraries, which may cause your app to crash. This change in behavior aims to create a consistent app experience across platform updates and different devices. Even though your code might not be linking against private libraries, it's possible that a third-party static library in your app could be doing so. Therefore, all developers should check to make sure that their apps do not crash on devices running Android 7.0. If your app uses native code, you should only be using public NDK APIs."

-- https://developer.android.com/about/versions/nougat/android-...

"Improving Stability with Private C/C++ Symbol Restrictions in Android N"

-- https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2016/06/improving-...

"Namespaces for Native Libraries"

-- https://source.android.com/docs/core/permissions/namespaces_...

Re: Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment app

#145

Post by bhawks »

rektide wrote: post #18
knaik94 wrote: post #9

Termux singlehandedly makes me feel like I'm living my childhood dream of having a full computer in my pocket. I use git to blog from my phone, I have ffmpeg and yt-dlp installed to download videos for when I am going to be away from internet access for a while, and I even have some home automation scripts setup that control the lights over the local network. But I am concerned about the direction Android is headed,…

> But I am concerned about the direction Android is headed, Over securing systems seems to be the modern trend, and mercy, it's such suffocating paternalism. We have incredible phones and Android/Google just keeps making them less and less capable.

You have to weight the aggressive security posture against the fact that there are nearly 1.5 billion smart phones sold every year. [0]

In addition to having ridiculous computing power and storage capabilities, they carry microphones, cameras, WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC, lidar, radar...

If you can grasp not just the power of the device but the scale of its reach the only responsible and ethical action is to security harden it every chance you get as much as you can.

0: https://www.zippia.com/advice/us-smartphone-industry-statist...

Re: Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment app

#146

Post by roninghost »

Jeff_Brown wrote: post #38
retrocryptid wrote: post #2

I sometimes run org mode in emacs under termux on my phone. After getting fed up with crap in simple list apps, my grocery list is a file in termux.

Emacs on Termux is great. I have used org mode, shell mode, magit (for git), and even eww (the Emacs Web Wowser) to great effect in it.

What software keyboard do you use? I find it dificult wothout ctrl and meta to type in emacs

Re: Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment app

#147

Post by snthpy »

galp76 wrote: post #115

I check out Hacker News everyday but this is my first post. I had never been a person who likes computers until the COVID lockdowns began. Some day I opened a Python course advertisement, I started the course but I got no computer to code the exercises, so I installed Termux on my 80$ Android phone and bought a 7$ external keyboard in order to do the Python exercises. Since then I have read several books about Linux…

That's wonderful!

Congratulations and good luck on your further journey! Keep having fun!

Re: Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment app

#148

Post by dredmorbius »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #141
dredmorbius wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Answering your first: absolutely, and suprised anyone need ask. It's a Trojan horse serving manipulation, advertising, surveillance, and propaganda. It's also intentionally crippled in numerous ways. The applications-store model is horrendously broken from not only this perspective, but in terms of utility, quality, and trust. Alternatives: For mobile compute: a Linux laptop. An ultralight sacrifices some features, b…

> I've watched the alternative-OS tablet space for well over a decade, and there's been vanishingly little to get excited about. GrapheneOS got me pretty excited. I actually bought a Pixel because of it. There's also postmarketOS. I'll try to port it to my current phone once I have my new one set up.

Anything Android-based is going to fundamentally disappoint me, though de-Googled Android beats Google-infested. See criticisms above and in linked comments. That would argue against GrapheneOS.

PostmarketOS might be worth a look, thanks for reminding me about it.

Among the other problems Android presents is that it's very nearly totally owned the mobile-device market, save iOS and a very few niche products (e.g., the listed non-Android e-book readers above).

Otherwise in the small-device space there's RaPi and Arduino, and perhaps OpenWRT. Those obviously target different use-cases, but in terms of small/light systems are the principle options of which I'm aware. I'm also painfully aware that there are considerable UI/UX, power management, and security issues to consider for a mobile device, all the more so for anything that's aimed at a mass market. To an extent I can sympathize with some of the decisions Android's made, though that doesn't reduce my own frustration with it at all.

What I find curious about my own psychology and attitude toward the space is that the far more limited Palm devices (I'd owned a couple of PDAs as well as one of the Treo-line phones) didn't bother me to the same degree. Part of it was that these were such obviously limited devices, though they also seemed to be less afflicted by the advertising-and-surveillance disease.

Apple's iPads are so very nearly laptop-replacements but crippled in critical ways that it pains me. There's the Windows Surface (nice form-factor, pity about the OS), and a few other options.

Re: Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment app

#149

Post by dredmorbius »

timeinput wrote: post #136
dredmorbius wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Answering your first: absolutely, and suprised anyone need ask. It's a Trojan horse serving manipulation, advertising, surveillance, and propaganda. It's also intentionally crippled in numerous ways. The applications-store model is horrendously broken from not only this perspective, but in terms of utility, quality, and trust. Alternatives: For mobile compute: a Linux laptop. An ultralight sacrifices some features, b…

That's a lot of words to say there's no real alternative if one wants a pocket sized device with an ssh client and a good cellular data connection. I get your point. It sucks that these are our options, but you didn't present any viable alternatives.

Answers to questions often surprise or disappoint.

Those are often the most useful answers.

Re: Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment app

#150

Post by saagarjha »

pjmlp wrote: post #144
saagarjha wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is prevented by killing any process that makes API calls not part of the official set of public NDK APIs and file locations. This is not something Android does.

How much Android experience do you happen to have actually? "Starting in Android 7.0, the system prevents apps from dynamically linking against non-NDK libraries, which may cause your app to crash. This change in behavior aims to create a consistent app experience across platform updates and different devices. Even though your code might not be linking against private libraries, it's possible that a third-party stati…

I work on Android. Opinions my own, etc.

The things you’ve linked are attempts to discourage people from depending on private implementation details. They are not a security boundary, nor are they really the kinds of APIs we’re talking about in this context. Since they run in your process there is no sandboxing or isolation involved here; you can call them if you really want to by looking them up manually. (Don’t do this.)

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