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

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

#151

Post by snazz »

OJFord wrote: post #146
snazz wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MMS doesn't work on any FOSS non-Android Linux phone I'm aware of, so they definitely do not work for a significant percentage of the population even for basic group text messages. Building an alternative phone OS is much harder than building an alternative desktop OS—the requirements are much higher (battery life, cellular, app support) and the mobile web is far less developed as a stopgap compared to the desktop we…

MMS? Seriously, that's your bar? I haven't had it working on Android or iOS for years , only realising when it accidentally tries to send. I just assumed it didn't work because nobody cared.

No, that's just a technology that I consider "basic"—and one which most Americans use at least a little, even if the experience is terrible. And it does work for most people, even if it compresses images to oblivion and is slow to send messages.

My bar for widespread adoption is far higher, but it may be somewhat unattainable and it's definitely not necessary for the types of people who use desktop Linux. Even if you're happy with desktop Linux—in other words, your expectations of integration and proprietary software support are low—you won't be happy with current Linux phones.

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

#152

Post by pigeons »

saagarjha wrote: post #122
swiley wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the whole "linux desktop isn't there yet" thing but with phones now. It's not shiny but it does work. Continuing to use abusive software is a disservice to yourself and everyone around you.

Linux on the desktop is eminently usable, and many people do use it daily to get work done. I have yet to see someone make something usable for mobile.

Maemo

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

#153

Post by dspillett »

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.

rsync over SSH for backups. Google photos want including the highest quality images, and I had tremendous terrible with both this and my last phone copying off large files (long recorded videos at high res) locally via normal USB methods.

A script running rsync over SSH over wi-fi works every time. And as I use rsync for backups generally (have done for many years) this integrates nicely with my general way of doing things.

I've not tried running SSHd to allow things to be pulled off or pushed to devices, but others report that working well too.

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

#154

Post by dspillett »

jonny383 wrote: post #138

Termux has saved one of our projects literally tens of thousands of dollars in SMS fees from someone like Twilio. We have a few areas where non urgent SMS reminders need to be sent to users. We literally just use a couple of cheap ($100) Android phones with termux on an unlimited message plan with a local provider (who approved us for commercial usage). The actual process is a glorified bash script that pulls API job…

That sounds like it would be very useful for a personal project, but the docs for termux-sms state "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." - are you building your own version, or are there official builds off Play that include the feature?

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

#155

Post by [deleted] »

jonny383 wrote: post #138

Termux has saved one of our projects literally tens of thousands of dollars in SMS fees from someone like Twilio. We have a few areas where non urgent SMS reminders need to be sent to users. We literally just use a couple of cheap ($100) Android phones with termux on an unlimited message plan with a local provider (who approved us for commercial usage). The actual process is a glorified bash script that pulls API job…

[deleted]

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

#156

Post by Valkhyr »

swiley wrote: post #114
saagarjha wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to say that, but the competition isn't all that great so your comment isn't really adding much.

This is the whole "linux desktop isn't there yet" thing but with phones now. It's not shiny but it does work. Continuing to use abusive software is a disservice to yourself and everyone around you.

It all depends on your personal definitions of 'shiny' and 'work' I suppose. Current GNU/Linux phones unfortunately don’t even clear the ‘work’ threshold for me, and are far from it.

If current GNU/Linux phones work for your needs, that’s great - but sorry to say that you are not representative of all users (neither am I - that's the point, kind of - Android/iOS are mature enough to cover most users' needs). I don’t want to go into too much detail of my specific needs, but let’s just say the deficiencies boil down to (a) vastly inferior power management/battery life, (b) vastly inferior processing power in the current crop of hardware and (c) specific apps/services not being available on the platform (and likely impossible to run via Anbox because of (b)).

I would actually love to jump to a GNU/Linux phone. Less so because of freedom or privacy concerns (they are a factor, but not the dominating factor). More because I prefer the traditional desktop/general-purpose-computing OS way of doing things (file-centric vs app-centric, root access to the entire file system, development directly on the device). I would honestly be fairly happy with Android if it was pre-rooted, imposed fewer restrictions on what apps can do, and was based on a mainline kernel ideally.

I have previously used Ubuntu Touch for about a year on a secondary device, I have a Librem 5 on pre-order, and I follow development for the Pinephone somewhat closely and am tempted to get one. But for the foreseeable future I can't see a GNU/Linux smartphone replacing my Android - I'd see it as a complement to it (a tiny portable laptop).

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

#157

Post by Valkhyr »

rektide wrote: post #37
j-james wrote: post #27

Termux has recently run into issues with Android 10 and the more recent APIs, which break its form of package management. Their workaround is fairly clever (although not yet implemented) but means that updates to the Play Store version have been temporarily put on hold. https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/wiki/Termux-and-An...

Comments like this one[1] that mention having difficulty using Termux to access SD cards keep making me feel like we are radically over-securing devices. More and more it feels like the OS, the browser, are guarding the user not against bad apps, but also against the user. Firefox Mobile only allowing less than a dozen extensions. Chrome mobile supporting no extensions. These are different than the OS, but the same k…

Could not agree more.

There should be a "I know what I'm doing" switch that disables a bunch of restrictions and essentially enables full root privileges for your user.

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

#158

Post by Valkhyr »

bosswipe wrote: post #39
j-james wrote: post #27

Termux has recently run into issues with Android 10 and the more recent APIs, which break its form of package management. Their workaround is fairly clever (although not yet implemented) but means that updates to the Play Store version have been temporarily put on hold. https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/wiki/Termux-and-An...

I hate the direction Google is taking Android. They're on an appliance-ification quest trying to hide any exposed linux-ness of the OS, including trying to remove developer access to all file handles. They always claim it's in the name of security but my suspicion is that it's an effort to transition from Linux to Fuchsia.

This.

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

#159

Post by jonny383 »

dspillett wrote: post #154
jonny383 wrote: post #138

Termux has saved one of our projects literally tens of thousands of dollars in SMS fees from someone like Twilio. We have a few areas where non urgent SMS reminders need to be sent to users. We literally just use a couple of cheap ($100) Android phones with termux on an unlimited message plan with a local provider (who approved us for commercial usage). The actual process is a glorified bash script that pulls API job…

That sounds like it would be very useful for a personal project, but the docs for termux-sms state "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." - are you building your own version, or are there official builds off Play that include the feature?

We're running builds from FDroid.
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