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

Post by higerordermap » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 3:31 AM UTC

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.

Post by pabs3 » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 5:43 AM UTC

MarkusWandel wrote: post #134

rektide wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, I approach it from two angles at once. One, a pocket computer running Linux which, using Termux, could be a full Linux machine - in which I can run Perl scripts on my SMS messages, grep my emails, rename and organize my photo library and so on. Which was presumably mostly possible on old, less secure versions of Android. With Android 10 and its exec restriction, sure you can still install precompiled packages a…

Post by pjmlp » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 6:02 AM UTC

bosswipe wrote: post #124

pjmlp wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android was always about Java (now Kotlin). The NDK was only added in 2.0 to appease game developers and workaround for Dalvik anemic performance. Any access to Linux APIs was accidental and never part of the official native APIs.

But Java has interfaces for interacting with the host OS, for example you can create a file by writing `new File("myfile").createNewFile()` which makes a Linux call under the hood. Android 11 breaks that File API.

Post by ce4 » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 6:59 AM UTC

DennisAleynikov wrote: post #171

javajosh wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free associating? I never experienced F-Droid before or since my scattered Cyanogen/LineageOS experiments. Honestly, I doubt I'm alone making that distinction (similar to how its hard to make a distinction between javascript and jquery when you're first learning) Honestly I'm a little confused about the DIY mobile software landscape, and would love to get a minimalist, open-source wonderland mobile OS - and I wouldn'…

fdroid is kinda like cydia, repo based but often open source/FOSS stuff you can install as apks on an android OS device. dont need a special lineage install to get it, seems to work anywhere

Post by Ballas » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 7:19 AM UTC

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.