Termux • Hacker News Board

Re: Termux

#31

Post by elcapitan » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 1:07 PM UTC

mg wrote: post #7

Is Termux still needed, now that new Android phones have a full Linux available? I keep reading on https://www.reddit.com/r/androidterminal/ about user experiences with it and it seems pretty great.

Oh wow, thanks for mentioning this, I totally missed that this was introduced.

Re: Termux

#32

Post by firecall » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 1:17 PM UTC

cfiggers wrote: post #16

Termux is the first app I install on every Android device I get my hands on. It's astonishingly capable. I have a Bluetooth keyboard case for my Android tablet. All the time, I use Termux to ssh into my Linux machine over my home network and code on it in Neovim from my couch. I don't bother with the default notes app on my phone. Termux + Neovim running vimwiki and syncing to a private GitHub repo is way better. Mos…

What keyboard case do you use?

My android phone is a Pixel 8 and that sounds cool :-)

Re: Termux

#33

Post by nicman23 » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 1:18 PM UTC

mg wrote: post #7

Is Termux still needed, now that new Android phones have a full Linux available? I keep reading on https://www.reddit.com/r/androidterminal/ about user experiences with it and it seems pretty great.

it is trash on the hw acceleration side, while termux has vulkan linux to vulkan android wrappers - which in future will probably do hw encode and decode as well

Re: Termux

#34

Post by firecall » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 1:19 PM UTC

There’s an app called Termux in the iOS App Store, but I’m guessing it’s not the same thing?

Re: Termux

#35

Post by bear330 » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 1:20 PM UTC

I also really like Termux. When I was developing https://github.com/nuwainfo/ffl (a tool similar to croc, but the receiver uses a browser and doesn't need to install anything), it was because I wanted an easy way to get things off my phone. I actually packaged ffl—which is pure Python—into an APE just to make it compatible with Termux. Although many people here use ssh, rsync, or solutions like copyparty, I prefer my own minimalist solution: just one binary to transfer whatever I want. Anyway, Termux is cool.

Re: Termux

#36

Post by ezequiel-garzon » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 1:21 PM UTC

bluebarbet wrote: post #26

Honest question, as a heavy desktop TUI user who has had Termux installed for years. A terminal (emulator) is a keyboard-based environment. How on earth are all you fans making it work with a tiny touchscreen?

Sessions tend to be way shorter for me, but it's great to have.

Re: Termux

#37

Post by alance » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 1:21 PM UTC

Fwiw termux + rsync for android phone backup (eg rsync /storage/emulated/0/) will grab most things.

Re: Termux

#38

Post by r17n » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 1:22 PM UTC

Everyone posting seems to love this. Can folks provide some of their use-cases?

Re: Termux

#39

Post by bryanrasmussen » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 1:22 PM UTC

firecall wrote: post #34

There’s an app called Termux in the iOS App Store, but I’m guessing it’s not the same thing?

no, it's not, termux requires low level access to the OS that iOS protects against.

Re: Termux

#40

Post by nasretdinov » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 1:24 PM UTC

DrNefario wrote: post #24

nasretdinov wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In iOS we can only use something like ish.app which emulates x86 and runs full Linux distro instead, with predictably much lower performance than Termux (due to JIT being banned in iOS apps), but without any restrictions Android has on the executables

I don't have an iPhone, but wouldn't UTM be better for that use case?

UTM can't be installed from the App Store unfortunately, and without a developer license you are limited to 7 days for each successful on-device reinstall