Hacker News Reader

Comment by vimredo | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand what this would be useful for. The Linux terminal app on Android (check Developer settings if you want it) already exists and it uses hardware accelerated virtualization, while this uses QEMU with TCG. The Linux terminal app also supports running a DE (No VNC - as in no VNC, not NoVNC - required!), has full shell, full root, all the features of Podroid, and hell, you could even swap out the terminal if you wanted to. The only advantage to this seems that it supports Android 14, 15, and 16. Am I missing something, or does this have no purpose?

View on HN

My understanding is that the integrated linux terminal is not supported on all processors like snapdragon ones and also is not available on all manufactures like Samsung. Therefore this approach covers a much bigger audience.

I think it was only available on Google Pixel until recently. As far as I understand, some Samsung Exynos devices support it (e.g. Z Flip 7, non-US S26 with Exynos), but not Snapdragon devices, which don't seem to support non-protected VMs yet:

Error code: java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException: Non-protected VMs are not supported on this device

I can find it on my S25fe with exynos android 16/oneui 8.0 if I search for it in the setting but is greyed out. I wait for 8.5 to see if it is enabled then and is the only time I'm happy to have an exynos device!

Can confirm -- seeing the same error on a Samsung Snapdragon device when attempting to use the Linux terminal

It also behaves weirdly if you use a VPN.

Android's terminal app is really slow and takes some time to boot comparing to Termux.

Also, the Terminal app is essentially a webview (as I understand, the reason is architectural).

This. Also, for phones that don't support Android virtualization, there's a user-space hack, part of Termux upstream, that allows for root-less chroots via LD_PRELOAD: https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/PRoot.

systemd won't boot with this (needs to be PID 1), but a lot of software will work just fine and there's nearly zero emulation overhead.

I don't think it uses LD_PRELOAD, it uses ptrace to intercept system calls (hence the name). Unfortunately this does have performance overhead, although I've never bothered to measure it. Actually that would be an interesting thing to benchmark.

My bad, I must have confused it with something else. Yes, it uses ptrace; there definitely is some overhead around system calls, but that still should be better than running atop a full-scale CPU emulator. That being said, I haven't benchmarked it myself, just remember it being pretty snappy.

Thanks for your correction!

The new app is truly awesome, was able to get a desktop environment running, and a minecraft server & client. Just a shame that you can't pass through USB.

The Linux terminal app on Android reddits are full of reports of instability. It is far from being useful as far as I understand. I had so much hope for this being a good way to use my phone as a portal for development, but it's a dud. At least we have termux and proot.

Termux itself is a red-headed step-child on Android, with current releases installable only from F-Droid, and quite possibly subject to further restrictions in future.

Mind: Termux is the only thing on Android which has not precisely sucked in my own 15+ years' experience with the platform. It remains both crippled and emperiled by the OS and Google.

<https://web.archive.org/web/20210103151837/https://wiki.term...>

There's ... some Google Play availability as of June 2024: <https://github.com/termux/termux-app/discussions/4000>.

F-Droid's own future viability is at risk given Google's recent Android directions:

<https://www.techdirt.com/2025/10/07/googles-requirement-for-...>.

My own interests lie more in the ability to run Android emulated under Linux, and switching from phone / tablet devices to a small form-factor laptop (Framework 12 or 13 most likely) for on-the-go computing.

you seem to have articulated precisely the advantage that makes it serve a purpose for me: supporting the version of android on my phone. presumably i am far from unique in not having android 16

Not everyone owns one of the limited range of devices that Linux Terminal is available for. For example, no Snapdragon chips currently in use support the "non-protected" virtual machines required by the Android Virtualization Framework. Also, it doesn't jive with Samsung Knox, so the few Samsung devices that this might work on (mostly international models with Exynos chips) will likely not be supported.

Wow, didn't know this existed, thanks. But 761 Mo download?? That's insanely big for a terminal, what could possibly make this bundle so big?

It's not giving you access to Android shell, but one inside VM. So OS image for VM.

It is a complete OS in a virtual machine.

The Linux Terminal app is incredibly buggy in my experience, but that may be because I use GrapheneOS.

I tried it on my Samsung phone. Keeps crashing, "recovery" just deletes everything and you start over from scratch. No session lasted more than 5 minutes.

Isn't this super limited? It seems to only support the latest version of android which only recently released phones have.

Personally this toggle doesn't do anything (Android 16, Samsung) so I'm not sure when it's supposed to be ready

We can use old phones for running PiHole.

> The Linux terminal app on Android (check Developer settings if you want it)

I don't see it. How do I install it?

In developer settings, under debugging "Linux development environment (Experimental) Run Linux terminal on Android"

No such option. Apparently it needs to be allowed by the vendor (Samsung)?

Yeah, it is controlled by the vendor. If you can't find the option, you will need to use `adb` to enable it that's what I did basically. You can Google it and you'll find what I'm talking about. IRC, it is `pm enable ...`.

Sometimes the capability unlocks the possibilities.

But does it synergize paradigms?

Creating a new capability is like making a new flashlight.

Maybe the new light can see wider, or further and you see something you didn’t before that was possible.

You can synergizr the looksmaxing while cooking if you like :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com