Show HN: Termux – Terminal emulator and Unix environment for Android | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Termux – Terminal emulator and Unix environment for Android

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I'll leave this here http://kevinboone.net/kbox3.html. I'm using it for years now, together with Android Terminal Emulator.

Thanks, KBOX have been one of the inspirations for the app!

The main technical difference between how Termux and KBOX runs packages is that is that KBOX uses libfakechroot for running binaries under a fake chroot environment, while Termux runs without a chroot, having instead patched the packages to live under the file system hierarchy enforced by Android.

Besides that, the ambition is that Termux should give a more "out of the box" user friendly experience directly after installation to encourage newcomers to the world of terminals :).

How does this compare to TerminalIDE? I'll try this out and KBOX too for myself. Thanks!

I think TerminalIDE is rather similar, with Termux having more up-to-date packages and terminal emulation.

Since Termux requires Lollipop or later, and TerminalIDE only works on Android versions prior to lollipop, TerminalIDE could be an alternative for devices running older Android versions.

Thanks for trying it out - let me know if you have any suggestions for improving the app!

I tried 'apt-get install' by mistake. I see your help file uses 'apt install'. I tried 'apt install picolisp', but no luck. Do you have your own package repository? Thanks.

Yes, the repository is an app-specific one, containing cross compiled (and sometimes patched) packages to run directly without chroot. Just tell me about desired packages (such as picolisp) and I will look into adding them!

So how well does this work under secondary users? AFAIK /data/data always points to the primary user's data directory, so this wouldn't quite work...

Correct, it won't work for secondary users! It's a trade-off for avoiding a fake chroot.

The main problem (imho) with Android is not the interface, but the input. We have a touch display and I have yet to see an interface that I would like to use 8h/day to do work with. The keyboards they blend in are better than anything we had in the past for mobile devices, but they just don't cut it if you want to work. For example a shortcut is likely not "touch ctrl" then "touch a" then "touch k" then "touch y" (exit from screen). A shortcut might be a drawn out pattern (I guess).

Another solution might include sounds, interacting with the microphone. Or using the camera and recognizing gestures. There are many things the traditional computer doesn't have. And in exchange we don't have on a mobile device what we have on a computer: a desk to put a keyboard on.

I already have a terminal for Android, SSH, IDEs, etc. But where are people on making the text (or command) come from my head into the app?

Try Hacker's Keyboard. Or a real bluetooth keyboard.

I now actually prefer the Hacker's Keyboard on my Nexus 6 in portrait because the regular keyboard takes a lot of energy and generally is a hassle and really loud.

I do all of my programming and everything on Android for the last 4 months.

> I do all of my programming and everything on Android for the last 4 months.

On a Nexus 6? Or on a 9-inch tablet? Why?

I used a 7 inch tablet and now my Nexus. I just need a terminal and/or ssh window and a browser. I have also been sshing into my Linode so maybe that's cheating.

But I can do that stuff fine on a tablet/phablet. Laptop is really big and heavy and uses 2-10x as much energy. Seems outdated. And typing is really loud.

This looks cool, but sadly not compatible with either of my devices. What requirements does this have? It's never clear to me if I can find this out on Google Play.

As far as I can tell the source for the APK itself isn't available -- but it seems to be targeting Android 5.

Yes, Android 5.0 or later is required due to the libc changes made in lollipop. It also requires an arm(64) or x86(_64) cpu - no mips support at the moment!

Finally updated my note3 to lollipop - I like your price point for the theme-addon. Bought it. Keep up the good work! :)

Great, thanks :). Let me know if you miss any font or colour theme from it!

Very good ! Thanks.

There is still some problems, on my nexus 9 "make" complain that it doesn't find "/bin/sh" which is normal, is it possible to change this so it can find the provided shell ? And "ld" from binutils require gcc so it seems that it is not possible to work only with clang ?

Thanks a lot, it is the best solution to develop on my Nexus 9, it really shine again !

Thanks! Is it the make program itself which tries to run /bin/sh, or does it try to run a file from a project which has a #!/bin/sh start?

If it's GNU make itself which tries to call /bin/sh directly, that could be patched from my side. But if it is a script from a file, you have to make the shebang replacement #!/bin/sh -> #!${PREFIX}/bin/sh yourself on all script files to be executed - there is a simple termux-fix-shebang script installed by default for that!

I've tryed it on a very simple makefile and after some testing found what trigger the message. It is simply a line with an "echo" command. It seems that make try to run it with "/bin/sh".

Thanks - this is now fixed, if you do an 'apt update && apt upgrade' it should now work!

Thanks, it works perfectly now.

Do you plan to also make a version for 64bit ARM ? This one works perfectly on my Nexus 9 but I would love to be able to develop for ARM64 directly on it.

Thank you for your work, From what I see on the play store, you plan to make money with the extensions ? I will probably buy at least the theme one soon.

Great! Yes, I've been experimenting with ARM64 packages, will look at it more when things settle down a bit.

Nice, let me know if there is a font or colour theme you miss from it!

Looks very nice. You should perhaps make the github/source link[1] a bit easier to find, than just pop it on the help-page -- at first I thought you were ignoring the GPL for bash etc.

[1] https://github.com/termux/termux-packages

Thanks! I'll think about making the source more obvious in the store listing or the app interface.

Just tried apt install emacs. Launched. It works!

I'm finally proud of my Nexus 9 with keyboard.

Works awesome on my Nexus 6 so far. Woww.. great job!

fish package install output something weird but it works. And nodejs installed!

You are da man, man! Now maybe I won't bother rooting it.

This works quite well on my Nvidia Shield Android TV. Now I just need a way to easily shift between the browser and the terminal.

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