11 ms·

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 (al

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-Android-10 https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/wiki/Termux-and-An...

rektide 6y ago
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 kind of decisions done "for the user" by removing capabilities from the environment. Even the people not fighting against people in the War on General Purpose Computing keep seceding our sovereign systems away from us. The need for security is real, but I don't see that we are approaching it with balance. We seem to be growing ever more heavyhanded, permitting users less & less, and I don't see a reciprocal respect & empowerment being considered, furthered or advanced. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24982862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24982862
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  > More and more it feels like the OS, the browser, are guarding the user not against bad apps, but also against the user. This is something Stallman and others have been talking about[1] for more than a decade now. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24881893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24881893
- quicklime 6y ago
  What worries me most is that our devices are being radically over-secured according to a threat model that doesn't include companies that share my data without my permission, but does include open source developers building general-purpose tools. The former are actively encouraged, and the latter are considered collateral damage.
  - anderspitman 6y ago
    That might have something to do with the fact that the people making the OS are also the people most interested in your data.
- npsimons 6y ago
  Stallman was right.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
  Can the user really achieve "security" without having full control. When the user is not the customer of the third party providing "security". (In this case advertisers are the customer.) Hopefully courts will begin to recognise that this sort of "security" is in fact created for the benefit of the company and its customers, not users. Any benefits to users are incidental. Users are not soliciting these "security" measures. They are always initiated by the company.
- MarkusWandel 6y ago
  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 as apk's but what about simply compiling a small C program and running it? So the old school tinkerer is sad that I'm locked out of a perfectly good Linux machine that I own. However the other angle is, this phone is an appliance and I want it to just work. I'm personally competent enough to have that cake (programmability) and eat it too (reliable usability) - after all I've been running Red Hat/Fedora as my primary desktop OS at home for two decades and it works just fine, thank you. But I also remember what a horrible mess the average schmoe's home computer was back in the good old days... remember an outdated version of Internet Explorer with half the screen obscured by a stack of junky toolbars, and the whole thing running at 800x600 on a monitor capable of higher resolutions "because otherwise the letters are too small". Good riddance. Anyway for the moment, second-hand desktop and laptop machines that can run a full, unencumbered compute environment are still plentiful. Maybe by the time they aren't, I'll be a truly old fart who doesn't care any more.
  - rektide 6y ago
    I agree that there are multiple angles. I think of them as different contexts. What I see is that, at the moment, we're designing, permitting, allowing, creating, constructing, & securing only for one angle, only for the pure-consumerism mode, the mode where we assume the user is in "don't care/don't know" mode. This mode, however, is such a denigration to humanity. All the spirit of augmenting the human intellect, computing being servant to the human psyche, harnessed by human creativity... it's a way-more-than-tacit admission of defeat, a brazen retreat. It just seems... unaccounted for. We don't talk about this loss, this turning around. We trumpet security & chalk up wins for helping each other, but there's no mainstream dialogue that supports the deeply enriched angle, the immersive, expert computer user, the post-training-wheels life. Everything is centered around the dumb consumer, all of computing focused around a consumerized applicationized "just work" mentality. I think we've been drinking poison.
  - 6y ago
- Valkhyr 6y ago
  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.
- fogihujy 6y ago
  This is not a part of the war on general purpose computing; it's a part of the effort to make Eternal September to end by making software that works for everyone. As it is, this entails limiting the users' freedom to tinker in such a way that they simply cannot screw things up no matter how hard they try. Because, you know, if users have that option, then someone will take advantage of it and screw things up. This line of thought has powerful political and philosophical backing, as digitalization is seen as the magic bullet that will solve a wide array of issues throughout society, and the general idea seem to be to protect people for their own good. Incidentally, it's often the most profitable route as well, as it's the only way to get non-technical users on-board.
  - rusk 6y ago
    That’s the cover story LOL
    - fogihujy 6y ago
      It's the official story, no matter how you put it. I'm not saying it's a good thing (in fact, I find it horrible), but it is what it is and I have no idea on how to turn that tide. There's a lot to be said about freedom of computing, but the fact remains that given the option to screw things up, then some people will do that. At the same time, we have a culture that incentivize catering to the non-technical users in a way that prevents them from screwing things up. Long story short: If we want to turn this trend, then we need to: 1) Start telling non-technical users that any damage caused through their freedom of action is their own responsibility. 2) Produce competitive products that not only provide the desired amount of freedom, but which also compete on price, desirability, usability and the impression that the products are secure enough to use. In many cases, 1 will be seen as a way of avoiding responsibility, and it'll take a tremendous amount of effort to convince users (and consumer protection agencies) that they should be less protected just in case someone else decides to tinker with their product. That alone makes 2 more or less impossible.
      - rusk 6y ago
        I really think this line of thinking is overegged. It is one thing to make a device easy to use, yet quite another to lock them out for creative purposes.
- unicornporn 6y ago
  > Chrome mobile supporting no extensions. Kiwi browser does.
bosswipe 6y ago
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.
- varispeed 6y ago
  For me so far the worst thing Google did was disabling API for call recording. That makes new phones pretty much useless for me. I always record calls, so that I can go back to them if I forget something or that nobody can claim they said something when they didn't (most recently insurance salesperson told me I will have option X if I take their insurance and they once I bought it, there was no such option. Once I pulled the "I have recorded your salesman lying to me", I got a prompt refund and apologies).
  - fencepost 6y ago
    You may be better off with a VoIP service and a softphone client, though I don't think any are as smooth as the phone native performance
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - tyingq 6y ago
    I assume you're up on all the various local laws on recording conversations, so this is for others, not you. Look into it before doing this.
    - sxiin 6y ago
      Not against the law in Finland at least and thus seems unfair that rooting is needed to do this.
    - varispeed 6y ago
      Ok but then why don't they disable the camera and a microphone when you record videos? You can hide the phone in a way that the person you talk to won't see you are recording it. I don't accept this explanation.
saagarjha 6y ago
This is annoying but not actually a big deal; it is easy to work around this with a custom dynamic linker.
donio 6y ago
The workaround won't help with self-installed executables though, right? Like when I cross-compile something on my dekstop and copy the executable to run under Termux?
- kbenson 6y ago
  It seems like maybe as long as you package your executable into a DEB it can convert it into an APK? That shouldn't be too hard. It's probably possible for them to release a script that does it automatically depending on what information is preserved from the DEB in the APK with regard to types of files and how complex the thing you want to install is. I don't have much experience with DEBs, but have quite a bit with RPMs and their spec files which are used to create them, and this wouldn't be that hard to do with an RPM (and you can convert RPMs to DEBs in many cases with utilities).
  - donio 6y ago
    Yeah I guess that would work as a last resort but it's a pretty big hoop to jump through compared to just scp-ing the binary over. I guess I will stick with SDK 28 builds as long as I possibly can and start looking at alternatives for the longer term.
nanna 6y ago
Reminder that Termux is available on F-Droid.
- javajosh 6y ago
  I've had a terrible experience with my LineageOS S9.
  - 0xdeadb00f 6y ago
    F-Droid's UI is trash in terms of usability IMO. Quite clunky. If that was your issue too there are various frontend forks that fix that issue in better ways than F-Droid has attempted to. I for one use FoxyDroid which is about as minimal as it gets, but still usable and pretty to look at. There's also AuroraDroid (best looking one IMO), and G-Droid as alternative frontends.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - tweetle_beetle 6y ago
      I agree, the big F-Droid redesign was a step backwards. I didn't know about the alternatives though. Thanks
  - donio 6y ago
    What does that have to do with Termux or F-Droid?
    - javajosh 6y ago
      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't even mind if it was browser native, and neither should anyone else because WASM.
swiley 6y ago
If you want to do something other than Instagram then don't buy devices that run "mobile" OSes.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  It's easy to say that, but the competition isn't all that great so your comment isn't really adding much.
  - swiley 6y ago
    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.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      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.
      - pigeons 6y ago
        Maemo
    - snazz 6y ago
      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 web. Desktop Linux is usable for most developers and people who don't care about UI consistency or proprietary applications like Office and Creative Cloud. That's a reasonably significant chunk of the computer-using population. The same cannot be said of phones.

rektide 6y ago

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 kind of decisions done "for the user" by removing capabilities from the environment. Even the people not fighting against people in the War on General Purpose Computing keep seceding our sovereign systems away from us. The need for security is real, but I don't see that we are approaching it with balance. We seem to be growing ever more heavyhanded, permitting users less & less, and I don't see a reciprocal respect & empowerment being considered, furthered or advanced. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24982862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24982862

heavyset_go 6y ago
> More and more it feels like the OS, the browser, are guarding the user not against bad apps, but also against the user. This is something Stallman and others have been talking about[1] for more than a decade now. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24881893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24881893
quicklime 6y ago
What worries me most is that our devices are being radically over-secured according to a threat model that doesn't include companies that share my data without my permission, but does include open source developers building general-purpose tools. The former are actively encouraged, and the latter are considered collateral damage.
- anderspitman 6y ago
  That might have something to do with the fact that the people making the OS are also the people most interested in your data.
npsimons 6y ago
Stallman was right.
1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
Can the user really achieve "security" without having full control. When the user is not the customer of the third party providing "security". (In this case advertisers are the customer.) Hopefully courts will begin to recognise that this sort of "security" is in fact created for the benefit of the company and its customers, not users. Any benefits to users are incidental. Users are not soliciting these "security" measures. They are always initiated by the company.
MarkusWandel 6y ago
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 as apk's but what about simply compiling a small C program and running it? So the old school tinkerer is sad that I'm locked out of a perfectly good Linux machine that I own. However the other angle is, this phone is an appliance and I want it to just work. I'm personally competent enough to have that cake (programmability) and eat it too (reliable usability) - after all I've been running Red Hat/Fedora as my primary desktop OS at home for two decades and it works just fine, thank you. But I also remember what a horrible mess the average schmoe's home computer was back in the good old days... remember an outdated version of Internet Explorer with half the screen obscured by a stack of junky toolbars, and the whole thing running at 800x600 on a monitor capable of higher resolutions "because otherwise the letters are too small". Good riddance. Anyway for the moment, second-hand desktop and laptop machines that can run a full, unencumbered compute environment are still plentiful. Maybe by the time they aren't, I'll be a truly old fart who doesn't care any more.
- rektide 6y ago
  I agree that there are multiple angles. I think of them as different contexts. What I see is that, at the moment, we're designing, permitting, allowing, creating, constructing, & securing only for one angle, only for the pure-consumerism mode, the mode where we assume the user is in "don't care/don't know" mode. This mode, however, is such a denigration to humanity. All the spirit of augmenting the human intellect, computing being servant to the human psyche, harnessed by human creativity... it's a way-more-than-tacit admission of defeat, a brazen retreat. It just seems... unaccounted for. We don't talk about this loss, this turning around. We trumpet security & chalk up wins for helping each other, but there's no mainstream dialogue that supports the deeply enriched angle, the immersive, expert computer user, the post-training-wheels life. Everything is centered around the dumb consumer, all of computing focused around a consumerized applicationized "just work" mentality. I think we've been drinking poison.
- 6y ago
Valkhyr 6y ago
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.
fogihujy 6y ago
This is not a part of the war on general purpose computing; it's a part of the effort to make Eternal September to end by making software that works for everyone. As it is, this entails limiting the users' freedom to tinker in such a way that they simply cannot screw things up no matter how hard they try. Because, you know, if users have that option, then someone will take advantage of it and screw things up. This line of thought has powerful political and philosophical backing, as digitalization is seen as the magic bullet that will solve a wide array of issues throughout society, and the general idea seem to be to protect people for their own good. Incidentally, it's often the most profitable route as well, as it's the only way to get non-technical users on-board.
- rusk 6y ago
  That’s the cover story LOL
  - fogihujy 6y ago
    It's the official story, no matter how you put it. I'm not saying it's a good thing (in fact, I find it horrible), but it is what it is and I have no idea on how to turn that tide. There's a lot to be said about freedom of computing, but the fact remains that given the option to screw things up, then some people will do that. At the same time, we have a culture that incentivize catering to the non-technical users in a way that prevents them from screwing things up. Long story short: If we want to turn this trend, then we need to: 1) Start telling non-technical users that any damage caused through their freedom of action is their own responsibility. 2) Produce competitive products that not only provide the desired amount of freedom, but which also compete on price, desirability, usability and the impression that the products are secure enough to use. In many cases, 1 will be seen as a way of avoiding responsibility, and it'll take a tremendous amount of effort to convince users (and consumer protection agencies) that they should be less protected just in case someone else decides to tinker with their product. That alone makes 2 more or less impossible.
    - rusk 6y ago
      I really think this line of thinking is overegged. It is one thing to make a device easy to use, yet quite another to lock them out for creative purposes.
unicornporn 6y ago
> Chrome mobile supporting no extensions. Kiwi browser does.

bosswipe 6y ago

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.

varispeed 6y ago
For me so far the worst thing Google did was disabling API for call recording. That makes new phones pretty much useless for me. I always record calls, so that I can go back to them if I forget something or that nobody can claim they said something when they didn't (most recently insurance salesperson told me I will have option X if I take their insurance and they once I bought it, there was no such option. Once I pulled the "I have recorded your salesman lying to me", I got a prompt refund and apologies).
- fencepost 6y ago
  You may be better off with a VoIP service and a softphone client, though I don't think any are as smooth as the phone native performance
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tyingq 6y ago
  I assume you're up on all the various local laws on recording conversations, so this is for others, not you. Look into it before doing this.
  - sxiin 6y ago
    Not against the law in Finland at least and thus seems unfair that rooting is needed to do this.
  - varispeed 6y ago
    Ok but then why don't they disable the camera and a microphone when you record videos? You can hide the phone in a way that the person you talk to won't see you are recording it. I don't accept this explanation.

saagarjha 6y ago

This is annoying but not actually a big deal; it is easy to work around this with a custom dynamic linker.

donio 6y ago

The workaround won't help with self-installed executables though, right? Like when I cross-compile something on my dekstop and copy the executable to run under Termux?

kbenson 6y ago
It seems like maybe as long as you package your executable into a DEB it can convert it into an APK? That shouldn't be too hard. It's probably possible for them to release a script that does it automatically depending on what information is preserved from the DEB in the APK with regard to types of files and how complex the thing you want to install is. I don't have much experience with DEBs, but have quite a bit with RPMs and their spec files which are used to create them, and this wouldn't be that hard to do with an RPM (and you can convert RPMs to DEBs in many cases with utilities).
- donio 6y ago
  Yeah I guess that would work as a last resort but it's a pretty big hoop to jump through compared to just scp-ing the binary over. I guess I will stick with SDK 28 builds as long as I possibly can and start looking at alternatives for the longer term.

nanna 6y ago

Reminder that Termux is available on F-Droid.

javajosh 6y ago
I've had a terrible experience with my LineageOS S9.
- 0xdeadb00f 6y ago
  F-Droid's UI is trash in terms of usability IMO. Quite clunky. If that was your issue too there are various frontend forks that fix that issue in better ways than F-Droid has attempted to. I for one use FoxyDroid which is about as minimal as it gets, but still usable and pretty to look at. There's also AuroraDroid (best looking one IMO), and G-Droid as alternative frontends.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - tweetle_beetle 6y ago
    I agree, the big F-Droid redesign was a step backwards. I didn't know about the alternatives though. Thanks
- donio 6y ago
  What does that have to do with Termux or F-Droid?
  - javajosh 6y ago
    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't even mind if it was browser native, and neither should anyone else because WASM.

swiley 6y ago

If you want to do something other than Instagram then don't buy devices that run "mobile" OSes.

saagarjha 6y ago
It's easy to say that, but the competition isn't all that great so your comment isn't really adding much.
- swiley 6y ago
  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.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    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.
    - pigeons 6y ago
      Maemo
  - snazz 6y ago
    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 web. Desktop Linux is usable for most developers and people who don't care about UI consistency or proprietary applications like Office and Creative Cloud. That's a reasonably significant chunk of the computer-using population. The same cannot be said of phones.