7 ms·

What is the general consensus on the usability of the Terminal app? On two different Pixel phones (6a & 8a) I had a terrible experience: - Very slow - Crash

What is the general consensus on the usability of the Terminal app? On two different Pixel phones (6a & 8a) I had a terrible experience: - Very slow - Crash all the time - The app need to be reinitialised almost every day But I have heard some people have no complain. Also, since I couldn't really keep it alive long enough: what as the prospects in terms of battery usage? will it be realistic to have it running all time in the background?

flyinghamster 1y ago
Pixel 7a: slow to start, and you must wait for it to finish shutting down (or crashing) before you try to launch it again. Lord help you if Debian pushes a systemd update, since updating systemd is a reliable crash.
soupbowl 1y ago
I had pretty good speed on pixel 6 but the reinitializeling randomly made it useless.
carwyn 1y ago
Sometimes it crashes just running regular apt-get upgrade if it has too many packages to update, or takes too long. Switching away from the app can also mean it crashes. Nice idea, nowhere near ready for anything but playing.
- kllrnohj 1y ago
  > Switching away from the app can also mean it crashes. That sounds more like it's being killed for RAM reasons rather than "crashing"
  - mort96 1y ago
    Same thing. Google owns both Android and the Linux Terminal app. Some combination of Google's OS and Google's app causes the app to crash or be crashed in the background. That's something that Google needs to fix regardless of where the bug lies.
    - _Algernon_ 1y ago
      Is this with battery optimizations disabled?
    - kllrnohj 1y ago
      Not if it's not crashing at all and is just a fundamental difference between Android's memory management and what the Debian guest is expecting (which is no RAM management at all)
      - efskap 1y ago
        >which is no RAM management at all I'm sure the Android one is much more aggressive, but Linux's OOM killer isn't too different is it?
        msgodel 1y ago
        OOM is only triggered when you actually run out of virtual memory. With modern phones that shouldn't normally happen unless you're doing something silly like compiling a web browser.
        heavyset_go 1y ago
        oomkiller is triggered when requested pages can't be allocated
  - heavyset_go 1y ago
    No, it's just Android working the way it was designed. Long running server or VM-esque apps are incompatible with Android's ideal process management and scheduling. Apps are meant to be started and destroyed dynamically when the user does something else, their phone is idle for a long time, battery life is low, etc. If something is in the background it's fair game to kill.
    - codedokode 1y ago
      It could simply pause or throttle apps instead of killing. Also I am sure Google Play Services are not killed randomly.
      - heavyset_go 1y ago
        Yeah, Google has control of the OS and can easily choose to fix the issue. It's just an issue that plagued the last 15 years of attempts at getting Linux running in VMs/containers/etc on Android, and that's the reason it's an issue. Developers might be able to work around the limitation by building dynamic suspending and restoring of VM state into their Linux launcher and try to make it play nice with Android.
- msgodel 1y ago
  This was the issue I had doing anything interesting on Android in the past. It just randomly kills things so you can't do much more serious stuff than web browsing/social media on it. I suppose normal GNU/Linux might have this issue as well if you run an OS with lots of background services that randomly consume large amounts of RAM or if your desktop environment does. I don't so outside of kind of insane environments like raspberry pi zeros or weird situations on servers I don't typically run into this. (and no. It's not 2010, phones are normal PCs not a weird embedded environment.)
  - pfcd 1y ago
    > phones are normal PCs not a weird embedded environment It's the opposite.
    - msgodel 1y ago
      Nope. My last laptop has lower specs than modern phones.
      - pfcd 1y ago
        That doesn't mean they are "normal PCs". Define what is a "normal PC" to you, then. Is it just specs?
      - heavyset_go 1y ago
        Your PC is built on a standardized architecture, your mobile device is its own bespoke SoC and requires unique, and often proprietary, methods just to boot and discover components. It's the reason you can use any amd64 ISO to boot Linux on your PC, but each individual embedded device needs its own special image that is custom to that board, and often a custom Linux fork.
  - heavyset_go 1y ago
    Android app scheduling is different than what not-Android Linux does. oomkiller might kill stuff in high memory pressure situations, but Android does a bunch of dynamic loading and unloading all the time. See also https://developer.android.com/guide/components/processes-and-threads https://developer.android.com/guide/components/processes-and...
- godelski 1y ago
  > just running regular apt-get upgrade if it has too many packages to update, or takes too long That's really interesting! How's it handle nala[0]? I ask because it parallelizes apt. So if it crashes fast then might be a good hint that it is overloaded but if it is more successful could be a timeout? Also... I mean nala is also a much better experience than apt... [0] https://gitlab.com/volian/nala https://gitlab.com/volian/nala
- pjmlp 1y ago
  I keep advocating that all these are kind of band aids, the right approach is to do the CLI as many non-UNIX OSes have done it, not by keeping VT100 hardware alive virtually. In Android's case, a Java or Kotlin written Terminal app, exposing CLI capabilities, taking advantage of Android's APIs. Even assuming the Terminal app works great, it is still only usable for playing, unless I am able to plug a keyboard, mouse and external monitor to a phone, and I have used both DEX and Windows Continuum in the past.
  - microtonal 1y ago
    They are also working on a more full-fledged desktop mode in Android 16 QPR 1. Obviously, you can also plug a keyboard, phone, and external monitor. Pixel 8 and 9 support DP-Alt. I am not sure why VT100 emulation is relevant in this context. Removing it will break a lot of existing Unix/Linux terminal applications and the point of this emulator is to bring the wealth of existing applications (as well as X11/Wayland applications) to Android.
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      Which naturally requires being a Pixel phone, and not something that works across the ecosystem. Exactly because we should stop dragging UNIX all over place, and embrace new computing models, the world already has enough UNIX clones always redoing the same stuff over and over again, as if Lion's book had been published last week.
hnuser123456 1y ago
You're running VMs on low-RAM phones, what did you expect?
- smashed 1y ago
  Pixel 8a has 8gb ram. It's not a low end number for Android phones. Probably more the fact that the memory and battery management logic assumes all user apps which are not in focus can be killed aggressively, which makes the system unsuitable for any background task by design.
  - sunshine-o 1y ago
    Yeah I have machines with 8Gb and I am popping VMs like there is no tomorrow without problem. Now I am not very knowledge about memory management on Android but I just noticed the 8Gb of the Pixel 8a are almost all used just after reboot. So this is very different than a Linux desktop...
    - hnuser123456 1y ago
      Yes, all of the background google services that don't come with desktop Linux chew up a big chunk. You could look into disabling all non-critical services on the phone, there's probably lots of low-hanging fruit.
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      Android is not GNU/Linux, yes it may use the Linux kernel, however it has a complete different userland, complete different driver model microkernel inspired with Android IPC, and the kernel itself is heavly customised, more so the OEMs ones. Expecting Android to be just another Linux distro is exactly the root cause of many Termux developers frustations.
  - godelski 1y ago
    > Pixel 8a has 8gb ram. It's not a low end number for Android phones. I mean... linux runs fine of a Gen 1 raspberry pi... I have several machines around me that are running linux with 4GB or less. Hell, my 3D printer only has 128MB and my car has under a gig and run Linux fine. A low end phone *should* be just fine...
cyanic 1y ago
From my experience it was quite usable on Pixel 8a, but I did experience problems. For context, I use it mostly for web development. It runs a desktop environment with VNC, so I'm able to connect and run software like a browser. I don't develop on the device, but instead connect to a remote machine. Although the browser takes a few seconds to start, I didn't have any issues doing frontend development or doing web searches and reading docs, but I tend to be careful regarding the number of open tabs. The Terminal app does crash from time to time. It can crash after 15 minutes, but I've also had it running for about 2 hours without issues. I'm not bothered by this as I just reconnect and continue where I left. The reinstall is not needed every day. When I run the app, sometimes it says there was an unrecoverable error and suggests to reinstall. I ignore this, because it's a timing issue; the app was slow to start. Usually, if I run it again after closing the activity, it starts normally. The same VM has been running for me without a need to reinstall for a few months. The battery usage is not too bad. I use an external display and make the phone screen black during this time. The battery gets depleted at a rate between 5% and 20% per hour, but this is only for active usage. I haven't been running it all the time in the background.
ricardolopes 1y ago
My experience with a Pixel 6: + Doesn't have the same compatibility issues Termux has, so I can install things like bun.js and npm packages with native bindings (e.g. database connectors) - Can't edit text selection, which makes it difficult to copy text - Can't paste text - Frequently restarts and loses all progress while switching apps I can't say much about the battery because I just haven't used it enough to tell the difference. Honestly, with all these major flaws, I usually end up just using Termux. I hope they fix these glaring flaws soon, IMO they're a lot more urgent to get devs to actually use this than GUI support. Nitpick: also, a more distinctive name would be nice. Right now, it's basically impossible to search for solutions to Android Terminal issues
ThePowerOfFuet 1y ago
The Pixels whose names end in "a" are the budget models with less RAM etc. You will probably have a better experience on more capable hardware.

flyinghamster 1y ago

Pixel 7a: slow to start, and you must wait for it to finish shutting down (or crashing) before you try to launch it again. Lord help you if Debian pushes a systemd update, since updating systemd is a reliable crash.

soupbowl 1y ago

I had pretty good speed on pixel 6 but the reinitializeling randomly made it useless.

carwyn 1y ago

Sometimes it crashes just running regular apt-get upgrade if it has too many packages to update, or takes too long. Switching away from the app can also mean it crashes. Nice idea, nowhere near ready for anything but playing.

kllrnohj 1y ago
> Switching away from the app can also mean it crashes. That sounds more like it's being killed for RAM reasons rather than "crashing"
- mort96 1y ago
  Same thing. Google owns both Android and the Linux Terminal app. Some combination of Google's OS and Google's app causes the app to crash or be crashed in the background. That's something that Google needs to fix regardless of where the bug lies.
  - _Algernon_ 1y ago
    Is this with battery optimizations disabled?
  - kllrnohj 1y ago
    Not if it's not crashing at all and is just a fundamental difference between Android's memory management and what the Debian guest is expecting (which is no RAM management at all)
    - efskap 1y ago
      >which is no RAM management at all I'm sure the Android one is much more aggressive, but Linux's OOM killer isn't too different is it?
      - msgodel 1y ago
        OOM is only triggered when you actually run out of virtual memory. With modern phones that shouldn't normally happen unless you're doing something silly like compiling a web browser.
        heavyset_go 1y ago
        oomkiller is triggered when requested pages can't be allocated
- heavyset_go 1y ago
  No, it's just Android working the way it was designed. Long running server or VM-esque apps are incompatible with Android's ideal process management and scheduling. Apps are meant to be started and destroyed dynamically when the user does something else, their phone is idle for a long time, battery life is low, etc. If something is in the background it's fair game to kill.
  - codedokode 1y ago
    It could simply pause or throttle apps instead of killing. Also I am sure Google Play Services are not killed randomly.
    - heavyset_go 1y ago
      Yeah, Google has control of the OS and can easily choose to fix the issue. It's just an issue that plagued the last 15 years of attempts at getting Linux running in VMs/containers/etc on Android, and that's the reason it's an issue. Developers might be able to work around the limitation by building dynamic suspending and restoring of VM state into their Linux launcher and try to make it play nice with Android.
msgodel 1y ago
This was the issue I had doing anything interesting on Android in the past. It just randomly kills things so you can't do much more serious stuff than web browsing/social media on it. I suppose normal GNU/Linux might have this issue as well if you run an OS with lots of background services that randomly consume large amounts of RAM or if your desktop environment does. I don't so outside of kind of insane environments like raspberry pi zeros or weird situations on servers I don't typically run into this. (and no. It's not 2010, phones are normal PCs not a weird embedded environment.)
- pfcd 1y ago
  > phones are normal PCs not a weird embedded environment It's the opposite.
  - msgodel 1y ago
    Nope. My last laptop has lower specs than modern phones.
    - pfcd 1y ago
      That doesn't mean they are "normal PCs". Define what is a "normal PC" to you, then. Is it just specs?
    - heavyset_go 1y ago
      Your PC is built on a standardized architecture, your mobile device is its own bespoke SoC and requires unique, and often proprietary, methods just to boot and discover components. It's the reason you can use any amd64 ISO to boot Linux on your PC, but each individual embedded device needs its own special image that is custom to that board, and often a custom Linux fork.
- heavyset_go 1y ago
  Android app scheduling is different than what not-Android Linux does. oomkiller might kill stuff in high memory pressure situations, but Android does a bunch of dynamic loading and unloading all the time. See also https://developer.android.com/guide/components/processes-and-threads https://developer.android.com/guide/components/processes-and...
godelski 1y ago
> just running regular apt-get upgrade if it has too many packages to update, or takes too long That's really interesting! How's it handle nala[0]? I ask because it parallelizes apt. So if it crashes fast then might be a good hint that it is overloaded but if it is more successful could be a timeout? Also... I mean nala is also a much better experience than apt... [0] https://gitlab.com/volian/nala https://gitlab.com/volian/nala
pjmlp 1y ago
I keep advocating that all these are kind of band aids, the right approach is to do the CLI as many non-UNIX OSes have done it, not by keeping VT100 hardware alive virtually. In Android's case, a Java or Kotlin written Terminal app, exposing CLI capabilities, taking advantage of Android's APIs. Even assuming the Terminal app works great, it is still only usable for playing, unless I am able to plug a keyboard, mouse and external monitor to a phone, and I have used both DEX and Windows Continuum in the past.
- microtonal 1y ago
  They are also working on a more full-fledged desktop mode in Android 16 QPR 1. Obviously, you can also plug a keyboard, phone, and external monitor. Pixel 8 and 9 support DP-Alt. I am not sure why VT100 emulation is relevant in this context. Removing it will break a lot of existing Unix/Linux terminal applications and the point of this emulator is to bring the wealth of existing applications (as well as X11/Wayland applications) to Android.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Which naturally requires being a Pixel phone, and not something that works across the ecosystem. Exactly because we should stop dragging UNIX all over place, and embrace new computing models, the world already has enough UNIX clones always redoing the same stuff over and over again, as if Lion's book had been published last week.

hnuser123456 1y ago

You're running VMs on low-RAM phones, what did you expect?

smashed 1y ago
Pixel 8a has 8gb ram. It's not a low end number for Android phones. Probably more the fact that the memory and battery management logic assumes all user apps which are not in focus can be killed aggressively, which makes the system unsuitable for any background task by design.
- sunshine-o 1y ago
  Yeah I have machines with 8Gb and I am popping VMs like there is no tomorrow without problem. Now I am not very knowledge about memory management on Android but I just noticed the 8Gb of the Pixel 8a are almost all used just after reboot. So this is very different than a Linux desktop...
  - hnuser123456 1y ago
    Yes, all of the background google services that don't come with desktop Linux chew up a big chunk. You could look into disabling all non-critical services on the phone, there's probably lots of low-hanging fruit.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Android is not GNU/Linux, yes it may use the Linux kernel, however it has a complete different userland, complete different driver model microkernel inspired with Android IPC, and the kernel itself is heavly customised, more so the OEMs ones. Expecting Android to be just another Linux distro is exactly the root cause of many Termux developers frustations.
- godelski 1y ago
  > Pixel 8a has 8gb ram. It's not a low end number for Android phones. I mean... linux runs fine of a Gen 1 raspberry pi... I have several machines around me that are running linux with 4GB or less. Hell, my 3D printer only has 128MB and my car has under a gig and run Linux fine. A low end phone *should* be just fine...

cyanic 1y ago

From my experience it was quite usable on Pixel 8a, but I did experience problems. For context, I use it mostly for web development. It runs a desktop environment with VNC, so I'm able to connect and run software like a browser. I don't develop on the device, but instead connect to a remote machine. Although the browser takes a few seconds to start, I didn't have any issues doing frontend development or doing web searches and reading docs, but I tend to be careful regarding the number of open tabs. The Terminal app does crash from time to time. It can crash after 15 minutes, but I've also had it running for about 2 hours without issues. I'm not bothered by this as I just reconnect and continue where I left. The reinstall is not needed every day. When I run the app, sometimes it says there was an unrecoverable error and suggests to reinstall. I ignore this, because it's a timing issue; the app was slow to start. Usually, if I run it again after closing the activity, it starts normally. The same VM has been running for me without a need to reinstall for a few months. The battery usage is not too bad. I use an external display and make the phone screen black during this time. The battery gets depleted at a rate between 5% and 20% per hour, but this is only for active usage. I haven't been running it all the time in the background.

ricardolopes 1y ago

My experience with a Pixel 6: + Doesn't have the same compatibility issues Termux has, so I can install things like bun.js and npm packages with native bindings (e.g. database connectors) - Can't edit text selection, which makes it difficult to copy text - Can't paste text - Frequently restarts and loses all progress while switching apps I can't say much about the battery because I just haven't used it enough to tell the difference. Honestly, with all these major flaws, I usually end up just using Termux. I hope they fix these glaring flaws soon, IMO they're a lot more urgent to get devs to actually use this than GUI support. Nitpick: also, a more distinctive name would be nice. Right now, it's basically impossible to search for solutions to Android Terminal issues

ThePowerOfFuet 1y ago

The Pixels whose names end in "a" are the budget models with less RAM etc. You will probably have a better experience on more capable hardware.