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Comment by sowbug

8 hours ago

I haven't used my Pro purchase in years, but if I did want to ssh from my phone today, I'd use the newish Terminal app, available since Android 15. It's a full Debian virtual machine.

32 comments

sowbug

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wilsonnb3  7 hours ago

I don’t think it is that widely available due to Snapdragon chips not supporting some feature it requires.

Good option for Pixel owners or phones with MediaTek chips though.

  • fulafel  6 hours ago

    Apparently it's about software, not hardware - Qualcomm recommends running Android under a virtual machine (which lacks nested virtualization support).

    • mcbridematt  2 hours ago

      IIRC Qualcomm smartphone SoCs have always run some kind of hypervisor, I believe it's to allow partitioning of the CPU cores with the modem/DSP.

      They used to (mid-late 2000s) use an L4 derivative ("REX"?), with the more recent chips (including the 'X' series for PCs) using their homegrown "Gunyah" hypervisor (https://github.com/quic/gunyah-hypervisor)

    • superb_dev  5 hours ago

      Is this for real? Do you have any more info on this? It seems crazy to me given how popular their chips are and how many problems I’d imagine this creates

      4 replies →

  • chasil  5 hours ago

    I run LineageOS on both a Pixel 3a XL and a OnePlus 5. Yes, these both run Snapdragons.

    The option to install the subsystem is present on both, but I have not attempted it.

    I have loaded it onto a Pixel 6a running Graphene.

    • TheRoque  1 hour ago

      The option is available, but it probably won't work (show some error that the chip should allow unsecure VMs)

preisschild  6 hours ago

Or termux, which doesnt use a VM

  • gruez  5 hours ago

    Yeah, another vote for Termux. The linux VM ends up being a bit laggy because it's actually a webview that renders a terminal, that's connected to the VM. More importantly though, the soft keyboard support is totally broken, so if you try to backspace more characters than you've typed, it won't let you. That sucks if do something like:

    1. type some command, hit enter

    2. hit up to edit it (because you typoed something)

    3. can't backspace because the soft keyboard thinks there's nothing to delete

    • preisschild  4 hours ago

      Ive always considered termux the more elegant option for userspace programs than the android terminal debian vm. I just wished android had the permission api to create user namespaces (containers) in termux

sunnyam  8 hours ago

Do you mean Termux? I can't find any other Terminal app with a similar name