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Comment by speedgoose | Hacker News Reader

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speedgoose·

It's a bit better on Android, but far from perfect. And the hardware is not very exciting.

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On Android, I love Termux: https://termux.com/

It turns my Android devices into a powerful and versatile programming environment.

ISH looks great. If I was still using any iOS devices, I would give it a try.

I really wish iOS / iPadOS supported better software development environments and tools like ISH. Hopefully ISH does not get pulled by Apple App Store regulators.

I got Visual Studio Code running "natively" on Android under Termux using code-server:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SamsungDex/comments/f6oy5y/quest_fo...

It actually makes my Tab S6 somewhat useful for development.

Termux is much, much better than iSH. iSH is not bad, it's just that it doesn't run any code natively, everything runs through a software emulation layer (I believe x86 to the Apple Axxx processors). So it's slow. Whereas Termux is native and very snappy. I tried running emacs on my iPad Pro (2017) and gave up because it was too slow. On Termux emacs is great, even on a midrange phone from several years ago (Moto G5 Plus).

Hardware-wise the best Android tablet right now is the Samsung Tab S6. I think it's at least as exciting as some of Apple's offerings -- although the android tablet experience is probably not as good as iOS. However, for the purposes of this discussion the "Linux" experience is much better on Android.

It is, but the writing and app experience was so much worse when I last tried it.

If I were okay with other hardware, I could use a Surface, which requires no workarounds for almost all of my work scenarios. But I'd rather carry two devices than make that compromise, to be honest.

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