Hacker News Reader

It's a system inside a system shipped as an app, isolated from other apps and with no integrations with the wider operating system. It's not far from WSL or a VM.

View on HN

It forks and execs new programs using the actual Linux system calls. It's a real Linux terminal emulator that opens and drives /dev/ptmx. Not sure what else it needs to be a real Linux.

Termux is very well integrated. Termux:API allows access to phone sensors, location and cameras, sharing data with android apps, issuing notifications... All from the command line. Things like xdg-open work fine.

There is a reason why you cannot install Termux any longer via the Play Store, those APIs aren't allowed as public APIs.

I know and I think it's dumb. Termux is too useful not to allow the use of those APIs. They should turn them into permissions or something.

Linux kernel is only an implementation detail, doing so would prevent a future Zirkon migration.

yet the existance of these api's serves as an example as to why android can be classified as a unix

What matters is what the consumers, and developers of the platform see when using it in legal ways, not the hacker route.

the nature of a thing does not change with the perspective

Reply on news.ycombinator.com