Have you ever wanted to run a Linux shell on your iOS device to transfer files, write shell scripts, or simply to use Vi to develop code or edit files? Now you can, with a project called iSH that is currently available as a TestFlight beta for iOS devices.
iSH is a project that aims to bring a Linux shell to iOS devices using a usermode x86 emulator. iSH is built on the Alpine Linux distro, which is designed to have a small footprint, be secure, and easy to use with little or no distracting bells and whistles.
Neat and useful project. Let’s hope it eventually gets approved for App Store distribution.
> Neat and useful project. Let’s hope it eventually gets approved for App Store distribution.
volantem porcos will be a newly discovered species too
That a *nix needs a ‘Linux’ (or any 3rd party) shell to accomplish any of that. Shows what a frakenstein it’s become.
I had a BASH terminal installed on my jailbroken iPhone 4
I fail to see how this is new.
Eh, this is new because it doesn’t involve jailbreaking?
But this app requires the author to have a mac, an iOS developer license, and to authorise people to download the app itself (even if it’s automated. Tghis leaves the devs at the mercy of Apple, who could easily revoke their developer license, leaving this app in the cold.
No such issue with Jailbreaking Because it’s a grey area anyway, developers make sure they’re not left at the whim of Apple, meaning a jailbroken terminal is more likely to still be available 5 years down the line.
Plus, with a jailbreak, you get root access.
Yeah, but you have to live with the peril of being jail broken. I’d rather have the bash terminal on my phone break when their developer account gets pulled, than have my phone’s security compromised by jail braking. If I wanted to enjoy the privilege of not get security updates, I’d go back to android.
I thought Linux was a kernel? Shells are not Linux specific, part of GNU or something else…
Edited 2018-11-13 09:31 UTC
Why is this not compiled for running on ARM but usingusing a usermode x86 emulator?
That makes no sense to me at all.
Yeah, that’s bizarre. I can only guess at why you would do it this way.
Ok its a beta, they get a little pass on that. Just tried it out and quickly found an issue with editing files with vim. Files are written, but then they actually are not…
So here be dragons.
The good news is that the keyboard is actually pleasant to use. It has an extra row with escape and CNTRL keys that make vim possible to use.
I’ve played various linux like shells on Android with very mixed results. The Keyboard seems to be the biggest problem. I haven’t found a good one. This seems better in that regard, hopeful any ways.
Note, they fixed the bugs I found with the last update. Looks good enough for my one off needs for a terminal on a phone.
get a shell account and use ssh terminal on iOS
works already and better..
Is there a specific app you’d recommend for SSH? There are a number of reasons why I might prefer not using ssh to a real linux box, but There are defiantly use-cases for having ssh access as well.
As mentioned in an above comment, I more familiar with the Android solutions, but I think I tried an ios solution or two and was not thrilled at the experience. You need special chars like ctrl,esc, tab, arrow keys to just work.
At somepoint it becomes easier to just write an app that does whatever you do the most often rather than to mess with the screwed up keyboard. But you can’t argue that some things are just easier and faster via cli.