For many years I have been a heavy user of ConnectBot. It was a fine SSH client for Android but it was usually missing latest ciphers and other new SSH features. Two weeks ago I stumbled upon Termux, a open source terminal emulator that bundles an APT-based Linux distribution for Android and immediately it became my ultimate Android console tool.
So what is Termux?
Termux is an open-source terminal emulator app for Android that bundles an extensible Linux environment. It runs completely in user mode (no root required) and therefore should run on any Android device. For me Termux is as a full-featured single-user Linux distribution.
Termux uses the apt package manager to install and manage more than 1000 packages.
The main repository includes many famous utilities and daemons:
- network tools (e.g. openssh, rsync, netcat, ipmitool, wget, curl)
- security tools (e.g. nmap)
- shells and related tools (e.g. bash, tcsh, zsh, tmux)
- command-line editors (e.g. nano, vim)
- source code management tools (e.g. git, subversion)
- scripting languages (e.g. Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, lua)
- the QEMU emulator
- document, graphics and video processing (e.g. ImageMagick, ffmpeg, pdftk)
- some famous servers as well (sshd, nginx, nodejs, redis, mysql, postgresql, samba)
There is a special “root” repository for packages that require a rooted android phone.
Here are included tools like lxc, docker, OpenVPN, mtr, Wireshark or dnsmasq.
Termux is available on Google Play, F-Droid and for direct download.