iSH: An open source terminal for iOS/iPadOS

spiritedpause@sh.itjust.works to Open Source@lemmy.ml – 32 points –
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ISH uses a x86 emulator to run alpine Linux as a terminal. I personally prefer A-shell (mini) as it is more performant

A-shell

Hadn't heard of a-shell. On my iPad I occasionally use iSH for bittorent, among other uses. I do agree it is on the slower side, but that is in part because of Apple's rules about JITs and this forces iSH to use an interpreter. I do think an interpreter of ARM ISA would potentially be faster as the ISA is fixed width and x86 is not, but I don't know if that would be margin of error faster or not.

Thanks for sharing.

Edit: I may have came across that before, but iSH is more flexible, if much slower.

because of Apple's rules about JITs

Now that I think about it, Apple's relaxing its rules for emulators it must be a PITA to make such a software without JIT..

Yeah. Only systems that can be interpreted in real time are viable. Not sure how recent we are talking either. On top of that, interpretation will be inherently worse on battery life.