ish - A Linux Shell for iOS

By PaulMartz, 19 November, 2018

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

I wondered if anyone has tried the beta ish Linux shell?

I tried it with a bluetooth keyboard.

Reviewing text is tricky, because up and down arrow keys take you through the command history. To review lines of text, you must turn on quick nav and rotor to lines. However, as soon as you enter a command, VO loses the rotor setting.

I'm not sure what I'll do with ish, but I'll keep playing with it and see what's possible. Please post your experiences here.

Options

Comments

By peter on Monday, November 19, 2018 - 21:26

This is intriguing. I'm curious what you can do with this interface since a lot of what is under the hood of iOS seems to be locked down from the outside world. For example, can you "see" and navigate the entire file system as on a PC? Can you run apps and/or customize how apps work? What uses do you envision for this interface?

Thanks.

--Pete

By Frankd on Tuesday, November 20, 2018 - 23:01

This app is a nice idea. I tried it briefly both with the on screen keyboard and a bluetooth keyboard. As described in the original post it is a little difficult to work with using a bluetooth keyboard. Recognizing that this is a beta release it might be worth encouraging the developer to consider accessibility as a design constraint.
I have recently been evaluating several ssh client apps which have baried from totally inaccessible to barely usable.The issue of navigating text on the command line/console screen is a common problem especially when using an external keyboard. . This makes me wonder if the various developers are using the same open source code.
A good ssh client app or linux emulator, as is the case with this app, would certainly fill a hole in the app store.

By peter on Tuesday, November 20, 2018 - 23:04

Just wondering what some of the uses for this interface might be. Can you give a few examples of tasks you might consider performing given this functionality? I assume there are lots of restrictions imposed by iOS itself.

Thanks.

--Pete

By PaulMartz on Wednesday, November 21, 2018 - 02:40

I was able to use apk to install both python and git. I tried cloning a git repo, but got an error.

I'd love to provide developer feedback, especially with respect to accessibility. I'll look into doing so, as time allows.

By Brian Tew on Friday, January 4, 2019 - 11:04

Using ios11, ipad, voiceover and a focus 40 blue braille display.
It takes about 2 seconds for each keystroke to show up.
I am too old and grumpy to wait for this thing.
Will check ios9 and 12 later.