Need help setting up Ubuntu or Zorin on Termux.

[soft fractal]

Starting from scratch because I was apparently using a third party method

[vale stag]

To help others find answers, you can mark your question as solved via Right click solution message -> Apps -> ✅ Mark Solution

[muted veldt]

hi

[soft fractal]

Ello :D

[muted veldt]

i was wondering first, what do you need to have ubuntu or zorin for

like what kind of apps in it do you want

[soft fractal]

I wanna build a cyberdeck! For web browsing and file storage mostly, would like the camera to be usable if possible.

Also just miscellaneous apps including a few I'm probably not allowed to talk about here

[muted veldt]

what desktop environment will you want in it?

[muted veldt]

ok don't mention what other apps you want only mention allowed things

[soft fractal]

Sorry, what's a desktop environment? Is that like a frontend?

[muted veldt]

yes it's like these

[muted veldt]

have you heard of any of these things

so i know you want one because you mentioned web browser, web browser in termux i recommend is firefox

[soft fractal]

I would use the default Zorin environment which I've heard is just modified GNOME

[muted veldt]

and to run firefox i recommend you need a linux gui

[soft fractal]

If I'm using Ubuntu just GNOME

[muted veldt]

ohh you need to know that GNOME won't really open in termux unless you use the one I compiled

even inside proot-distro i don't think GNOME works

i have made a GNOME for termux that works but it's for advanced users,

if you really want it then let me know

it's harder to install

than the other options

[soft fractal]

Definitely not my category lolz, what would you recommend? I want something somewhat similar to windows 10 layout wise

[muted veldt]

if you want it to be like windows I recommend KDE plasma, that can work

[soft fractal]

Alright perfect, I'll go with that

[muted veldt]

ok next, you should know that KDE plasma works in termux without having to install ubuntu or zorin os inside termux

so if it will work then do you still need ubuntu or zorin for something else or if you don't know just say you don't know

[soft fractal]

No clue

[muted veldt]

ok i recommend just try the way without having ubuntu or zorin first

and then if something you try after that doesn't work then if it's something allowed, ask me about it but it if it's not allowed then don't talk about it

to get kde plasma in termux this way,

first install this app

https://github.com/termux/termux-x11/releases/download/nightly/app-universal-debug.apk

then

do you have Google Play Termux or F-Droid Termux currently installed? (which one?)

[soft fractal]

Alright thanks

[soft fractal]

Trying on a completely separate device rn, getting the f droid version rn

[muted veldt]

oh good

yes the F-Droid version is the correct one

[soft fractal]

Alright I have a fresh install of it, guessing I need x-11 as well?

[muted veldt]

yes this one,

https://github.com/termux/termux-x11/releases/download/nightly/app-universal-debug.apk

and then let me know when you have them installed

[soft fractal]

Done

[muted veldt]

ok, now i will tell you commands to use one by one and you can copy and paste them

yes | pkg up -y

^ that is the first command

and let me know when it finishes

[soft fractal]

The whole thing? Or just pkg up -y?

[muted veldt]

the whole thing like this yeah

yes | pkg up -y

this | is a symbol you should copy and paste

it's not a I it's a |

lol they look almost the same

[soft fractal]

Oh it wants me to set a repo one sec

[muted veldt]

yes you can using

termux-change-repo

it's just optional to do that

[muted veldt]

ok now use this

termux-x11 -xstartup startplasma-x11

and then go to the termux:x11 app and look at it

[muted veldt]

yes

[muted veldt]

now go to the termux:x11 app and look at it

[soft fractal]

It gave me a little welcome briefing but theres not really anything here

[muted veldt]

now you need to go to termux:x11 settings here and go to keyboard and disable the extra keys

the extra keys are like, covering up your screen

[soft fractal]

Oh yeahhh that makes sense

Done

Alr, is there a way to integrate an onscreen keyboard?

Also would this support camera and audio?

[muted veldt]

ok there are multiple kinds of onscreen keyboards you can have but i'd recommend try first this one and if you don't like it, explain what needs to be different about it and i could show other options

[soft fractal]

Alright

[muted veldt]

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.pocketworkstation.pckeyboard/

[muted veldt]

audio yes and camera not really no

audio both speakers and microphone but speakers will work by default and microphone will not work by default

if you need to use microphone tell me and i'll tell you what to do

[soft fractal]

Nah camera would be the preferred one, ig I might just have to do some shenanigans with my frontend to make it visually consistent with the Termux

How do I set up the keyboard in Termux?

[muted veldt]

which version of android do you have, if you have android 12 or newer there is a way to use camera

though it's a bit complicated

[soft fractal]

16

[muted veldt]

just install the app and then set your system keyboard to that app

to try it

if the problem is that you don't want to use the same keyboard in both termux:x11 and in other apps,

let me know

there's a different kind of keyboard for that

[soft fractal]

Yeah I'd rather keep my default Gboard setup outside of Termux

Also a keyboard doesn't open when I "click" on a text box

[muted veldt]

you want a different kind of keyboard

use this command

[muted veldt]

well just in case

before you switch to the other kind of keyboard,

did you try using your "back swipe" or "back button" movement while looking at kde plasma

after clicking inside a text box?

[soft fractal]

I'll try that

[muted veldt]

that is basically how you are supposed to type text in termux:x11 but if it's not convenient i can still tell you how to try the other kind of keyboard

[soft fractal]

Nah this is fine, I'm only using on screen temporarily

Sorry to bombard with questions but is there a way to prevent this weird cutoff?

It's especially noticeable in the taskbar

[muted veldt]

car seat headrest is great i've listened to that

but yes

you have a phone with curved corner screen, i do too, most phones are like this,

the most convenient way to just easily avoid that problem is to just change the aspect ratio resolution of the termux:x11

here

[soft fractal]

Makes sense

[soft fractal]

If it's incredibly complicated I'd probably just make a modified frontend for Android or something, what would I need to do?

[muted veldt]

basically if your phone is 1080p set it to 1920x1080

but if your phone is 1440p set it to 2560x1440

etc.

do you have your phone screen resolution memorized and the common 16:9 aspect ratio resolutions memorized and so on?

if not then maybe you need help with this calculation but i could help if you need probably

[soft fractal]

Huh now 11 says it isn't connected, do I have to repeat all the previous steps or just launch it somehow?

[soft fractal]

Yep

[muted veldt]

did it close by itself, if so,

did you make sure to toggle this setting on the device developer options?

[soft fractal]

Toggled it now

[muted veldt]

well try this basically, first, try to follow the steps in this video up until the very end part and then stop before the facebook command it's just an example

[soft fractal]

Thanks, gotta relaunch the actual kde first tho

[muted veldt]

that should stop it from turning off by itself

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjjALJ9fiBc

[muted veldt]

well try this basically, first, try to follow the steps in this video up until the very end part and then stop before the facebook command it's just an example

that video is the first step for a method of getting camera

but warning in advance this method of getting camera is not going to let you use it directly as a webcam in like firefox or something,

[soft fractal]

Alright thanks, I'll probably do that tomorrow- wouldn't it be easier with a desktop with ADB?

[soft fractal]

Nah I'd probably use it to take photos from a camera app if possible

[muted veldt]

what it can do is it can show the camera in a window so then you could screen share with whatever screen share methods are possible in termux:x11 and then that can work in theory

[muted veldt]

oh ok then yeah i'm pretty sure it can do that

either using the tool itself to take the pictures,

or just taking screenshots and cropping them to the window that shows the camera

[soft fractal]

Alright

Just one (probably) more question, is it possible to get this to run the startup by itself when I open the app?

Or even boot up the device

[muted veldt]

yes and yes

[muted veldt]

yes

[soft fractal]

Alright, how would I set that up?

[muted veldt]

though technically the earliest you can make it automatically open is right after you type your PIN and unlock the screen after turning on the phone

it can't auto open before that

[soft fractal]

Close enough lol

[muted veldt]

this app is needed

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.termux.boot/

then you can follow one of my guides for the basic test of it

[soft fractal]

Will do tysm

Thanks for all the help and support! It's late so I'll try the camera and Termux:boot stuff tmrw

[muted veldt]

                mkdir -p "$HOME/.termux/boot"
                echo '#!/data/data/com.termux/files/usr/bin/sh' > "$HOME/.termux/boot/start"
                echo 'termux-x11 -xstartup startplasma-x11' >> "$HOME/.termux/boot/start"
                chmod +x "$HOME/.termux/boot/start"

i think that probably will be able to do it but if not then let me know

[soft fractal]

@muted veldt setting this up right now, I have a quick question. Why does my browser immediately crash when I open accounts.google.com?

like falkon in kde in termux

[muted veldt]

do you have firefox

[muted veldt]

oh ok i'll try that

[soft fractal]

tysm! :D

[soft fractal]

no ill try getting it here tho

wait is there a particular reason I should use firefox in termux or can i just use brave or GX?

[muted veldt]

i can reproduce that, i recommend you report it here and say that going to accounts.google.com in falkon makes it crash

[soft fractal]

where do I do that?

[muted veldt]

https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/issues

[soft fractal]

alr thanks

[muted veldt]

firefox will work, brave and opera will not work

[soft fractal]

why so?

[muted veldt]

pkg install firefox

[muted veldt]

it's hard to explain without a long explanation but, i recommend:

try to get firefox and also try to get brave and opera and you will see what i mean

[muted veldt]

also if you don't like having those black lines around firefox let me know and i could tell ways that can work around that

[soft fractal]

tyty

[soft fractal]

that would be awesome thanks

[muted veldt]

let's go to #1392715498776563724 @soft fractal

[soft fractal]

on what platform, sorry?

[soft fractal]

yes | pkg up -y

pkg install x11-repo

pkg install termux-x11-nightly plasma kde-applications

termux-x11 -xstartup startplasma-x11

[soft fractal]

stopped working after I installed ubuntu, is there a way to remedy this? (srry for ping)

[muted veldt]

y did you need to install ubuntu?

[soft fractal]

couldn't run .deb files

at least not in a way I could figure out

[muted veldt]

was the deb file of something that's not allowed?

[soft fractal]

nah it was just discord, didn't work anyway because of the cpu architecture but I js wanna run deb files in general

[muted veldt]

oh sorry you won't be able to easily run deb files in general because most of them are for x86 cpus

even if you got ubuntu to work it would be an ARM version

[soft fractal]

I got ubuntu to work with some clanker support, its just that the auto boot thing isn't working now

[muted veldt]

could you use this command

cat ~/.termux/boot/start

[soft fractal]

just in termux?

[muted veldt]

yes

[soft fractal]

nothing happened in termux

do I have to mkdir again?

[muted veldt]

for discord i recommend discord.com in firefox firefox works best in termux

[muted veldt]

send a screenshot of what you see

[soft fractal]

huh it's different now that I try it in a new session

[muted veldt]

Yes

if you go to a session where you are running ubuntu it's different from when you aren't and the files are different

[soft fractal]

now it says
#!/data/data/com.termux/files/usr/bin/sh
am start -n com.termux.x11/.MainActivity
termux-x11 -xstartup startplasma-x11

[soft fractal]

nah it just didn't do anything after i did termux-x11 -xstartup startplasma-x11

[muted veldt]

oh could you send a screenshot of what happened when you did that

[soft fractal]

Just nothing

[muted veldt]

oh it means that termux-x11 is already running in that session so you can't type additional commands there

what do you see in the termux:x11 app?

[soft fractal]

i might have just been already in it but it's in terminal

i had already launched it if it matters

[muted veldt]

ohh

wait so what was wrong

it's just that you want to run ubuntu .deb files in the GUI?

you can but there are a few steps required, when you find a .deb files you want to use you could show me and i could explain what steps to do

[soft fractal]

termux doesn't launch itself now that I set up ubuntu

[soft fractal]

yeah that would be nice

[muted veldt]

does the Termux:X11 app still open by itself or just does nothing happen when the phone turns on and you unlock it?

and is the termux:boot app still installed?

[soft fractal]

yes

[soft fractal]

nothing happens

also x11 didnt open by itself already iirc, it just started itself after opening after about 30 seconds

[muted veldt]

i'm not sure what you mean, if it used to start itself then wasn't that the same as opening by itself?

[soft fractal]

oh i misunderstood what you meant mb

the app itself doesnt open unless i open it

but when the app is opened then it starts

like the x11 app wont automatically open itself when I unlock my phone

but it did do the termux-x11 -xstartup startplasma-x11 thing by itsefl

[muted veldt]

ohh

yeah i remember now

yeah i'm not sure why that happens to you

for my device it opens automatically with the same configuration

so i guess you just have to start it manually

you could try the method of termux:widget it makes a shortcut on your home screen you can touch to open it

#general message

[soft fractal]

i use a side button shortcut

I'm more concerned about automating the termux-x11 -xstartup startplasma-x11

like how I had it previously set up

[muted veldt]

it should be working, but I don't know why it isn't for you anymore

[muted veldt]

since you said that the am start part didn't work for you, you could remove that from the ~/.termux/boot/start file and just leave the other two lines there, then try again

[soft fractal]

alright

[soft fractal]

Setting up on another device, what's happening here?

Device is ayn thor on android 13

[main loom]

E: Sub-process /data/data/.../bin/pkg returned an error code (1)

What happened here? Please show us the entire output.

[soft fractal]

tried a screen recording it because the text is a bit too much to reasonably paste in here

[main loom]

Use this instead

More > Share transcript

[soft fractal]

tyty

ill run the last 2 commands i did on a separate session and send the transcript

[main loom]

Thanks

[soft fractal]

npnp you're the one helping lol

uh its way too long for discord, i might try and save it as a .txt or something

[main loom]

It should automatically convert it as a file

[soft fractal]

im on android so the option doesnt pop up

i just manually made it into one, ill upload it

[main loom]

Have you tried to run pkg upgrade like said by pkg.

[soft fractal]

ill try that

[soft fractal]

Did so, this is what happened when I tried to start it now

"The XKEYBOARD keymap compiler (xkbcomp) reports:"
"> "Warning:          Multiple symbols for level 1/group 1 on key <FK23>
"> "                  Using F23, ignoring XF86TouchpadOff
"> "Warning:          Symbol map for key <FK23> redefined
"> "                  Using last definition for conflicting fields
"> "Warning:          Symbol map for key <FK24> redefined
"> "                  Using last definition for conflicting fields
"> "Warning:          Could not resolve keysym XF86AudioBassBoost
"Errors from xkbcomp are not fatal to the X server"
CANNOT LINK EXECUTABLE "startplasma-x11": library "libPlasma.so.6" not found: needed by /data/data/com.termux/files/usr/lib/libkworkspace6.so.6.6.0 in namespace (default)
21131 exited, status=1
~ $```

[muted veldt]

that's weird,

could you show the result from this command?

ohh hold on i can kind of reproduce something similar

we need to recompile kde plasma for libplasma version 6.6.1 that came in the auto update

@sand heart unfortunately some things have broken by themselves after libplasma 6.6.1 came,

[soft fractal]

yeah, havent had issues with this for the past 3 devices

[muted veldt]

we should be able to fix it by recompiling the kde plasma packages which depend on that and updating them to fix this https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/issues/28614

@sand heart if you are here then would you want to do it first or if you're not here that's fine and i will do it in about 6 hours from now?

[soft fractal]

srry i dont understand, wdym?

how could I fix the issue

[muted veldt]

sorry that message was for @sand heart

[muted veldt]

unfortunately you just need to wait for us to fix it it's a problem on our end

[soft fractal]

nah allg lol i failed the reading comprehension check lol

[muted veldt]

whenever we fix it, pkg upgrade will fix it

[soft fractal]

fair, is it because of the specific device or something else?

[muted veldt]

no it's because the update of kde plasma 6.6.1 came

[soft fractal]

oh alr

[sand heart]

Sorry for the delay. I was sleeping.

[muted veldt]

@soft fractal ok now you can use pkg upgrade and get an update and that update will fix kde plasma

[soft fractal]

damn that was fast, thanks

would it be possible for it to capture input from the joysticks of my device?

it seemed to work by default with external keyboards and mice and other peripherals but not my joysticks, idk why

[muted veldt]

not officially

[soft fractal]

alr

[muted veldt]

@waxen citrus will you be able to make a PR to termux-x11 that adds the joystick support?