More screwing around in Android

Entered: in emacs on Gemini PDA Date: 20230409

I never use my Gemini PDA much outside of termux

I pretty much only use termux on this device. If I am writing a script or doing something where I want to look something up on the web, I use my phone for that so I can keep emacs up on my GPDA.

With that in mind, I have went ahead and used the magisk debloat module to remove a lot of system programs, and disabled the navigation bar. Somewhere along the lines I likely removed a system app I should not have because alt+tab stopped functioning. So I installed an ad-free taskmanager and

sudo htop

works just as well for killing apps. Since I also damaged the ability to return to my launcher along the way, the built in Gemini PDA appbar, triggered by the alt key, is a huge boon as it has a desktop button.

Fixing termux being autokilled

I disabled battery optimization for termux but it still would get killed in the middle of high cpu activities. I added the following to my .bashrc and it seems to have worked:

sudo /system/bin/ulimit -m unlimited
sudo /system/bin/ulimit -v unlimited
sudo /system/bin/ulimit -s unlimited
ulimit -m unlimited
ulimit -v unlimited
ulimit -s unlimited

The reason the lines are duplicated is there are two ulimits installed. The one in /system/bin is android native and the one above with no path is the termux pkg installed binary. They likely both do the same thing, but it does not seem to hurt being in there twice.

Termux as a psuedo window manager

In ~/.termux/termux.properties the following lines are very helpful:

shortcut.create-session = ctrl + t
shortcut.previous-session = ctrl + 1
shortcut.next-session = ctrl + 2
shortcut.rename-session = ctrl + n

With these options uncommented ctrl+t starts a new session (window) and ctrl+[1|2] cycles thru windows. No more need for tmux or screen. Super handy and fewer key strokes to go between sessions.

Feeling

The current state of this device is starting to feel like home. The items that have been removed, disabled, broken, are ones that did I either do not use, or that I do not feel bothered by the work-around. Meanwhile I am able to quickly do the things I actually wanted to do.

Screenshot: emacs in termux on GPA [IMG]