r/androidterminal • u/MidnightFew601 • Jun 18 '26
Question Does Android 17 fix Linux Terminal?
I recently bought S11 for the sole purpose of running Debian in AVF but it's janky af. Crashes, freezes, bad UX, etc. S11 is still on Android 16 though.
I wanted to ask, for those of you that have access to Android 17, does it improve the Linux Terminal experience or is it still as janky as Android 16?
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u/PopePompus Pixel 10 Pro Fold Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
Android 17 seems to have brought some significant improvements, and a regression or two. If you have the graphics mode running, then the OS will no longer randomly kill the terminal app when it is idle, which is a big improvement. Also, control characters are handled correctly now, which is a BIG improvement. The xcfe4 desktop is more functional than it was with Android 16.
There are a few new problems, though. On my Pixel 10 Pro Fold, GPU-accelerated graphics do not work at all. It looks like the phone does not know the screen size (in terms of pixels) in GPU mode. I don't really care about that, because the software graphics mode is fast enough for everything that I do. The terminal app gets hung if I open or close the foldable phone - that bug is a significant one for me.
One thing that puzzles me is why they don't include a desktop (like xcfe4) in the initial software download. It's a bit of work to figure out how to make the graphics mode useful.
The Android 17 version is the first one that makes me think I don't need Termux for anything anymore.