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Ish Alternatives
Similar projects and alternatives to ish
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InfluxDB
InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads. InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
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termux-app
Termux - a terminal emulator application for Android OS extendible by variety of packages.
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SaaSHub
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
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Vrmac
Vrmac Graphics, a cross-platform graphics library for .NET. Supports 3D, 2D, and accelerated video playback. Works on Windows 10 and Raspberry Pi4.
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ios-signer-service
Discontinued ✒ A free, self-hosted, cross-platform service to sign and install iOS apps, all without a computer [Moved to: https://github.com/SignTools/SignTools]
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SaaSHub
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
NOTE:
The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives.
Hence, a higher number means a better ish alternative or higher similarity.
ish discussion
ish reviews and mentions
Posts with mentions or reviews of ish.
We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives
and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-02-02.
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Show HN: Lume – OS Lightweight CLI/API for macOS/Linux VMs on Apple Silicon
You can, with ish (https://ish.app). It is a bit slow though and doesn't support the newest releases. (Well and by default it runs Alpine instead of Debian)
- ISH: Linux on jailbreak-free iPhones via userspace emulation
- Developer wrote 25k lines of Neovim plugin code using phone and touchscreen
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Configure SSH between your PC and mobile
On IOS, there is a emulator called ISH which looks great. I haven't tried personally though, I couldn't afford an iphone. I will be using Termux on android for the rest of the post.
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Poll: When will we see full Linux distros as official iPhone apps?
I'm a happy daily iSH [1] user, it's an amazing technical project, but I really pine for the day when `apt get blah` will be a reality, using an app available from the official App Store. Be it a paid or free app. CLI only, or with graphics. For concreteness, let's say a Debian-based distro in your iPhone upon tapping Get on Apple's App Store, independently of your location. It is pretty sad that, if this ever comes to be, it will probably be the result of EU/DOJ forces, not of technological advancements.
When do you see this happening (options are number of years)?
[1] https://ish.app/
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Qualcomm's Oryon Core: A Long Time in the Making
You can run iSH on the device for Linux (somewhat limited)
https://github.com/ish-app/ish
- ISH: Linux shell running on iOS, using usermode x86 emulation
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Apple blocks PC emulator in iOS App Store and third-party app stores
If you're curious, iSH's source is public: https://github.com/ish-app/ish
You're correct that there is no Linux kernel emulation. They went with reimplementation for that. However, the userland is very much emulated x86 binaries. You can even compile your own C code inside iSH and run it. When you syscall, control passes from the threaded code[0] interpreter into the Linux reimplementation.
The reason why they aren't shipping Debian is that the threaded code technique being used as a JIT substitute in both iSH and UTM SE is far too slow to run a full Debian derivative. Believe me, I tried installing Ubuntu on UTM SE and it took literal hours and flattened my iPad battery in the process. iSH uses Alpine Linux because it's very lightweight[1].
As far as I'm aware there's no secret deal with Apple to lock iSH down. The only limitations I've ran into have to do with MySQL, which wants unaligned atomics, which you can't do on ARM64 without compromising the performance of the emulator. I actually had a discussion with the developer of iSH about this and put in a PR to make MySQL stop crashing iSH.
[0] return-oriented programming
[1] So lightweight it doesn't even ship anything GNU, making it one of the few genuine "Linux distros" with no slash or plus or "I would just like to interject"
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Apple downgrades new M2 iPad Air, 9-core GPU instead of 10-core
> in software side of Ipad IOS, that is the biggest innovation in years
That would be iSH, slow but functional Alpine Linux emulation for iOS.
https://ish.app
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Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says
> Just imagine how much more versatile the iPad Pro would be if only you could run Linux VMs on it
After installing https://ish.app for Alpine Linux emulation on iPad, one immediately comes up with use cases, even though it's excruciatingly slow.
Hopefully Apple opens up the imminent M3 iPad Pros to run macOS and Linux VMs.
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A note from our sponsor - InfluxDB
www.influxdata.com | 13 Jun 2025
Stats
Basic ish repo stats
163
18,102
9.3
6 days ago
ish-app/ish is an open source project licensed under GNU General Public License v3.0 or later which is an OSI approved license.
The primary programming language of ish is C.
Sponsored
InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads
InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
www.influxdata.com