Changelog

Notable changes to ternux. Dates are ISO 8601.

[Unreleased]

[1.4.0] — 2026-08-17 · release tagged v1.4.0 on 2026-09-19

Animated installer dashboard

Rebuilt the one-command installer frame as a persistent dashboard: a live device panel (model, Android, GPU, backend, memory), a fixed step progress bar, a framed scrolling log, and an animated copyright footer with a spinner.
Borders now auto-fit the terminal and repaint on resize — including font or zoom changes and the on-screen keyboard — so log lines never wrap past the frame.
Replaced the thin single-line frame with thicker double-line borders and clipped, color-coded log lines; the identity, progress and footer text is ellipsized instead of overflowing on narrow viewports.

Installer renderer rebuilt — stable frame, readable log

The installation dashboard is rendered by a new engine. On real devices the previous one could wrap log lines through its own borders, repaint the whole screen several times per second, and expand package-manager progress into thousands of scrolling lines.

Fixed

Frame integrity. The frame no longer writes into the terminal’s last column, so the pending-wrap state is never armed and a log line can no longer shift every row that follows it.
Repaint storms. The screen is cleared only when it opens, when the terminal genuinely changes size, and when it closes. Resize detection compares raw terminal measurements with the previous raw measurement — never with the clamped drawing size — and is polled at most once per second, with SIGWINCH short-circuiting the poll.
Size detection. The window size is read from the kernel through stty/tput with descriptor fallbacks, so a phase running inside a pipeline can still measure the terminal. When no measurement is possible the frame stays fixed instead of thrashing.
Progress floods. Carriage-return output from apt, dpkg, proot-distro and curl updates one row in place instead of scrolling the log window away.
Split lines. Partial reads are buffered, so a slowly produced line is reassembled rather than printed in fragments.
Log window content. The window is redrawn from a dedicated stream log, so timestamped diagnostic entries no longer appear between package lines.
Terminal state. The scroll region and cursor are restored on every exit path, including SIGINT and SIGTERM.

Changed

Output bursts are coalesced to a readable rate and the remainder is reported as ... +N more lines. Errors, warnings and phase markers are never coalesced, and the complete stream is always written to the log file.
Closing the installer reserves rows for a short recap — outcome, phase and log path — as ordinary scrollback text.
A terminal that becomes too small drops cleanly to plain scrolling output instead of drawing a broken frame.
The per-line render path no longer forks a subprocess; clipping, padding, colouring and the animated signature use shell builtins only.

Added

--ui auto|dashboard|plain|off, --plain, and the TERNUX_UI environment variable. --no-anim now only freezes the animation instead of affecting layout, and TERNUX_COLS/TERNUX_ROWS force a geometry for reproducible transcripts.
tests/ui_render.py, run in CI: the installer is executed inside a real pseudo-terminal and replayed through a VT100 emulator that asserts border integrity, bounded repaints, progress collapsing, and correct re-fitting after a resize.
Documentation for the installer screen, its renderer modes and its logs in the installation guide, the CLI reference, the configuration reference and troubleshooting, in both languages.

Professional bilingual documentation experience

Rebuilt both landing pages in a refined terminal design with clearer hierarchy, responsive layouts, local fonts, stronger accessibility, concise installation choices, evidence boundaries, and workload cards that open upstream repositories.
Replaced the flat documentation-chip shell with grouped sidebar navigation, filterable page index, breadcrumbs, generated local tables of contents, previous/next navigation, edit and feedback paths, mobile drawer behavior, print styles, and a consistent project footer.
Added mirrored English/Bengali documentation hubs and the complete Bengali benchmark/evidence archive, including all 66 captured scene values and caveats.
Centralized the bilingual information architecture in _data/docs.yml; added repository authoring maps, reciprocal language metadata, a complete sitemap, corrected canonical URL configuration, and professional contribution guidance.
Preserved measured, observed, reported-build, and untested distinctions across both languages and all redesigned surfaces.

Archival real-device guide and installer hardening

Rebuilt the README as an evidence-led, archival guide: exact renderer, measured glmark2 scores and all observed FPS ranges, architecture and backend interpretation, verification/benchmark protocols, workloads, FAQ, thermal guidance, limitations, and explicit separation of measured, observed, build-only and untested claims.
Added docs/BENCHMARKS.md, preserving all 66 captured OpenGL/OpenGL ES scene results, test conditions, anomalies, evidence matrix and reproduction steps.
Added one-command and full download-review-run installation routes plus English and Bengali manual procedures. Review instructions now cover every executable installer component, not just the entry script.
Hardened backend normalization/detection, Turnip archive selection and staged extraction, launcher argument/env handling, PulseAudio loopback configuration, locale/user persistence, repair aggregation, verification, resumability and scoped uninstall documentation.
Standardized supported command JSON and shared fatal envelopes while documenting which lifecycle commands remain human-oriented.
Expanded English/Bengali troubleshooting, configuration, architecture and CLI references; workload cards link directly to Blender, llama.cpp and stable-diffusion.cpp upstream repositories.

[1.3.1] — 2026-08-17

Real-device installer recovery

Replaced fragile human-output matching with one shared Debian-container probe. It understands PRoot-Distro 5’s list --quiet interface, both current and legacy rootfs layouts, and older Alias/Status output, so an existing Debian container is reused instead of passed to proot-distro install again.
Changed standalone bootstrap and fallback host-CLI acquisition from many independent raw-file requests to one validated source archive with bounded retries. The one-click route reuses that same extracted snapshot for bootstrap, host CLI and Debian guest companion installation.
Removed the full-screen termux-change-repo dialog from the persistent install frame. Package setup keeps the user’s current apt source and temporarily disables pkg’s all-mirror sweep; an unreachable source fails normally and can be changed manually before --resume.
Fixed failed dashboard closure so it retains the actual failed phase and title instead of rewriting every error as FAILED [11/11]; only success advances the counter to the total.
Preserved line-streamed logs, required-phase failure propagation, resumability, host/guest CLI verification, the 3–4 GB base and 10–12 GB complete estimates, and the visible Sobuj Miah installer identity.
Added regression coverage for current/legacy PRoot-Distro layouts, existing Debian reuse, noninteractive repository handling, and a transiently failed but successfully retried standalone source-bundle download.

[1.3.0] — 2026-08-15

ternux CLI v1.3.0 — production modular CLI with documented JSON output

Complete CLI redesign. The CLI has been rebuilt from the ground up as a thin dispatcher with self-contained command modules, proper help system and consistent UX. Machine-readable JSON is available for the reporting commands whose schemas are documented; interactive/lifecycle commands remain human-oriented.

New architecture:

bin/ternux is now a thin dispatcher (~80 lines): discovers commands via tnx_cmd_* function naming convention, lazy-loads libraries, handles global flags properly
Every command function lives in its own library file (lib/<name>.sh)
New lib/help.sh — centralized help system with per-command help functions
New lib/info.sh — dedicated system information command module
Command dispatch is extensible: adding a new command = add a tnx_cmd_<name>() function in a new lib/<name>.sh file

Fixed UX bugs:

ternux doctor --help now shows doctor-specific help (was showing main help)
ternux profile --help now shows profile subcommands properly
--help after any command correctly dispatches to tnx_help_<command>
Unknown commands now produce clear error messages with correct exit codes

Standardized subcommand pattern:

Every command that takes subcommands validates them and shows usage on error
Consistent --help handling at every level
All commands return proper exit codes (0=success, 1=error)

JSON output improvements:

tnx_json_add_array() with proper item escaping
All JSON output uses consistent field naming (snake_case)
Error JSON objects include command, status: "error", and reason field
JSON schemas documented in share/templates/json-schema.md

New features added:

ternux backend detect — auto-detect the correct GPU backend
ternux update check — check for updates without installing
Proper --version flag on all command paths
TERNUX_QUIET suppresses non-critical messages everywhere
TERNUX_VERBOSE enables debug output consistently

Extensibility (plugin readiness):

Add a new command: create lib/mycommand.sh with tnx_cmd_mycommand()
Add help: create tnx_help_mycommand() in lib/help.sh
Command functions are auto-discovered via declare -F

New documentation:

docs/CLI.md — complete CLI reference (every command, flag, and JSON schema)
share/ternux-completion.bash — bash tab-completion for all commands

CI/CD pipeline (new):

.github/workflows/ci.yml — ShellCheck, syntax check, 43 smoke tests, doc link check
.github/workflows/release.yml — auto-GitHub-Release on v* tag
.github/dependabot.yml — weekly GitHub Actions dependency updates

Contributor tooling (new):

.github/stale.yml — 90-day stale issue auto-management
.github/FUNDING.yml — GitHub Sponsors support
Repository topics set: 14 discoverable tags on GitHub

Repository metadata:

GitHub topics added: termux, android, linux-desktop, gpu-acceleration, vulkan, zink, turnip, adreno, proot, xfce4, debian, no-root, cli, shell-script
README badges updated: CI status, release version, GitHub stars
.gitattributes with proper line-ending rules

[1.0.10] — 2026-08-15

Installer v1.2.2 — perfectly-aligned live dashboard with full details

Geometry engine (the box now lines up on every terminal):

New padline() measures ANSI-coloured lines by their VISIBLE width — measuring by bytes made every box row shorter than its border and cut escape codes mid-sequence, leaking garbage glyphs.
CSI stripping moved from globs to sed: a bash glob [0-9;]*m means “one digit/semicolon then ANYTHING then m” (* is a free wildcard, not a quantifier) and was swallowing whole lines; sed’s regex does it correctly.
A UTF-8 locale is bootstrapped at startup so ‘✓’ counts as one column everywhere; _vtrunc() does locale-independent character truncation (cut -c ignores the locale on some systems).
Boxes carry right borders and a 2-column safety margin so nothing touches the terminal’s auto-wrap edge.

More dashboard details:

Device row: Android version, arch, model and RAM, captured in preflight.
Phase clock: current-phase and total elapsed timers on the progress row (wide terminals), per-phase durations recorded and shown with ✓/· in the final summary.
Live log tail is sanitised (carriage returns/control codes stripped) so apt/curl progress can never jump the cursor inside the panel.
Frozen finish frame is now the same height as the live frame (no stale border leftovers) and prints the full checklist, device and signature.

Verification: rendered the raw PTY output with a real terminal emulator — every row of every box measured exactly equal to its border, zero escape leaks, zero spam; full mock install green; narrow-terminal fallback, pipe purity and regressions A–D all pass.

[1.0.9] — 2026-08-15

Installer v1.2.1 — the author’s name rides the whole install

Flowing rainbow signature. A new sig engine renders “Sobuj Miah” letter by letter, each letter cycling through the six theme colours with a per-tick phase offset, so the colours flow through the name continuously.
The signature lives in every stage of the install: the banner byline shimmers on arrival, the HUD panel carries a “✦ ternux by Sobuj Miah” row on every frame, the frozen finish frame keeps it, the compact status line appends a cycling-colour name on wide terminals, the completion celebration prints “built with ♥ by Sobuj Miah” as an animated flourish, and the final summary box signs off with it.
All signature output degrades to plain text when piped or with NO_COLOR; compact view skips it on narrow terminals.

[1.0.8] — 2026-08-15

Installer v1.2.0 — HUD dashboard, glitch banner, summary panel

Glitch-in banner: the ASCII wordmark now resolves from random glyphs in three animated passes (matrix-style reveal), each row in the green→cyan gradient; plain banner when piped.
Live HUD dashboard on every task: a bordered panel redrawn in place — spinner, [3/9] counter, task name and elapsed time, an eased phase bar with shimmer lead, a sliding activity track, a nine-phase checklist (✓ done / ⟳ running / · pending) and the live last line of the install log. Finished tasks freeze the panel with a ✓/✗ frame.
Boxed summary panel at the end: backend, user, elapsed, launcher, start command and log path — plain text on narrow terminals.
Narrow-terminal fallback: below 46 columns (typical phone width) everything degrades to the compact single-line view automatically.
Cursor hide/show is now stateful (no stray escape codes in piped output); banner gradient is suppressed when piped; eased percent resets on fresh installs.
Tested under a real PTY: boxed HUD frames, frozen finish box, summary panel, full mock install, narrow fallback, pipe purity, and all prior regressions (conffile cascade, sleep-breaking upgrade, broken dpkg).

[1.0.7] — 2026-08-15

Installer v1.1.4 — the whole toolchain, not just curl

Real device follow-up: curl was upgraded (8.12.1 → 8.21.0) yet still failed to link — the missing symbol comes from openssl, so repairing curl alone can never fix it. repair_curl now upgrades the entire chain (curl openssl openssl-tool libngtcp2 libnghttp3) and, if curl still cannot link, points the user at a full pkg upgrade -y.
Troubleshooting (EN + BN) documents the “already upgraded curl and it still fails” case with the deterministic fix.

[1.0.6] — 2026-08-15

Installer v1.1.3 + site: copy-safe commands and curl resilience

Copy can no longer include the $ prompt. On the landing page the prompt and blinking cursor are now drawn with CSS pseudo-elements, so selecting or copying the install line yields exactly the command. Copy buttons on guide blocks also strip display-only $ prefixes per line. Fixes the reported No command $ found after pasting.
Broken curl no longer blocks anything. After a partial upgrade curl can fail to link (SSL_set_quic_tls_transport_params). The installer now detects this in preflight and repairs it (pkg install curl openssl), checks the network with a wget fallback, and downloads the Turnip driver through a download() helper that falls back to wget. The site and every doc (README, Quick start, Installation, Manual — EN + BN) now show the wget -qO- … | bash one-liner as the curl-free path.
Troubleshooting gains both sections: pasted-command $ and curl CANNOT LINK (EN + BN), with table entries.

[1.0.5] — 2026-08-15

Installer v1.1.2 — animation through the whole install

Live status line during every task: one persistent animated line — braille spinner, overall phase bar [2/9] ██░░…, sliding activity track and elapsed timer — redrawn on every tick for ALL wrapped tasks.
Every long task is now animated: the Debian package install, user creation, Turnip driver staging, locale/fonts setup and all optional workloads (dev, llama.cpp, network, media, Blender) previously ran as plain text; they now run through the spinner with their output logged.
Animated phase headers: each of the nine phases opens with two sweeping rules and a [N/9] title instead of a static ==>.
Growing progress bars: the per-phase bar now animates its fill from the previous phase to the current one (▓ shimmer lead, percent, count and elapsed time) instead of printing once.
Typed next steps and a two-line completion celebration.
All timings use bsleep(); --no-anim, NO_COLOR=1 and piped runs stay plain text. Full-flow regression: mock end-to-end install under a real PTY passes with the celebration, launcher and aliases written; prior failure scenarios (conffile cascade, sleep-breaking upgrade, broken dpkg) still pass.

[1.0.4] — 2026-08-15

Installer v1.1.1 — spinner hardened against prefix replacement

Fixed upgrade-time error spam and hang risk. While pkg upgrade replaces the Termux prefix, the spinner’s sleep could fail mid-run (CANNOT LINK EXECUTABLE "sleep": library "libpcre2-8.so" not found, /usr/bin/sleep: No such file or directory), spamming the terminal and risking a busy loop. The installer now uses bsleep(): the real sleep with stderr silenced, falling back to a pure-bash read -t timeout on a self-owned FIFO — the spinner needs no binary the upgrade can remove.
The FIFO is created lazily before any prefix-modifying step and removed on exit; every installer sleep now goes through bsleep.
Regression-tested by replaying the exact failure (mock sleep breaking CANNOT-LINK then missing mid-upgrade under a real PTY): spinner kept animating, zero error spam, install completed green. Fallback pacing verified (1.5 s ±0.1 s) with sleep permanently broken.

[1.0.3] — 2026-08-15

Installer v1.1.0 — fixes and a real terminal theme

Fixed the openssl/conffile cascade. pkg upgrade could hit a dpkg conffile prompt; with stdin closed it errors and leaves the package system broken, failing every later install. All apt operations now run non-interactively with force-confold/force-confdef, broken dpkg state is repaired before and after upgrades, and the same hardening is applied to every apt step inside the Debian container.
Fixed run() exit-code reporting. Failures previously printed rc=0; the real exit code is now captured and shown.
Termux-X11 fallback. If a mirror lacks termux-x11-nightly, the installer falls back to stable termux-x11 instead of failing.
Terminal theme: gradient banner, animated typed intro, braille spinner on long tasks, a custom █▓░ progress bar with percentage and phase counter, success celebration, and a themed uninstaller banner. Disable with --no-anim / TERNUX_NO_ANIM=1; NO_COLOR=1 still produces plain output.
Regression-tested against the exact reported failure (mock pkg/dpkg replay): upgrade crash, repair, nightly-missing fallback, clean run, pre-broken state.

[1.0.2] — 2026-08-15

Copy-to-clipboard everywhere

Every code block on the site now carries a terminal-style header bar with a copy button — documentation pages and landing-page command blocks alike.
Inline code is now click-to-copy with a flash confirmation.
New shared assets/js/codecopy.js (clipboard API + fallback for older webviews); runs on every page with no dependencies.

Installer spotlight

The one-command install box is now an animated centrepiece: rotating gradient ring, breathing glow, shine sweep, live pulse dot, version tag and a blinking cursor — all disabled under prefers-reduced-motion.
The whole command line is click-to-copy, not just the button.

Guide cross-links

The landing guide banner and hero CTA now point to the Manual installation page; Installation and Quick start reference it as “Method 3 / পদ্ধতি ৩”.

[1.0.1] — 2026-08-15

New: Manual installation page (EN + BN)

Manual installation — every step by hand, command by command: apps, base packages, Debian, user + sudo, GPU driver (Zink/VirGL), audio/locale/ fonts, the complete launcher file for both routes, shortcuts, phantom-killer, verification and uninstall.
Linked from Installation and Quick start; added to doc-nav, sitemap and the landing docs cards.

Responsiveness overhaul (all pages)

Inline commands now wrap — a long inline command no longer stretches its paragraph (pages measured 1100+ px wide on a 360 px screen before).
Tables wrap naturally on desktop; degrade to a scroll box on phones only when they must.
Sticky nav is a single row — scrolls sideways on phones instead of stacking into 2–3 rows.
Landing guide cards fixed — long commands no longer blow cards out to 640 px; hero, buttons, step cards and switch tuned for mobile.
All pages verified with Playwright at 360/768/1280/1920 px: zero horizontal overflow.

[1.0.0] — 2026-08-15

First public release — free and open

One-command installer released. install.sh is now a public Apache-2.0-licensed, single-file installer: preflight → base packages → Debian + Xfce4 → GPU driver (Zink/Turnip or VirGL) → audio/locale/fonts → launcher → shortcuts → optional workloads → phantom-killer advisory → verification.
Installer tooling: --yes, --user, --locale, --backend, --zsh, workload flags (--with-dev, --with-llm, --with-network, --with-media, --with-blender, --all), --doctor [--fix], --resume, --status, --uninstall, --version, --help.
Safety hardening: driver archive validation (no links, no path traversal, whitelisted extraction only), SHA-256 recorded in install state, visudo-validated sudoers drop-in, idempotent phases, verified binaries.
Standalone uninstall.sh with session stop, launcher/shortcut removal and container deletion.
Documentation rewritten from scratch, EN + BN: Quick start, Installation (with the why of every phase), Usage, Configuration, Troubleshooting (symptom → cause → fix), Architecture and FAQ. Bangla mirrors for every page, including this changelog.
Site rebuilt: landing page with a copyable one-command install box, GPU route switch, phase and design-decision sections; the “Pro coming soon” framing and private-installer language are gone — ternux is free software.
Removed: the Pro page and the public/private documentation boundary.

[0.x] — 2026-08-13 and earlier

Pre-release era: documentation-only site describing the private installer. Superseded by 1.0.0, which publishes the installer itself under MIT.