Android Candy: Landing on the Moon, with your Thumbs

I do a lot of system administration with my thumbs. Yes, if I'm home, I grab a laptop or go to my office and type in a real terminal window. Usually, when things go wrong though, I'm at my daughters' volleyball match or shopping with my wife. Thankfully, most tasks can be done remotely via SSH. There are lots of SSH clients for Android, but my favorite is JuiceSSH.

Yes, part of my love for the app is that it has a cool icon in the shape of a lemon, but really, there's more to it than that. It has a plugin architecture that allows you to build functionality on top of SSH. It also allows you to execute code snippets on multiple connections with a click of a button.

They keyboard is designed in such a way that even vi users like myself can manage to edit files remotely. And thanks to the ability to import private SSH keys, I can connect to those servers where I have password authentication disabled. (For example, most cloud servers don't allow you to log in via password, they require you to use SSH keys, which is awesome.)

To be honest, I do so much work remotely with my phone, that I'm considering getting a foldable Bluetooth keyboard so I can actually do some typing in a pinch if needed. If I find a keyboard I like, I'll be sure to write about it in a future issue! You can get JuiceSSH from the Google Play Store.

Shawn is Associate Editor here at Linux Journal, and has been around Linux since the beginning. He has a passion for open source, and he loves to teach. He also drinks too much coffee, which often shows in his writing.

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