It is kind of a shame that in the day and age of containers we can't just have Linux as an "app" on our iPads. Instead people are forced to write a worse version of everything and bundle it together as an app.

I kind of appreciate Apple's approach to simplicity. I use an iPad because I don't want to maintain another computer; syncing configuration, updating packages, etc. But it basically means that I use it as a "dumb terminal" when I hear it has a surprisingly fast processor. Seems like a waste.

You can, iSh is a container of Alpine Linux.

I admittedly don't do much of anything with it, but it's neat to have.

Neat, I didn't know about that.

I wonder why they emulate x86 instead of targeting ARM though.

It doesn't make much difference, since either way they can't run native code - iOS makes this virtually impossible.

More in depth discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18425106