It started as a stupid project cause I was bored. How much can you actually do without a windowing environment?
After finding out how to post to lemmy from a TTY, I realized that I can do most things I do daily using text.
Browsing the web in links, which opens all sorts of files in the corresponding programs if configured correctly.
Opening images in fbi, PDFs in fbpdf, listening to music in cmus, watching movies in mplayer, using e-mail in alpine, creating documents in vim and latex, …
The only thing that still requires a GUI is image editing and a few websites I need that don’t work without JavaScript.
And it’s actually really nice…more focused, without loading times, animations, popups, ads, or other distractions, and everything is scriptable.
Anyway, sorry for the blog post.
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Okay, I’ve wanted to do the same thing for ages. Time to follow up my words with action!
Forget gpus. A framebuffer is all you need :)
it’s all just curling some jsons and slapping some paint and shit on top of that.
You’re following the Unix philosophy.
And I understand why some people are fonts enthusiasts, now.
On the console, you only have 16 colors and 1 font to customize your “desktop”.
How about a console with cursive writing font? That’s probably the reason why it’s named cursive. Because of all the curses of the users.
You can Install more fonts, but not all of them are any good.
Lol so cool. My fav text apps are toot for mastodon and maybe gomuks or iamb for matrix/element. Also what Lemmy app r u using?
I’m just using the Links browser and fbi for the images.
Does feddit.org work without JS? Does this depend on the front-end that the instance uses?
The standard frontend doesn’t let you log in without JS, but on old.feddit.org it works.
Same with the other instances I tested.
So weird I’m used to hearing about FBI using us for images. 🤔 Lol
What about the Lynx browser…it’s TTY isn’t it…?
yes it only shows the filename of an image. But you can set it up to open images in an external image viewer when you click on it.
Tried browsh ?
Yes. I have absolutely no idea what its purpose or use case is.
On a TTY, it has no mouse click support. It also has no keyboard navigation support in general. So how am I supposed to navigate websites?
On a terminal inside a graphical environment it’s completely useless, cause I’m in a graphical environment and can just use Firefox.Seriously, if anyone is using Browsh or Carbonyl productively, I’d love to know for what.
Nowt wrong with a tty interface. All you need is a gif->ASCII converter and you can view the images too.
The default video output device of a Linux TTY is the framebuffer.
I have no issues viewing images and PDF documents, or watching videos.
Thank you for this.
aercis going to save my sanity.It’s awesome. Seeing aerc getting an update always makes me smile.
And it actually lets me set up multiple IMAP/SMTP accounts without sacrificing a chicken to the Unix Philosophers.
I wouldn’t recommend skipping the offering, but purely from a technical standpoint it is unnecessary.
Bookmarked. Thank you!
Been attempting to learn bash again, will make is more appealing.
Sometimes it’s nice to put the ADHD away and just have simple fucking interfaces without all the stupid distractions.
This was my exact experience browsing the Social Media on gemini:// – it was glorious how less can actually be more.
I’d love to put the ADHD away sometimes :(
image editing
imagemagick for basic transformations/compression/conversions, CLI (locally hosted) AI for the shops
I’m a photographer and edit my own photos. I’m not gonna outsource that to an AI.
I may get hate for this, but… I do this a fair bit because I prefer TUIs for a lot of stuff, and also end up doing a lot of things in emacs because I usually have it open anyway…
Legendary video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urcL86UpqZc
I would not recommend web links opening in other programs.
Reject pixel-graphics, install aalib
;^)
I’d love to be able to ditch the gui entirely, I’ve found working from a TTY really helps me focus on the actual work I’m supposed to be doing
Unfortunately the one impossible hurdle is the web browser. Have kinda got around the need for it mostly with an llm cli for basic questions but will always find myself needing to fire up a window manager just to get a browser eventually
Also doesn’t help that I’m primarily a web developer
cageis a minimalist Wayland compositor that only shows a single application in fullscreen. When you close the app, it drops you back to your console.
It’s compatible with programs that need X11 through XWayland, and it has practically no loading times.cage -ds firefoxwould open Firefox in fullscreen.
Option-dhides client-side decorations and-sallows you to switch from Wayland to another TTY using Ctrl+Alt+F[1-6]I put aliases for the programs I use in my .bashrc so I can just type FF[Enter] and a second later I have Firefox open.
always find myself needing to fire up a window manager just to get a browser eventually
A chromeless tiling WM is basically invisible and AFAIK has almost zero performance impact. That’s roughly what I do.
I usually use gamescope for that purpose but it’s still a bit of a pain and takes me out of the tmux/helix loop
Why alpine instead of mutt? It must be some 20 years since I least heard about pine or any of its forks
Alpine is an email client.
Mutt is a maildir reader which you can use as a part of your DIY email client.
… what? mutt can talk imap and smtp natively, I don’t know what else you need to qualify as an “email client”
Since when? I made two attempts over many years and an elaborate offlineimap and msmtp setup was needed both times.
🤷♀️ I was using mutt for both smtp and imap in 2002, don’t know how long before that it worked — but at least since then.
Alright then, I guess it’s time for attempt #3 with the newly acquired knowledge. Thanks!
Because I’m too dumb to configure mutt.
