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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Thatâ™s⠀really cool. � Ꭰо уо𝗎 𝗍һі𝗇𝗄 уо𝗎’ӏӏ со𝗇𝗍і𝗇𝗎е ᖯ𝗋о𝗐ѕі𝗇𝗀 ӏі𝗄е 𝗍һа𝗍?
Fuck you, you really made me check on my phone if all my text looks like this :(
(Your comment showed up “fine”, by the way)Yes, I think I will. Not exclusively, of course. But starting Firefox in Wayland just takes a key combo and 5 seconds if needed.
Starting Firefox takes 5 seconds? I start thinking I need to optimise if it takes more than 2
It takes 5 seconds when the PC has to start up a wayland compositor, first.
Are there any non-JavaScript websites left?
Surprisingly, a lot. And usually they’re the more informative and less commercial ones.
Most websites that only show a “please enable Javascript” banner I just leave again. Very few I do need, for those I have a key combo that starts a window manager with maximized Firefox on another TTY.Not OP, but some of them have non-JS version, in addition to the regular JS version; but yeah, a lot of sites are broken.
Wikipedia
Welcome back to 1985 I guess. Now you’re going to need a green phosphor CRT and a dot matrix printer.
I’d prefer a dot matrix printer over whatever the fuck HP makes now.
I doubt it. They make a hell of a noise and print at a rate of characters per second not pages per second. The ribbons suffered from similar issues as cassette tapes (the other ribbons that we had to deal with). The ribbon would dry out if not used for a few days and you’d waste paper and a lot of time.
DM printers were ideal in the guise of “line printers” - the big old IBM jobbies that munched through A3 landscape fan fold at ridiculous speeds. Home printers like the Epson FX80 or RX80 were at least affordable. I still remember the manual of our RX80 congratulating us on buying it and exhorting me to hug the printer on unpacking it. I suspect the Japanese to English translation might not have been the best.
We had to get a Centronics interface board stuffed into our C64 and get it working (sacrifice a chicken on a waxing gibbous moon night, etc)
It worked better on my 80286 box, some years later. I had to set it up in each application - Harvard Graphics, Word Perfect, Super Calc.
In around 1991 I was able to buy a 80486 based beastie, thanks to gift from granddad. In around 1993 I was given a HP LJ 4P so I could print out proofs for a Plymouth (Devon) tourist tat thing.
Nowadays I have a fairly elderly HPE MFP five toner humming away at home. Its on a VLAN that doesn’t get to see the internet. It just works. I won’t be “upgrading” it for the foreseeable future.
My mom used to have an epson lx-300+ printer for her small shop, and it was awesome. We printed a lot of stuff and the ribbon lasted for ages. This was my only experience with dot matrix printers, and it was a nice one.
You’re following the Unix philosophy.
And I understand why some people are fonts enthusiasts, now.
On the console, you only have 256 colors and 1 font to customize your “desktop”.
it’s all just curling some jsons and slapping some paint and shit on top of that.
Your post made me wonder, so I checked and of course it exists. Behold, a text-mode Lemmy client: Neon Modem Overdrive
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…
What did you use to do so?
I tried w3m, lynx, links and elinks, which all failed cause they don’t support JavaScript, which is necessary to log in.
Then I tried Browsh and Carbonyl, which failed cause they both don’t accept mouse clicks in a TTY and offer no keyboard navigation.Then I tried Neonmodem Overdrive, a CLI fediverse browser, which I just couldn’t get to show any posts.
In the end, @pmjv@lemmy.sdf.org gave me the hint that some instances have alternative “old-reddit-like” frontends that allow logging in without JavaScript.
And my home instance with old.feddit.org is one of them. So now I’m using links, cause it’s the most user-friendly text browser IMO.
