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.

  • zkfcfbzr@lemmy.worldEnglish
    34·
    2 months ago

    Thatâ™s⠀rea​lly cool. � Ꭰо уо𝗎 𝗍һі𝗇𝗄 уо𝗎’ӏӏ со𝗇𝗍і𝗇𝗎е ᖯ𝗋о𝗐ѕі𝗇𝗀 ӏі𝗄е 𝗍һа𝗍?

    • superkret@feddit.orgOP
      13·
      1 month ago

      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”.

  • Trent@lemmy.mlEnglish
    4·
    2 months ago

    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…

    • superkret@feddit.orgOP
      4·
      2 months ago

      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.

    • chi-chan~@lemmy.world
      3·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • gerdesj@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        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.

        • nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br
          3·
          1 month ago

          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.

    • superkret@feddit.orgOP
      1·
      2 months ago

      The default video output device of a Linux TTY is the framebuffer.
      I have no issues viewing images and PDF documents, or watching videos.

  • electricprism@lemmy.ml
    2·
    2 months ago

    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.

  • bruhSoulz@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    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?

  • flashgnash@lemm.ee
    1·
    2 months ago

    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

    • superkret@feddit.orgOP
      1·
      1 month ago

      cage is 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 firefox would open Firefox in fullscreen.
      Option -d hides client-side decorations and -s allows 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.

      • flashgnash@lemm.ee
        1·
        1 month ago

        Ah that’s useful to know, I’ve been using gamescope for that but it’s a bit overkill

    • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • flashgnash@lemm.ee
        1·
        2 months ago

        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