A third way of using Linux

(hisvirusness.com)

17 points | by speckx 2 hours ago

12 comments

  • BeetleB 4 minutes ago
    The article has it backwards: GUIs are the third way of using Linux. TUIs are the 2nd way. I mean, stuff like pico, nano, vi, Emacs - these are all TUIs.

    Perhaps it's because I grew up on DOS that I think that way, but one of the reasons I switched from Windows to Linux decades ago was to use TUIs.

  • neomantra 8 minutes ago
    I'm exploring aspects of these "other ways". I've been pushing Kitty terminal graphics compositing and then layering libraries over that. I've also been working on remoting Golang programs over the network as well as compiling them to WASM and embedding that in browsers. This WebGPU browser shader is an example of that mashed together [1]. Same code for native and browser.

    Shout out to TUIOS [2] that is in the article; author has a lot of neat libraries and his `sip` protocol is the basis of that remoting work.

    [1] https://nimblemarkets.github.io/ntcharts/demos/shaders/

    [2] https://github.com/Gaurav-Gosain/tuios

  • __MatrixMan__ 49 minutes ago
    I stick to CLI's and TUI's and use zellij as my window manager. This way the configs and muscle memory I develop on my work macbook are transferrable to the linux box I use for personal projects, and visa versa.

    It seemed a bit limiting at first, but after adapting to it I feel like it was the right move. GUI's represent a sort of explosion in the set of valid states for software to be in, and I find that software which opts out of trying to support that explosion tends to work better, likely because the maintainer just has less to worry about.

    • snapplebobapple 7 minutes ago
      Try herdr. I ama tmux then zellij switcher and love it once you minimize the ai crap
  • floathub 1 hour ago
    Emacs text interface, Emacs GUI interface, and ... sorry what's the third one? :-)
    • drums8787 17 minutes ago
      The only one that matters, Emacs in evil mode.
    • cowlevel 24 minutes ago
      Emacs in ed mode, but you list them in the opposite order from the article.
    • iron-s 1 hour ago
      ghostty running ssh w/ emacsclient connected to emacs daemon running ghostel
    • fellowniusmonk 29 minutes ago
      why would one use the madness of adhoc tuis instead of emacs, I'll never know.
  • skybrian 30 minutes ago
    Other ways I often use:

    - Using a web browser to connect to a web app running in a Linux VM. I write all my custom tools that way.

    - Using VS Code to connect remotely, using ssh

  • spottedmarley 40 minutes ago
    I was hoping the third way would be somehow related to a type of hands-free neuralink so I can code at the speed of thought with my eyes closed laying in bed. Someday the tech will exist but, by then I'm not sure coding will be a thing to do anymore. I'll probably still do it anyway though.
  • cowlevel 25 minutes ago
    > What gives you the benefit of a visual interface, without the bloat that comes with Wayland or X11?

    fbdev?

  • GianFabien 1 hour ago
    Early Reuters and Bloomberg terminals had a text-centric aesthetic.

    AFAIK on a PC, when booted into text-only mode, you are still using a bit-mapped framebuffer. From my experiments you can mix graphics and text.

    • cowlevel 23 minutes ago
      PC is the weird exception in having a character mode at all for compatibility reasons. every other platform does the character mapping in software.
  • horsh1 59 minutes ago
    Well, if we count claude as tui.
  • allanrbo 1 hour ago
    Like the days of Norton Commander
  • BirAdam 55 minutes ago
    Isn’t that what resolution aware ttys and screen accomplish?
  • hypfer 1 hour ago
    Ah yes, website talks about "the bloat of x11 and Wayland", and doesn't even scroll correctly on Firefox mobile likely due to some JavaScript fuckery.

    Practice what you preach. And practice first.

    • black_knight 28 minutes ago
      I guess the site scrolls smoothly in a TUI browser?
      • metalman 19 minutes ago
        which, wierdly enough I am useing, and the site scrolls just fine,my browswr has NO java script, No Dom storage, no images/video displayed though there are a few websites that have some kind of alternate way to display images in short video loops that auto play

        edit:videos are mp4's

    • dormo 1 hour ago
      Scrolling is pretty bad on Firefox desktop as well. So bad that I didn't want to finish the article.

      Why do people do this?

      • Insanity 24 minutes ago
        What do you mean by "pretty bad"? I'm on Zen (Firefox based) and the scrolling seems to work fine. But maybe it's getting resource constrained on some hardware.
      • prmoustache 25 minutes ago
        Weird. I can't reproduce the slowness you guys experience with fennec nor ironfox.
      • thereisno 43 minutes ago
        They only tested in Chrome.
    • seba_dos1 46 minutes ago
      Not JavaScript in this case, just CSS bloat (backdrop-filter).
    • orangea 55 minutes ago
      I don't see any suspicious JS on the page, so I suspect it's a styling issue triggering some inefficiency in Firefox. There are animations and text-shadows.