[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Is it still possible to live in a terminal?
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Ask HN: Is it still possible to live in a terminal?
In college I did a month long experiment where I only used my
computer's terminal emulator to do all my work. I wrote my
code/notes in Vim, browsed the web with elinks, and wrote my emails
using mutt. It was a great learning experience. Recently I looked
into doing this again and ran into a bunch of issues: - My company
uses Slack's enterprise auth, and all the CLI slack clients I could
find haven't been updated in years and no longer work. - The web
is using more javascript than in the past. - Mutt doesn't handle
multiple email accounts natively for work/personal. The solutions
are hacks at best. Email servers are starting to use more complete
auth mechanisms that don't work well with mutt. It seems like the
terminal world is slowly getting abandoned in favor of proprietary
GUI apps. Anyone still living inside the terminal? Links to tools
for Slack are appreciated.
Author : ilovecaching
Score : 133 points
Date : 2022-10-14 16:49 UTC (6 hours ago)
| batmanturkey wrote:
| If companies choose to use proprietary software for needs that
| FOSS can and has served well for years, it would seem that those
| companies are cutting their own legs.
|
| I speak primarily of Slack and Zoom and other "low hanging fruit"
| of already solved problems that feature VC-funded wheel
| reinvention made popular by their VC-brethren dogfooding said
| products, when threaded messaging and webRTC don't necessitate
| proprietary solutions. https://meet.jit.si for example...
|
| I don't think mindless cargo culture is a trend to follow, nor
| will tech savvy devs disappear nor will the need to remotely
| administer servers via command lines tools disappear.
|
| Remote Desktop solutions are not realistic tools for server
| administration in any sort of serious way, so I'm pretty sure
| that's a niche that will always exist...
|
| Seeking to browse the web exclusively through a cli browser,
| however, is probably not something one can do while working in
| the field of web development. The web is primarily graphic lauout
| based
| Arubis wrote:
| Does GUI Emacs count as sufficiently terminal-ish? You can embed
| a Webkit-driven browser into Emacs, and then do anything
| browser-y you need to from there:
| https://github.com/akirakyle/emacs-webkit
| Thlom wrote:
| You can even use Emacs as a window manager if you are so
| inclined. https://github.com/ch11ng/exwm
| kkfx wrote:
| Until few years ago I was a hard-code unixer, witch means
| zsh+Vim, even if on X11, on modern terminal emulators like
| Terminator, Tilix etc. Then I've decided to seriously do a thing
| I've only superficially and never really studied before, after
| seeing it in action: try Emacs seriously.
|
| In a little time EXWM have replaced my WM, Emacs have integrated
| a big slice of my previously favorite tools. It's not perfect, it
| have bugs/flaws, but is so much powerful than the Unix model and
| the modern GUI model(s) that outshine anything else. I still use
| zsh, eshell it's a bit too limited/alien to me so far, unix tools
| lacking a LispM underneath are still serving me under the wood
| but that's is.
|
| Said that, as you rightly state the actual IT model, VERY
| unfortunately for the humanity at a whole and no, I'm really
| serious, have shifted long ago to classic desktop model toward a
| modern limited and limiting model and now even worse to the old
| mainframe+dumb terminals model, where the mainframe is external,
| someone else computer, the cloud and dumb terminals are now
| "endpoint", utterly complicated pile of crap to boot up a WebVM
| improperly named browser for legacy reasons. In the actual state
| of things choice is limited: some "services" can be integrated
| more or less easily, more or less stably/reliably, others can
| not.
|
| That's why I've first shared my person journey toward Emacs: even
| if sit on top of Unix, like a bootloader, not much differently
| than the aforementioned WebVMs it can wrap Unix and integrate
| X11/WebVMs (cr)apps a little bit. Doing so does not totally solve
| your issues, BUT solve partially many of them and gives you
| something FAR more powerful/evolved than Unix. You can't do much
| more than that.
|
| To use a truce metaphor: we live in a dramatically lost war,
| chances to win before dying are utopia at best, but at least we
| can live the unique life we got a bit armed instead of being
| totally at the mercy of every enemy. Your car if not today,
| tomorrow will demand you a login on a smartphone to a cloud
| service just to open the door, so your WC to lift the cover, your
| country will demand a smartphone just to pay taxes in an
| integrated cloud-mobile platform no one really know who really
| control at a certain "zoom" level, no one can really do anything
| outside it but you can so far still have a small personal garden
| that ease your life a bit at least giving a comfortable
| environment with your data locally available so much powerful
| that can help cope with the outside world crap.
|
| BTW Slack, a CRAPPY service no damn company should be so crazy to
| choose it, is supported by some Emacs packages see for instance
| https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Slack as usual it's not a full
| and bug free support, but you can use it, like you can use Jira
| etc.
| habibur wrote:
| The solution is not to get religiously terminal.
|
| I keep two desktops open and can flip with a keystroke.
|
| One of those always runs a full screen browser on gnome desk, and
| the other is the shell.
|
| I flip between those. Email is webmail but on the other screen
| code editor is vim.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| Yeah if you're more effective in terminal then go for it, but I
| think you'll at least need a good web browser to fill in the
| gaps.
| wfleming wrote:
| I'm not sure what specific issues you've had with mutt, but I
| have mine setup with multiple accounts & have in the past used it
| for a work account where I had to do IMAP/SMTP auth via oauth
| token rather than username/password. It's definitely not a super
| well supported happy path & requires some setup, but it's worked
| well for me.
|
| - Multiple accounts: I have a per-account config file with the
| relevant specifics
| (https://github.com/wfleming/dotfiles/tree/arch-linux/home/co...)
| and use folder hooks to apply those depending on which mailbox
| I'm viewing (https://github.com/wfleming/dotfiles/blob/arch-
| linux/home/co...). (Plus a keybinding in each account file to
| make flipping to the next account easy.)
|
| - Non-standard auth: - I use offlineimap to sync
| my mail, and it supports oauth2 for Gmail. The arch wiki has
| helpful details: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/OfflineIMAP#Con
| figuring_OAuth2_and_getting_access_tokens_via_mailctl
| - For sending mail, I use msmtp, which also supports oauth2.
| Again, arch wiki has some helpful details.
| https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Msmtp#OAuth2_Setup
|
| For web & Slack, I sympathize and have toyed with CLI
| alternatives in the past, but I'm come to terms with the the fact
| that it's just not that feasible for the most part. Personally, I
| spend as much time in the terminal as I can, but I've given up on
| fighting against the tide for everything. The only native apps I
| usually have open are Firefox, Slack, and Spotify, and that's
| acceptable to me since it ends up meaning I still spend most of
| my day in a terminal.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| I wonder if you included a JS REPL/console in your terminal if
| you'd hit an interesting enough hybrid.
|
| Something like Puppeteer/Playwright where you can spin up
| headless Chrome instances from the terminal, interact with them
| and automate them in JS. Treat the JS as a mini shell script
| language in your terminal of choice.
|
| I'm almost surprised there isn't yet a terminal that is an
| intentional JS-hybrid where you can REPL JS and/or directly shell
| script in it (beyond just Node scripts).
|
| Probably not entirely worth the time to build such Rube Goldberg
| contraptions, but an interesting thought experiment at least.
| nathias wrote:
| yes except for the browser, you can use weechat it's a cli irc
| client but you can link a lot of accunts (slack, fb messenger,
| etc.)
| jolmg wrote:
| > - Mutt doesn't handle multiple email accounts natively for
| work/personal. The solutions are hacks at best.
|
| I don't know about Mutt, but I've had no problems handling
| multiple accounts with mu4e on Emacs. `emacs`/`emacsclient` can
| be forced to use the terminal by using the `-nw` option.
|
| isync/`mbsync` can also work with multiple accounts. Although,
| this program just sync's an IMAP account with a local Maildir
| that clients like mu4e can use for reading mail offline. It's an
| MRA[1] rather than a whole MUA.
|
| There are many other terminal email clients you can also try.
|
| > Email servers are starting to use more complete auth mechanisms
| that don't work well with mutt.
|
| Google can support standard auth by activating 2FA, then making
| an app password. You can do this here:
|
| https://myaccount.google.com/security
|
| Google specifically needs "more complete auth mechanisms" because
| its regular password gives access to much more than an email
| account, since Google accounts are a huge platform. What other
| servers are moving away from standard auth mechanisms?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_retrieval_agent
| geofft wrote:
| For Slack in particular, the deal is that new signins return a
| token that starts with "xoxc", not a token that starts with
| "xoxs", and that token requires corresponding cookies in order to
| be accepted. If you're grabbing a token out of the browser, you
| will also need to get cookies for slack.com and pass them in the
| client. Last I checked, you only strictly needed the cookie
| called "d", but you may as well grab all of them.
|
| A bunch of folks who have been using Slack for a long time have
| saved their xoxs cookie from a couple of years ago and not
| invalidated their old sessions, and they'll tell you the various
| clients still work. For a new user who is getting an xoxc token,
| your client needs a way to pass cookies along with your token.
| Many of the terminal clients I've seen don't obviously give you a
| way to pass the cookie.
|
| My company uses the enterprisiest Slack offering (Enterprise
| Grid, compliance archiving, proxy restrictions, the works) hooked
| up to Azure AD as the identity provider and previously to Okta
| via ADFS, and I have working programmatic auth to Slack
| (leveraging local Kerberos tickets from Windows AD signon). Give
| me some details on what your auth setup looks like and I can
| probably help you with it. (I can try to open-source my internal
| client if it helps, but it's specific in some ways to our setup
| so it might be easier to just talk you through it.)
| openfuture wrote:
| The terminal is still the most efficient control center for the
| machine. We have less control than before so we get dragged into
| the cloud, onto centrally coordinated networks.
|
| There are converging factors that will give back some control but
| I think people should be treating that convergence with more
| urgency than we do now.
|
| Of course the terminal should also evolve, new standards need to
| be set.
| jcuenod wrote:
| The answer is yes, but you have to make friends with the
| employees and plan to marry a local.
|
| See this documentary:
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0362227/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
| sdfjkl wrote:
| No, you need food and water.
| jadbox wrote:
| I really just enjoy using i3wm tiling window management for
| terminal multitasking.
| BayAreaEscapee wrote:
| When I saw this subject I thought it was about living in an
| airport terminal, like Mehran Karimi Nasseri did in Paris for 18
| years.
|
| https://allthatsinteresting.com/mehran-karimi-nasseri
| efficax wrote:
| the web is what keeps me in GUI land, and Browsh
| (https://www.brow.sh/) isn't _quite_ good enough to make do with.
| daggersandscars wrote:
| For email, it appears Alpine (the successor to Pine) supports
| multiple email accounts via Roles. I have not tried this.
| heliophobicdude wrote:
| Question for OP: why do you like terminals/CLI applications? What
| are your needs?
|
| For me, CLI applications are nice because of their ability to
| interface with others with things like arguments, stdout etc.
| Dumb and simple to string together a series of applications that
| feed into each other to give you what you want.
|
| Desktop apps don't focus on that or if inclined would set up
| rigid interfaces that require communication over IP (read:
| expensive and inflexible)
|
| Mobile apps grew into this and so will VR/AR/XR.
|
| My call to action would be to encourage you to develop smaller,
| useful components that others can run to string together their
| own experiences/solutions.
|
| In mobile apps, this would be providing more integrations to
| IFTTT or iOS's shortcuts.
|
| My use cases would be to dump information out of apps and grep
| them. Just give me a damn file I can grep!
| cweagans wrote:
| > - My company uses Slack's enterprise auth, and all the CLI
| slack clients I could find haven't been updated in years and no
| longer work.
|
| https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack is decent.
|
| > - The web is using more javascript than in the past.
|
| cli browsers are probably the only truly unrealistic thing. An
| idea that I've been kicking around for a while is to build a
| simple CLI "browser" that uses PhantomJS or similar under the
| hood to request, load, and render the page into an image, convert
| the image to sixel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixel) and
| display it that way (or use any of the various terminal emulator-
| specific features (KiTTY has
| https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/graphics-protocol/ for example)).
| Probably pretty clunky, but it's doable if you're in the mood to
| write something purely for fun.
|
| > - Mutt doesn't handle multiple email accounts natively for
| work/personal. The solutions are hacks at best. Email servers are
| starting to use more complete auth mechanisms that don't work
| well with mutt.
|
| I don't think they're hacks. You can define exactly how you want
| it to work. That's a feature, not a bug. Sure, it takes a little
| bit of work to set up but you can use
| https://github.com/cweagans/dotfiles/tree/master/.config/mut...
| as a starting point if you'd like.
| easrng wrote:
| You might be interested in https://brow.sh
| mrweasel wrote:
| I was a terminal poweruser wannabe. For a time I tried just using
| tmux and Vim on almost all occasions. I still use Vim for
| something, like writing Puppet code. For everything else: I've
| just come to embrace to the GUI.
|
| Unless you're an absolute terminal power user that can
| masterfully navigate tmux, vim or whatever tools you use, I don't
| think it's a good use of time. There certainly are things where
| the terminal is the right tools, use it in those situations. Just
| ask yourself if you're artificially limiting yourself, simply
| because you think the cool kids use the terminal.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| It doesn't work for business at all because if you want to do
| business you have to meet people where they are. You can't email
| a client and say, sorry, can you please send me that contract in
| a text file, I only have a terminal. Or, sorry, I can't use your
| web portal to access the data because it uses JavaScript.
|
| If you're not doing business, using the terminal works fine. Up
| until you have to deal with health insurance or your power bill
| or your taxes or bank.
|
| Unfortunately the world now revolves around [gui] web browsers.
| We brought this technologically retarded hellscape on ourselves
| and we deserve it.
| ghaff wrote:
| >[gui] web browsers
|
| You largely _can_ restrict yourself to phone calls and postal
| mail. Aside from ordering from Amazon, my dad largely does.
| (Albeit in part because my brother and I will do various things
| for him he can 't figure out how to do with just a phone call
| or letter.) But it's increasingly difficult for a lot of things
| and is, at a minimum, less convenient.
|
| And, as you say, in business you generally don't really have
| the option to basically refuse to use a computer for many
| purposes.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Saw an elderly lady freaking out at Walmart because they no
| longer could pay capital one credit card in person with a
| physical check.
| ghaff wrote:
| In fairness, paying post-paid bills by check through the
| mail is still an option for most things. I get most stuff
| handled automatically and pay most of the rest online
| through my bank but I still write a fair number of checks
| either in person or mailed.
| pb7 wrote:
| >Unfortunately the world now revolves around [gui] web
| browsers. We brought this technologically retarded hellscape on
| ourselves and we deserve it.
|
| This seems backwards. Limiting yourself to CLI tools _do_
| retard your abilities, modern GUI apps do not.
| kkfx wrote:
| Sorry?
|
| CLI respect of Emacs yes, is limited and limiting, but modern
| GUIs are FAR more limited and limiting. Can you integrate
| them? No. Let's say you want in a single view a set of mails,
| financial transactions, notes etc. You can arrange something
| in a CLI, you can do it in org-mode, you can't do it in the
| most advanced ERP monster.
|
| Modern UIs try to go back to the original document UI concept
| but TOTALLY fails for the interactive part, they are mere
| view where you can touch some knobs someone else placed there
| for you, nothing more, and try to bend them is a nightmare.
| pb7 wrote:
| The GP lists some ways that a terminal-only workflow limits
| you.
|
| >Modern UIs try to go back to the original document UI
| concept but TOTALLY fails for the interactive part, they
| are mere view where you can touch some knobs someone else
| placed there for you, nothing more, and try to bend them is
| a nightmare.
|
| I don't see this as a bad thing. I want someone responsible
| for the product to figure out the best way to use it via a
| focused set of controls and inputs. Some people fail at
| this, others are amazing.
| kube-system wrote:
| What can't you do in X Window that you can do in a
| terminal?
|
| I'd agree that _some_ GUIs are bad, but the same could be
| said about _some_ TUIs.
| zdragnar wrote:
| This seems like an unfair comparison.
|
| If you limit the capabilities of a GUI interface to only
| what is possible without code changes, then you must do the
| same for CLI applications.
|
| Emacs is all code. Most CLI-only applications cannot be
| modified other than the flags you pass in; you are instead
| forced to pipe from one application to another.
|
| If you limit the capabilities of GUI applications to the
| realm of existing software (i.e. your monster ERP
| reference) then we must also limit the capabilities of CLI
| tools to what exists, and I know (for having looked far and
| wide) that I have needs which are not available via
| terminal-only programs; the only existing set of available
| software that I need with a comprehensive set of features
| is in a GUI-only application.
| mikkergp wrote:
| > Unfortunately the world now revolves around [gui] web
| browsers. We brought this technologically retarded hellscape on
| ourselves and we deserve it.
|
| This seems like rose colored glasses, maybe there was a very
| small period of time where there was a wide variety of things
| you could do in a terminal, but for business purposes it was
| mostly native GUI's which suffer from the same problems as the
| web if not worse (maybe only better because they were harder to
| make so there were a lot less of them)
| parasti wrote:
| > technologically retarded hellscape
|
| The modern web seems pretty great to me. Why do you feel that
| way?
| [deleted]
| nico_h wrote:
| You must have a very good ad blocker.
| plasticchris wrote:
| It was certainly an eye opener when I went to help a friend
| with their computer and saw the web without ad blockers for
| the first time in years. I had no idea.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Worse, if they have been infested with malware that may
| inject additional ads into sites like Amazon... Actually
| made me a fan of chromebooks for anyone that doesn't
| actually need more than that.
| pb7 wrote:
| Are you sure those aren't just Amazon ads? They generated
| $31B in ad revenue last year.
| tracker1 wrote:
| In this case of memory, it was definitely malware...
| though I couldn't really speak to Amazon today if
| ublock/privacy-guard/pihole catch them.
| usednet wrote:
| Censorship, mandatory KYC and ID verification, mass
| surveillance, ridiculous amounts of ads, everything is a
| subscription service and my god damn oven needs a login and
| ethernet connection...
| ghaff wrote:
| That seems to be a complaint, at least in part, about a
| terminal-based world which only the "right" people had the
| ability to access vs. a commercialized Eternal September
| where all the plebes (and scammers/grifters) have access.
| I'm pretty sure that a terminal line world that somehow had
| the same access and usage as today's GUIs/Web would find
| other ways of introducing the same problems.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Rel: Usenet spam
| thewebcount wrote:
| Yeah, this is the same thinking that calls Unix with it's
| incomprehensible set of pun-filled commands with
| thousands of conflicting flags "the bazaar" and the
| relatively-easy-to-use and discoverable GUIs of the world
| "the cathedral". It's elitism at its worst.
| kkfx wrote:
| Is pretty as a prison dressed to be nice. Is pretty for
| instance if you do not need to do anything than consume
| someone else provided contents and your favorite services do
| not cease to exists or change usage terms overnight.
|
| Google reader was nice, a day Google kill it, GitHub seems to
| be nice for some cohort of users, a day a political move
| between some countries makes your account locked, a day your
| ebook reader+service cease to exists with all books you never
| own but being convinced of the contrary, a day your smart
| vacuum cleaner stop to work because an AWS service have
| issues etc.
|
| That's how pretty it is. Pretty to capture you, ugly once you
| discover you are trapped and than it's too late.
|
| Oh, sure in mere tech terms you might run webapps locally,
| they are still NOT AT ALL pretty behind sugar-eye graphics,
| since integrate things, bend things is a nightmare that
| demand a gazillion SLoC for anything, while on classic CLI or
| better systems like Emacs you can do it in a snap. Not only:
| anything you'll learn on classic systems is valuable normally
| for a lifetime and more, anything you learn for the modern
| web might be valid for few years but generally last far less
| and no, you can't advance, you can only remain afloat keep
| learning the new crap on and on.
| pb7 wrote:
| You seem to have a lot of complaints about the internet and
| they may even be valid concerns on their own, but I fail to
| see how this relates to CLI vs. GUI. Google Reader would
| still be dead if you interacted with it via CLI. GitHub
| would still be dead if their servers shut down. Maybe
| you're equating CLI with some "good old days" that you
| fondly remember?
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| The modern web is primarily distinguished by its custom
| ui/media, as opposed to the old school web which put textual
| information first and allowed clients more control over
| presentation. The problems this creates are:
|
| * Accessibility - I can't change presentation to make things
| easier for me to consume
|
| * Inspectability - I can't search, index, etc. Information is
| hidden behind js driven interfaces that only present bits at
| a time.
|
| * Uniformity - I don't want to deal with a deluge of clever
| interfaces. I want the _data only_ , and I want control over
| how I will present the data to myself.
|
| * Buggy - All these custom JS driven interfaces means a never
| ending deluge of weird interaction bugs, most of which we
| just ignore. Pages are needlessly slow or error prone.
| ehutch79 wrote:
| You don't get out much do you? Not if you consider that a
| hellscape.
| spac wrote:
| I find this comment absolutely inappropriate for this
| forum.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > The modern web seems pretty great to me. Why do you feel
| that way?
|
| A quote I once heard about the modern web browser: "I want
| this program to do everything my computer already does."
|
| Imagine a simple hypertext markup language which tells a
| program how to render the text, link to different text or
| sites and perhaps paint some images on a screen. Seems pretty
| strait forward. Now make that program into a worse computer.
| This is what makes many people nauseous when they attempt to
| build "modern web" things.
|
| I heard a great comparison of game dev to web dev: "You write
| programs to reach goals or a finish line. game dev feels like
| you're building and fine tuning a race car. Web dev feels
| like you're running a marathon in the rain and everyone is
| throwing garbage at you while booing."
| jesusofnazarath wrote:
| [deleted]
| nine_k wrote:
| There are reasonable terminal viewers for many formats.
|
| Web sites that require JS to function (and there are many) is a
| bigger deal.
|
| Same with pictures.
|
| It's much more realistic to run a graphical environment and use
| a regular browser. Just disable JS by default and put a
| reasonable ad blocker. Then whitelist sites where you _really_
| need JS to work, like your Jenkins host :)
|
| A reasonable PDF viewer is also not such a resource hog, same
| with picture viewers when you need to display pictures. Say,
| Firefox does a reasonable job of being both if you don't want
| to install dedicated software.
|
| You _can_ make a graphical environment which is snappy, low-
| distraction, and very usable. (That was definitely already
| possible _20 years ago,_ when my Linux desktop was my main
| working machine, and ran quite adequately on a tiny fraction of
| today 's laptop resources.)
| random42_ wrote:
| > Up until you have to deal with health insurance or your power
| bill or your taxes or bank.
|
| > Unfortunately the world now revolves around [gui] web
| browsers. We brought this technologically retarded hellscape on
| ourselves and we deserve it.
|
| As bad as the web is, I certainly don't miss the days when I
| had to go to a physical office, wait minutes, sometimes hours,
| in a line and talk to somebody that may or may not help me,
| depending on how their day was going. Thanks but no thanks.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| This is like asking can I fix my car with only a set of wrench
| and a few tools. The answer is yes but it will be hard in
| situations. One is trying to do anything graphical unless you are
| launching a gui app from terminal, but still call it "inside"
| zaik wrote:
| Slack used to have XMPP integration, so you could have used
| https://profanity-im.github.io/ for chat.
| chameco wrote:
| I lived without X11/Wayland for several years. (These days, I
| live in GUI Emacs with EXWM instead, which has a similar
| feeling.)
|
| Some tools I had luck with:
|
| - mpv is your friend - it can play audio, video, and display
| images directly to the framebuffer without X11. It also makes a
| pretty decent PDF reader combined with ghostscript to render each
| page to a PNG.
|
| - The Emacs ecosystem is very useful - there are many packages
| for interacting with common services, and they typically work in
| both terminal and GUI modes.
|
| - For web stuff, the best solution I found was to push as much as
| possible into RSS feeds and/or IRC, which have good terminal
| clients. Things like rss-bridge and bitlbee are great here. When
| I needed a browser, I typically used Elinks but was never really
| satisfied with it. I believe if you need decent JS support you're
| out of luck.
| redsummer wrote:
| valeyard wrote:
| Which IRC client did you use in these years?
| chameco wrote:
| First irssi, then WeeChat, then cerce in Emacs.
| tomcam wrote:
| Sure! You can also use a Model T for all your auto needs.
| nnoitra wrote:
| pmontra wrote:
| I stopped using emacs to manage my mail in 1996 when my
| colleagues started to send me Word and Excel attachments. Not
| only I was using a text only client, I was using it on a Unix OS.
|
| I moved my mail to the predecessor of Exchange on a Windows 95
| PC. I went on for years with MS Express(?) and Netscape /
| Thunderbird for my personal email and Exchange for work email.
| Then only Thunderbird since I went self employed.
| bobkazamakis wrote:
| Yes, this was already documented by Tom Hanks in
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminal
| amelius wrote:
| Even my local library stopped using terminals with monochrome
| screens and some database system written in COBOL. Now they have
| webbrowsers.
|
| Perhaps it is time to upgrade :)
| nathants wrote:
| no, but a terminal and a browser is a good compromise between
| terminal only and going full enterprise office software mode.
| deeblering4 wrote:
| Maybe you'll find something you like looking into a matrix slack
| bridge alongside a command line matrix client
| zhxshen wrote:
| pedrovhb wrote:
| I don't know about "living" in a terminal, but CLI/terminal tools
| are quite far from being out of the picture; if anything, I'd say
| they're thriving. It's not about one or the other; they're
| complementary, and I use both every day.
|
| Personally, I use Firefox for browsing, PyCharm for coding,
| mpv/qimgv for media, and do pretty much everything else in the
| terminal. Terminal tools are incredibly versatile and composable
| in a way GUIs really can't match - for instance, I built a script
| that gets all the RAW files from my camera, converts them to jpg
| with darktable-cli, and optimizes them for filesize maintaining
| the same visual quality with jpeg-recompress, great for when I
| don't particularly care about editing each picture of a long
| hike. Next step will be to also push them to Google Drive, but I
| haven't gotten around to that yet. Similarly, the gopro-like
| camera I use for recording racing footage produces files with
| some weird filenames and terrible encoding which makes them
| enormous, so another script pulls the files, renames them to the
| date/time taken, and uses ffmpeg to transcode them to hevc, which
| saves several GB. Could I do this all from GUIs? Probably, but
| it'd involve a lot of hunting for files, dragging/dropping, and
| context switching between different programs. It's a lot more
| convenient to do it all in one short command.
|
| There's also some amazing tools which just don't make much sense
| or would be quite contrived in GUI form. fd and fclones come to
| mind. AI is starting to be packaged as CLI tools, and it'll open
| up even more possibilities. Separate hiking pictures into their
| own directory? Sure! Find lecture videos mentioning a specific
| subject? No problem, this one doesn't mention the specific
| keyword you were looking for but it's also relevant at X
| timestamp!
| gregjor wrote:
| I do almost everything in terminal windows, but for emails,
| Slack, video calls, and other support-related things I use native
| MacOS/iPadOS apps. It doesn't make sense to do everything in a
| terminal because not every useful service works in a terminal.
| Choose your environment and tools based on utility.
| brudgers wrote:
| Since Emacs runs just fine in a terminal, I imagine so.
|
| Although, if you are going to live in Emacs there might be enough
| terminal there without actually running it in a terminal.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| How do you read documentation for work?
| ilovecaching wrote:
| Man pages, pdftotext, elinks, go doc, etc.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| Sure it's possible to live in a terminal, assuming you're willing
| to impose shit like this not just on yourself but upon everyone
| you interact with: https://stallman.org/stallman-
| computing.html#internetuse
| dominotw wrote:
| Yes unless you work with language that "needs" an IDE like java,
| scala ect.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| You can always load the IDE up as a Vim/Emacs plugin. I've used
| the Eclipse Language Server within Vim to some success in the
| past
| dominotw wrote:
| Thats why i put need in quotes.
|
| Sure you can get away with it but vim plugin is no where
| close to what you can do in Idea. Not even in the same orbit.
| anaganisk wrote:
| Good old days at college when I used to code in notepad :p
| falcolas wrote:
| I have done Java in Vim before with various plugins. It is
| technically doable, but it's also nowhere near as ergonomic as
| it is to use IntelliJ for example. I would want to put a lot
| more into the setup before trying to do it full time in the
| terminal.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Terminal code review seems to be a niche looking for an occupier.
| I live in my terminal for editing text and code, running code to
| generate more text (test output), deciding how to break that code
| into meaningful chunks and writing about what each chunk does to
| make the codebase better (git).
|
| This is realistically a huge part of my job.
|
| The next part of the cycle though is always web based. Where are
| the code review tools that integrate with my editor? Why am I not
| reviewing someone's changes presented as a branch in my working
| copy? Can I do this without having to make the cognitive break of
| leaving my development environment and moving to a web page
| facsimile -- albeit a very good one -- of the place I do my own
| thinking? Being able to make suggestions by editing the actual
| code (and testing it) would be _huge_.
|
| A solution to this would be amazing.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I still use the command line extensively. However, I use a
| browser for collaboration tools and email, and Emacs GUI for
| coding. On the work computer, sadly a Windows box, I have no such
| luck.
|
| Having said that, current windowed terminals are a sad shadow of
| the days of the VT330. Almost none can do double-width and
| double-height, many can't blink, and none can do smooth
| scrolling.
|
| Honorable mention to Apple's (NeXT's?) Terminal app, that can, at
| least, do double width and height.
|
| None has Tektronix or ReGIS support - which would be wonderful
| for graphic panel applications.
| zppln wrote:
| It obviously depends on your working environment..? I'd be
| screwed 5 minutes into my workday having to sign into our PDM.
|
| > It seems like the terminal world is slowly getting abandoned in
| favor of proprietary GUI apps.
|
| Eh, I'm seeing quite the opposite trend. I see people doing stuff
| that'd consider using a terminal to be straight up inappropriate
| for (e.g. displaying line graphs).
|
| And your troubles with Slack is most likely down to it being
| proprietary garbage.
| Jiro wrote:
| From the headline, I thought the post would have been about this
| guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehran_Karimi_Nasseri
| slowhand09 wrote:
| I was thinking The Lawnmower Man
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LNvXjb44-U
| univacky wrote:
| I was thinking The Terminal Man
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminal_Man_(film)
| [deleted]
| chatterhead wrote:
| I was thinking The Omega Man
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067525/
| beardyw wrote:
| Me too!
| halz wrote:
| There is a pretty well updated cli for Slack built on top of
| WeeChat (hailing from IRC heritage) https://github.com/wee-
| slack/wee-slack
| leet_thow wrote:
| anaganisk wrote:
| howeyc wrote:
| For everything except web browsing, I use the terminal.
|
| neovim - text editor
|
| aerc - email
|
| nzbget - usenet
|
| irssi - chat
|
| mpv - audio
|
| still hoping for gemini to take over for a full terminal
| experience.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Any thoughts regarding irssi vs weechat?
| atemerev wrote:
| You can, if you're working as an independent consultant. I have a
| few friends like this who do live in a terminal. (I am also a
| consultant, but Gnome works fine for me)
| als0 wrote:
| Can't use Zoom inside a terminal.
| nsm wrote:
| Are your concerns about the lack of open APIs or the lack of
| command line apps per-se?
|
| Personally I'm all in favor of having more open APIs and third
| party clients, but would never want to intentionally constrain
| myself to a TTY that is half a century old.
| reissbaker wrote:
| The Vim/Neovim ecosystem has gotten unbelievably better over the
| last 5-10 years. "Living in the terminal" for core development
| work is IMO better than pretty much anything else out there; my
| Neovim setup has a modern plugin manager; an IDE-like experience
| with fast autocompletion as I type, goto definition, and
| automated refactor support; and a side-drawer file browser
| navigable with Vim motions. It feels like an IDE, except that it
| launches in ~100ms and has ultra-low typing latency. Using it
| with tmux panes means I can have various drawers and panes with a
| series of full, incredibly fast terminals wherever I want, with
| long-running tasks like automated test watching/running while I
| edit code placed wherever I want around the editor panel. Not to
| mention the Cambrian explosion of "modern" terminal tooling
| getting built, like xplr [1], hyperfine [2], httpie [3], etc.
|
| That being said, I think "living in the terminal" for general
| purpose computing, like browsing the web or talking to your
| coworkers, has been in a kind of frozen standstill while the rest
| of the world has moved on. I think it isn't worth trying to push
| non-dev work into the terminal currently.
|
| 1: https://github.com/sayanarijit/xplr
|
| 2: https://github.com/sharkdp/hyperfine
|
| 3: https://github.com/httpie/httpie
| yeswecatan wrote:
| Do you have your dotfiles on github?
| greymalik wrote:
| What setup/plugins do you recommend for using Neovim as an IDE
| replacement? I use vi for minor text editing but have never
| used it for development.
| Ian_Macharia wrote:
| Lunarvim is a pretty solid choice and comes fully stocked
| with cool plugins that match most of the popular editors out
| there. Sometimes I even forget i'm in a terminal.
| ablob wrote:
| Depending on what you deem to be a suitable replacement i'd
| recommend: nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim //
| integrates well with code actions and searching (very
| extensible in general, similar to ctrl-p) hrsh7th/nvim-
| cmp hrsh7th/cmp-nvim-lsp // for language server
| completion neovim/nvim-lspconfig // a bunch of language
| server specific stuff
|
| note, that you'll probably need a bit of time to configure it
| to your liking and that nvim doesn't install the language
| server by itself, so that is something that you need to take
| care of by yourself as well.
|
| If you want to see what a preconfigured IDE-replacement might
| look like you can take a look at lunarvim(but beware, it
| misbehaves on windows quite a bit, you're better of with a
| linux system here)
| lelandbatey wrote:
| There's really only one "class" of plugin that's a "must
| have" to turn Vim (Vim or Neovim) into an IDE replacement and
| that's _some kind_ of Language Server integration; there are
| several you could pick, they all allow your Vim to
| automatically start and talk to a local Language Server,
| giving you all the fancy autocomplete /go-to-
| definition/inline documentation/etc that you expect from an
| IDE. Otherwise, I dunno, maybe a nice color theme? Probably
| the only one I really depend on that's not part of "general"
| vim is the FZF plugin, which lets me rapidly and quickly
| fuzzy search for files by their name anywhere in the folder
| I'm in.
| adriand wrote:
| I use Neovim all the time but although I do have some
| linters installed I find all the fancy stuff so much worse
| than in a more visually appealing editor. I love vim and I
| do have a lot of affection for the terminal but things get
| extremely visually noisy with language servers in a way
| they just don't with a more graphical interface.
|
| It sucks because I want to use vim for TypeScript dev but I
| just can't stand it compared to VS Code. For non-typed
| languages I still use vim, and I love how I can fluently
| edit anything on servers I shell into, but I kind of wish
| there was a middle ground of some kind.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| Yes, but it depends a bit on the exact nature of your job. At the
| last job, my Linux work machine never had a mouse plugged into it
| because I never needed one. The macbook the company gave me was
| the "chat/email machine".
|
| Nowadays, I have to run a proprietary VPN client that only works
| via GUI, but even though a full screen terminal emulator isn't as
| "pure", it feels the same.
|
| I love it: absolutely zero distractions, it's a _huge_
| productivity win for me. But I realize I 'm lucky in that the
| kind of work I do doesn't require me to be responsive to chats
| and emails (my reply latency is 24h).
| codyb wrote:
| I do most of my work in the terminal. I work on
| JavaScript/TypeScript projects. Soon Java, we'll see if I use the
| terminal for that.
|
| I love streamlining my ZSHell and ViM experiences by tooling
| around and have produced some nice scripts and functions which
| are both living documentation and useful to share.
|
| However, I wouldn't expect my team to maintain shell scripts as
| they're a bit esoteric.
|
| I quickly navigate around and search my files, use version
| control, switch projects, run services, and open sites in my
| browser using terminal and Vim commands.
|
| I have to switch away for debugging though.
| elf25 wrote:
| rosnd wrote:
| >- Mutt doesn't handle multiple email accounts natively for
| work/personal. The solutions are hacks at best. Email servers are
| starting to use more complete auth mechanisms that don't work
| well with mutt.
|
| How come? I use hundreds of email accounts with mutt and have
| never had to do any special configuration.
| oneplane wrote:
| It is possible but inadvisable. A more realistic approach would
| be terminal + browser.
|
| Living in a terminal itself doesn't really mean much, as it
| strongly depends on your tasks. For things like number crunching
| or programming, it has a pretty big benefit (as text is the
| universal API after all), and you can do pretty much everything,
| usually faster and more reliable than a GUI can.
|
| But when you need to do data visualisation, make use of external
| services that do not provide terminal emulation interfaces or
| want to work with people that do not live in a terminal, that
| makes a 60/40 split the best choice.
| brbrodude wrote:
| As long as coding stuff can be done through SSH, TMUX, VIM and
| terminal I'm fine. I've got a netbook-like tablet(s3 active with
| keyboard cover) and working on it is real nice(I hope to start
| going a bit more nomad soon), I have to switch apps to Slack &
| browser but the OS handles this so why bother.. My 2013 notebook
| also holding up well since what I need besides the term is just
| the browser... I don't think it's going away, but for this kinda
| of port to be maintained it needs to fit in with what workflow
| the termnerds and geeklords are doing, I guess.
|
| In my mind I like to entertain the thought though that this bare
| way of working computers is discovered by more people & younger
| generations, that maybe they pick it up and do more cool stuff
| etc because it's something I only grow to like more and more over
| time. Btw I was never was like the hardcore linux wizard or
| anything, more like 'touch typing + this is kinda like playing a
| fighter'. I've got 2 trainees who are trying to pick up Vim right
| now and I guess a lot of ppl notice it since they never saw
| someone coding like I do, like doing typing combos and working
| mostly at the CLI. It's also funny because my colleague at the
| company is a very respectable senior and about my age but its 2
| totally different styles, he's using vscode & autopilot.
|
| I have some RSI though and it sucks when it starts popping,
| nowadays that mostly when Im working more remotely since then I
| use normal keyboard & key setup. On my work computer I have a
| typematrix with some key customizations that have helped A LOT.
| oshirisuki wrote:
| for mutt, I use Luke Smith's mutt-wizard and can do several
| accounts, I switch accounts with `i1`, `i2`, etc. for the
| different accounts, though I'm not sure if that fits your use
| case
|
| for the question I'd say "depends on what you want to do", if you
| have to interact with people who use slack, then probably no,
| unless you make your own CLI client to it, same with the web
| golly_ned wrote:
| Emacs (which can be run in the terminal using the "-nw" option)
| has a slack package -- I dipped my toes in and noped out quickly,
| as I found it too difficult and too ugly compared to using the
| app: https://github.com/yuya373/emacs-slack
|
| I've tried to do the same thing: going completely text mode. For
| me, it was disastrous -- it was a big distraction for me at work,
| at two jobs. I even left a good job partially so that I could try
| to go text-mode rather than click my way through lots of GUIs. It
| was something of an obsession. Now I look back and sigh.
| agumonkey wrote:
| there's also a resurgence of lean fast TUI, fzf, bat, neovim,
| python libs like textual
| zh3 wrote:
| I keep a 'perfect terminal' in the office, basically a system
| with an nvidia 7600 in it because that's the fastest 2D text
| thing I've found to date (yes, modern cards are so slow in text
| mode it's not even funny). Configured for 24 VT's, a bunch of
| them autoconnect to remote systems/run specific applications etc
| at boot - so if I want the calculator, for example, it's Alt-F12.
|
| For local graphics programs, that also provides a memory-mapped
| framebuffer which makes basic graphics a doddle. Beyond that,
| text-mode browsing has been too hard work for years (and so by
| extension email too). While it's very possible to 'cheat' by
| setting X to render to a framebuffer (either directly or in the
| background) the whole reason to use the text-only console is to
| focus on code without computer-borne interruptions.
|
| Even on my graphical computer, it's basically terminals windows
| and a browser. Any piece of software that interrupts the flow is
| either configured to not do so, or discarded PDQ.
|
| Terminals FTW.
| Melatonic wrote:
| What do you mean by fast or slow in text mode? Like the 7600 is
| literally writing text to the screen faster than modern cards
| or?
| dopidopHN wrote:
| No idea if op refers to that. I don't think so, but modern
| stack can be ineffective.
|
| My work mbp M1 was having a delay writing text in external
| monitor
|
| While all the rest, including video, was display without
| delay.
|
| I had to tweak some driver settings ( of the base , not my
| graphic card )
| jyrkesh wrote:
| Did you happen to write down what you tweaked? I use an MBP
| M1 with an external 4K, and I've had a sneaking suspicion
| that my keyboard inputs are somewhat delayed. Just hasn't
| ever felt quite right....
| tracker1 wrote:
| Yeah... modern graphics cards have really limited text mode
| implementations and even worse, often broken ones that don't
| display the correct colors even (can find many complaints of
| those running "classic" games etc). There are/were a _LOT_ of
| basic text modes that were supported up until they were
| largely deprecated and only very basic implementations exist
| now... and often are slow to render walls of text. It 's kind
| of wild.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Is it "possible"? That just depends on what you are willing to
| give up. You clearly aren't fond of video calls if you consider
| giving up a graphical desktop.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I'd give up the GUI if that could get me rid of constant
| meetings over Teams.
| undoware wrote:
| dude, I've been reading posts like this since the nineties (on
| Slashdot.)
|
| Terminals have been 'going away' for longer than I've been alive,
| and they will continue to diminish long after I'm gone.
|
| The reason they don't ever get there is that the market as a
| whole is still increasing in size overall, even as the stock of
| TUI-natives dwindles. There are simply so many more people
| working on e.g. neovim, kakaoune, and himalaya (an email client)
| that the fact that there are _even _more_ more_ people using GUIs
| simply doesn 't matter as much.
|
| Put another way: the increase in absolute numbers of TUI/CLI
| users is the statistic to watch, not the relative percentage of
| users.
|
| Finally, terminal chops are a nerd status symbol -- a form of
| conspicuous consumption of time and muscle memory. Humans tend to
| drop status symbols _last_.
|
| I don't brag about my use of VSCode, but I sure talk up my neovim
| config in interviews ;D
| alwillis wrote:
| There also seems to a renaissance of new terminal applications
| --slick, GPU-accelerated, built in multiplexing, native support
| for Open Type features, full color support, etc.
|
| I've settled on WezTerm [1] for now but Alacrity and Kitty are
| also impressive.
|
| [1]: https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/
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