💾 Archived View for altesq.net › ~evenfire › posts › 2022-06-13.gmi captured on 2023-09-08 at 16:15:37. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

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TTY

I've always used tiling window managers, first i3 then more recently, dwm. In my search for something even lighter, I've come across dvtm, a window manager for the terminal. It acts, in most aspects, like dwm, having the same behavior, but in my case in a TTY. First impressions are that it's much lighter, obviously, and smoother when especially when scrolling. Still getting used to the keybindings, but I definitely vouch for it. The default meta key is ctrl-g, although I'll probably change it to alt as I'm more used to that. It has the default tiling layout of dwm, as well as a few others.

I can do my workflow just fine in a TTY, as I don't use GUI programs. My average ram usage is about 100Mb, which I consider very impressive. A TTY, personally, keeps me focused more than what a graphical environment would. I spend all my time in terminals usually, so a TTY is no different, only perhaps the color palette differs. Aside from that, dvtm provides a customizable bar too, like dwm, although I haven't got around to customize it. I need to learn how to copy text using dvtm, as I've seen it offers a function for that, as you can't copy text normally in a TTY.

The only issue I encountered is when SSHing into s server and running tmux there. Tmux won't open/attach because it doesn't recognise the terminal "dvtm." In order to fix this, put in your shell's file in your server "TERM=linux". Keep in mind "TERM=xterm" is buggy and you cannot clear your screen properly.

For my shell, I've begun to use mksh. I'm coming from zsh, so it's a bit of a learning curve, but it's worth it. I'm still learning the various ins-and-outs of mksh. I've moved all my useful aliases and such to the mkshrc.

Life in a TTY is more pleasant than I thought, and I expect I'll spend most of my time in one from now on.

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