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A Terminal-Only Desktop
Is it possible to live only in the terminal? Either on a TTY or using a minimal window manager? I think so - here's a non-comprehensive list of tools I use all the time, what they're for, and how they can replace (or supplement) a GUI application.
- The obligatory tmux, vim, and git, for writing and distributing code and text.
- nmtui (network-manager-tui), htop and btop for resource management. top is good but these are better.
- newsboat(+podboat) for rss feeds and podcasts.
- mpv, ncmpcpp/mpd/mpc, and imv for music/video. Does mpv count? It can run on a tty, but it's for displaying video. If the requirements are 'text only', it does not, and I'd have to replace imv with catimg.
- aerc and mbsync (now named isync) for email, with Thunderbird as an occiasional backup.
- weechat for IRC, and profanity for XMPP. scli is a tui for signal-cli I've used on occasion, but am moving away from signal.
- lynx and links for browsing www, amfora for gemini, and bat, less, or reader (https://github.com/mrusme/reader) for piping text.
- nethack or crawl for some entertainment.
- keepassxc-cli, but I usually use keepass. I could switch to pass; I have used it before.
- openconnect, for a work VPN, on the work computer.
Stuff I can't replace (yet):
- a www browser - lynx and links are not good enough for more than casual browsing, and most of the time pages are a chore to navigate and look broken.
- the whole email suite that Thunderbird provides - caldav and carddav syncing and an autocompleting address book. Maybe I just have to bite the bullet and switch to mutt+abook?
I usually use sway or i3 as a window manager, but I could configure tmux to behave kind of the same way. In fact I might do that for fun; give up a traditional for a while. There are a few other GUI tools too, but those are easily replaced. I think I could do it - it seems pretty fun! I might need to look into how to do colorschemes or something like gammastep on a TTY. Maybe I could cheat and use netsurf-fb, too...
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