I always liked that "offpunk" vibe as well. But my eyes get so tired quickly of the white-on-black of the terminal. I like it for playing with low level stuff, such as groping around a program with gdb, or looking at packet captures. But I also have no use for that kind of thing anymore. I like the pastel-ish look of plan9 and it's austere aesthetics. That's why I keep fantasizing about it.
But recently I don't give a flying f about computers, either. I want to go offscreen as much as possible these days. I read on my tablet, I spend most of my day reading on my tablet, in fact, so I cannot just throw the baby out with the bathwater (as much as I'm a fan of throwing babies out the window!). I plan to get an ereader soon but in my experience those are not very good for reading pdfs. I don't know.
Another alternative is for me to take as many notes now so that in the future I can have as much as possible on paper to refer to and go full analog, though that seems unlikely, I have gigabytes of pdfs waiting for me to read them.
I 'm not really writing for you either, here, can we call this the solipsism thread?
~bartender surprise me.
I, too, wanted to delve into text-only/cli-centric methods of computing, but I ended up just beeing offline mostly, anyway. Text, e-mail, YouTube (via NewPipe on Android) and IRC (lately Revolution IRC from FDroid, soon back to Irssi in XFCE terminal), but other than that I am MIA from the Web. No beef or qualms or ill will towards anyone or anything, I just cannot have my brain melded into the shortform/micro-blogging world of Mastodon as it had been with Twitter (literally the same mental pathways break open, show themselves as the all too familiar avenues to nowhere that they are). Writing online is on/off as writing itself is on/off, for me. A conversation on IRC when it's relevant, or a comment to and fro, but even e-mail seems like an *upkeep* of communication anymore. Lo and wonderous was the world of "just" AOL chatrooms or/and AIM personal IM's (and also AIM personally curated chatrooms) back when, prior to me needing/wanting/knowing how to put anything online, pissing on Newgrounds and sometimes causing a hellacious stir there in the forums as the trool-like teenage fiend I was.
So now I lurk, always. YouTube, IRC, Midnight.pub, Read.write.as, Feedbin for the litany of blogs and Mastodon accts I follow (no need or want to take action on any of it - just read what is there).
CLI-only? Yes, I will go with Newsboat in time. Self-host it. Possibly even YewTube, who knows. For now just *using* the Web is alright with me.
Stay good, Inq