A day without X11 ?

Spartrekus

Spartrekus

Hello,

A day without X11 ? No startx, no xterm, just the beauty of the console (ttyv0, ttyv1,...).
Note that if you have 3 to 4 monitors, you can do : ssh 192.168.123.100 > /dev/ttyv0 and run the same screen (or tmux for younger hacker generations) on your four monitors.

Would you be able to survive a long day without using X11 at all?

Regards
 
Why a day? And why "survive"? I believe many people comfortably live without X. Personally I don't – since working in a corporate environment forces you using graphics. However, I always read/write my work and personal emails in mail/mutt (two separate rc files), use www/w3m, used to use net-im/finch messenger. For development I excusively use vim (either console or lite package) with NERD tree navigation.
 
aragats said:
Why a day? And why "survive"? I believe many people comfortably live without X. Personally I don't – since working in a corporate environment forces you using graphics. However, I always read/write my work and personal emails in mail/mutt (two separate rc files), use www/w3m, used to use net-im/finch messenger. For development I excusively use vim (either console or lite package) with NERD tree navigation.
Click to expand...

You are right now using a web browser to post, so it means you use X. bouuuuu :)

Well, corporate needs engineers. X11 is common today and (wayland for Linux).
 
Spartrekus said:
Hello,

A day without X11 ? No startx, no xterm, just the beauty of the console (ttyv0, ttyv1,...).
Note that if you have 3 to 4 monitors, you can do : ssh 192.168.123.100 > /dev/ttyv0 and run the same screen (or tmux for younger hacker generations) on your four monitors.

Would you be able to survive a long day without using X11 at all?

Regards
Click to expand...

No, because I use Eclipse for development. :p
I could do with an mcedit, but it would be going back to my productivity levels from the 90-s. No thanks :)
 
aragats said:
Why a day? And why "survive"? I believe many people comfortably live without X. Personally I don't – since working in a corporate environment forces you using graphics. However, I always read/write my work and personal emails in mail/mutt (two separate rc files), use www/w3m, used to use net-im/finch messenger. For development I excusively use vim (either console or lite package) with NERD tree navigation.
Click to expand...
Does vim support refactorings for languages? Just out of curiosity. I myself never learned it, so I mostly end up cursing that I can't delete a character using Backspace or Del. :) I know many people love it.
 
Not "without X", so this strictly doesn't count, but...

Back around 2008-2009 I did a week at work 'only' using terminal windows*. It worked surprisingly well back then, think I used www/lynx to use the web, including the Lab management web tool and some forums I was on at the time. It really didn't impact my weeks work at all and taught me a great deal about living on the command line.

I don't think it's quite as easy to do for my work today (especially as I work in a department that develops web based video players!)

*Desktop was the Java Desktop, so whatever terminal emulator came with that - at the time I was had three SunRays linked to a UltraSPARC server running pre-release OpenSolaris builds and a modified SunRay Server...
 
Note that if you have 3 to 4 monitors, you can do : ssh 192.168.123.100 > /dev/ttyv0 and run the same screen (or tmux for younger hacker generations) on your four monitors.
Click to expand...
For my local tmux I have the backtick set as the Prefix key. F11 to add a new window, F12 to step between windows. I just find that easier/quicker. Which is handy for when I ssh into hashbang.sh ... that also runs tmux using the standard keys (ctrl-b prefix) ... as the two don't collide. I have my tmux menubar at the top of screen, hashbangs is the default bottom of screen. No need for multiple monitors and I don't use panes (split a single tmux window down and zoom in/out one of many panes), but instead just flip between windows (each program maximised).

s.png

hashbang.sh like many provides email, irc, textual browser. Local has calcurse (calendar/todo/diary), cmus (music) ..etc. and I like mc for file manager and text editor. I could get by with that alone, however for https/browsing X/gui is pretty much a necessity. My android phone however could be used as a alternative to that so fundamentally could I live a day without firefox/X/gui and use just my phone instead .. yes easily, but for actual work, cutting and pasting from a browser into a text file etc. would be inconvenient. Whilst I can mount my phone so that its folders appear as any other folder on my desktop system, its more awkward. If I could mount my phone and have the desktop keyboard/mouse control it, and have its screen displayed on another monitor (or window) then that would be more viable. A gap in the market however is that such a 'app' isn't readily available AFAIK (my awareness on that front however is lacking, so hopefully someone might pipe in with a pointer to such a app :) )

A nice feature of using a ssh server is that you can just detach (ctrl-b d) and then later login again and attach ($ tmux attach) back into the exact same (still running) session with all your windows ready to go.
 
The ideal for me would be a modest sized (portable, but not too big to lump around, whilst having a reasonable screen size) laptop, 'dual cored' with a integral phone and bluetooth headphones/mic, where the android phone 'core' aspect displayed on the laptops screen and was controlled via the keyboard/touch screen/voice and that was multiplexed with tmux. i.e. easier on tired (older) eyes with the convenience of the likes of googles speak to text alongside reasonable screen text size for irc, email ...etc. (tmux console sized text).
 
Sure, if you want to destroy your productivity, go without better tools for a day ...

I do 90% of my programming and analysis work using terminals, and typically have 5 or 6 terminal windows open, at work on two monitors (at home typically one on my lap, except on weekends I set up the desk in the study with the big screen). But there are many things for which a terminal is sub-optimal. For example color-coded 3-way diffs when doing code merges. Or searching e-mails by text strings. Or integrating well-formatted documents, spreadsheets, and graphics into mail. Or analyzing data using Root / Jupyter / iPython, with graphs integrated into the workflow. And even for my terminal windows, I use a GUI underneath, which allows me to move and resize the terminals flexibly (so if an error message is too long, I quickly drag my window to be wider, and when I need to look at multiple pieces of code, I make it narrower and add another terminal).

I really worry about Spartrekus luddite attitude: text-mode terminals were good 30 or 40 years ago, so they must be good now. I've had a terminal on my desk at work since 1984, and at home intermittently since 1986. But claiming that this is good is complete nonsense. Yes, they were good back then. The alternative back then was either to go to a terminal room in the computer center, stand in line until a terminal became free, and program while the people standing in line were giving you dirty looks because you weren't typing fast enough. Or the alternative was to write one's programs with pencil and paper on a desk, and then later type them in at night, when the terminals in the computer center were available. Or to write programs on cards, organize them at your desk, and carry them over to the computer to run (for a reasonably-sized program of 5000 lines, you need a cart, since that big a program is too heavy to carry). Today, restricting oneself to text-mode terminals only makes no sense, and simply kills productivity.
 
ralphbsz said:
Or to write programs on cards, organize them at your desk, and carry them over to the computer to run (for a reasonably-sized program of 5000 lines, you need a cart, since that big a program is too heavy to carry).
Click to expand...
You forgot the part where you tripped on the stairs and sent your deck crashing down two flights, praising yourself for the foresight to number them so you now had a chance to check your knowledge of sorting algorithms. I bet quicksort was discovered that way. And now one or two cards were missing...
 
Or the day parts of the program were so worn out that they had to be duplicated. Unfortunately, the code had been commented by writing onto the cards with a felt-tip pen, so after duplication the comments were lost. Oops.

One disaster that has never happened to me, but that I've heard about: If your source code that has been punched on paper tape falls down, and makes a giant spaghetti on the floor. You really don't want to tear it, so you'll spend a long time carefully winding it back up. Compared to that, vi and emacs are great.

There is a lot of mystique about the old days. One particular example is the paleo diet: If the neanderthal ate it, it must be good. Nonsense. The neanderthal were not healthy at all, had short live spans, and suffered from terrible diseases and malnutrition. They would have been much better off with modern medicine, vaccinations, and good food. Which doesn't mean eating McDonalds hamburgers all day (like the President of the US does), nor does it mean megadoses of vitamin pills and "herbal supplements", but a good balanced diet. How do I know that? I've met the neanderthals! My hometown in Germany is within easy bicycle distance from the little valley of Neandertal (today a small part of the city of Mettmann, a suburb of Duesseldorf), which has a charming museum. Somewhere at home I have a picture of our son and his cousin hugging a neanderthal guy at the museum. And in that area, if you go to an amateur football (soccer) game on a Saturday afternoon, or to a Kneipe (pub) on a Friday evening, the place is full of living specimens. <- Cruel joke, not meant seriously

Seriously, the world of computing has gotten much better. GUIs and X are really much better to use than just text-mode terminals (which are not obsolete, just part of the solution), and punched cards and paper tape have rightfully been put into the dustbin of history.
 
Well, they are perfectly usable as bogeymen to scare youngsters into accepting the safety of modern times. And that goes for punch card readers with clubs as for neanderthals wielding spools of paper tape.
 
When I started out with Arch Linux I used the console exclusively. Unfortunately because of the javascript on the internet today, you have to use one of the major browsers.
 
Isn't there an ASCII art backend somewhere? I remember watching one episode of GoT on the console when X wasn't running.
 
ralphbsz said:
Seriously, the world of computing has gotten much better. GUIs and X are really much better to use than just text-mode terminals (which are not obsolete, just part of the solution), and punched cards and paper tape have rightfully been put into the dustbin of history.
Click to expand...

Having gone to uni in 2006, I wished that the department had been able to keep one of their first computers (I don't recall what it was, we were told, but it was punch-card operated). I didn't wish to be seriously taught computing on it, but I thought it would have been wonderful to have had a term working within the constraints of such a system. That would have given us all a lot more gratitude to the environments we find ourselves working in today, I think.
 
roccobaroccoSC said:
Does vim support refactorings for languages? Just out of curiosity. I myself never learned it, so I mostly end up cursing that I can't delete a character using Backspace or Del. :) I know many people love it.
Click to expand...
is vim better than eclipse? might it be actually the opposite?

rufwoof said:
For my local tmux I have the backtick set as the Prefix key. F11 to add a new window, F12 to step between windows. I just find that easier/quicker. Which is handy for when I ssh into hashbang.sh ... that also runs tmux using the standard keys (ctrl-b prefix) ... as the two don't collide. I have my tmux menubar at the top of screen, hashbangs is the default bottom of screen. No need for multiple monitors and I don't use panes (split a single tmux window down and zoom in/out one of many panes), but instead just flip between windows (each program maximised).

View attachment 6362

hashbang.sh like many provides email, irc, textual browser. Local has calcurse (calendar/todo/diary), cmus (music) ..etc. and I like mc for file manager and text editor. I could get by with that alone, however for https/browsing X/gui is pretty much a necessity. My android phone however could be used as a alternative to that so fundamentally could I live a day without firefox/X/gui and use just my phone instead .. yes easily, but for actual work, cutting and pasting from a browser into a text file etc. would be inconvenient. Whilst I can mount my phone so that its folders appear as any other folder on my desktop system, its more awkward. If I could mount my phone and have the desktop keyboard/mouse control it, and have its screen displayed on another monitor (or window) then that would be more viable. A gap in the market however is that such a 'app' isn't readily available AFAIK (my awareness on that front however is lacking, so hopefully someone might pipe in with a pointer to such a app :) )

A nice feature of using a ssh server is that you can just detach (ctrl-b d) and then later login again and attach ($ tmux attach) back into the exact same (still running) session with all your windows ready to go.
Click to expand...
I have three monitors. They are connected, displaying and running only a single same session of screen (or tmux). why X when there is a fast, productive console.

Actually, for developments, vim, emacs,... are there as example of old, powerful editors.

For images or PDFs, there is framebuffer.
 
Crivens said:
You forgot the part where you tripped on the stairs and sent your deck crashing down two flights, praising yourself for the foresight to number them so you now had a chance to check your knowledge of sorting algorithms. I bet quicksort was discovered that way. And now one or two cards were missing...
Click to expand...
That's what rubber bands are for ...
 
forquare said:
Having gone to uni in 2006, I wished that the department had been able to keep one of their first computers (I don't recall what it was, we were told, but it was punch-card operated). I didn't wish to be seriously taught computing on it, but I thought it would have been wonderful to have had a term working within the constraints of such a system. That would have given us all a lot more gratitude to the environments we find ourselves working in today, I think.
Click to expand...
If you live in the San Francisco bay area, you can go on Wednesday to the Computer History Museum, and watch an IBM 1401 in action. No disk drive, only storage is tape. No semiconductor RAM, only memory is magnetic code (only a few kB of it). No chips, no silicon, only germanium transistors. All programming happens on cards. Today, they use Raspberry Pi or similar to emulate tape drives and card reader/punches for their maintenance operations, to reduce wear and tear.

To get to program it (which is hard but doable, I've met quite a few people who do it) you have to volunteer on the project.
 
I spent my day without X11 today. Ironically much of it was also spent writing graphical software.
The technology I am working on (OpenGL | Distributed) was being written on a development machine running FreeBSD 9.1 (eeek ;)) on a Thinkpad T23 and then I was using an Android 4.x tablet to receive the messages to perform the render.

Yes, cheating using Android (SurfaceFlinger) as the client renderer but it still counts ;)

Its all ANSI C (C89 for ultimate compatibility) so the relatively underpowered Pentium III could easily handle the compiles. At this point I honestly just jumped on that machine because I like the keyboard haha
 
Spartrekus said:
is vim better than eclipse? might it be actually the opposite?
Click to expand...
The word "better" is a very slippery one. It implies a linear scale and a quantitative relation.
Without precisely specifying in which aspect we are comparing I don't think it's possible to conclude that one is better than the other.

Text editors are a matter of personal taste and experience, also - use case.

To formulate the question differently: "Which editor has better Java refactoring capabilities?" - Eclipse does this really well. I don't know vi enough that's why I asked the question.
If we ask however: "Which editor am I most productive with when editing general text?" - then it depends strongly on the person in question.

Would I use Eclipse in every possible situation? Definitely not. When I work in a textual console I go nano, ee, mcedit or even vi (but not gladly).
You need the right tool for the job.

And a last thought, vi is a very nice and sophisticated editor. If only it were a bit easier to learn and more intuitive, I just get frustrated so early on.
As I use hundreds of software tools I cannot possibly know all their features and shortcuts by heart. I don't have the time and energy to read the manual every 15 minutes when I am editing text. It's that simple. And with vi, I would have to do it.
vi is for people that use it all day long and have time to learn all the commands by heart.
 
Spartrekus said:
Would you be able to survive a long day without using X11 at all?
Click to expand...

What's this preoccupation with X11?

I can turn off all my laptops, unplug my cable modem, turn off my flip phone (which doesn't even have Internet service) and survive somehow for days on end.
 
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