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+date = 2022-06-16
+title = "A Terminal Lifestyle"
+description = "A detailed description on how I'm living my digital life in the terminal."
++++
+
+## Text-Based Simplicity
+
+I've detailed my views on web-based minimalism and related topics in other 
+posts throughout the years; e.g., JavaScript/CSS bloat slowing down websites 
+that are essentially a text document. However, I have never really expanded 
+beyond talking about the web and describing how I focus on minimizing 
+distractions in other digital environments.
+
+This post is going to set the baseline for how I *try* to live my digital life. 
+It does not necessarily get into my physical life, which is often harder to 
+control and contain all the noise in our modern world.
+
+While there are new things to do every day in our digital world, I find that 
+keeping a core set of values and interests can ground you and keep you mindful 
+of *why* you are participating in the digital world. For example, if - at your 
+core - you have no interest in what strangers think about random topics, it 
+would be unwise to start participating in social media. However, I am someone 
+who has been dragged in by effective advertising to participate in communities 
+that I realize I do not care for.
+
+I won't dive much further into explaining the philosophy of all this, but I will 
+link a few helpful articles that may pique your interest if you're in search of 
+more meaningful experiences:
+
+- [Mindfulness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness)
+- [Minimalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalism)
+- [Stoicism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism)
+
+## Living Life in the Terminal 
+
+My personal approach to reducing digital distractions and increasing my focus on 
+the task at hand is to use a terminal for as much as I possibly can.
+
+Most days, this means that I have a few tabs open constantly in my terminal:
+
+1. A web browser
+2. A chat client
+3. An email client
+4. An RSS feed reader
+5. A local shell for navigating my computer's files
+6. A remote shell for managing servers and other machines
+
+Beyond this, I rarely open other tabs or GUI applications, unless absolutely 
+necessary. If you look, you may be surprised what can be accomplished in the 
+terminal.
+
+For example, I have moved my music and entertainment downloads to the 
+terminal, along with my device VPN connections. I am exploring options for 
+moving my RSS subscriptions to something like [Newsboat](https://newsboat.org/), 
+so that I can read my daily articles without all the fuss.
+
+Now that we have some examples out of the way, let's dive into the 
+specifics.
+
+### Browsing the Web
+
+I'm going to start off with a hard topic for those who prefer to live in the 
+terminal: web browsing. This task is made hard mostly by websites and web apps 
+that require JavaScript to run. The other difficult part is that if you're using 
+a text-based browser, that means images won't load (hopefully that's obvious).
+
+I am using [Lynx](https://lynx.invisible-island.net), a text-based browser that 
+runs quickly and easily in the terminal. Lynx allows me to browser most websites 
+by simply typing `g` and then typing in the URL I want.
+
+![Lynx](https://img.0x4b1d.org/blog/20220616-terminal-lifestyle/lynx.png)
+
+If you need a search engine while in Lynx, I recommend [DuckDuckGo 
+(Lite)](https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite/), which allows you to search the web 
+using their text-only interface.
+
+![DuckDuckGo 
+!Lite](https://img.0x4b1d.org/blog/20220616-terminal-lifestyle/ddg.png)
+
+Eventually, you will run into websites that don't work (or are just too ugly 
+and messy) in a text-only mode, and you'll be forced to switch over to a GUI 
+browser to look at that site. Personally, I don't mind this as it doesn't happen 
+as often as I thought it would.
+
+The only time I need to do this is when I want to browse an image/video-focused 
+webpage or if I need to log in to a site, and it doesn't support a text-only 
+login page.
+For example, I am able to easily log in to [Sourcehut](https://sr.ht) in lynx.
+
+### Chatting with Friends
+
+After web browsing activities, my main form of terminal communication is Matrix. 
+I use the [gomuks](https://docs.mau.fi/gomuks/) client currently.
+
+This was incredibly easy to install on macOS (but I will need to see if it'll 
+be just as easy on Linux when my new laptop arrives):
+
+```sh
+brew install gomuks
+```
+
+Once you launch gomuks, it will sync and require your username and password to 
+login. After doing so, the only problem I ran into was verifying my gomuks 
+client so that I could participate in rooms with E2EE.
+
+Finally, I was able to verify the session by opening the Element desktop app (I 
+assume you can do this in the browser and mobile app too, but I'm not sure) and 
+manually verifying myself with this process:
+
+1. Open the Element desktop app
+2. Open a room I was a member of
+3. Open the `Room Info` pane
+4. Open the `People` menu and search for myself
+5. Click on my profile name
+6. Click on the session link under the `Security` section and follow the 
+prompts to manually verify the session
+
+Overall, I like gomuks and am able to enjoy all the features I was using in 
+Element. The only hiccup I have occurred is manually downloading images to view 
+them, which can be annoying.
+
+![gomuks](https://img.0x4b1d.org/blog/20220616-terminal-lifestyle/gomuks.png)
+
+### Email
+
+Moving email to the terminal has been the hardest of the tasks for me. Unlike 
+web browsing, where I can simply decide to not look at a website that does not 
+work in the terminal, I cannot simply ignore emails sent to me.
+
+Personally, I am experimenting with [neomutt](https://neomutt.org/) as a 
+potential email client.
+
+However, this requires a **TON** of configuration and tweaking to get right. 
+Even when I was able to set up neomutt, configure my email account, and 
+customize a few personal preferences, a lot of emails still do not display 
+correctly (mostly due to HTML and images).
+
+I won't get into the details of configuring `neomutt`; I mostly followed this 
+blog post: [Email in the Terminal: Configuring 
+Neomutt](https://gideonwolfe.com/posts/workflow/neomutt/intro/).
+
+Finally, I have yet to figure out how to connect my GPG keys to `neomutt`, but 
+that's a problem for another day.
+
+### RSS Feed Reader
+
+I have just started using [Newsboat](https://newsboat.org/) to read articles in 
+my terminal and have found quick success with it.
+
+I'll show you a quick screenshot first:
+
+![Newsboat](https://img.0x4b1d.org/blog/20220616-terminal-lifestyle/newsboat.png)
+
+The configuration was super easy for this app; I simply installed the app, 
+created a file for URLs, and imported my OPML subscriptions that I had exported 
+out of my old feed reader:
+
+```sh
+brew install newsboat
+```
+
+```sh
+touch ~/.newsboat/urls
+```
+
+```sh
+newsboat -i=my_subscriptions.opml
+```
+
+### Writing & Programming
+
+Unfortunately, the weak link in my terminal-based environment right now is my 
+grasp of the possibilities of editing files within a shell.
+
+I am used to the easy extensions found in VSCodium and Kate, so I am slowly 
+learning how to mold the default editing tools to my needs. Currently, this 
+means I am using `nano` with the following configuration:
+
+```config
+set breaklonglines
+set autoindent
+set linenumbers
+set tabstospaces
+set tabsize 2
+set fill 80
+```
+
+This configuration allows nano to automatically hard-wrap lines at 80 
+characters, autoindent the wrapped lines (if the previous line was indented), 
+use 2 spaces per tab, and display line numbers within each file I open.
+
+I am currently looking to see if `vim` or `emacs` would be more useful for my 
+current needs, but I'm not in any rush, so I don't expect to find an answer 
+anytime soon.
+
+With my current life demands, I am not programming at the moment and have not 
+explored the best terminal set-up for programming. However, I have seen many 
+peers find success configuring `vim` and `emacs`, so that's where I will start 
+when I pick my projects back up.
+
+![nano](https://img.0x4b1d.org/blog/20220616-terminal-lifestyle/nano.png)