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diff --git a/content/blog/2022-06-16-terminal-lifestyle.md b/content/blog/2022-06-16-terminal-lifestyle.md deleted file mode 100644 index cd383ba..0000000 --- a/content/blog/2022-06-16-terminal-lifestyle.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,189 +0,0 @@ -+++ -date = 2022-06-16 -title = "A Terminal Lifestyle" -description = "" -draft = false -+++ - -# 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. - -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. - -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. - -## 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. - -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. |