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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 7b9eb32..0000000 --- a/content/blog/2022-06-16-terminal-lifestyle.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,215 +0,0 @@ -+++ -date = 2022-06-16 -title = "A Terminal Lifestyle" -description = "Explaining how I live my digital life mostly in the console/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. - - - -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. - -I'll show you a quick screenshot first: - - - -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. - - |