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This can be done with modern tech. A lot of the time I use a Debian box for my personal stuff with keyboard and cheap 1080p display. It does not run X at all. I

by qz2 6y ago

This can be done with modern tech. A lot of the time I use a Debian box for my personal stuff with keyboard and cheap 1080p display. It does not run X at all. It's literally just framebuffer console, tmux and terminals. I don't use a web browser on it either. A neat side effect of this is the machine I use is a fanless N3010 celeron based Lenovo M600 which feels positively lightning quick if you never go near the www on it. Perhaps 90% of the reason a PC feels like a sluggish POS these days is because there's some chunk of browser stack in there somewhere. Edit: picture of the set up here: https://imgur.com/yjPMYaX https://imgur.com/yjPMYaX

throwanem 6y ago
Cheap Chromebooks work well for this, as long as they're among the models that can be jailbroken and take a proper Linux install. Ample power to run a text editor and a textmode browser (Emacs and eww, or any other, lesser, choice you may prefer), but not enough for graphical browsing and other distractions. Too, since they're specced to run Chrome for a couple hours, you can easily get 8 to 10 hours of battery life running something less absurd. The keyboards aren't what you call great, but they serve well enough. I like a mechanical keyboard as much as the next dork, but I've never really felt the lack when using the Chromebook for writing.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  > Cheap Chromebooks work well for this, as long as they're among the models that can be jailbroken and take a proper Linux install. Jailbreaking Chromebooks is a huge hassle, though. Much easier to install Linux on a standard box from the past 10 to 15 years. You can also buy cheap low-end hardware with Chromebooks-like specs that will run Linux out of the box.
anthk 6y ago
That's literally my setup in slackware, but you can watch movies in framebuffer, and I surf too (lynx/links/sacc). #!/bin/sh clear setterm -cursor off echo -en "\e]P0000000" mplayer -really-quiet -vo fbdev2 -vf scale=1280:-2 -cache 2048 "$@" setterm -cursor on echo -en "\e]P01d2229" clear Games? - IF. Lots of them. - Slashem. - MUDs. - Mednafen through framebuffer. Even gamepads work.
anthk 6y ago
Also, if you get used to edbrowse, you can even use some JS ridden sites. Youtube? mpsyt + youtube-dl. Telegram? Bitlbee+IRSSI. But when you use gopher (gopher://magical.fish and gopher://floodgap.org as a start) everything is instantaneous. Oh, and, for music the Soma cli tool from slackware. Amazing.
- qz2 6y ago
  Completely. I’ve actually written a mostly working terminal gopher client in Go which is reminiscent of such browsers :) Source: https://pastebin.com/B7KqsDRg https://pastebin.com/B7KqsDRg (no dependencies, no license) Screenshot: https://imgur.com/vNLO2zJ https://imgur.com/vNLO2zJ
  - anthk 6y ago
    Ah, I know it, I tried it long ago, but I prefer sacc.

by qz2 6y ago

throwanem 6y ago

Cheap Chromebooks work well for this, as long as they're among the models that can be jailbroken and take a proper Linux install. Ample power to run a text editor and a textmode browser (Emacs and eww, or any other, lesser, choice you may prefer), but not enough for graphical browsing and other distractions. Too, since they're specced to run Chrome for a couple hours, you can easily get 8 to 10 hours of battery life running something less absurd. The keyboards aren't what you call great, but they serve well enough. I like a mechanical keyboard as much as the next dork, but I've never really felt the lack when using the Chromebook for writing.

zozbot234 6y ago
> Cheap Chromebooks work well for this, as long as they're among the models that can be jailbroken and take a proper Linux install. Jailbreaking Chromebooks is a huge hassle, though. Much easier to install Linux on a standard box from the past 10 to 15 years. You can also buy cheap low-end hardware with Chromebooks-like specs that will run Linux out of the box.

anthk 6y ago

That's literally my setup in slackware, but you can watch movies in framebuffer, and I surf too (lynx/links/sacc). #!/bin/sh clear setterm -cursor off echo -en "\e]P0000000" mplayer -really-quiet -vo fbdev2 -vf scale=1280:-2 -cache 2048 "$@" setterm -cursor on echo -en "\e]P01d2229" clear Games? - IF. Lots of them. - Slashem. - MUDs. - Mednafen through framebuffer. Even gamepads work.

anthk 6y ago

Also, if you get used to edbrowse, you can even use some JS ridden sites. Youtube? mpsyt + youtube-dl. Telegram? Bitlbee+IRSSI. But when you use gopher (gopher://magical.fish and gopher://floodgap.org as a start) everything is instantaneous. Oh, and, for music the Soma cli tool from slackware. Amazing.

qz2 6y ago
Completely. I’ve actually written a mostly working terminal gopher client in Go which is reminiscent of such browsers :) Source: https://pastebin.com/B7KqsDRg https://pastebin.com/B7KqsDRg (no dependencies, no license) Screenshot: https://imgur.com/vNLO2zJ https://imgur.com/vNLO2zJ
- anthk 6y ago
  Ah, I know it, I tried it long ago, but I prefer sacc.