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Vtm: Text-Based Desktop Environment
- pvg 2y agoA big thread five years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24243521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24243521
- evanjrowley 2y agoThe main link in the thread appears to have been taken over by a malicious entity.
- arcanemachiner 2y agodang replaced it with an archive link and pinned a comment at the top telling the story. What a G.
- stuartjohnson12 2y agoI've never seen a forum moderator of a place as full of anxious nerds as Hacker News steward a ship this well. May we all aspire to Dang's heights.
- accrual 2y agoWe've come full circle. We invented a GUI to replace the TUI, then reimplemented the GUI in the TUI. Long live the terminal!
- ninetyninenine 2y agoWe've done it twice. Many terminals run under electron or equivalent browser interfaces. So we've implemented TUI in the GUI as well!
- hnlmorg 2y agoThat’s also applies to literally every terminal emulator written since xterm. Most of the modern terms these days have GPU acceleration too.
- ninetyninenine 2y agoNo. This isn’t true. Most terminals are native. They don’t run under a browser engine.
- hnlmorg 2y agoA browser engine isn’t a prerequisite for something using a graphical framework nor running on a desktop environment
- ninetyninenine 2y agoAh I see what you mean. I mean it’s all pixels in the end right? and pixels are primitives for guis. So then the root primitive is in actuality the gui.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tomxor 2y agoThat sounds like the worst thing ever. So many good native terminals to choose from why ruin it with electron.
- cmrdporcupine 2y agoRevenge of DESQview
- leejoramo 2y agoI used DESQview for a number of years, and always think about it when see new TUI systems https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview
- sushidev 2y agoI tried to use desqview but it was too slow on my 386 33mhz machine… not sure how much RAM it had back then but I recall it was the bottleneck and swapping to disk caused everything to lag.
- lproven 2y agoI think you are confusing old memories here. DESQview did not do any memory management of its own, and it did not use graphics. It was entirely local and had no networking. It was famously fast. It was a DOS multitasker so it managed DOS tasks, meaning multiple slots of 640kB. On a 386 with 4MB of RAM you could have 6 full-size DOS VMs with a bit left over. If you were a power user you could still have say a big 1-2-3 spreadsheet in EMS plus a few DOS VMs. DESQview delegated memory management to QEMM386, and QEMM386 did not do swapping. It didn't need to. DESQview/X was a totally different product, with a full GUI, so much bigger and slower -- and it added an optional extension that added full virtual memory with swapping to disk. I am wondering if you are mixing up DESQview (small, fast, local) with DV/x (big, complicated, networked, had optional VM)? Or indeed DV/x with something else altogether? OS/2 maybe? Because if it was swapping, it wasn't DESQview, not in any normal sane config anyway. It might be possible to add DV/x VM to plain old DESQview but I never heard of anyone doing that.
- nxobject 2y agoIt’s funny - I think of DESQView/X, their fully compliant X11 server complete with both Motif and OpenLook. The exact opposite of vanilla DESQview.
- fragmede 2y agorun it through aalib for good measure
- CaffeineLD50 2y agoTotes.
- pantulis 2y agoThe demo video has a lot of Borland's Turbo Vision vibes.
- pjmlp 2y agoIt was a great framework, it was my path into OOP, after learning it previously in TP 5.5 (TV was released alongside TP 6, and Borland C++ 3.0), and its design was quite pragmatic.
- pantulis 2y agoSure, it was awesome, it was also my first exposure to OOP but I think for a beginner it was slightly too deep and I ended up doing things without knowing what I was doing... although they worked.
- hidelooktropic 2y agoYeah. Am I missing the point that this leans so far into being as capable as a GUI as it can, that we lose something from starting in the terminal in the first place?
- fmxsh 2y agoI was exploring why Linux terminal environment is so powerful compared to Windows terminal. Windows is built at the kernel level to support graphics and GUI, while *nix systems are built with terminal at the core. Thus Windows historically has had way more powerful GUIs. They are two different domains of power. Each of them also trying to do what the other does better.
- pjmlp 2y agoEvery desktop OS has been like that, UNIX is the exception, as it was originally designed for a timesharing headless system. And with exception of command.com, most have had good CLI shells, without having to pretend being a teletype, like UNIX ones. Amiga DOS with REXX was great, Oberon REPL, Smalltalk Transcript, Interlisp-D REPL, Xerox Star Mesa XDE,....
- -__---____-ZXyw 2y agoInteresting perspective. I've poked at the medley interlisp revival project, as well as glamorous toolkit, and cuis, but hadn't heard about most of the things you mention here. Will be investigating.
- gjvc 2y agoThere was something similar a few years ago which ran over an ssh connection and had a zoomable ui of sorts. I can't find the link -- does this ring a bell anywhere?
- qrobit 2y agoI don't completely understand what is meant by "zooming", but kitty[^1] does that: you open ssh connection with `kitten ssh user@host` and pressing <C-Enter> will open another ssh pane in the same tab, you can than IIRC <C-F> to "zoom" and make tab take full window [1]: <https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/ https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/>
- gjvc 2y agonot the same zooming. imagine a text mode ZUI -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooming_user_interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooming_user_interface
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y agoIt really is tragedy that there aren't more ZUIs in the wild. I'd love a compositor (X11 or Wayland; it's probably not just a wm) that made all windows arbitrarily zoomable, but I lack the skill to make it myself.
- nix0n 2y agoZooming all windows at once exists as a Gnome shell extension. https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/7263/better-desktop-zoom/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/7263/better-desktop-z... Probably it would be possible to zoom one window at once as a shell extension.
- smusamashah 2y agoIt was this very tool. It could be sshed into with ssh vtm@netxs.online That domain is dead now
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deadbabe 2y agoI wish some web apps would adopt this pure text design language
- jimmydddd 2y agoWho is the target user for this?
- Defletter 2y agoAssuming this works over SSH, then presumably people who are literate with a terminal but prefer GUIs.
- johnisgood 2y agoDamn, that would be quite cool.
- rangerelf 2y agoIt does (work over ssh). Pretty neat: reconnect to the host and you see all the terminals you left open.
- thesuitonym 2y agoPeople who think it is cool, I guess.
- munk-a 2y agoPeople who were looking for a TTRPG in the modern setting and ended up being deeply confused and converting their entire computer environment into a powerful runic device that requires complex incantations - though maybe those folks would have been better off looking for Mage the Ascension.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago> and converting their entire computer environment into a powerful runic device that requires complex incantation I already have a Linux machine, but yes this looks like a nice addition;)
- CaffeineLD50 2y agoCrazy text fanatics, lynx browser users, console minimalists, desktop ricers, AI fearing cult members: the usual suspects.
- hnlmorg 2y agoI know I’m missing the obvious here, but is this a terminal multiplexer (like tmux)? Or a tiling terminal emulator (like iTerm, et al)?
- Retr0id 2y agoNeither, it's its own thing. Most similar to tmux, but you interact with it more like you'd interact with a graphical window manager.
- pancsta 2y agoSo tmux with floating panes and drag-n-drop.
- cryptonector 2y agoWith tiling, I think.
- safety1st 2y agoThe Youtube video embedded on their Github is titled "Tiling Window Manager with Drag&Drop" and from watching it, that appears to be exactly what this is. I don't know if or why it artificially constrains itself to only opening terminals.
- colecut 2y agoThe whole thing runs inside of a terminal, it would be hard to open anything else
- o-sdn-o 2y agoIt's scary to do something more complex than a terminal emulator until the architecture is unstable. In case of small changes we will have to rewrite a lot. You can play with a couple of built-in demo apps 'vtm --run text', 'vtm --run calc', 'vtm --run test', 'vtm --run truecolor'. You can also run it directly inside the vtm desktop by typing vtm.desktop.Run({ type='calc' }) in the command line of 'Log Monitor'.
- 2y ago
- jacobegold 2y agoI feel like an LLM agent could grok and interact with something like this pretty well...
- meepmeepinator 2y ago[flagged]
- otherayden 2y agoThanks, ChatGPT
- VanillaCafe 2y agoTrying to understand it... if by comparison I'm using tmux then switching to something like this adds mouse based window (panel) management?
- dmd 2y agoI'd love to see some of these ideas folded into Zellij.
- CaesarA 2y agoI always wondered if it was possible to have a TUI-style window manager inside the terminal. This is a fantastic project, whoever made it did a great job.
- CaffeineLD50 2y agoThe demo looks great but I'm twice shy from having been bitten a few times. It can't just be pretty.
- grafelic 2y agoSomething like dvtm? https://www.brain-dump.org/projects/dvtm/ https://www.brain-dump.org/projects/dvtm/
- CaesarA 2y agoA little bit actually, yeah. This looks great, thanks.
- nine_k 2y agoMy TUI desktop environment, complete with a tiling window manager, is called Emacs %) I suppose Vim can offer a comparable experience.
- celsius1414 2y agoTo paraphrase the old vim joke, emacs will be great once they add a text editor. ;)
- dgsm98 2y agoWhen I first read this, I thought this was an open source project by DirectTV
- TheLockranore 2y agoI use terminal specifically to not need a mouse. I use a great many TUI tools, but this one is never going to be one of them.
- shric 2y agoIf it had i3/sway tiling behaviour/bindings, that would be great.
- lostmsu 2y agoPotentially relevant for using this vs GUI for remote access: AV1 can compress 4k+ screen casts in real time to under 500kbps while keeping text legible.
- CaffeineLD50 2y agoThis looks unbelievably bad ass. I cant wait to try it.
- CaffeineLD50 2y ago[flagged]
- alchemist1e9 2y agohttps://github.com/zellij-org/zellij https://github.com/zellij-org/zellij
- jlkuester7 2y agoBeen using Zellij for awhile and it is delightful! I am only a moderate terminal user, but I really like having some basic multiplexing features if I need them. My brain just could not hold onto the necessary tmux key combos with only intermittent use. Instead I find the Zellij commands to be more intuitive (and more discoverable thanks to the handy prompts...)
- CaffeineLD50 2y agoOpen man page for tmux. Search for split window. Launch tmux and split window. Open man page for tmux in 2nd window. Its not hard.
- mixmastamyk 2y agoNow that we have high resolution, millions of colors, and unicode in our terminals, this is the logical conclusion. Still doesn't make a lot of sense, but I like it. :-D
- redder23 2y ago[dead]
- joshu 2y agohas anyone tried building it from source?
- o-sdn-o 2y agoBuilding with gcc requires ~4Gb of RAM; clang requires ~8Gb. Due to memory requirements, building vtm for a 32-bit target is only possible using cross-compilation. In addition, cmake downloads Lua sources during the build process.
- fmxsh 2y agoLooks very smooth! However, from my perspective, the extensive need to drag windows around and resize them is a habit of windows environment. So, perhaps, this is for the mouse what tmux and Neovim are for the keyboard. In tmux, the window layouts I need are fixed sets of 2x2 panes, with some predefined ways of resizing them and toggling full-screen. With effective tools like telescope and nvim, the need to line all windows up disapears, because the switching is so efficient and I have more of a mental picture than a visual one of what's available. For example, no need for the file tree commonly to the left in most IDEs.
- haolez 2y agoI thought like you in the past. Today, for some reason, I value defaults and reducing my cognitive load so that I can think more and do less. Even Eclipse would work for me nowadays :P
- fmxsh 2y agoI remember Eclipse! That was something like 20 years ago I used it last time. Thanks for bringing back some memories. Setting up an efficient terminal environment is overwhelming. I do it as a hobby and enjoy the tinkering. Thanks to GPT the process is quicker. But I spent a lot of time just setting up a basic environment.
- curtisszmania 2y ago[dead]
- hambes 2y agohonest question, since i really like the idea but don't understand the implementation: what use is a text-based desktop environment, if it requires a graphical interface and cannot run in a tty?
- o-sdn-o 2y agoNot all platorm-specific tty's are supported by vtm. See the list of supported terminals.