It should be pointed out that this experiment was abandoned after 10 days. But it was done entirely in a text-based terminal: no display servers at all. The criticisms of the experience are what you would expect of such a stunt.
Reading the posts, it becomes quite evident that viewing youtube videos and similar activities were important to him. And while theres nothing wrong with that, it does mean there was no chance of him actually finishing this. Though I would of been fine with reading about a slightly more relaxed 30 days (ie. Allowing himself to use mpv or similar software for videos)
Everything in moderation. As an experiment, I might try terminal only on desktop, but use an iPad for graphical browsing and so forth. Actually, that’s almost exactly what I do.
A very interesting read, but I don’t get it why he ditched the framebuffer. If you allow the Linux framebuffer in your “terminal-only” experience you can come along pretty good. There are programs for playing videos in the framebuffer (like mplayer) or viewing PDF files (fbpdf). Most importantly, move away from using the bare Linux virtual console and instead use a proper framebuffer terminal like fbterm. It gives you the possibility to use any TTF font file on your system for your terminal font, and thus have proper Unicode support on your terminal. w3m is already mentioned by the author; if used on a framebuffer, it can also display images (though I have made the experience that the images' positions are rather random).
I do most of my work from a terminal (usually using a terminal emulator on top of i3), but the one thing that is missing is a proper web browser. w3m is great, but even though it can display images, it’s not really a browser targetting the framebuffer. It should be possible to have something like webkit render directly onto the framebuffer. Then there’d be no real difference to a graphical user interface browser.
There was a period of time (about 4 years during highschool) when I used Slackware without an X server. Even more, there was a brief moment when my monitor broke down and I used a dot matrix printer as the display by redirecting stdout & stderr to lp0 - that was annoying but an amazing experience :) Sadly I didn’t keep neither the printer nor the printouts :(
I did not have a network connection during that time but I still could do pretty much everything I needed on it.
I already miss YouTube. I wonder if there’s some way to stream YouTube clips, translated to ASCII somehow. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but it seems possible.
It should be pointed out that this experiment was abandoned after 10 days. But it was done entirely in a text-based terminal: no display servers at all. The criticisms of the experience are what you would expect of such a stunt.
[Comment from banned user removed]
Reading the posts, it becomes quite evident that viewing youtube videos and similar activities were important to him. And while theres nothing wrong with that, it does mean there was no chance of him actually finishing this. Though I would of been fine with reading about a slightly more relaxed 30 days (ie. Allowing himself to use mpv or similar software for videos)
If you have the YouTube link, you can play them from the command line with
mpvor download them withyoutube-dl.Yes, but the author wanted to try a completely text based approach, I merely proned a more balanced approach.
IIRC
mpvcan play both in the framebuffer and as ASCII art.Everything in moderation. As an experiment, I might try terminal only on desktop, but use an iPad for graphical browsing and so forth. Actually, that’s almost exactly what I do.
A very interesting read, but I don’t get it why he ditched the framebuffer. If you allow the Linux framebuffer in your “terminal-only” experience you can come along pretty good. There are programs for playing videos in the framebuffer (like mplayer) or viewing PDF files (fbpdf). Most importantly, move away from using the bare Linux virtual console and instead use a proper framebuffer terminal like fbterm. It gives you the possibility to use any TTF font file on your system for your terminal font, and thus have proper Unicode support on your terminal. w3m is already mentioned by the author; if used on a framebuffer, it can also display images (though I have made the experience that the images' positions are rather random).
I do most of my work from a terminal (usually using a terminal emulator on top of i3), but the one thing that is missing is a proper web browser. w3m is great, but even though it can display images, it’s not really a browser targetting the framebuffer. It should be possible to have something like webkit render directly onto the framebuffer. Then there’d be no real difference to a graphical user interface browser.
Edit: When I said “fbdev” I meant “fbterm”
I don’t think you thought this through. How on earth are you going to survive without Counter-Strike?
There was a period of time (about 4 years during highschool) when I used Slackware without an X server. Even more, there was a brief moment when my monitor broke down and I used a dot matrix printer as the display by redirecting stdout & stderr to lp0 - that was annoying but an amazing experience :) Sadly I didn’t keep neither the printer nor the printouts :(
I did not have a network connection during that time but I still could do pretty much everything I needed on it.
The author probably doesn’t know that mplayer can play videos in the framebuffer :)
The author ruled out the framebuffer, but weirdly that’s in the final, not the first chapter.
http://www.networkworld.com/article/3090404/linux/30-days-in-a-terminal-day-10-the-experiment-is-over.html