Ask HN: Interesting TUIs (text user interfaces), maybe forgotten ones? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Interesting TUIs (text user interfaces), maybe forgotten ones?

#171

Post by kjs3 » Tue, May 07, 2024, 10:01 PM UTC

frederikvs wrote: post #94

Linux's `make menuconfig` [0] and GDB's TUI interface [1] are the first ones that come to mind. Both are very powerful once you get to know them a bit, and are still valuable tools today. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menuconfig [1] https://sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb.html/TUI.h...

I find menuconfig to be a not-very-great TUI (too much stuff per page for my taste), but the GDB tui is really nice/functional (tho also idiosyncratic).

Re: Ask HN: Interesting TUIs (text user interfaces), maybe forgotten ones?

#172

Post by kjs3 » Tue, May 07, 2024, 10:05 PM UTC

cpach wrote: post #7

WordPerfect is an interesting example: https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/wordperfect.html WordStar is another one, used by George RR Martin et al: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/words...

I used the TUI WordPerfect for SCO Unix/Xenix on various serial terminals and telnet/ssh connections for years. I still miss it for heads-down cranking out text.

Re: Ask HN: Interesting TUIs (text user interfaces), maybe forgotten ones?

#173

Post by NunoSempere » Tue, May 07, 2024, 10:10 PM UTC

bashinator wrote: post #109

NoboruWataya wrote: post #20

These certainly aren't forgotten, but I like: * `ranger` file manager: https://ranger.github.io/ * `ncdu` for visualising disk usage: https://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdu * `htop` process monitor: https://htop.dev/ I just find them very intuitive, and information-dense while not being overwhelming.

`ncdu` is the single best tool I've ever found for tracking down high-disk-usage directories deep in the filesystem. Run it with the `-x` flag to prevent it from crossing mounts.

Wow, thanks for the pointer, finding it super useful right now to see what's taking so much space in my backups

Re: Ask HN: Interesting TUIs (text user interfaces), maybe forgotten ones?

#174

Post by kjs3 » Tue, May 07, 2024, 10:15 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #78

While there were many things I didn't like about the AIX "smit" sysadmin tool, the UI in the tty version was pretty smooth for the time period. An example: http://img1.51cto.com/attachment/201204/133704226.jpg

Smit was always love/hate. It's very powerful, effective and well thought out, and if I didn't already have years of 'regular' unix experience, I would have liked it much, much better. But it screamed "this is what happens when mainframe folks are handed a unix". And the first thing I was told in my first AIX admin class was "Just accept it up front and learn to love smit. Do not try to go behind smits back. Do not think you know better than smit does.". Wasn't usually wrong.

Re: Ask HN: Interesting TUIs (text user interfaces), maybe forgotten ones?

#175

Post by FridgeSeal » Tue, May 07, 2024, 10:25 PM UTC

- Lazygit: has completely replaced how I do all git things now. Fantastic interface, nice and speedy, easy to learn.

- K9s: replaced my use of kubectl and the K8s dashboard. Lets you go from browse —> action on a resource so much faster than kubectl.

- btop: it’s like top, but way prettier.

Re: Ask HN: Interesting TUIs (text user interfaces), maybe forgotten ones?

#176

Post by NunoSempere » Tue, May 07, 2024, 10:29 PM UTC

prab97 wrote: post #158

ncmpcpp is a TUI based music player for your audio file collection. It's actually a frontend to the mpd (music player daemon) https://rybczak.net/ncmpcpp https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/ncmpcpp

On that note, moc (http://moc.daper.net/) is also pretty nice

Re: Ask HN: Interesting TUIs (text user interfaces), maybe forgotten ones?

#177

Post by NunoSempere » Tue, May 07, 2024, 10:35 PM UTC

Some which I use: lf, neomutt, moc/mocp, newsboat, fzf. Screenshots for some: https://nunosempere.com/blog/2023/03/27/soothing-software/

to a lesser extent: btop, htop (but I find the shortcuts confusing), csvlens (https://github.com/YS-L/csvlens), lynx (elinks, links).

Re: Ask HN: Interesting TUIs (text user interfaces), maybe forgotten ones?

#178

Post by nikisweeting » Tue, May 07, 2024, 10:37 PM UTC

I maintain a list of all my favorites here (the ones with rainbows have TUIs or pretty colors):

https://docs.sweeting.me/s/system-monitoring-tools

There's also this list: https://github.com/rothgar/awesome-tuis

In particular ones I haven't seen mentioned already are:

pudb (gdb for python), glances (better htop), memray, fdisk, ctop (htop for docker), dissy (dissasembler), fzf (file browser), micro (like nano meets Sublime Text), hexyl (hex viewer)

Re: Ask HN: Interesting TUIs (text user interfaces), maybe forgotten ones?

#179

Post by nikisweeting » Tue, May 07, 2024, 10:40 PM UTC

shihanwan1 wrote: post #58

I have used this https://github.com/vadimdemedes/ink/ for TUI design, it's "React" for TUI. It's pretty good but I had to add a bit of sub-process parallelization since I have a long running process in the background.

I like https://github.com/Textualize/rich and Textual by the same team, they solve a similar need but using Python.

Re: Ask HN: Interesting TUIs (text user interfaces), maybe forgotten ones?

#180

Post by nikisweeting » Tue, May 07, 2024, 10:43 PM UTC

hanniabu wrote: post #76

Are there any tools to convert a TUI into a GUI?

Rich / textual let you stream a terminal pane to a browser over a websocket, you could then embed that in a webview, use a PWA, or use Electron to display it in app form.

Please let me know if someone actually tries this!

https://github.com/Textualize/rich