Can you use the terminal for everything? [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Can you use the terminal for everything? [video]

#81

Post by pq0ak2nnd » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 2:55 PM UTC

pq0ak2nnd wrote: post #58

amelius wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you had to do something now on some alien OS that you didn't know the internals of, wouldn't you prefer a GUI?

That's an interesting question. My first response is: hell no. But I think what's behind your question is the fact that part of UX/UI is to abstract experience and interface. So maybe if I first had to poke at an alien OS I would try its UI as part of familiarity in getting to know it, but ultimately as a system architect, hardware developer, and former O/S dev with 4 decades experience, I want to see how it really w…

Wow voted negative for entertaining a thought. I thought HN was better than /. or 4c or reddit... guess i was deluded.

Re: Can you use the terminal for everything? [video]

#82

Post by digi_owl » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 4:23 PM UTC

canhascodez wrote: post #57

digi_owl wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unix have all kinds of funny things if all happens within a single box. If you want to send someone a message, there is write (if the person have mesg set to yes). There is also talk, but it requires its own daemon. Seriously, _nix started out in the mainframe era. Meaning that the basic assumption was multiple terminals hooked up to a single computer, with a different user on each terminal. Sadly we have a generatio…

Multiseat is a bit complex under X11, but certainly possible today. What do you see as the advantages of thin clients, though?

Multiseat is a dirty hack. It is about using software to build a terminal out of a random collection of screens and input devices. All it has really done is give us yet another "session" to mentally track, in the form of consolekit/logind, on top of the kernel and X provides ones.

And it is not about thin clients, thin clients btw is yet another Windows-ism, it is about the concepts embedded in the unix concept that current day devs seems to either sidestep or downplay while building house of cards in userspace that poorly replicate said concepts.

Re: Can you use the terminal for everything? [video]

#83

Post by canhascodez » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 4:44 PM UTC

digi_owl wrote: post #82

canhascodez wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiseat is a bit complex under X11, but certainly possible today. What do you see as the advantages of thin clients, though?

Multiseat is a dirty hack. It is about using software to build a terminal out of a random collection of screens and input devices. All it has really done is give us yet another "session" to mentally track, in the form of consolekit/logind, on top of the kernel and X provides ones. And it is not about thin clients, thin clients btw is yet another Windows-ism, it is about the concepts embedded in the unix concept that…

You're not really explaining what it is that you think is missing from modern computing. From my perspective, none of this technology has gone away, but some things see very little use for good reasons.

Re: Can you use the terminal for everything? [video]

#84

Post by digi_owl » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 6:37 PM UTC

canhascodez wrote: post #83

digi_owl wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiseat is a dirty hack. It is about using software to build a terminal out of a random collection of screens and input devices. All it has really done is give us yet another "session" to mentally track, in the form of consolekit/logind, on top of the kernel and X provides ones. And it is not about thin clients, thin clients btw is yet another Windows-ism, it is about the concepts embedded in the unix concept that…

You're not really explaining what it is that you think is missing from modern computing. From my perspective, none of this technology has gone away, but some things see very little use for good reasons.

IT IS NOT THAT IT HAS GONE AWAY, IT IS THAT THE CURRENT GENERATION IS IMPLEMENTING CRAP CLONES OUT OF IGNORANCE AND HUBRIS!!!

Re: Can you use the terminal for everything? [video]

#85

Post by c487bd62 » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 7:18 PM UTC

teddyh wrote: post #72

c487bd62 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://mpv.io/

AFAIK, mpv calls youtube-dl internally.

Yes but it's easier for when you just want to open a link to watch. You get subtitles, audio channels, can skip to the part you want, without downloading the entire video. I think it's DASH but more options are available, it works for Twitch and many other sites (thanks to youtube-dl I guess). With a browser extension you can click on links and open mpv directly.

Re: Can you use the terminal for everything? [video]

#86

Post by canhascodez » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 7:22 PM UTC

digi_owl wrote: post #84

canhascodez wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not really explaining what it is that you think is missing from modern computing. From my perspective, none of this technology has gone away, but some things see very little use for good reasons.

IT IS NOT THAT IT HAS GONE AWAY, IT IS THAT THE CURRENT GENERATION IS IMPLEMENTING CRAP CLONES OUT OF IGNORANCE AND HUBRIS!!!

You are not entitled to speak to anyone like that, and neither wisdom nor correctness increase with volume. This is a comment which can only be dismissed. I am sure that you have much better arguments at your disposal, if you would condescend to employ them.

Re: Can you use the terminal for everything? [video]

#87

Post by copperx » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 8:31 PM UTC

gnulinux wrote: post #11

busfahrer wrote: post #8

I think there's a version of elinks (or one of the other text based browsers) that can display images if you are running on a framebuffer console

Not only that but there are tons of image viewer, video viewer, pdf viewer etc application for framebuffer (for linux). But this begs the question whether framebuffer can be considered "terminal". Also, to me it's still perfectly "terminal", if you use X and run a terminal emulator and live inside it unless you need to see a image, video or pdf. To me, the answer to this question is "yes".

The only problem with the framebuffer is that it adds a perceptible delay vs using a "raw" TTY. It's a small delay, perhaps a few ms, and I guess most people can't notice it, but it can be distracting if you live on the terminal.

You can actually see it if you cat a big file to the screen.

Re: Can you use the terminal for everything? [video]

#88

Post by kbenson » Mon, Sep 03, 2018, 3:04 AM UTC

canhascodez wrote: post #80

kbenson wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point wasn't to specifically lament the lack of thin clients, but the lack of knowledge about how the systems are really designed be multi-user, and actually multi- concurrent -user, as opposed to systems like windows which eventually gained multi-user capabilities, and even then concurrent use isn't exactly the common case (and I'm not sure how well it works in practice, but I imagine with RDP it works w…

All of these tools and capabilities still exist; there's probably still some Unix beards hanging out on Nyx and SDF. Yet here we all are having a discussion on HN instead.

> All of these tools and capabilities still exist

Yes... that's the point of the discussion. They exist, but there is (or is perceived to be) lack of knowledge about their existence and how to make use of them from some newer users, either because of the push for desktop linux, or for whatever reason.

> Yet here we all are having a discussion on HN instead.

I have no idea what you're trying to imply here. I suspect maybe we are discussing similar, but ultimately different, things.

Re: Can you use the terminal for everything? [video]

#89

Post by kqr » Mon, Sep 03, 2018, 4:26 AM UTC

hjek wrote: post #78

> Spreadsheets in the terminal: Totally doable. I disagree. I find vim, mutt and pandoc superior to LO Writer and Thundrbird for text editing and emailing, but sc is just nowhere near LO Calc or even Gnumeric. I really wish someone would make a text user interface for Gnumeric.

Have you tried Org mode tables? They have some spreadsheet functionality, but I'm not sure how big the overlap is.

Re: Can you use the terminal for everything? [video]

#90

Post by canhascodez » Mon, Sep 03, 2018, 4:38 AM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #88

canhascodez wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these tools and capabilities still exist; there's probably still some Unix beards hanging out on Nyx and SDF. Yet here we all are having a discussion on HN instead.

> All of these tools and capabilities still exist Yes... that's the point of the discussion. They exist, but there is (or is perceived to be) lack of knowledge about their existence and how to make use of them from some newer users, either because of the push for desktop linux, or for whatever reason. > Yet here we all are having a discussion on HN instead. I have no idea what you're trying to imply here. I suspect m…

I'm implying that multi-user systems were supplanted by web applications, because multi-user systems did not offer good value, and do not scale. Neither do I see these systems being advanced in this thread based on their utility.