Here's a computer scientist with an impressive amount of hand-tailored tools for living without X11 (scroll down to the "Framebuffer" / "I no longer use X11" section):
A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming
71–80 of 125 posts
Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming
#72I use Alacritty,zsh,oh-my-zsh and fzf like you, but I have never used tmux and lsd, do they have any highlight?
Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming
#73I use Alacritty,zsh,oh-my-zsh and fzf like you, but I have never used tmux and lsd, do they have any highlight?
Tmux is great for persistence. It’s also basically required for working remotely. Allows you to, across sessions, to reconnect to the same flow. I have it set up to have multiple views of the same set of windows, so I can scroll through them independently.
I’d say it is one of the best utilities I use.
Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming
#74Whoa the terminal based browser mentioned (ranger) looks awesome! I’ve been looking for something similar since I SSH so much more because of the WFH situation. I love how it has the image preview too!
there's also lf.
Unfortunately it does not have the image preview aspect that ranger has and the developer is reluctant to include that
Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just the combination of tmux and nvim with shared ctrl-hjkl between both nvim and tmux panes is so buttersmooth and no other setup has given me such an seamless interoperability between an editor and an OS. What this means: you can switch between tmux panes or nvim panes or from tmux to nvim and back always with the same shortcut. This is the most underrated killer feature.
Does NeoVim support that out if the box? For regular Vim I'm using https://github.com/christoomey/vim-tmux-navigator .
No, you need that plugin/script but installation and usage is rock-solid, I am using this now for years. FWIW, I also never use nvim's built-in terminal because this setup with tmux is so fast and feels super natural.
Hint: you have to redefine more of tmux' binds, the defaults are just not usable.
Hint2: most creation and resizing of panes and windows binds should be mapped without the tmux prefix, you can do this with "bind -n" in the .tmux.conf.
Hint3: read the tmux manual, it's really good and on one (long) page.
Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just the combination of tmux and nvim with shared ctrl-hjkl between both nvim and tmux panes is so buttersmooth and no other setup has given me such an seamless interoperability between an editor and an OS. What this means: you can switch between tmux panes or nvim panes or from tmux to nvim and back always with the same shortcut. This is the most underrated killer feature.
I am not sure if you tried i3 window manager. It provides similar features but with more freedom.
I posted in another comment more about my view on i3. However, compared to tmux it also lacks the capability to be used via ssh. At the end of the day there are not really comparable but yeah, I prefer to work with tmux+nvim on a *nix environment through ssh, all wrapped in a typical window manager such as Windows which handles stuff like hidpi, meta window management, device management etc. The good thing is that I am not stuck with Windows. You can give me any meta/desktop OS/window management such as any Linux wm or macos as long as I have tmux and nvim, my productivity will stay the same.
FWIW, while automatic tiling with i3 is super impressive, it's overrated. In the beginning you believe that this really boosts your productivity but you get quickly annoyed. If tmux is set-up right, so not just this seamless navigation but also creating and resizing of panes in a similar fashion with intuitive binds you wouldn't want any automatic tiling anymore. With my binds I am able to open and resize dozen of panes faster than I ever could with i3. And as a bonus tmux' config is just simple some remapping but never a rabbit hole to get basic things working.
Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was one or two years on Arch with i3 and all was great except when an app (eg a browser or Inkscape) opens a dialogue/modal/popup or whatever and this got stretched over the entire pane, yuck. AFAIK this could be configured somehow but I found configuration not as mature and rock-solid as with tmux or nvim but good though. It was rather a rabbit-hole. While I prefer the paradigm of tiling wms I eventually stuck wit…
That's odd, I've been using i3 for years now and modals always open as a floating window. Even GIMP (and its many windows) works fine. I don't remember tweaking anything in particular to make it work.
Nice to hear and need to try it again. I stopped using it 2017. Another gripe I had with i3 was that setting up proper hidpi support was a mess, maybe this improved as well. I know that the latest Ubuntu got here quite well, allowing also 25% steps etc.
Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Starting with Tmux was quite eye-opening to me for exactly this reason. The power of composable tools is hard to exaggerate.
Can you give some examples of what you're able to do or what exactly you mean by composing in this context? I've used tmux a bit but just to split windows and restore sessions...
Feel like I'm stuck at this point myself. Sort of plateau'd my tmux at "persistence / tab manager"
Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming
#79At risk of being /that guy/, I find that emacs gives me a nice & consistent "one-stop-shop" for text-based apps instead of having to kludge together a bunch disparate terminal programs. Also, +1 for Julia.
I think author (and other folks who have this vim+tmux+other tools type of workflow) would really like Emacs, especially Org mode. I have a very similar set of tools for a pure-Emacs workflow to this: - org-roam - org-noter - persp mode with persistent sessions - vterm + eshell - various plugins for org bibtex / latex All of this in Doom Emacs gives me the same functionality. I do admit that it took a large amount of…
Tried so many times to get into emacs (3 or 4 times) and once into org mode. It unfortunately never made click despite my love for any kind of terminal app and also competition in this space. Just emacs lisp would be the reason to switch from vimscript but again I just couldn't get warm with emacs.
Also I think that the paradigm of modal editing is key to editing, not because I am used it, it just makes sense to have the myriad of functions of an editor easily reachable without too many modifiers. Coding isn't about just writing code but a lot about thinking, editing, staring at code, thinking, editing, jumping, f, /, yy's, dd's, ct, etc. I use modifiers heavily, way more than the typical ctrl/alt, but again to have an extra dedicated mode is crucial, so I can't imagine how any non-modal editor, eg emacs, can excel re UX like vim or nvim do. There must be reason that even the emacs community itself promotes spacemacs, which follows that paradigm, so much. But for some spacemacs is a layer too much adding unnecessary complexity. Besides, vim is also so popular because it's fast, load time, editing, anything.
Whatever, put me into any text field without modal binds and I am pretty much handicapped but maybe I might just missed emacs' hidden qualities. Trying emacs feels going one step back (when coming from modal editing).
Edit: Don't get me wrong, this shouldn't qualify as offense but every time I read some random emacs praise on the net, I never know if I should give emacs another try or if it's just a vocal minority who never experienced proper modal editing and I just should move on.
Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's odd, I've been using i3 for years now and modals always open as a floating window. Even GIMP (and its many windows) works fine. I don't remember tweaking anything in particular to make it work.
Nice to hear and need to try it again. I stopped using it 2017. Another gripe I had with i3 was that setting up proper hidpi support was a mess, maybe this improved as well. I know that the latest Ubuntu got here quite well, allowing also 25% steps etc.
Hidpi is still a total crapshoot on linux (depending on distro and window manager).
My current setup uses xrandr to scale my 4k to 1440p.
It's not perfect, but it's better than other options.