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I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

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Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#131

Post by ynniv »

swombat wrote: post #46
moconnor wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but I'd be sacrificing the silence, the portability and the battery life. And the hipster factor, I guess. 102x768 isn't for everyone, but in text-mode it's all the same. I've no idea how many hours I've spent on a huge high-res monitor staring at a relatively tiny terminal window surrounded by a pretty desktop picture.

The battery life of a Macbook Air is pretty damn good. You can get a good 6+ hours of work out of them before needing to plug in. Not quite iPad-scale, but close enough in many cases. Also, the iPad does tend to run out of battery a bit more quickly when using 3G and bluetooth heavily, I believe...

It's useful to note that the Air's battery life is fleeting if you actually use the processor. Intensive game development has left me thinking that it's life is closer to two hours.

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#133

Post by moconnor »

navs wrote: post #123

I actually attempted the same thing once but gave up after a day. I borrowed the iPad from work (clients absolutely love demos on this thing) and used iSSH to connect to my netbook running ubuntu. First, I tried to create a simple mobile website with vim. I'm not a hardcore vim user so the frustration I felt using it on the iPad were mostly due to my level of inexperience with vim. Additionally, I didn't have an exte…

I feel your pain, I can't imagine doing any serious text-related work on the iPad without an external keyboard. As you say, alone the typing position is horrendous.

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#134

Post by moconnor »

dspillett wrote: post #124
moconnor wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never restarted my Linode ;-)

What about when a kernel update is due? Is something fancy like live patches (via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ksplice or the like) happening or are you simply skipping security updates?

Well, I've only had it for a month. No, I'm not going to try to do anything fancy, the machine will go down for kernel updates just like any other.

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#135

Post by moconnor »

scottschulthess wrote: post #113
moconnor wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but I'd be sacrificing the silence, the portability and the battery life. And the hipster factor, I guess. 102x768 isn't for everyone, but in text-mode it's all the same. I've no idea how many hours I've spent on a huge high-res monitor staring at a relatively tiny terminal window surrounded by a pretty desktop picture.

I see your point, but still, battery life/silence/portability doesn't seem to be worth the flexibility of having full osx esp when compared to an Air

The restrictions of iOS make me happy: I have a simple consumer brick. I can wipe it and restore it on a different device without losing a single byte. It never stutters, never misses a frame. I never need to care which programs are running or the layout of the filesystem.

The psychological effect of this is surprisingly powerful.

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#136

Post by cageface »

moconnor wrote: post #34
kayoone wrote: post #26

You could actually do the same thing WITH a Macbook Air/Pro. The beauty of a cloud linux instance + gnu screen isnt limited to the ipad and so you could still have a bigger screen and the possibility to go back to GUI apps if you need them. I like this for travelling on the go, but spending my normal workday in 1024 resolution ? Naaa.

This is true, but I'd be sacrificing the silence, the portability and the battery life. And the hipster factor, I guess. 102x768 isn't for everyone, but in text-mode it's all the same. I've no idea how many hours I've spent on a huge high-res monitor staring at a relatively tiny terminal window surrounded by a pretty desktop picture.

This is true, but I'd be sacrificing the silence, the portability and the battery life. And the hipster factor, I guess.

A 11" laptop, particularly the new MBAs, is less cumbersome than an iPad + keyboard and far, far more useful as a real development tool. Other than battery life I just don't see the point of doing this other than the "hipster" factor.

Just the ability to spin up a Rails instance on my own machine or run XCode alone keeps my iPad on the shelf when I'm working.

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#138

Post by nileshk »

The last time I tried to use SSH under iOS with the Apple bluetooth keyboard (trying different SSH apps including iSSH and TouchTerm) I found that I could not comfortably use Emacs due to various key combinations not being transmitted (I guess Vim isn't as much of a problem). One of the SSH app developers said that they were not able to trap certain keystrokes that were iOS keyboard shortcuts. Looks like this may still be an issue, as moconnor says this:

> Ctrl-X is my screen’s ‘hotkey’; it defaults to Ctrl-A but on a wireless keyboard that leaves unicode characters in the terminal - I assume this is related to Apple’s support for some common Emacs key bindings in iOS.

Is the situation any better now? Any workarounds to make this work better (e.g. configure the shell on the remote end)? How is this on Android?

I was trying this on an iPhone, but I'd imagine it handles bluetooth keyboards the same as the iPad.

Another issue I had was latency of the cellular connection (AT&T 3G); there was a very noticeable delay between keystrokes and the server receiving them and transmitting back. I imagine if you're on wifi most of the time this isn't as much of a problem, though. Or maybe you just get used to the latency.

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#139

Post by nzmsv »

scott_s wrote: post #112
scottschulthess wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain your question better? I don't understand it enough to take a shot at an answer

The only feature I care about is persistence. Is there a difference between Screen and tmux regarding persistence?

If you only need persistence, look into dtach. That's all it does.

Both screen and tmux offer multiple persistent sessions, the difference is the command syntax.

Back when I was deciding on a terminal multiplexer I picked tmux over screen because session sharing seemed to be done in a more sane way. But then again, had I used screen for any length of time I'm sure I'd have gotten used to it.

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#140

Post by there »

srik wrote: post #73
scott_s wrote: post #36

For anyone who spends their day (or most of some days) in a terminal connected to a remote server, I can't recommend using GNU Screen enough (brief tutorial: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/3/9/16838/14935 ). I've worked almost exclusively on remote servers, using the command line and vim, for about eight years now. It's only been in the past year that I started using Screen, and I feel stupid for not using it soo…

Screen is great. Though not it's fault, the only downside is that it cant persist through a machine restart.

linux has this: http://cryopid.berlios.de/
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