For reference - http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=joeyh
Joey Hess' minimal approach
21–30 of 122 posts
Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah. Says the guy doing all his work on a 1024 x 600 display. I mean the guy no harm, but so much of what he says strikes me as incredibly back-worldly. Like using dial-up and limiting yourself to fan-less laptops. I mean I get the "thin terminal" philosophy where you have a shit laptop that connects to something much more potent. But where's the point if the connection sucks as well. I guess in the end we have vast…
For writing or coding, a decent keyboard seems much more important than a high resolution screen. For consuming stuff the converse is true. (Even though I also prefer a high res display, and he mentions that it took him some time to set up Xmonad in a way that allowed him to effectively work with such a low-res display).
Except the Dell Mini 9 doesn't have anything nowhere close to a decent keyboard.
Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach
#23I love this setup. After the new ARM chromebook came out I got all excited and looked about for a way to dual boot a full OS on my old series 5. It turns out it's easy now ( http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/chrubuntu-1204-n... ) There is a lot of pleasure in using such a small machine. I am definitely looking forward to an e-ink laptop. As I get older my eyes grow more weary, but the e-ink display on my ki…
My main gripe with chromebooks is that they don't have a windows key (KEY_LEFTMETA). As a xmonad user, I have quite a lot of functionality bound to that key and I'm not too sure about moving it over to KEY_LEFTALT (mostly because of conflicts with my Emacs key bindings).
Have you tried overloading the search key (used to be caps lock). This key is roughly useless outside chromeos (and I never used it inside chromeos anyway). I am planning to bind that key to my windows-key when I get home tonight so I can use the keyboard to get at my Unity launcher.
As an aside, I was very impressed how well Unity runs on relatively anaemic hardware. for running a terminal and a web browser it runs great.
Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach
#24It sounds like the new Chromebook is a pretty good solution for him. Or maybe wait a year more for the next-gen one, which hopefully will have a 4 cell battery.
I've been looking for a replacement for my Mini 9 and this seems to be about the only thing out there. Microsoft sure has strong armed everyone to make things with regular HDDs because they needed to run Windows... I actually went into Microcenter last year looking for a SSD netbook, and they practically chased me out of the store, and added $50 to everything that wasn't Windows (which they didn't have the prices on…
I have been searching for this laptop too. The only solution I found was to dual boot my chromebook. Works beautifully and the hardware is cheap for what it brings to the table.
Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach
#25"If it doesn't have a keyboard, I feel that my thoughts are being forced out through a straw." Beautiful.
Yeah. Says the guy doing all his work on a 1024 x 600 display. I mean the guy no harm, but so much of what he says strikes me as incredibly back-worldly. Like using dial-up and limiting yourself to fan-less laptops. I mean I get the "thin terminal" philosophy where you have a shit laptop that connects to something much more potent. But where's the point if the connection sucks as well. I guess in the end we have vast…
His connection is terrible because he lives up in the Blue Ridge of Tennessee. There is no broadband there and I wouldn't be surprised if the phone lines are poor enough that you can't connect at more then 28.8k on a good day.
Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach
#26"If it doesn't have a keyboard, I feel that my thoughts are being forced out through a straw." Beautiful.
Yeah. Says the guy doing all his work on a 1024 x 600 display. I mean the guy no harm, but so much of what he says strikes me as incredibly back-worldly. Like using dial-up and limiting yourself to fan-less laptops. I mean I get the "thin terminal" philosophy where you have a shit laptop that connects to something much more potent. But where's the point if the connection sucks as well. I guess in the end we have vast…
It appears he is living off-grid so his biggest constraint is going to be power consumption. A smaller screen means longer battery life.
Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah. Says the guy doing all his work on a 1024 x 600 display. I mean the guy no harm, but so much of what he says strikes me as incredibly back-worldly. Like using dial-up and limiting yourself to fan-less laptops. I mean I get the "thin terminal" philosophy where you have a shit laptop that connects to something much more potent. But where's the point if the connection sucks as well. I guess in the end we have vast…
For writing or coding, a decent keyboard seems much more important than a high resolution screen. For consuming stuff the converse is true. (Even though I also prefer a high res display, and he mentions that it took him some time to set up Xmonad in a way that allowed him to effectively work with such a low-res display).
Well not everyone is coding in terminal windows and doing console-only stuff... for me doing interactive 3D development, a high res screen (or a couple of them) and a powerful machine is of equal if not higher importance than my keyboard.
Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach
#28I've never been to usesthis.com before. What a wonderful website! I would love to see more interviews like this.
Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach
#29big respect to this guy and he seems to make awesome software. But using a 5 year old netbook with very low resolution and 2gigs of ram, no external Screen and dialup modems for internet doesnt seem like a very productive working enviroment...but if it works for him, why not, but this is clearly is too minimal for my taste ;)
Probably makes it less tempting to procrastinate on Hacker News. Upgrading Debian Unstable must be fun though. Ugh.
Re: Joey Hess' minimal approach
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah. Says the guy doing all his work on a 1024 x 600 display. I mean the guy no harm, but so much of what he says strikes me as incredibly back-worldly. Like using dial-up and limiting yourself to fan-less laptops. I mean I get the "thin terminal" philosophy where you have a shit laptop that connects to something much more potent. But where's the point if the connection sucks as well. I guess in the end we have vast…
His connection is terrible because he lives up in the Blue Ridge of Tennessee. There is no broadband there and I wouldn't be surprised if the phone lines are poor enough that you can't connect at more then 28.8k on a good day.
To clarify, there is broadband up here in hills, but it is very unevenly distributed.
I lived near the top of a mountain in the same area, and was finally able to get cable after pestering Comcast for a few years.
The guy that bought the land at the very top of the hill was unable to get Comcast to run cable even with his offer to pay for the run himself. We cut down some trees for line of sight and re-purposed some satellite equipment and got him online via a second cable run to my house.