Live in TTY Challenge

sunfizz98 · 2012-03-10 09:16:06

Window managers and xorg make life too easy. To one-up our linux prowess, I challenge thee to a TTY challenge.

Objective: Live in TTY for as long as you can

Rules:
1. No xorg or any app that requires X.
2. Only apps that can work in CLI are allowed.

Achievements:
1 week - a cookie of your choice
2 weeks - A macadamia cake
3 weeks - A companion cube
4+ weeks - Glados approval

Please ask your mods for the achievement redemptions wink

The community and I will offer our support and words of encouragement.

Last edited by sunfizz98 (2012-03-10 09:19:35)

cJones · 2012-03-10 10:04:05

Muahaha I lost big_smile
I couldn't accomplish any of those achievements...although a cookie sounds really good!

rhowaldt · 2012-03-10 10:54:02

good challenge sunfizz. i'd do it if it wasn't for a slight problem: i need to finish some musical pieces in the coming weeks, and Renoise won't run in TTY smile
if that wasn't the case, i'm sure i could at least go for that companion cube without much hassle.

gutterslob · 2012-03-10 12:35:59

I've done it for a couple of weeks. Was some years ago and I was on the road.
Laptop was old and wonky. Wouldn't load X no matter what I did.

Slackware + Screen
E-mail - Mutt
Browsing - Links2
RSS - Newsbeuter
Music - Can't remember, was either MoC or MPD
Text Editing - Nano & Vi
File Management - MC or command line
Others - tar, rtorrent, wget, irssi, wicd-curses, nethack, top

Browsing experience obviously suffered, but everything else was more than usable. Most important was the ability to send and receive emails, which mutt handled with aplomb.

Not as hardcore as KMandla though.

Last edited by gutterslob (2012-03-10 12:39:03)

rhowaldt · 2012-03-10 12:46:15

^ yes, i think the webbrowsing would be the biggest issue for me in daily use. the rest of the stuff i can manage without too much trouble.

Vansgo · 2012-03-10 13:02:57

I have been using TTY to explore file structure, types and commands. Like rhowaldt, I rely on GUI for audio processing apps. that require xorg tongue

sunfizz98 · 2012-03-10 22:33:44

Stuff to help you on your way.

Web browsing
w3m-img

Music
moc, mpd, ncmpcpp

Video
mplayer(2)

Yes, video playback does work in CLI.

Digit · 2012-03-11 03:16:03

great idea.

i had a week-long holiday in INX, a distro designed to introduce one to the command line.

so i get an organic chocolate chip chocolate n chilli cookie. ^_^

but that was a while ago, my skills have much improved in command line since then (and much thanks to INX for really showing me just how possible it is to live in command line only.

alas... gimp. it's the main thing keeping me stuck to something gui. ok, various audio tools too (audacity, hydrogen, lmms2, terminatorX, etc)... but if i just stuck at it with imagemagick, and sox, for a while... ... i could do it... i could live in tty alone... i could...

... meh, one day.

... maybe.

.... .... i just don't know if i've the dedication to learn imagemagick, and give up the gimp for so long.

and yeah, two most pleasant surprises in command line only land, "links -g" and "mplayer". full graphical web browser, no X involved, and movie playback in full quality (though ascii video playback is fun too).

could i still claim a prize if i only launched x with xgame, for single apps at a time?

how about frambuffer gui? are there prizes for that? ... surely there are prizes for that... anyone can exist in command line... but i've yet to see anyone actually get fbgui and the like working. i think that aught command a higher level of geek kudos. wink

sunfizz98 · 2012-03-11 03:50:49

INX looks like a worthy adventure!

@Digit
If it uses X, then no...

Ncurses is fair game.

Digit · 2012-03-11 05:37:05

well, fbui is x-less. ' doesnt use x. no x. gui. no x. gui. yes. it exists. XD wink

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_framebuffer
http://fbgui.sourceforge.net/
http://wikibin.org/articles/framebuffer-ui.html
and so on. ( failed to find the main elaboration on it, which argues the point for in kernel, correct runlevel, security savvy, low ram, lightweight rapid immediate graphics n all the rest of it's features, very well. ... might find it later and replace this guff with it. )

suffice to say, if you use X, you're a noob. also, if you dont have a gui to go to (i.e. spent all your time in comand line, and ncurses (or links2/mplayer) is as gui'd as it gets for you) then you're a noob too. wink only those who framebuffer their guis are true leet. XD hehehe. ok, so i'm a noob too, and these are just me voicing my aspirations forcefully. XD

oh to know the code so well as to be able to conjure up my own dynamic tiling wm variations for framebuffer ui.

but then, i suppose if it were easy, you'd still need threads like this for it, to help encourage people to discover the ways in which the command line kicks the gui's arse.

my holidays to terminal only, are great fun. thoroughly enjoy them all. tho gimp always lures me back. that was part of the reasoning behind why i made gimpstick, a slitaz-based distro with just gimp on it, n no more (pure and dirty versions. dirty includes all the standard slitaz with just gimp installed too and a gimpy background). hrmm, i could make one that uses gimp2.7 with the single-window mode, and xgame to launch it, so it really really is just gimp you get in the gui. ^_^ n then could have a full complement of terminal tools for comfortable tty living.

~ er, sorry, rambling off topic yet?

start help
the previous mentioned lists of terminal applications will help you out tremendously, but to really appreciate the command line, you need to learn the command line, not just enough apps to get by.

look around for threads and blog posts etc like "top 20 commands" and "wat are your most used commands" etc. in addition to sussing the basic helpful stuff like man and info and apropos and whatis and whereis and locate (+ sudo updatedb) and useful navigation and file stuff like cd and ls and pwd and cp(careful!) and rm(careful!) and mv(careful!) and mkdir and so on.

now if the above is useful to you, then much respect for considering trying a holiday in " tty only " so early on in your 'nix adventure. it will serve you very very well.

if you were reading that thinking "i know all that stuff", then i have to presume you're already at least eating a cookie for having spent at least a week in tty.... right? if not, why not? and no, that's a rhetorical question, you have no excuse for not having done this. pkill your x nao! ;D

cl gets rly cool once u start piping and grepping. actually, it just get's cool once you figure out what "tab autocompletion" is. (means u dont have to type long file location paths, just the first letter or two, then pressing tab key will fill in the rest. tab tab tab, use that tab key the most! double tap it right now on an empty command line prompt, go on, say yes.)

go on, get yourself a macadaemia cake everyone... wink

Last edited by Digit (2012-03-11 05:45:35)

MatthewMeredith · 2012-03-11 14:19:28

I managed this for nearly a whole semester tongue

E-mail
Alpine (way better than Mutt tongue )
Text editing/Programming
Nano with syntax highlighting
Torrents
rtorrent
Music
Mpd and Ncmpc++
Web
Elinks (and Links and Links2)
Media
I even managed to watch episodes of Top Gear with cvlc! Although the command to change the aspect ratio never seemed to work for me sad

I think I managed about 3 months in total... Although I did boot X a couple times for my YouTube fix tongue

sunfizz98 · 2012-03-11 17:38:43

^ I remember there was a script floating around crunchbang for streaming youtube vids to mplayer so you don't need X anymore. I would give you a cake but using X is a no-no. wink

I would suggest using mc or ranger for simple tasks if doing cd, cp, mv is too inconvenient.

@Digit
FYI, tab autocompletion only works if you have bash-completion installed.

Last edited by sunfizz98 (2012-03-11 17:41:08)

2ManyDogs · 2012-03-14 01:20:36

I wanna play, but I have to play with WMs for the next 20 days. But I'll be back to the CLI, I promise. I'm posting this from w3m, and I have screen shots from fbgrab, does that count?

p120d16y · 2012-03-14 22:16:28

This is really cool. I'm going to participate once I get another machine for the wife to use. She would kill me if I put the PC into CLI only! Literally, I would die if she couldn't get on that thing people call Facebook.

I just stream so much video, love full multimedia so much that I've strayed away from CL so much lately. When I first got into Linux, I tried it because all the gurus could or preferred to only use CL. I thought it was insane when I first got into Linux. I looked up to a few hackers, one being gen0cide who used only CLI and owned the FBI regularly.

Last edited by p120d16y (2012-03-14 22:18:19)

sunfizz98 · 2012-03-15 03:34:26

@2manydogs
fbgrab should be fine. Dunno if this works but scrot should be able too. I need to confirm this myself.

Forthy · 2012-03-20 21:56:25

I fancy giving this a go, although I want to get a bit further through my CLI book first so I feel better prepared for any potential unexpected awkwardness that might tempt me back! For me it'll probably be quite self rewarding, so if there's a time limit on the cookies, I'll just have to go without - lol - better than trying and failing.

Anyway, was just curious as to how many people are doing this, and how you're doing. What's been good What's not? How much have you missed the 'frills' of GUI browsing, or how much have you had to sacrifice? Etc etc.

Tell us how you're geTTYng on!

anticapitalista · 2012-03-20 23:44:11

Here is a thread over at antiX for X-less that may be of use.

http://antix.freeforums.org/further-adv … t2778.html

(There was another earlier one, but I can't find it).

I went completely X-less for a couple of weeks or so at one time, and I regularly just boot into init 3 for when I want to do some work and listen to music or even watch a movie (mplayer). It is great fun, and uses hardly any resources.

CrunchBang Linux

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#1 2012-03-10 09:16:06

Live in TTY Challenge

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