Xless Linux and the CLIT
Slartibartfast
Global Moderator-__-
Xless Linux and the CLIT
I've been wondering if the average use can run linux without X. Over the past couple of days I've been
experimenting with software that use either the framebuffer or the cli as output. There are plenty of
apps that are capable of replacing all the GUI tools on your system. It is possible for almost
everyone to use an completely X free system.
The question most people are going to ask is: Why? The tangible reasons are: battery life, a better
understanding of your system and efficieny. This can be run on older early 90's hardware.
There are also those people that really dislike X.
What is a framebuffer?
Have you ever wondered how the ubuntu bootsplash works? How does an image get
displayed before X loads? It utilises the framebuffer. Put simply It's a low level way of displaying
and orgainsing colours onto your screen. That's probably an over-simplifed expanation but it's a good
way to think about it. The framebuffer can be used for displaying imaged and videos. There are plent
of applications that utilise this.
In this thread i'm going to show you how you can potentially live in an Xless world.
fbterm
fbterm is a console emulator that supports framebuffers. If you want to watch videos or view
images you need this. run it from inside one of your ttys.
http://code.google.com/p/fbterm
The Terminal Multiplexer
A terminal multiplex is a way of dividing your console into multiple
consoles. It it ncurses base. People familair with tiling manager such as Xmonad will be very
comfortabe with this. These things can generally do a lot more but >90% of people use it to slit their screen.
There are two main ones: gnu screen or tmux. I personally went with tmux because the instructions were
easier to find.
Here is a screenshot:
http://tmux.sourceforge.net
This is confusing to learn but it end up being very useful.
you can play with this from inside your your desktop terminal until your are confident with it.
The browser.
Hoo boy. In short you have links (or elinks) and w3m. If you wish to load images go with w3m. I'm not
going to lie to you - script heavy sites don't work with any of these. On the otherhand i could log
into this forum with no difficulty. links is a lot more stable and faster if you don't want to load images.
Media and Videos.
mplayer is definately the way to go. There are two ways to watch videos. One converts the video into ascii:
mplayer -vo caca /path/to/video.webm
Generally this looks shit, except on animations.
The other is to try and use the framebuffer:
mplayer -vo fbdev /path/to/video.webm
you can also play audio with mplayer or use a ncurses playlist like cmus
to view images use fbv:
fbv /path/to/girl.png
Games
There are plenty. Search your repos:
Other apps:
mail - alpine
text - nano, vim, emacs
organiser/calander - wyrd (schedule), hnb (notes)
calculator - bc (fantastic for scripts)
filmanager - mc (midnight commander - everyone knows this one)
screenshot - fbshot, fbgrab
twitter/facebook - fbcmd and bti
irc - irssi, weechat
IM - centerim (personal choice), irssi and bitlbee (esentially this acts as a bridge between IRC and other IM protocols),
MSWORD/ODF/pdf - fbpdf pdf2text, pdf2html cat2doc o3read
blog/upload - charm (blogger/wordpress etc) imgurbash (image uploader)
I've been wondering if the average use can run linux without X. Over the past couple of days I've been
experimenting with software that use either the framebuffer or the cli as output. There are plenty of
apps that are capable of replacing all the GUI tools on your system. It is possible for almost
everyone to use an completely X free system.
The question most people are going to ask is: Why? The tangible reasons are: battery life, a better
understanding of your system and efficieny. This can be run on older early 90's hardware.
There are also those people that really dislike X.
What is a framebuffer?
Have you ever wondered how the ubuntu bootsplash works? How does an image get
displayed before X loads? It utilises the framebuffer. Put simply It's a low level way of displaying
and orgainsing colours onto your screen. That's probably an over-simplifed expanation but it's a good
way to think about it. The framebuffer can be used for displaying imaged and videos. There are plent
of applications that utilise this.
In this thread i'm going to show you how you can potentially live in an Xless world.
fbterm
fbterm is a console emulator that supports framebuffers. If you want to watch videos or view
images you need this. run it from inside one of your ttys.
http://code.google.com/p/fbterm
The Terminal Multiplexer
A terminal multiplex is a way of dividing your console into multiple
consoles. It it ncurses base. People familair with tiling manager such as Xmonad will be very
comfortabe with this. These things can generally do a lot more but >90% of people use it to slit their screen.
There are two main ones: gnu screen or tmux. I personally went with tmux because the instructions were
easier to find.
Here is a screenshot:
http://tmux.sourceforge.net
This is confusing to learn but it end up being very useful.
you can play with this from inside your your desktop terminal until your are confident with it.
The browser.
Hoo boy. In short you have links (or elinks) and w3m. If you wish to load images go with w3m. I'm not
going to lie to you - script heavy sites don't work with any of these. On the otherhand i could log
into this forum with no difficulty. links is a lot more stable and faster if you don't want to load images.
Media and Videos.
mplayer is definately the way to go. There are two ways to watch videos. One converts the video into ascii:
mplayer -vo caca /path/to/video.webm
Generally this looks shit, except on animations.
The other is to try and use the framebuffer:
mplayer -vo fbdev /path/to/video.webm
you can also play audio with mplayer or use a ncurses playlist like cmus
to view images use fbv:
fbv /path/to/girl.png
Games
There are plenty. Search your repos:
Other apps:
mail - alpine
text - nano, vim, emacs
organiser/calander - wyrd (schedule), hnb (notes)
calculator - bc (fantastic for scripts)
filmanager - mc (midnight commander - everyone knows this one)
screenshot - fbshot, fbgrab
twitter/facebook - fbcmd and bti
irc - irssi, weechat
IM - centerim (personal choice), irssi and bitlbee (esentially this acts as a bridge between IRC and other IM protocols),
MSWORD/ODF/pdf - fbpdf pdf2text, pdf2html cat2doc o3read
blog/upload - charm (blogger/wordpress etc) imgurbash (image uploader)
Comments
I originally wasn't planning on keeping 'em for longer than a couple weeks, but I've started to like 'em. They add to my posts a sense of superiority and mockery.
Also, they tell people they really shouldn't believe anything of what I write, 'cause 90% of the time I'm just making shit up to sound cool and the other 10% are worthless posts like this one.
BUT as a desktop you can do more, do faster, do easier on windows. Once every 4 years I wish I had a pipe option in windows, I wish I could just rm -rf c:\. But the rest of the 99.9999% of the time, windows, with a GUI.
Windows might seem easier to you, but that's because it's literally built to be easy to use. It's designed as an operating system which can be used by anyone from a student to a 78 year old grandma. Linux can be easy too, but it's just... fun
It depends what "Desktop" means to you. To me it means the daily manipulation of files, a web browser, a Media Player and a pdf reader.
I challenge anyone to suggest that windows can do that better than Linux and KDE/GNOME. Especially given the stability and malware free nature of Linux.
The main shortcomings of the Linux Desktop are those specialty apps, CAD software, Photoshop and Games (which are dying on the Desktop in any case).
However i respect your views, there are some people for who i would never suggest Linux. Your needs may differ greatly from the person next to you but i do know that a lot of people think windows is their only option when in reality they don't.
If you are questioning why I would do such a thing, the idea was to create a command line based carputer that opened a certain set of features every time it was started.