Is it possible to survive using only TTY capabilities? Here is my short story about how I struggled with TTY, wanting to get it to work properly
prehistory
Recently, on my old laptop, the video card flew. Yes, it flew so that I could not even launch the installer of any OS. Windows crashed while installing basic drivers. The Linux installation did not want to start at all, even if I set nouveau.modeset=0 in the launch configuration.
I didn’t want to buy a new video card for a laptop that had served its purpose. However, as a true Linuxoid, I began to think: "But shouldn't I make a terminal computer out of my laptop, as it was in the 80s?". So the idea was born not to install xserver on Linux, but to try to live on a TTY (bare console).
First difficulties
On PC I installed . I love this distribution because it can be configured as you like (and also, the installation itself was carried out from the console, which was to my advantage). Following the manual, I installed the system as usual. Now I wanted to see what the console can do. I guessed that without xserver I cut off a lot of opportunities for myself. I wanted to see if a bare console could play a video or show a photo (as w3m does in a console), but all attempts were in vain. Then I started to try browsers, there I ran into the problem of the clipboard: it is useless without a GUI. I can't select anything, the buffer is empty. Of course, there is an internal buffer (like Vim has), but it’s internal for that, I remember that in Vim’s configs you can specify the use of an external buffer, but then I ask myself: why? It was like I was in a cage. I won’t watch the video, because xserver is needed, alsa-mixer also doesn’t want to work without it, there is no sound due to it, browsers are useless, and that’s all: (who didn't upload pictures) (which was convenient, but also completely useless), (which processed all the pictures and passed them to the terminal as an ASCII pseudo-picture, but you couldn't even follow the link there). It was towards evening, and I had a "stump" in my hands, with which you can only compile the code. The most I could do was look for help on how2 code and surf with ddgr.
So is there a way out?
Then I start to think that I turned the wrong way. It's easier to just buy a video card than to hang around with a bastard. Not that I can call Linux with only TTY a completely unnecessary system, no, maybe for administrators on the server it will do, but my goal was originally to make a "candy" out of TTY, and the result was a Frankenstein monster that convulsed, when it came to GUI operations. I wanted more, then I finally abandoned the idea of playing video and audio materials, and began to think about how I could make an SSH server with which I could have fun while away from home.
What exactly did I want?
- Working with code: Vim, NeoVim, linters, debuggers, interpreters, compilers and everything else
- The ability to safely surf the Internet
- Software for the institute (at least some programs that can render a document on the web with .md markup)
- Convenience
Survival
Vim, Nvim, and all the other joys of a lazy programmer, I installed and configured pretty quickly. The ability to surf the Internet, however, caused difficulties (who would have thought) because I still can't copy links. Then I thought that surfing the Internet while in the console at least unreasonable and I started looking for a replacement. RSS feeders for the console were searched for a long time, but still a couple of feeders were found, and I successfully started using them and enjoying the flow of information.
Now software for working with documents. Here I had to work hard and write a script so that my .md file is rendered without a video card (irony). To do this, I used a service for viewing and distributing .md files, and then using another service for processing web pages in .pdf, I made documents. Problem solved.
There were also some problems with convenience. The terminal does not support all colors normally, resulting in something like . Also the issue of panels (or rather their lack), which was quickly resolved with the help of tmux. The file manager I chose was Ranger + fzf and ripgrep for a quick search. The browser chose elinks (due to the fact that links can be followed by numbers). There were some more moments, but all of them were quickly solved by a certain list of utilities.
Experience the Power of Effective Results
It wasn't worth the time. I warn you right away, if you want to switch to the console for a while, be prepared for the fact that you have to suffer. Still, as a result, I got a completely working system, with a file manager, panels, browser, editors and compilers. In general, not bad, but a week later, I just could not stand it and bought a new PC. That's all for me. Share your experience, it will be interesting to know what you did when you found yourself in console-only mode for a while.
Source: habr.com
