{"id":56209,"date":"2020-02-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prohoster.info\/blog\/blog_prohoster\/tty-terminal-kotoryj-ne-dlya-domashnego-ispolzovaniya"},"modified":"2020-02-18T14:04:26","modified_gmt":"2020-02-18T11:04:26","slug":"tty-terminal-kotoryj-ne-dlya-domashnego-ispolzovaniya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prohoster.info\/en\/blog\/administrirovanie\/tty-terminal-kotoryj-ne-dlya-domashnego-ispolzovaniya","title":{"rendered":"TTY \u2014 a terminal not intended for home use","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TTY<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Is it possible to survive using only TTY capabilities? Here's my brief story about how I struggled with TTY, wanting to get it to work properly.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/noindex><\/p>\n

Background<\/h1>\n

<\/p>\n

Recently, the graphics card on my old laptop failed. It failed so badly that I couldn't even launch an installer for any OS. Windows crashed with errors during the installation of basic drivers. Installing Linux wouldn't start at all, even when I specified nouveau.modeset=0 in the boot configuration.
\nI didn't want to buy a new graphics card for a laptop that has already served its time. However, as a true Linux enthusiast, I started to think: \"Why not turn my laptop into a terminal computer, like it was in the '80s?\". Thus, the idea was born not to install X server on Linux but to try living solely on TTY (plain console).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The First Difficulties<\/h1>\n

<\/p>\n

I installed it on my PC. Arch Linux<\/a><\/noindex>I love this distribution for its flexibility in customization (plus, the installation was done from the console, which suited me). Following the manual, I installed the system as I always do. Now I wanted to see what the console could do. I suspected that without X server, I had cut off many possibilities. I wanted to check if a plain console could play videos or show photos (like w3m does), but all attempts were in vain. Then I started trying browsers, but there I also ran into the clipboard issue: it\u2019s useless without a GUI. I can't select anything, the clipboard stays empty. There is, of course, an internal buffer (like in Vim), but remember that it's internal; I recall that in Vim's configs, you can specify the use of an external buffer, but I wondered: why bother? It felt like I was in a cage. I couldn't watch videos since X server is required, alsa-mixer also refuses to work without it, leading to no sound, and browsers are useless\u2014all of them. w3m<\/a><\/noindex> (which didn't load images), elinks<\/a><\/noindex> (which was convenient but also absolutely useless), browsh<\/a><\/noindex> (that processed all images and sent them to the terminal as ASCII art, but you couldn't even click a link). The evening was approaching, and I was left with a \"mutilated tool\" that could only compile code. The most I could do was look for code references on how2 and surf using ddgr.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So is there a way out?<\/h1>\n

<\/p>\n

At this point, I started to ponder that I had taken the wrong path. It would be easier to just buy a graphics card than to struggle with this makeshift setup. Not that I could call Linux with just TTY a completely useless system\u2014no, perhaps it would suit server administrators, but my original goal was to make TTY a \"sweet setup,\" and instead, I ended up with a Frankenstein monster, convulsing whenever it came to GUI operations. I wanted more, so I finally abandoned the ideas of playing videos and audio materials, and started thinking about how to set up an SSH server, through which I could entertain myself while away from home.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What did I actually want?<\/h3>\n

<\/p>\n