Anti-bloatware threads on other imageboards often result in people saying that anything TUI = gud, but that's clearly untrue; for example, the following I consider bloatware:
>ncurses (supports 30 year old hardware which doesn't exist)
>network managers (hundreds of thousands of lines of code to do something which can be done with a simple script)
>apache (giant blob of modules and extensions)
>emacs (includes everything by default)
>vim (hundreds of thousands of lines of code...)
Discuss ITT the alternatives to these pieces of bloatware. I'm genuinely curious to see what you guys come up with.
kakoune or vis as alternatives to vim, much smaller. If you really need those plugins I guess it's neovim.
To baka to answer the rest.
I use wpa_suppliclant (and dhcpcd) for network, but it seems to be roughly 300k LOC. Can you tell me more about this simple script you use?
(btw when using LOC as an indicator of complexity don't use openhub it is unreliable; just get the source code and do "find . -name "*.c" -o -name "*.h" | xargs wc -l")
>>177 >simple script you use
It's basically something that runs ifconfig every 5 seconds and disables the iwn0 (OpenBSD wireless) interface when the ethernet is connected.
Sure, you can do way more complex things with a "real" network manager, but for me at least I don't need those features.
Also I don't think wpa_supplicant would be classified as a network manager, because a network manager runs on top of wpa_supplicant. Maybe my terminology is wrong, though.
>>179 yeah, there's no alternative to wpa_supplicant that I know of... too bad the only software which allows connection to WPA2 networks is an undocumented piece of shit with bad code
I think there is no need for filemanager when one has command line. A couple examples of how TUI = gud is wrong is Ranger and Vifm, about 50k and 80k LOC very big and most if not all of it is stuff you can do with command line and shell scripts.
The only thing I really need is the navigating and selecting files to copy to clipboard since names can be long and tiring to type for many files. For this I use nnn a very small filebrowser that is only 1-2k LOC. I also use it for selectively viewing and selecting many video files.
For images I want thumbnails so I use sxiv imageviewer which using it's keyhandler allows running any command on the selected images as well as copy to clipboard for general use.
nnn is not ideal though, it still has some features that are unneeded because of commandline; it's selection is not as flexible as rangers and does not highlight files though it is usable. I would also like if nnn was more general so it could be used not just on directories but on files. Example I could pipe ls *webm | nnn -l and view only the webms if it worked on files. Perhaps could take it even further and have nnn work on any text given predefined behavior. Would also be nice if nnn had something like keyhandler for maximum flexibility.
>tfw mg lacks region highlighting, vertical splitting and doesn't even has C-u shell-command-on-region or customizable tab width
Does anyone know the pain of using GNU Emacs and hating Lisp? It took me something like one hour to make:
(defun sed-on-region (b e script)
"Run a sed script on a region"
(interactive "r\nsSed script on region: ")
(call-process-region b e "sed" t t t "-E" "--" script))
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c C-e") 'sed-on-region)
>>181 Noone said "TUI = gud". What's true is TUI > GUI almost all the time.
>using GNU emacs and hating Lisp
what's the fucking point just use neovim and redefine all the keybindings to what you want, which isn't hard and takes half an hour in vimscript.
I'll add
>webkit/webengine browsers
>thinking surf, qutebrowser, luakit, etc. are minimalist
this shit gives me real cancer. I currently use firefox only when I need to do something with javascript but I use w3m or graphical links for anything else. When I finish college I'll fucking uninstall firefox and will never look back or install a "minimal" webkit browser just to shit post on 4chan.
>>174 >vim
depends how you compile. check vim-tiny on debian. It's much similar to vi while having good features such as unlimited back and forward.
>apache
yea, use quark for personal/static sites, and nginx if you need server side functionality (which you shouldn't need for personal sites/blogs)
>network managers
yea, use wpa_supplicant. wpa_cli for interacting with it.
>emacs
lol obviously, no need to point it out.
>ncurses
not sure about it. what is the alternative? there're things I wouldn't use plain terminal for. Do you really thing going more minimalist than mutt for an email client is viable?
>>177 >kakoune or vis
they are still pretty hefty and you don't need to stop using vim to be minimalist. see my response above.
>>941 >ncurses
Personally I think a fork of ncurses removing support for anything other than the standard VT100-compatible terminals is the best solution. All the old cruft needs to be purged.
>>943 >hurr muh vi always modal!!
You can configure neovim to be non-modal if you really want the inferior editing style.
>hurr modal editing bad
have fun with your arthritis, Ecraps user.
>>945 Daily reminder:
>I wish we hadn't used all the keys on the keyboard. I think one of the interesting things is that vi is really a mode-based editor. I think as mode-based editors go, it's pretty good. One of the good things about EMACS, though, is its programmability and the modelessness. Those are two ideas which never occurred to me. I also wasn't very good at optimizing code when I wrote vi. I think the redisplay module of the editor is almost intractable. It does a really good job for what it does, but when you're writing programs as you're learning... That's why I stopped working on it.
t. Bill Joy, creator of vi
>>958 That's why neovim is better than vi. Or use busybox vi if you don't need muh advanced features. Busybox vi is extremely fast and no-frills, although I haven't yet looked at the source code.
>>941 ncurses alternative is plain ANSI/VT100 codes. You can get 90% of what most TUIs need using just CSIx;yH.
>>958 Man, someone oughta create a new version of vi that improves it.
>>1178 I tried creating a tui alternative to curses. What really killed it was handling user keypresses: all the special keys were different between the tty and terminal emulators, and parsing them was difficult.
>>1179 Well, keyboard characters and control codes will always work fine, so you could limit yourself to those. You could probably tack on arrow keys too, those are fairly standard. You only really have difficulty when you get into complex modifiers, like alt+up.
>>181 >can have thumbnails for not only images but also videos, pdfs and shit and even uncommon formats like .blend
>with intuitive ui, zero learning curve
>all out of the box
<chooses to spend his time learning some unpolished shit because it has less lines of code
>>1507 >can have blazing fast system which runs on low cost hardware
>with flexible ui, big learning curve to filter out normalfags
>all with just 30 minutes of installation time
<chooses to spend his time waiting for bloat and spyware to finish loading, just because it's shiny and has animations
>>2399 >chooses to spend his time waiting for bloat and spyware to finish loading, just because it's shiny and has animations
it's all about making excuses for being a normalfag while also being offended when called out for being one. this is The Way of the NPC.
>>2408 >admits the learning curve is big
<Waah I can only do things that are easy, because I am retarded
>No distro takes that long to install
I am talking about OpenBSD, you faggot. Time spent learning how the disk devices etc. work is also included in that. If you are an experienced OpenBSD user, it's only going to take 10 minutes or less.
>GUI software
>not bloat
>>2399 >>filter out normalfags
Why would you want to though?
>>2411 >>Waah I can only do things that are easy, because I am retarded
I prefer doing things that are easy.
If something is harder but there are some benefits to it, I do it. Like, OpenBSD takes some time to learn, but has advantages. I do take the time to learn it. But if something is harder just for the sake of being harder, like Gentoo, than no thanks, I'll leave that for the retarded.
>I am talking about OpenBSD, you faggot.
Why the fuck are you though? My post was about file managers. That was somewhat out of context, you know.
>all gui is bloat
Ah, I see, we are on that level of autism.
>>2425 >Why would you want to filter out normalfags
because when too many normalfags use software, they demand adding features which they think add "convenience" but in reality just add extra bloat and crap to the software. Normalfags do not understand technology and should not have a role in its design.
>My post was about file managers
you did say something about distros, though.
>we are on that level of autism
ok, let me reduce my autism levels a bit. gui is only useful for viewing and editing images and video. and maybe for web browsing (although websites which absolutely require a gui are bloat).
>>2426 You do realise that the more popular a piece of software is the more likely its bugs and vulnerabilities are to be
discovered and fixed, don't you?
>because when too many normalfags use software, they demand adding features
Nah, it's the other way around. Software gets features and attracts people (it also needs marketing to be really popular of course). Not like Windows has all the spying crap because the users demanded it. Not like GNOME or KDE is the way it is because that's what the users demanded.
>gui is only useful for viewing and editing images and video
Is this really all you could come up with? No 3D modelling, no CAD and shits. Never done any actual work on a PC have you
>>2427 >the more popular a piece of software is the more likely its bugs and vulnerabilities are to be discovered and fixed
Yes. Microsoft Windies is popular. Microsoft Wangles is very secure.
>>2428 go back to pigchan, pig
We were talking about libre software. If you would said the same about openssl there could be a further debate, but no, you are too retarded for comfy conversations.
>>2430 >pointing out that wangblows is insecure in conversation where windows doesn't exist and can't be possibly counted as software means you're a pigchanner
fixed that for you
Also pointing out common factual knowledge does no good to anybody, you may be a hero on reddit, but certainly you won't get upboats here.
Not nice.
>>2428 OpenBSD only implemented package signing circa 2014. Same for Arch. Gentoo only implemented those in 2018.
Not like 99.99% windows users aren't fucking morons downloading random executables from the internet and running those as privileged user.
Debian had that since 2003.
>>2427 Displaying mathematical equations, graphing and plotting, simulation (from weather to milling), video gaymen
>>2430 More users on windows does not translate to more eyes on the source code fag
>>2437 >Displaying mathematical equations, graphing and plotting, simulation (from weather to milling), video gaymen
a gui isn't a requirement for any of these. and some applications (eg, SCADA dashboards, many games) would be better served by full screen graphical display modes sans wm, but these aren't all that common nowadays.
>>2439 >It literally means "not a cli/tui".
Maybe this distinction isn't even useful any longer, if it ever was. Project Oberon is well known for its tui, which is well ensconced in a gui just like the LispMs of old were. And plenty of gui apps are as much text-based as they are graphical. We should just castigate bloated, perenially broken shit made for NPCs and get on with life.
>>2448 That is not an induction of less bugs. Windows is simply a higher value target for attackers. You get more pwns for the amount of effort needed to find security bugs.
That's not to say you are incorrect, your reply doesn't disprove the person you replied to
I'm thinking of trying out Devuan. Does anyone have experience setting it up? I'm not l337 enough to install Arch or Gentoo and I need some hand-holding (lewdness encouraged) to install my OS.
As far as anti-bloatware, the best solution to bloatware is to make the documentation better for command line tools. the manpages are just awful and not everyone knows to read the million lines of GNU manual before installing ubuntu. There needs to be a "crash course" type of manual for technically minded people, with longer explanations for things.
With the coreutils and the stuff bundled in most distros, you can do pretty much anything in CLI, but there's a real sense of "fuck you if you don't know all the ins and outs of regular expressions."
>>2537 I haven't used devuan specifically, but I have used debian before it got systemdicked (wheezy). It's a reasonable system but it has a lot of bloat by default. For minimalism, Alpine Linux, NetBSD or OpenBSD are better. Try each one, perhaps in a VM, and find the one you like best.
>>2537 If the installation us just like Debian, its easier than Windows.
Do you need disk partitioning, or do you want the entire storage disk drive to be used for Devuan (and empty storage ready for you to fill when using Devuan)? If you need preserving or dualbooting, read tutorials on installing Devuan with partitioning (can be intimidating and you risk overwriting the old data on the hard drive)
There should be a tutorial or two, yeah?
>>2544 Agreed. In my opinion, the only problems of OpenBSD are out-of-date packages (not a big deal, but some people might care, and it improves the reliability anyway) and low popularity (which isn't OpenBSD's fault).
Alpine Linux is the best linux distro, if you still want/need the CoCkernel for any reason. It uses musl and busybox, which greatly reduces its dependency on cancerous GNU shitware.
>>2544 (Not Devuan-anon)
Yes, but it doesn't support some programs I need and I only have one device for a while, so its not an option.
Also, the maintainers only audit the bits they like, from what I have seen. I guess that applies to other OSs as well though.
How is updating and installing packages? How beginner friendly is OpenBSD? It seems like there is a fair bit of required reading or assumed knowledge and only then the man pages become great.
Devices When you partition a data or OS drive you will need to deal with devices. On Linux you have /dev/sda for the entire disk, and /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 etc... for partitions on that disk.
On OpenBSD, however, you have /dev/sd0a, /dev/sd0b, /dev/sd0c etc. and these do not necessarily refer to the entire disk. The letter after the drive number refers to the disklabel entry, which can be edited by using the disklabel(8) tool, which allows you to edit the partition entries with a text editor:
# disklabel -e sd0
Usually, the disklabel entry sd0c (accessed from /dev/sd0c) is used to refer to the entire disk, although this is not the case if you edit your disklabel to behave otherwise. For example, if you want to copy a raw filesystem image to your second hard disk:
# dd if=fs.img of=/dev/sd1c bs=4M
To create a filesystem on any partition, use the newfs(8) command. There are also newfs_ext2fs and newfs_msdos commands for ext2 and FAT, respectively.
# newfs sd3a
Package Management On Linux there are many different package managers. I will assume familiarity with the apt system used by debian and jewbuntu & co.
>>2545 >out-of-date packages
I would think that a security correctness-oriented OS would consider this a very big deal. What kind of packages? I would assume such packages may need semi regular security updates.
>>2548 Outdated packages != security vulnerabilities. They do update packages when there are vulnerabilities, or patch them, but not if they are already stable and working properly.
Well, here's the software that I'm using (or trying to, because it's cool to post about it on the WWW and even cooler on Tor):
• Firecocks — alas, there's no replacement for µMatrix in that trendy qute- or -kit browsers;
• ALSA;
• rtorrent;
• sxiv;
• ffmpeg;
• mpv;
• mpd + ncmpcpp;
• urxvt;
• polipo;
• no DHCP client, only settings in /etc/network/interfaces and /etc/resolv.conf.
>>4014 >rtorrent
C++ and no clean daemon/client architecture. Use transmission while waiting for synapse to get better (even if Rust is a meme).
>mpd
Depends on fucking boost, m8.
>urxvt
st.
>no DHCP client
Well, that's actually interesting for once. I use dhcpcd with mostly static parameters for now, because I'm lazy.
>>4102 >10 patches
No. Scrollback is 1, multiple fonts is 2.
>decent response time
Changing a config value isn't a "patch", brainlet.
>alacritty
>Rust dependency
>GPU acceleration -> dependency on opengl
>https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty/issues/673 so-called highest performing terminal has a shitty latency, which is the most important characteristic
Now that's a meme. Maybe I'll consider it when I need to switch to wayland (not soon) and that something else on my system (rav1e, probably) requires rust.
>>4068 > transmission
When using some GUI piece of software it's just too tiresome to put one's hand on and off of mouse.
> st
Honestly tried it but sorta failed. Would you mind to share your source files if you managed to make it comfy?
> I use dhcpcd with mostly static parameters for now, because I'm lazy.
Too lazy to remove it?
You need to set your IP and nameservers only once and live happily with assurance that no fussy daemon can rewrite your resolv.conf when you less expecting it. I hated that.
/etc/network/interfaces:
#iface eth0 inet dhcp
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.8.17/24
broadcast 192.168.8.255
gateway 192.168.8.1
It's not so difficult, as you can see.
>>4107 > multiple fonts
I'd prefer only one, but st takes settings from fontconfig which I can't fucking figure out how to set up. Where in that steaming pile of XML spaghetti one supposed to write "don't use any fallback fonts for Unicode, show all weeb syllabies in Terminus"?
Pic: upper is from URxvt, lower is from st.
>>177 > vis
> Non Goals
> Some features which will not be implemented:
> tabs / multiple workspaces / advanced window management
> file and directory browser
Feels bad man. How am I supposed to edit something more sophisticated than a quick memo? Also vis cannot open background buffers too, which is terribly inconvenient after using vim clones for a while.
Anti-bloatware threads on other imageboards often result in people saying that anything TUI = gud, but that's clearly untrue; for example, the following I consider bloatware:
>ncurses (supports 30 year old hardware which doesn't exist)
>network managers (hundreds of thousands of lines of code to do something which can be done with a simple script)
>apache (giant blob of modules and extensions)
>emacs (includes everything by default)
>vim (hundreds of thousands of lines of code...)
Discuss ITT the alternatives to these pieces of bloatware. I'm genuinely curious to see what you guys come up with.