Text-based system

[3rdalbum]

There was/is a distro out there without X that used a framebuffer to render everything too.

GeeXBox and the Movix distros do that, and it works quite well.

[superatrain]

antiword will have to do, but i was hoping for something that used FB and could edit the files as well...
I hope to try out twin soon... as soon as I get networking back working :S

btw: how do you split the screens, and how do you control which half is active?

[Takmadeus]

you could use midnight commander as a file manager (sorry for the revival... it was an interesting thread)

[derjames]

I've just submit a HowTo which includes info from thise thread and which will apprear soon... (some sort of summary). I been working in Command line mode for a couple of weeks (no X, just simple and plain text) and the experience has been great... the computer is so responsive (ultrafast boot time and instantaneous response) in a Laptop with Core 2 Duo T5600 and 1 GB RAM. Music and Video working fine etc.. etc..

[3rdalbum]

I've just submit a HowTo which includes info from thise thread and which will apprear soon... (some sort of summary). I been working in Command line mode for a couple of weeks (no X, just simple and plain text) and the experience has been great... the computer is so responsive (ultrafast boot time and instantaneous response) in a Laptop with Core 2 Duo T5600 and 1 GB RAM. Music and Video working fine etc.. etc..

I'd love to see the Howto; when it's up on the Ubuntu wiki, please reply with the URL.

[K.Mandla]

I'd love to see the Howto; when it's up on the Ubuntu wiki, please reply with the URL.

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=387598

[igknighted]

I've just submit a HowTo which includes info from thise thread and which will apprear soon... (some sort of summary). I been working in Command line mode for a couple of weeks (no X, just simple and plain text) and the experience has been great... the computer is so responsive (ultrafast boot time and instantaneous response) in a Laptop with Core 2 Duo T5600 and 1 GB RAM. Music and Video working fine etc.. etc..

No offense, because I think that the end result of what you have achieved is well worth it... but on that system? I would be willing to bet that nearly anything you do on that system (aside from compile) I could do just as quickly on my 1ghz Athlon machine from 6 years ago. It would seem to me that that if you wanted to just work in CLI mode, why not use older hardware? I feel like I waste the capabilities of the system listed in my sig... even running beryl/gnome.

[andrew.46]

Hi,

I would partly disagree:

^^ What he said, plus slrn. ^^

The best text-based system would _only_ have slrn

Andrew (slrn fan-boy)

[jseiser]

saw this back up top, and k mandlas blog gave me the info to get a text system, which after a while of playing with was fun. Couldnt figure screen how really so i went with X + evilwm. then used xbindkeys to bind alt+F# 2-12 to have gmrun, links2, mc, gentoo, vim, leafpad, cplay, rtorrent ( loads onto second desktop and it watches a folder for new/deleted torrents and adjusts automaticly + encryption) gksu+synaptic,htop and k3b (wish i new how to burn mp3 cd's from command line). My computer is a amd 64 3000 200g HD 1 g ram, and even xubuntu seemed a bit sluggish, this just flies. I changed default terminal to urxvt, and just bringing up a terminal is as easy as ctrl+alt+enter. alt tab between full screen windows. You can use left click to move window, middle click to re-size, right click to lower window. ctrl+alt+x maxes window out verticly, cltr-alt+= totally maximises it. The key bindings, make you open and close programs very fast. ctrl+alt+ hjkl will resize your windows, so you can be completely mouse free. I imagine this would be amazing on a laptop, even and old one. I know this was about a text based system but if you must have some sort of x running, i havent seen anything that compares to the useability of evilwm+xbindkeys.

[init1]

There's also a kind of window manager for consoles that you can run without an X server. It's in the repos - it's called twin.

Interesting stuff, but I think it's probably useless really

Yeah. It's useless. Cool, but useless.