/text/ - Pure text general.

Lynx, cmus, and alsamixer are my TUI favorites.

ASCII roguelikes are great

I use the command line whenever practical.

At first, mutt was really weird, but after getting sort of used to it, I preferred mutt over any graphical client.

ncmpcpp looks good enough and I find it pretty nice. All I really need from a music player is text and the sound is handled by mpd. It is possible to grab cover art and use it on some places, but I don't have any need for that.

weechat is just nice. IRC is only text anyways, no need for an entire GUI.

I won't be using w3m or any other terminal Web browser anytime soon, however. The Web has been tailored for graphical interfaces for years now, though vimperator lets me use the keyboard more than the mouse.

I use quite an old laptop, and while the specs are perfectly fine for graphical software I like having them all "there" rather than minimised. So with a multiplexer I can have everything all running on its own desktop, then firefox on its own.

>>57473369
The web becoming so image centric is really upsetting for me. I go on a lot of BBSs and there's lots of people from developing countries on then who have web access but far too slow for the actual web, often with computers that are years behind even budget units in the west. Not to sound too much like a commie, but walling these people off from the web through javascript and image-heavy sites seems totally against what the web was meant to be about.

File: rnepc.gif (123KB, 500x302px) Image search: [Google]

123KB, 500x302px

One thing I like about looking at things from a textual basis is seeing how far we've actually come, but also how much of a waste it all was, because demand increased with capability. When you think that Rusty and Edie's BBS could be replaced with a Raspberry Pi you get a real sense of progress; then you think about how useless a Raspberry Pi is next to that comparison and it makes me think we made a mistake along the way.

>>57474068
The mistake ies in the fact that upgrades like RAM, disk space and cpu speeds were developed too fast. While people were stuck with, say, 64K of RAM, you had to design your game/program/testing software/custom interface controller/whatever to be nice with that 64k of memory, this way you spent more time optimizing the code to run smoothly and do the job flawlessly.
But when the limitations are loosened too fast, people realize that optimization is no longer a priority. If you compare, say, a Apple ][ GS to any modern machine not running gentoo the difference is clear as day: back then you NEEDED optimization, nowadays code is sloppy, with the worst offender being windows 10.

>>57474068
The Pi's issue is the architecture, not the numbers. I've gotten better performance at the command line (even had X running with no real slow down most of the time...most of the time) with old laptops with 400mhz and 128MB of RAM because it was a supported (being 86) architecture. That thing flew with just text programs.

obligatory link:
http://txti.es/textpunk

I don't know why, I might even be just a not-even-my-time nostalgia jerkoff, but pure-text has always fascinated me.
here's some stuff you might like
textfiles.com (but of course you know this one already)
telnet telehack.com
telnet gopher.su 1234
if.illuminion.de/infocom.html (also install frotz)
mudconnect.com
phrack.org
txti.es
weblog.sh

>>57474756
Richard Bartle has a lot of thoughts on text.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zctp972y_Eg

Considering that you can get an entire C2D for $30 or an entire i5 for $50, it's essentially either dropout timesink shit, or hipster garbage, depending on which one you prefer. GUI programs don't come with a gay empty .config file, they instead have these things called "buttons", which you click if you want that option. It has the functionality already built in, and you can simply turn it on or off with that button, and not have to spend hours dicking about with .confs and permissions. Buttons are for people whose time matters because they are employed and making money. .conf files are for dropouts pretending to do "computer science" by turning the basic task of listening to music or browsing the web into a pretend "project" which takes weeks and usually learning some dead, hipster 80s lang that nobody cares about, so you can build your little contrarian resume of unhirable things. In fact if you want you can even turn your pretend resume into a psuedo-project and make it look "beautiful" by doing it in latex and then sending 3-4 walls of text at the hiring manager when she asks for a version of it in .doc on why the entire business should essentially stay in the 80s.

>>57475013
you tell em boy!

>>57474068
It's also worth thinking about the power requirements of text as opposed to graphical interfaces. I know of a bunch of Raspberry Pis that are solar powered, running BBSs.

I think it's sad that we moved so far away from text because then we'd probably have entire computers that are so energy efficient (there's only so far it's worth improving clock speed in such an environment) that they consume nearly no power and screens would likely have moved to e-ink years ago.

This is the real reason I dislike bloat. Forcing more power-hungry hardware and generation literal mountains of e-waste in the process.

>>57475353
I don't understand why the raspberry pi keeps coming up. How about a zipit z2, which is even cheaper, and worse?

thinkpad AC adapter is 90W so it's less than most stereos. And you can get an entire complete laptop, and it's portable, for $60. then you can drop the hipster opinions about bloat, and get a job, to pay off the interest on the loan you took out to buy a $60 thinkpad

>>57473247
MOC is godlike, just tinker with the layout (the "L" key) and nothing beats it. Also for the custom themes you can set custom colors. Dmenu is another killer program, in combination with Ratpoison I can browse the open programs easily.

Also I love roguelikes, although they crush me on the first few levels ;)

I wish there be more text based interfaces. Just think on the curses based installers.