Jumping onto the console bandwagon
After I discovered the existence of this very wonderful screen program a few months ago, I’d always been trying to use more and more simple command-line / console based programs rather than those GUI heavyweights which both use up resources and clutter my desktop.
At first I learned vim basics via vimtutor, but I gave up using it as a default text editor and still preferred the gedit warmth. But vim was powerful, no doubt, and definitely more faster than moving your mouse around to activate events and work with dialog boxes. But it just didn’t fit well with me that I launch it each time I need to dump some text or write something up quickly. Only while programming something up did I summon its need. The jump to console applications here was not so good!
Next up, I tried the most popular thing screen is famous for, the IRC client called irssi. This one simply blew me away. After all, in an IRC you do nothing with a mouse, all you do is talk with the keyboard, and run commands too with it. So why the GUI, I wondered, and ditched the good old XChat and its various scripts for a much more simple console interface, the mighty irssi. Running it within a screen session gave me more comfort of not having an icon blinking or simply residing on my tray or various other bars and that I could connect to the session anytime I desired. Takes about ~1 MB for one server (irc.freenode.net) with 4 channels auto connected. Jump to console applications for IRC - Very good!
Next up was the media requirements. While video was out of the question, cause I can _never_ give up Mplayer+GUI whatever comes my way, I looked at Console based audio players to satisfy this urge. I did some research on popular and non popular ones and am currently using Plait, which I think is the perfect thing I’d need. Its revolutionary, and is based on a hinting system. It (plaiter) takes about 600~ KB of my RAM for a list of 10 songs. Directly streams them to the audio device or any even an online stream if desired, at no or very less resource costs! An example follows:
$ plait staind not outside
Now this command above will play all songs in my library which are by Staind but will not play those songs matching the name Outside.
Awesome isn't it?
The shift here, for music, is still quite a bumpy one so far since pausing / stopping is a bit tedious but I have made ways for it by mapping my keyboard’s (a Samsung SDM4500P) multimedia keys to its commands. More about this in some other post over time here.
The last thing I’ve shifted to a console application is the beautiful rTorrent client. This client is an amazing one. Its light as irssi, perhaps even lighter, cause its just taking ~1 MB of my RAM and its got all the features of a good client including PEX and DHT in it. Only issue with it is in its torrent list managemen. Its still under heavy and active development with very clean documentation so that shouldn’t be an issue for too long, and am happy with this anyway. Moreover, rTorrent uniquely is different cause it directly transfers from your file-system to the network stack, and vice versa, so very minimal amount of memory is used! Console based application for torrents - fairly good!
I’ll blog about each of these items and more as I encounter simpler alternatives to my major tasks soon here, detailing on how to install them, set them up and other usage details. Very soon. 
A final list of software I’ve talked about in this post:
- screen
- vim
- gedit
- irssi
- plait
- rtorrent
More soon! I’m loving the consoles! 
My observations :
- Are you using the console vim, or the gui’d gVim?
- For console msuic, have you tried mpd/mpc/ncmpc?
- irssi is awesome, wait till you check out bitlbee, which can patch irssi into all your chat networks.
Other tools you should learn to use are ImageMagick’s set of image tools, wget, and of course writing your own scripts to get things done. Once you’re there, you can move yourself to ratpoison and toss the mouse.
Sykora
25 Jan 08 at 3:23 pm
I am using the console Vim. Is gVim any better?
Whoa, no, I haven’t tried out mpd, wonder why none of the lists I’ve seen online had that one. Am gonna try it now, it looks pretty neat!
Thanks, I’ll check out bitlbee, I was thinking of using Finch for the chat networks. I’ll explore this too, and stick to the one which suits.
Haven’t learned much of shell scripting, it always puts me off, the syntax. But yeah I am trying out ImageMagick’s tools right now, and had used them before for the python challenge too, they are helpful!
GNOME’s too much trouble, it hangs a lot for me, especially Firefox. I don’t know if its a hardware or a software fault (Memtest gave 100% results, this confuses me) since ALT+SysReq+REISUB works only one time in 3-4 hangs, random I meant. I just wanna get rid of GNOME, for this sake, or is it not its fault and is Firefox’s? It never hangs when I’m on KDE 3.5.
And thanks for the comment!
Harsh
25 Jan 08 at 5:40 pm
The only time I use console vim is when I don’t have graphics, notably in runlevel 1. All other times I use gVim. Does that answer your question?
You need a client as well to use mpd. mpc, and the ncurses version ncmpc.
Shell scripting syntax puts me off as well. But I wasn’t referring to those as much as I was to scripts in Python.
If you want a full Desktop environment, you know the deal. KDE4 looks great, and I never liked Gnome anyway.
_But_ if you want just a window manager, without the frills, get ratpoison. Fluxbox works well too, I suppose, but ratpoison really gets rid of the mouse. And it hardly uses any memory.
Last of all, customize your shell. It’s like the entrance rite to CLI geekdom.
Sykora
25 Jan 08 at 5:56 pm
Alright, I’ll give in to consuming ratpoison, and gVim.
Just tried mpd with mpc, it works great! Removed plait and replaced those maps with this one’s commands.
But I got some more queries about Ratpoison, I’ll google them out first, and if they still aren’t clear, I’ll ask you, if you don’t mind.
And I could use some tips on customizing the shell, too. I wish you wrote more articles if you had the time, it’d be awesome really!
Harsh
25 Jan 08 at 8:01 pm
I’m in the middle of plans for my own site, so everything’s on hold, for now. I’ve got some ideas though, for later.
Sykora
25 Jan 08 at 9:38 pm
I didn’t know about Plait. For now, I’m using a home made script that mixes find, locate, and greps, to do nearly the same. I’ll try it just now.
I’m using finch at the moment, as I’m not a big fan of irssi nor weechat (I’m using weechat atm). You can tune finch bindings (mine acts the more vim-ish way I could set)
Learn vim and/or emacs. Those are really powerful tools.
Ratpoison is the last stop. I’ve been using it since 1.3, and it’s the first app I install on every linux I touch. rp shortcuts are screen-inspired, so you won’t have much trouble learning it.
Have fun!
ddik
7 Feb 08 at 2:04 am