POSTS
My Linux Way
Hello everyone,
this is my first post in almost a year. I recently had troubles coming up with ideas for posts. As always in the last three years, I was working on my side business to finally get started.
In retrospection, this was a really draining but also awarding experience. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not started yet, but we are in the final sprint. So maybe I’ll soon write about that. But until then I want to proceed with another topic :)
I really had troubles coming up with another topic, because I’ll like to write somewhat “deep” content. I don’t like the idea of writing about framework X with hyped language Y. This is easy and in my opinion click-baity content. I’m also not really interested in this kind of stuff because it’s quite boring to me. Sure for a newbie it’s nice to read such things and get another part of his filter bubble filled, but after a while and with some experience this topics become more and more noise in the background.
Sooo, why that whole shebang about that you ask? Because it’s quite a nice intro to this post.
Why my way of linux?
The last year I got quite “burned” out with writing posts. The main thing I was doing was rewriting my existing app from Flutter to Ionic. I wanted it to be future proof and my knowledge in web programming is far greater than using this flutter thingy. But I already wrote about that in another blog post.
So nothing on that front. Other articles about munching together colors with a hexadecimal way is still in “production” and so all this got a bit stalled.
But then I stumbled across a cool book, called “Build Your Mouseless Development Environment”.
I really like being productive. At this point in time, the idea of just lying around and doing nothing is not something I really enjoy doing. I much rather learn new things, build stuff (in sense of programming or in the physical way), play games or just read about stuff.
This always lead me to think that working with a environment where everything could be controlled by keys would be far faster then the mouse moving I was doing while working at my dayjo. The first time I came to this realisation was when I really got introduced into the concepts of VIM. Staying at the same position with your hands and simply move around the whole monitor with a few keystrokes is quite a big jump in productivity.
So after jumping around in my editor, getting faster by the day (I still can’t use macros …. have to learn that some day… I promise!!), I started to feel slow again.
After that I tried using some browser plug-ins to emulate vim in the browser and so on, but really never got warm with it. I even learned that there is a browser built around VIM keystrokes ^^ I quite like that one ^^. If you want to try it too, it’s called QuteBrowser.
And this is were my Linux way really started. I had tried Linux a few times in the past, but never got comfortable with it. It’s a nice thing to have on your droplets, because it’s free, but other I never truly used it anywhere else. And I think it was mostly because it’s such a huge thing to learn. It is it’s own ecosystem. That what’s making it great but also bad.
It is it’s own ecosystem. That what’s making it great but also bad.
What do I mean with this? Think about like this: I used Windows for forever. I got acustomed to it when I was young and in school, someone teached it ti me and I got quite sofisticated using it. That’s why I use it. I don’t like it nor do I dislike it.
But for learning Linux that’s quite a problem, because I don’t have that much time anymore. I have to work, build my business, have time for my girlfriend and so on.. The ecosystem is just to large for me to quickly diguist and use it.
But this book teached me about that whole shebang in just that short time. I’m not a Linux pro, but I know enough to be dangerous.
I finally feel like I can get into this whole thing, start and don’t feel lost after half a day, because something went wrong or I don’t now the alternative. And that’s a good feeling.
Getting productive
So I learned that there is a whole dimension of keyboard/ terminal centered applications which embrace this kind of productive working. From editors such as vim to email clients such as neomutt. Also things like the increased usage of the terminal which lends itself to do automation because it’s an command interpreter that is always there for you to use.
So to bundle this whole thing up, what is it I want to tell with this? Personally I think I just wanted to dump my brain into this. I don’t think there is really some advice in this post that you can quote and get on with it. I think it’s just that sort of content where you read through and think: “Yeah. Ok” and go on with your day.
Outro
One last thing. This book “Build Your Mouseless Development Environment” is a really good book. It got me quick started with Arch Linux. Which is quite impressive, because of what I know is that it is a advanced Linux system.