this post was submitted on 26 May 2026
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[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 23 points 4 days ago (3 children)

My laptop is terminal-only as well.

The only difference is that I use hyprland and waybar because it looks a bit better and using the dynamic tiling is sometimes easier than operating tmux panes.

To add to her list of useful apps:

mpd - To play music/audio. There are plug-ins for tmux and waybar to show the song status

ncmpcpp - TUI mpd client

lynx - Sometimes you need a web browser

[–] shiroininja@programming.dev 1 points 4 hours ago

Love ncmpcpp. I use it even when running a DE.

[–] wltr@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Hypr looks like overkill. I use Sway for a similar thing.

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

It is. The laptop was originally my testbed for trying hyprland so it had essentially nothing else installed, I just ended up using it as a portable terminal due to some unexpected traveling and I enjoyed the concept so I've kept it around.

[–] Creat@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Any reason it's not using zellij but still tmux? I thought this use case was basically what zellij was made for.

To be clear, I'm seriously asking, I don't really use the terminal to host fully fledged applications/screens

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I haven't tried zellij yet, but I'll give it a shot (thanks).

If I had to guess, it's that there are a ton of plug-ins for tmux and she's more comfortable with tmux.

Really, any terminal multiplexer will work fine. You just need to be able to do multiple things at once, Linux offers a plethora of choices for this.

[–] TerHu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Agreed, i should also be trying zellij, but my tmux is so well configured (for my) and dracula-tmux has everything i’d want, so it’d be hard to leave that behind for a not otherwise specified benefit. speed i guess?

considering that she’s using debian, i feel like she’s also living the peaceful life of not always chasing the latest shiny new tool, if the one she’s got is working well.

[–] caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 days ago

I'm loving byobu, which is to say preconfigured tmux.
Zellij is pretty cool though.

[–] trevor@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 points 4 days ago

TIL about kmscon. Getting actually readable font sizes in a tty is so nice.

[–] tuckerm@feddit.online 11 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I love this. I'm thinking of making another partition on my laptop so I can have a separate OS with no desktop environment. Reclaiming my attention span has kind of been a project for me this year. I was casually exploring how to make a setup like this with an e-ink screen, but e-ink displays are more expensive that I was hoping.

[–] muhyb@programming.dev 9 points 4 days ago

They're way too expensive especially on bigger sizes. I want one as my second monitor but I won't be able to get one soon.

By the way, you can still create a distraction-free environment for yourself with GUI. Just go with a minimal setup, something like Niri, Sway, river etc. (Openbox, bspwm, i3wm, Xmonad, dwm if you prefer X11).

The key points for distraction-free is to have a minimal desktop and using a program launcher like d-menu, fuzzel or rofi. TUI programs also help a lot. This way you won't need a second OS setup and can do everything in the same installation because TTY is restrictive for certain things.

There are also distraction-free GUI programs that you can use. For example I prefer ghostwriter as my go-to markdown editor, Apostrophe is also great if you prefer GTK. Depending on your use cases, there are a lot of programs like these.

[–] somegeek@programming.dev 1 points 3 days ago

You can use VNC+an old e ink tablet you already have.

I actually have a howto on my blog about this but I dont think you can reach it due to the internet blackout in my country.

https://alavi.me/blog

[–] RickyRigatoni@piefed.zip 7 points 4 days ago (3 children)

So since tmux was mentioned I got to know. Anybody still use byobu anymore? I used it back in my early days (2009-2012) but that was quite a while ago. Last stable release was in Feblueberry so that's promising.

[–] anhydrous@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

I used byobu waaaay back in the day. I think it was only for screen at the time, but I think it's for both now. I actually adapted the modules into my tmux configuration like 12 years ago, and am still using them to this day

[–] NOPper@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 days ago

I use byobu for random small rPi projects and stuff. It's just easy to set up, I've used it forever,
and I like the lil stats bar.

[–] mesamunefire@piefed.social 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I think so? Its been a while. Tmux waa what i used for along time but i remeber something before?

[–] fbn@slrpnk.net 3 points 4 days ago

gnu screen is older