this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2024
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~~Maybe not an "environment" but it sounds like you're at least using a window manager. The PDFs and videos, not to mention web browser, are gonna be hard to pull off from a raw shell.~~ [Hard but not that hard, apparently!]
But that's a detail. Otherwise I share your enthusiasm, I've been doing things this way for a while. Basically: tiling window manager + TUI file manager + scripts which do precisely what I want, if possible in the terminal, if necessary by launching a GUI app. In practice the GUI apps are Firefox, mapping app, and messaging apps.
The general discovery I made was this: for the small price of foregoing pretty colors and buttons and chrome, you can get a computer to do exactly what you want it to do much quicker. Assuming a willingness to learn a bit of shell scripting, of course.
For example: I have a button which runs a script with
getmailthat pulls in my email and then deploysripmimeandweasyprintto convert it to datestamped PDF files, which it dumps with any attachments directly into an inbox folder. In other words, I have maderangerinto my email client and I never need to "download" anything, it's already there.And those PDFs I can then manipulate with a bunch of shell scripts that use standard utilities, i.e. to split them, merge them, shrink them, clean them of metadata, even make them look like they come from photocopied paper (dumb bank!). All the stupid shit I once did with 10 manipulations hunting thru menus with a pointer in a fiddly app and always forgetting how it was done. Now I just select the file in the terminal, hit a button and it's done, I don't even see the PDF.
Of course, it's not for everyone, but this is the promise of free computing.
I find the emphasis people put on speed interesting, because by far the slowest part of any interaction I have with my computer is caused by me just figuring out what I'm doing next. When I'm functioning at top speed not needing to click around, or say, having the perfect keyboard shortcut, would save me only fractions of a second.
Actually.. to add to this I think the cognitive load of visually navigating is much lower than typing specific things it. I think this is why I find I'd prefer to click around my bookmarks or files to find something than just pull up a "Find" dialog and type something reasonable in.
That is exactly the reason why I like the text interface so much. It makes you think about what you want to do next.
In a graphical environment, there are lots of hints right in front of you what you could do next (made even worse in other OSs that use pop-ups).
In a text environment, unless you actively do something, all you get is a blinking cursor.
It increases my productivity and reduces time wasted on the computer, not because it is a bit faster, but because I don't get distracted.
For the same reason, I suppose you would love text adventure games like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where you have to come up with your action, as opposed to getting visual aids which come like a loaded question, steering you and somewhat robbing you of control.