"Online" documentation should be offline
I'm noticing a troubling trend among FOSS projects, even terminal-only utilities: no manpages (or a 1-paragraph useless one), barely any help screens, and a link to a wiki site like a github page or "readthedocs."
The thing is, the whole ethos behind so many terminal utilities is a hearkening back to a simpler time of keyboard-driven user interfaces, and specifically of eschewing the kind of bloated, unusable mess that characterizes so much of the modern web.
So please don't force me to crank up firefox just to read your docs. They should be included in some kind of plain text (or easily convertible) format along with the source and binary distributions of your package.
Heck, I'd even settle for a PDF at this point, so please:
Keep your online documentation offline. (Because online means on the computer, not on the web, behind some horrid cluodflare captcha just to read five pages of a wiki).
100 Days to Offload 2025 - Day 6
What is FOSS?
Note: This article was originally written last December, and was sidelined because I didn't feel it was finished. Reading through it this morning, I realized reason that I never "finished" it is because the next step would've been to write a 1280-word chapter, which is no small feat. But honestly …
Read More
Why would you use Perl in 2024?
The rise and fall of the popularity of programming languages is fun to watch.
Quick disclaimer: I'm not a programmer. I've never held a programming job. I have been interested in programming as a hobby for several decades, and have written shell scripts as a part of my job in …
Read More
An unexpected game of "Musical Laptops"
I purchased this laptop I'm writing on now about a month ago. It's a Thinkpad X260 from 2016. I looked it up online, and it was actually shipped the very day (or the day before/after) I graduated college. That's a fun little coincidence to make me feel the passage …
Read More
Use what works for good
Exactly a month ago, I wrote an article challenging the prevalent pragmatist-argument for choice in the digital world.
I'd like to refine that thought a bit further, based on recent experiences.
A little over a week ago, I started crafting an article covering FOSS keyboards for Android. This is one …
Read More
Using `cal` and plain text to track things, Part II
Back in September, I posted about using the output of cal and plain text to track things. Here is the example of that format I listed in the post:
August 2023
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
. 2 3 . 5
. 7 . . . . .
. . . 16 . . .
. . . . . 25 .
. . . 30 .
2023/08/02 326 45 …
*Don't* use what works for you
I was watching a youtuber I rather like, and he closed out his video talking about his pragmatic approach to operating systems. He said he used multiple OSes (some FOSS and some non-FOSS), and he summed up his approach with "Use what works for you."
This is not a polemic …
Read More
UNIX is "dead," Part II
I was re-reading my original UNIX is dead. Long live UNIX article, and I realized something that helped me better classify the various types of UNIX OSes:
I see OSes like the BSDs as UNIXes, while I view MacOS and many Linux distros (particularly the Gnome-oriented ones, more about that …
Read More
UNIX is dead. Long live UNIX
I remember once watching a video of presenter at a Linux conference boldly proclaim, "UNIX is dead."
As someone who worked on UNIX systems for over a decade, and who's played with UNIX variants off and on for three decades, that is a pretty incendiary statement.
With apologies to Sophocles …
Read More
Using `cal` and plain text to track things
I know everyone's got their preferred notes app/platform, but I've been using SimpleNote for several years now, and I'm quite fond of it. Not only does it have very usable mobile and cross-platform desktop apps, it also has alternate apps like nvpy (a GUI) and sncli, an excellent command …
Read More