Given the Igalia’s OLPI program (One Laptop Per Igalian) I got a new Thinkpad, the x301. I chose this one just because Alex chose it too, and I trust in the Alex judgement, and I don’t regret it: it’s a great machine.
All my computers had receive a name. The first computer I bought with my own resources was named Rowena. I still like that name. My first laptop was named Angelina. Meanwhile my third desktop computer was named Toaster.
So, in order to not break the tradition, I named the new laptop, and its name is lit 🙂
lit as noun is the contraction of literature. As adjective is the contraction of illuminated or lighted. Also, in French means bed.
I took a different approach to work with this laptop. First of all, I installed Debian Squeeze on it. Not Ubuntu, nor Gentoo. The reason of this is follow the starndard Igalia’s software stack.
The second difference is an reinforce in my console orientation 🙂 Instead of using Evolution, I’m trying Mutt; instead of XChat, IRSSI; right now I’m testing Newbeuter as feed reader, all of them in a single terminal using GNU/Screen. Besides, I’m continuing with my Emacs dependency curve.
And, if you’re wondering, I’m not going to use RatPoison or any other minimalistic window manager, and maybe never will.
Here’s a screenshot of my current desktop:
I was using Google Reader as I was tired of Liferea, which I find heavy and sometimes irresponsive for what a news readers is suppossed to be, so I tried Newsbeuter when I read your article… still do not have a final veredict, but I am liking it and probably it will stay installed at my computer. Thanks for pointing it out 😀
I also use Emacs, mutt, irssi and newsbeuter. I tried a lot to use text based browsers, but unfortunately most websites are so much image-oriented, and have ugly tables. Very few pages get rendered in a useful way in text browsers (elinks, lynx2…), not to mention the dependency on flash and javascript. So I use iceweasel (firefox).
I have also been using ttytter for twitter. There’s just a problem with accents that prevent me from using readline, but who knows, maybe in the future… For IM I use bitlbee to create a gateway, so my actual interface is irssi. Some times I manage to send blog posts from inside Emacs.
I have been using “laternative” windom managers, tough. For a long time I was a vtwm user. I only switched recently to a new manager called Awesome, which is built around the concept of automatic management of window positions.
I usually run all my windows maximized, or run 2 or three xterms by the side of each other. Awesome (as other similar managers) does exactly this. Of course, if needed you can turn it off.
Windows decorations can be set to a minimum, and tou can set all sorts of hotkeys… You can script it too. I have a very nice status bar that looks just how I wanted. I’m very happy today. 🙂
Try it out! If you are console kind of people, you might find it interesting…
@divide_by_zero: Thanks for your comment! Actually I’ve been thinking who drop pidgin in favor of something console based, now I’ve an approach.
For twitter I’ve been using the twittering-mode.el in emacs, and works like a charm.