Two New Tools

Sway

I repurposed an old laptop that was sitting around and have become delighted with the results. It was a cheap number from 2020 that never ran Windows very well.

My biggest disappointment when starting out was that I couldn’t get FreeBSD to run a USB stick. Even though it’s been 20+ years since I’ve used it regularly it’s still my favorite flavor of Unix. Maybe I’ll install it if I ever get an extra computer. (Like bicycles, the solution is always n+1.)

I finally got the old laptop working with Fedora. I tried a few different Ubuntu distros that I didn’t really like. (I’m not entirely sure why I don’t like Ubuntu, but I’ve never enjoyed it. I have no explanation.) After looking what distros are available for WSL2, I landed on Fedora as the right mix of updates, features, and “mainstreamedness”.

But to challenge myself a little bit, I went with Atomic Sway. So instead of having a bunch of stacking windows (like, well, Windows), everything is divided into logical screens that I can switch between with a keyboard command.

Sway on a laptop has become the ultimate writing machine. I can lookup stuff on the internet if I need it, but I haven’t bothered to install email, messaging, etc. etc. I can do what I need, and only that, and easy switch around between windows without much having to use the mouse. It’s become so addictive that I’ve tried to figure out how to get the same experience at work. (No dice, sadly.)

But this has been fun and a drawn me back to Linux. If I were allowed to use this for work, I totally would.

JOE

I’m not sure why I tried Joe. I’m an Emacs native and kind of prefer Ctrl sequences for executing commands. (I can use vim, but I don’t love it.) VSCode has been a great tool, but the key bindings never have worked for my workflow. After XEmacs was retired, I’ve never found a suitable replacement I like. (I haven’t tried that hard either.) Nano is an editor I’ve been using since the 90s in its various flavors (pine/pico/nano). Getting the word-wrapping to work the way I wanted wasn’t flawless, and after some late night messing around, I found JOE.

It’s nano-like, so the commands are familiar enough that I don’t have to relearn a lot. The defaults that are included are what I expect – line numbers, word wrap, syntax highlighting for different tools by default. It just worked, and I’ve been installing it just about anywhere I can. I think the entire editor is like 600KB, not that I care about disk space, but it’s just lighting fast.

I’m hooked.

And So…

Using both these tools (which I am right now) has helped me with tons of personal projects. I’ll be doing this until this laptop dies… And I’ll find a new old one to replace it.