The Redox project has published an overview of the progress made in January, and it’s a long list. Redox now supports the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+, a few of System76’s Cosmic Desktop applications now run on Redox, several more Linux applications haven been ported (most notably for me, nano, my CLI text editor of choice), and much more.
The most important change is an overhaul of how Redox handles resource paths:
Redox has a microkernel core, with drivers and other resource providers running as tasks and providing “schemes”. A scheme is the name of a resource provider, and until now, resources have been accessed using URI/URL format. For example, files would be accessed as
file:path/to/my_file, and a TCP connection would be accessed astcp:127.0.0.1. This format, while forward-looking, has not been very backwards-compatible.In order to simplify our efforts to port Linux software to Redox, we have decided to change our resource path format to the Linux-compatible
↫ Ron Williams/scheme/scheme_name/path/to/resource. Paths that do not begin with/schemewill be assumed to refer to thefilescheme, so/path/to/my_fileis treated by the system as/scheme/file/path/to/my_file, but the application will only see the/path/to/my_fileportion. Using this format, normal paths now look just like Linux paths, while drivers and other resources can still be addressed without breaking software.
The change is an ongoing process, so you might encounter some issues related to it in the coming time.
Nano is an awesome quick editor in my view. I think Pico (it’s predecessor) set the standard pretty high. To make a word replacement of a whole dokument is just a few key commands and pretty great to use in general.
It is however not a full feature editor like emacs and will never be, but great for its intended purpose.
TeaPot is the CLI application i spend the most time in nowadays, (i used to be a lotus 1-2-3 user before) and i find it to be absolutely delightful, and so much faster than any GUI spreadsheet application for me. It is also very easy to export to other formats unlike sc. sc is a nightmare for me, no command or shortcut is where it is supposed to be in my view and output to other files readable to other systems or readers is miss, hit but mostly miss.
Other must have cli applications for me is:
“green”, a cli pdf reader.
“weechat-ncurses”, a chat client.
htop, a process monitor.
dvtm, a terminal multiplexer that works with the framebuffer output.
netsurf-fb a buffer that does not need X or wayland and can still provide images and css.
cmus, a music player with playlist functionality and library support without needing a daemon.
rtorrent, a bittorrent/magnet client that has both a cli interface as well as a web interface.
mplayer2-fb, a media player that can scale and stretch video perfectly and supports variable framerates in the framebuffer.
vlc-nox, the vlc media player, but it works in cli on the framebuffer.
canto, a rss/atom reader that is blazingly fast.
ranger or mc, both great file managers.
feh, the best image viewer for the terminal bar none, it also supports different viewing modes.
twin, a cli window manager with dragging support. (viper is also good)
teapot, the most versatile and feature complete spreadsheet application in the open source world for cli users.
ncdu, storage monitor
unp, a unified application that uses installed unarchivers with a single command, unrar, unzip, b2zip, unace, unlha, p7zip, tar, gzip and all the others to make it easy to extract anything.
An honourable mention though to dosbox-fb if you want to run some dos application or the massive library of games that exists for that plattform.
I rarely ever start X on my systems, if i need general browsing with video support (rare) i just use my haiku-os computer with gnome-web since it has gotten so good. Haiku is also capable of great games nowadays. But if i am really in the gaming mood, i boot up my powerpc equipped amiga 1200 and just have at it.
a clil pdf reader? I’m afraid of how that renders the documents I view. But wroth trying. Also teapot sounds very intriguing, I’ve been looking for a cli spreadsheet for a while.
I bet you are an advanced user already, but thia link is rather amusing: https://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/how-to-use-teapot-like-a-pro/
It is from a sperspective of a windows user, sure. But even a complete noob can work teapot if you know the baiscs.
NaGERST
I wasn’t familiar with teapot, but…
I always use the numeric “R1C1” convention to reference cells in a spreadsheet, IMHO it’s just makes more sense especially for larger spreadsheets with relative positioning. Using letters gets awkward when you go past Z, but numbers just keep going naturally.
Anyway, teapot looks interesting, but that said I probably can’t justify learning a new spreadsheet when I’m already familiar with ones that do what I need.
Quite the list. A few new names on there for me.
You should try the Falkon web browser on Haiku.
I had no idea falkon was ported to haiku. Thank you for the suggestion.
And to bill: The green pdf viewer works rather well for all kinds of PDF’s, it is a small compile and worth it.
Granted that i mostly read technical documentation, so it is mostly text, but inline linking and some graphics like schematics looks great.
Hmm. the Minix approach was to port the NetBSD userland, or most of what was needed, to get pkgsrc running. Perhaps that’s too ambitious for redox, but I certainly hope the OS gets somewhere near that level of useabllity.