lanius.dev

Cfetch My Little Fetch Program In C

2023-06-24T00:00:00+02:00

#+title: Cfetch: my little fetch program in C #+layout: post #+tags: cfetch "C programming" #+date: 2023-06-24 13:20 +0200 I've recently created a simple C program, so originally named too: [[https://github.com/wmwnuk/cfetch][cfetch]]. In the previous post I mentioned it briefly, as a little /excercise/ project to learn a little bit more about C programming. ** Language hunt Generally, I was like /hunting/ for a programming language to write some side-projects in, and I was considering a few. I was looking into Elixir, which is pretty nice, but it doesn't seem like... general purpose enough. I kind of liked V, but it's still in beta and just very obscure language. I, of course, also we're eyeballing Rust, but the whole Rust Foundation debacle just made not really want to go there. ** Enter C I wasn't going to write CLI utilities in PHP or JavaScript, so I needed another language. Enter C. Quite obvious, maybe too obvious even. Actually, my first language was C++, but I've never really worked with C, but it still seems pretty familiar. It's like an ultimate general purpose, low-level language and exactly what I was looking for. ** Cfetch Well, obviously it is a pretty useless /vanity/ CLI app, but I think it's a good field to experiment. I was already thinking of moving to maybe some other project, but then I though that maybe I can make it into a utility I would want to use myself. Which would require few changes and additions, like more stuff that it actually /fetches/. Better configration file (I'm thinking about using TOML). Better frame and output rendering - I've written my own code to do it, so I need to either refine it, or use some library that probably already does it better. And finally, an option of adding your own positions to the fetch output (icon, color, command to run). So, I believe until I'll get an idea for some better utility to work on, I will be fiddling with this little project a bit. So, that's it. That's my C programming ventures. Have a nice day, and hit me up on [[https://fosstodon.org/@lanius][Mastodon]] or [[https://twitter.com/laniusdev][Twitter]].

I Think Im Back

2023-06-18T00:00:00+02:00

#+title: I think I'm back... #+layout: post #+tags: personal #+date: 2023-06-18 20:20 +0200 I went silent for quite a while now, both here, not to mention my YouTube channel. Things were quite complicated recently, not particularly great. At some point I recorded kinda part 1.5 of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QCtaTwuqDE][VimCast]] (which was totally made up format, because I rambled for way too long), but it was with my laptop mic and camera, and I never even started editing it. Maybe I will, or I will finally record MicroOS long-term review. Probably the latter. Many things have changed, I moved away from my previous place and I'm staying with my parents for a while. To save some money, and to have some time to think what's next. Haven't really figured it out yet. I've cut my hair, I guess the photo on this blog already shows. And everything feels just weird, and it takes time to accomodate. Eventually, I will be there though. I would like to post here more often, maybe with shorter notes, and maybe more interesting than moaning about life being not exactly what I wish it was. This iteration of this post is much better than the previous though, in terms of moaning about personal stuff. I guess the best thing to do is to just become busy, and I have a lot of ideas, a lot of things I'd like to do. Just yesterday I made [[https://github.com/wmwnuk/cfetch][cfetch]], a minimal neofetch'y program, which in all honesty doesn't do anything useful, and it's only purpose was to learn how to make a fully fledged CLI program in C (it has options, it has config, it has pretty output). Most probably I won't be really updating it, as there's nothing more to learn adding just more lines. But... who knows. Have a nice day, and hit me up on [[https://fosstodon.org/@lanius][Mastodon]] or [[https://twitter.com/laniusdev][Twitter]].

SigmaVimRc and Sigma.nvim

2023-03-16T22:50:00+01:00

I kind of promised another post, with more substance this time, so here we go.

Not long ago I made a large overhaul and refactoring of SigmaVimRc, even calling it stable at that point, but… It also showed me that actually keeping Vim and Neovim support in one config was holding back the project, both ways. At first I tried a crazy approach, trying to make it Lua-first, since Vim supports it as well, but in the end its support is pretty limited and it just wasn’t viable. So, there were two options.

Dropping Vim support and going full Lua

That would be like, most beneficial to me, as I daily drive Neovim, but it would defeat the purpose of this project which was aimed to support Vim and provide an IDE-like experience. So the project could as well be scrapped. As for simplicitiy… Supporting two different editors complicated it a fair bit, mixing in a bunch of Lua code. Even though, VimScript is quite awful, that’s what we have. So the only way to save Vim support was…

Dropping Neovim support

…which may seem confusing, since I was just saying I use Neovim. Yup, that is correct. So, since I decided to sunset Lua support and go pure VimScript again… I created a separate, Neovim-only config. Which is Sigma.nvim.

Future of the Lone Wolf’s Vim configs

I’m quite realistic here: SigmaVimRc is not going to be as actively maintained as it used to. It won’t be my daily driver anymore, but I feel it is still good config to use with Vim, so I’m not going to abandon it either. It will be put in maintenance mode, made simple again as it originally was. One choice for every plugin, with ALE in place of CoC. I’m still working on finishing that part. I might actually daily drive it for a moment to make sure it’s really fine. Only thing left honestly is making the completion and snippets work. And some visual tweaks. I also thought that maybe when Vim9 hits all the stable distros, I might port it to Vim9Script.

As for Sigma.nvim: it is 100% usable already, if it lacks something, it might be some documentation and tests when it comes to overriding the plugin configs: at least an additional way of doing it, which might be not even most optimal. So, if you use SigmaVimRc and you are Neovim user: switch to Sigma.nvim and Lua. Or fork. :)

There will be more updates soon, so if interested, keep your eyes peeled.

That’s that. Hit me up on Mastodon or Twitter.

My lifelog… I guess

2023-03-16T00:00:00+01:00

Well, hello there. If you’ve been following me, you might have already noticed that my YouTube channel went radio silent a while ago. Just in a moment I started getting some nice feedback and it is kind of nothing I can do about it right now. I thought that some stuff will be resolved by now, but it isn’t. And I’m not in a place (mentally and physically) to sit down and record a full fledged video. Instead I decided to maybe write some more.

If I’m being frank, I don’t know what else could I say. I think I’m long past spilling some personal stuff on a blog on the Internet. Things are not really fine. They will be fine, eventually. Hopefully. There are things out of my control, so I’m spending some time tinkering and coding my little private projects, like rewriting my Vim framework in Lua. It deserves it’s own blog post though.

That’s that. Hit me up on Mastodon and Twitter.

My Devlog

2023-02-25T00:00:00+01:00

#+title: KyotoNight and SigmaVimRc dev log #+layout: post #+tags: Vim colorscheme plugin SigmaVimRc #+date: 2023-02-25 14:40 +0200 So, I fullfilled my [[https://bringback.blog][bringback.blog]] 3 posts in January thing and then went radio silent. That has to do not really with sheer laziness, but some other real life stuff, which is also reflected in the lack of activity on my YouTube channel. Recently a month old video was uploaded, so it's technically not new either. I was more active with some tinkery stuff, and also decided to update my Vim projects. Development on SigmaVimRc and KyotoNight colorcheme kind of staled, but that is caused by the fact, that... well, there's pretty much nothing to add there. I daily drive both of these projects in my [[https://codeberg.org/wmwnuk/dotfiles/src/branch/main/ide/.config/nvim][Neovim config]], and there are no issues to fix there, at least in my own experience. But there was some stuff to add. *** [[https://github.com/voidekh/kyotonight.vim][KyotoNight colorscheme]] New additions to the repo were some new extras and little changes to existing ones, so it can hardly be called improvements to the core of the project. I made some changes to i3 theme, added tym (a minimalistic Lua terminal emulator), Contour (a modern QT terminal emulator) and Xfce4 terminal and panel themes. And that's pretty much it. All these were made a while before, but I figured to drop them into the repo, because someone might like to use it, and also to keep the repo updated. *** [[https://github.com/voidekh/SigmaVimRc][SigmaVimRc]] My (Neo)Vim framework got some meaningful fixes a while ago. This time I added support for the template files, which allows you to create your own templates for new file creation with some boilerplate code already there, or some file headers, which is always nice. One meaningful fix, for LSP users, was updating the default Lua LSP server to lua_ls from sumneko_lua that got deprecated. Not much to do here besides that, as I'm not indeting on bloating the config with tens of plugins Doom Emacs-style, and since it's very simple framework (if you can even call it that), there aren't many places it can fail either. I'm also not entirely sure if anyone except me uses it right now. If you do, tell me. Anyway, that would be it for today, a short update on what I've been doing with my little projects this month. I also feel kind of under the weather, which is a bit unfortunate for several reasons, but that that. Have a nice day, and hit me up on [[https://fosstodon.org/@lanius][Mastodon]] or [[https://twitter.com/laniusdev][Twitter]].

Why I Stayed On Github

2023-01-30T00:00:00+01:00

#+title: Why I stayed on GitHub #+layout: post #+tags: GitHub Microsoft copilot GitLab SourceHut Codeberg Gitea BitBucket #+date: 2023-01-30 22:51 +0200 As you may already know, [[https://github.com][GitHub]] had some bad reputation going on. Especially when it came to copilot using GPL licensed code not respecting the license. Also, the single fact that it is now owned by Microsoft seems a red flag, especially for FOSS enthusiasts and activists. Even I moved my private repos to GitLab at that time, and kind of considered leaving it, but since I started actually maintaining some little projects, and contributing a little to some other projects I learned why it would be hard for me to leave GitHub totally behind. *** Alternatives The first one right off the bat is [[https://gitlab.com/][*GitLab*]], which is open-source. Of course, it is backed by a corporation, which may again, be a red flag to some, but still better than GitHub in that regard. But in other regards... I have no idea how to explore or discover code on GitLab if I don't already have a link to it. It seems to lack the social platform aspect of GitHub or discoverability of new projects. Then there's [[https://sr.ht][*SourceHut*]]. Well... It's interesting, it has it's own open-source backend, looks very minimal, has recently some controversy with banning crypto projects, and also to actually host repos there you need (or needed?) to donate. It's also very barebones. For sure useful, but in the 'social' aspect it is seems worse than GitLab. *BitBucket*... I don't believe anyone in their right mind uses any Atlassian product for their private stuff, so I'm not even including it as an alternative. And there's [[https://codeberg.org/][*Codeberg*]]. It's based on Gitea and as little as I actually browsed it, it might be the only actual alternative to GitHub. It has everything GitHub has (I'm not counting copilot of course), has a way explore projects like... sensibly. As a bonus, it actually respects .org documents options. E.g.: it generates table of contents automatically. In the realm of being pro open-source: it is backend by a non-profit organization, is open-source of course and seems only real alternative to GitHub at the moment. *** Will I switch? Well... I will sure explore Codeberg more. I'm already mirroring my main personal [[https://codeberg.org/wmwnuk][projects]] there. I might move my private repos there as well. GitHub still has perks of being most popular, usually the default hosting place for open-source projects, Vim plugins, etc. And even though it's owned by Microsoft, and all the problems copilot and the way it was implemented has, it is still a good service. *** You said mirroring? Some services offer automatic mirroring of repos, but what I do, I just add another origin to my local repository and push changes to all of them (if I remember that is), and that's it. #+begin_src sh git remote add codeberg git@codeberg.org:user/repo.git git push codeberg master #+end_src That would be it for this one. Soon I will upload a video about NitruxOS, not sure when, because... stuff. Have fun and fight me on [[https://fosstodon.org/@lanius/109780369229087671][Mastodon]] or [[https://twitter.com/laniusdev/status/1620178652842364935][Twitter]].

Top 5 Most Interesting Linux Distributions Of 2022

2023-01-21T00:00:00+01:00

#+title: Top 5 most interesting Linux distributions of 2022 #+layout: post #+tags: linux distros Ubuntu Slackware EndeavourOS Devuan Nitrux #+date: 2023-01-21 12:01 +0200 I guess this will be the most cliche text on this blog yet, but here we go. This year I've been distro hopping a few times, exploring few different Linux distributions. So, that's not really a true 'best distros' list, but list of quite interesting ones with a summary what's special about them. *** 5. [[https://www.devuan.org/][Devuan]] So, Devuan GNU + Linux (yes, that's the full name), is a Debian fork. It was created when Debian adopted systemd, and Devuan kept to sysvinit, also adding alternative init system options later, like runit, openrc or dinit. It has all the perks of Debian, minus systemd. It has stable, testing and unstable branches, ships with Xfce by default. I was using the Ceres / unstable branch and had no issues whatsoever. It is last on the list, because there's nothing particularly interesting about it. It's just boringly solid and good. *** 4. [[https://rollingrhino.org/][Ubuntu Rolling]] Yup, there's a flavour of Ubuntu on the list. I used Rolling Rhino Remix, which was just renamed to Rhino Linux. It is basically devel branch of Ubuntu with some changes / additional tools, that you might find quite nice to have, but in the end - installing from a daily build and tracking 'devel' codename might be just enough. The tools provided offer easy installation of various desktops and window managers (either Ubuntu flavoured or vanilla), and easy updates. Funny enough, I found this flavour of Ubuntu being the most stable I ever had. It might be because I ripped off the snapd from it (which is offered in the tools provided). In general, interesting idea. *** 3. [[https://nxos.org/][NitruxOS]] I have, or had, an affinity for AppImages. Nitrux uses them as primary package format, is purely 64-bit system, uses openrc as init system, has custom set of apps based on Maui Framework maintained by Nitrux, and uses KDE-based desktop that is really beautiful. It's Debian based, pulls KDE from KDE Neon (Ubuntu based) and offers drivers for Nvidia cards from Ubuntu ppa. I had some criticisms for Nitrux, like AppImages no matter how nice they are, not being a good primary software source: mainly because iffy updates cycle, many quite ancient apps, and relying solely on third party not very updated software source. That point still stands. Other was usage of pkcon which is an awful to use package manager, and basically being Franken-Debian by design - even you're not suppossed to really mess with the base system, and it's kind of taken care of now, because it became immutable - which is only natural way of progression with what they are doing. Flatpak is now also supported out of the box, which is a really good choice. So, point for Nitrux. Another thing I had a criticism for is that they could base on Devuan openrc, so that they would at least have all the openrc services already in the repo ready to go. Although, this also doesn't stand anymore, since the system is immutable. So, they ship what they ship. And that really is fine. Even though I had some hurdles with Nitrux, and it is a little scary to talk smack about it, seeing how vocal its founder is about it (just kidding a little), it definately is a most interesting distro on this list, and it's design was an inspiration for me building my Devuan installation, which basically was a simplified Nitrux clone, incorporating many choices they made. And I carried it to other distros later. Whether it be keeping to a clean 64-bit, the looks when in KDE and so on. It also is becoming more and more interesting with every release. I will surely revisit it on my [[https://youtube.com/@laniusdev][channel]] soon. *** 2. [[https://endeavouros.com/][EndeavourOS]] The best way to install Arch. Full stop. I mean, unless KDE is your thing, then maybe XeroLinux is what you want, or XeroG if you're into GNOME. Other than that, EndeavourOS gives you bare minimum to have a comfortable, ready to use Arch desktop. Looking pretty too. At least in the Xfce or i3 versions, as I haven't looked at all of them. Arcolinux might present you with more full offering here, but I found it a little overwhelming with all the stuff you can put into it during setup. Endeavour on the other hand gives you functional system, that you can build upon the Arch-way... without tedious installation process, and being met with ugly defaults. Clean, simple, powerful. *** 1. [[http://www.slackware.com/][Slackware Linux]] What can I say. I just have a soft spot for Slackware and the way you do stuff here. It's very traditional, and very Unix-like system. It's the oldest still active Linux distribution. It's dead simple in design, so easy to understand and work on, but also it doesn't do much for you. Arch Linux is a walk in the park to setup. In Slackware many things you get for granted, you have to set up by yourself. As soon as you get hold of it, you realize though how powerful it is. Slackware-current branch is pretty much on par with Arch when it comes to software being cutting edge, and even on stable branch you get many latest and greatest programs from SlackBuilds, which is kind of Slackware's AUR. That is totally a distro for advanced users, but it's also tinkerer's heaven. Arch gives you LEGO bricks to build your system, Slackware comes pre-assembled, but you can do whatever you want from that point, including switching its init system, and you 3D print your own bricks. That's pretty weird analogy, but if Linux by default gives you freedom, Slackware gives you even more. It's very simple, but also not easy. My absolutely favourite distro. So, that's that. Have in mind that none of these are beginner friendly, more intermediate user level (Devuan, Rolling Rhino, Nitrux, Endeavour) or advanced (Slackware). Yes, I just said that Arch is an intermediate user level distro. Fight me on [[https://fosstodon.org/@lanius/109726940402038425][Mastodon]] or [[https://twitter.com/laniusdev/status/1616762184884699137][Twitter]]. And late happy New Year!

My Vim Framework

2023-01-06T00:00:00+01:00

#+title: My Vim framework #+layout: post #+tags: vim neovim dotfiles ricing SigmaVimRc #+date: 2023-01-06 00:24 +0200 Now for something entirely different... I've made a Vim framework (or however you wanna call it), it is in pretty solid shape already, I'm daily driving it and it's very good, at least the resulting experience of working in Neovim (or Vim), hopefully code isn't too awful, as I'm not very experienced in VimScript (nor Lua to be honest). Yesterday I've written a [[big README update][https://github.com/voidekh/SigmaVimRc#what-is-sigma]], that actually explains what it is. You might go and read it, but let me TLDR it for you, or just talk more about ideas I follow in SigmaVimRc (and in my workflow). It all started when I discovered lazygit, and lazygit.nvim plugin which has integrated it into Neovim. External tool in my editor? Very cool. Later I had a little phase, when I switched from Neovim to Vim, and actually used it for work, and pretty much everything. And I loved it. The simplicity! But in the end I came back to my Neovim. Somewhere in between all of this, I started using nnn file manager as file picker, still going into using standalone tools instead of plugins. Also, when using Vim I had to come up with way of integrating lazygit into Vim... which turned out to be very easy with remote control enabled kitty: #+begin_src vim nnoremap gg execute 'kitty @ launch lazygit -p' getcwd() #+end_src So, it launches lazygit in current working directory in a kitty pane. After figuring it out, I immediately removed lazygit plugin from my Neovim, as using one line of code instead of whole plugin (however cool it was), is the way I wanted to go. Add also fzf to the mix, which can be used outside Vim of course, as a bonus you can use Fzf inside of nnn. And then came the idea of fully functional Vim and / or Neovim setup, that keeps it simple, uses simple solutions and does the things the UNIX way (one tool for one task). So, Vim does the editing and all that comes with it. Fzf does fuzzy finding. Nnn does file browsing, picking and generally working with files and directories. And of course lazygit does the git repos lazily - I always forget about, because it literally has no plugin to work perfectly integrated in this setup. Only catch is that you need kitty or tmux. Otherwise you might opt for lazygit.nvim plugin for Neovim. Vim sadly has no integration like this. Telescope might be cool and all, but it's still just a Neovim plugin, not usable outside of Neovim, unless you want to live in Neovim as it was Emacs. [[/assets/sigmavimrc.png]] So, you might want to check out [[https://github.com/voidekh/SigmaVimRc][SigmaVimRc on GitHub]], and maybe also [[https://youtu.be/0QCtaTwuqDE][my video]] about it, the first one in series. I'm no Vim guru, but want to share some stuff that beginner or maybe more experienced vimmers can find useful. This is also my first entry for [[bringback.blog]]. Happy New Year, and happy vimmin'! PS: It wasn't that much TLDR was it?

The Twitter Madness

2022-12-11T00:00:00+01:00

#+title: The Twitter madness #+layout: post #+tags: twitter media "Elon Musk" politics misinformation "Elton John" #+date: 2022-12-11 13:01 +0200 Recently I'm getting a little sick of social media again. I barely use Twitter at this point. It doesn't really do much in terms of Twitter shit, because half of my Mastodon feed is Elon this (or Egon), and Elon that. The frustration that comes from it led me to writing this post. The straw that broke the camel's back, is this Tweet by Elton John: [[/assets/elton-tweet.png]] Misinformation flourishing unchecked... He doesn't use Facebook either, right? Or [[https://facebook.com/EltonJohn][does he]]? What really irritates me is that for some reason people are willing to trust a private company to decide what is misinformation and what is not. Even the governments fail at that. It was a big thing when COVID started, that certain opinions that it originates from a certain lab, were axed as misinformation, accounts were banned, but then suddenly some of government announcements got marked as misinformation. Although no one was banned. And I believe no one was unbanned either. A [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FooO8KbPEWY][video]] by Alec Bostwick explains it very well. This one is specifically about YouTube, but you can get a good idea. Meanwhile, Facebook doesn't give a flying duck about misinformation as long as it makes people scroll the site longer. And now, Elton John, and loads of Twitter and Mastodon users parrot this notion that Twitter should tell you what is misinformation or what is not. The truth is, should they be wrong about something - which they would for sure be - it would lead to even more harmful misinformation. Misinformation should be eradicated organically, not arbitrarily filtered. The rage about Elon Musk allowing 'nazis' is another cane of worms. I believe Twitter still doesn't allow harassment, and illegal content, like death threats, calling for violence and sharing of some heinous media. So, is allowing people with unpopular, wrong or harmful opinions on a site that is supposed to be 'global marketplace' a bad thing? I don't think so. They still would be punished for breaking TOS or law itself. I feel like people just don't want people they disagree with there. So, what they actually want to do is deplatform people that have other views. They complain about 'fascists' being allowed on the site now, but axing views not fitting the general agenda seems pretty 'fascist' to me. And the outcome of this is existence of sites that exclusively consist of these 'rejects', which allows or even makes them radicalize themselves even more, because no one tells them they are wrong. There is no discussion, no exchange of ideas. Only validation of one's world view, which often is very wrong or misguided. And Twitter DMs were never secure, they were never end-to-end encrypted, and they always could have been read by someone. And apparently they [[https://nitter.tiekoetter.com/abgutman/status/1601037060864811009][weren't given]] to some right wing reporters. Should we trust this statement? I don't think so. As long as DMs aren't encrypted, we should always assume that they aren't private, full stop. Before someone would say that I'm some kind of Elon's fanboy - because of course, you can either be Elon's fanboy or Elon's hater, there's nothing in between - I do think Elon is, maybe not necessarily a moron, but... a billionaire. He lives in a different world, and cannot give a shit about normal people, because he doesn't understand how to be a normal, regular person anymore. He cannot relate. He already is on Mars. That's why we cannot rely on him or any other billionaire to do the right thing for the masses. Because they don't know what is good for us. They might think they know, but they are perceiving it from a perspective that most of us would never have. And even if they could somehow relate, they could still just be wrong. Twitter was never a pristine site, it was for a long time now, a cesspool, a dumpster fire, and it still is. Pretending that it just got bad beacuse of Rocket Man, is just stupid. It's whole another story though. Now, you can argue with me on [[https://twitter.com/laniusone/status/1601913409993379841][Twitter]] or [[https://fosstodon.org/@lanius/109494963691213688][Mastodon]]. See you soon!

Im Back On Slack

2022-12-10T00:00:00+01:00

#+title: I'm back on Slack! [VIDEO] #+layout: post #+tags: distro slackware linux video #+date: 2022-12-10 11:22 +0200 So, here's my little come back / Slackware video. I plan making a follow up getting more into details, but here's the [[https://youtu.be/2mEX7Mckk8c][video]].