XQuartz VS blink

brew install --cask xquartz

Or install from the project homepage [1]. Then just launch the X11 app. Note that it does require the application to be built for Mac - it’s not an emulator, just an implementation of the X11 APIs.

[1] https://www.xquartz.org/

I’ve recently spent some time working with terminal emulators in raw mode on macOS. While I chose to handle key events using escape codes, and found it seriously difficult (even gave up) to process the shift modifier key. However, I came across xquartz [1], which seems to do similar things as mentioned in the article. Would detecting shift key state have been trivial using such a library?

[1] https://github.com/XQuartz/XQuartz

The contents are rendered through gtk/cairo which not only goes through https://www.xquartz.org/ but also doesn't use GPU rendering (it was experimental 3 years ago, maybe better now). The main issue seems to be that neither Inkscape nor gtk people have much low level Darwin experts or time available to invest in debugging the whole rendering stack. See for example https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/-/issues/1614 and all the other referenced issues for all the gory details.

I live in a mezzanine studio using a M1 macbook for a workstation (writing/editing) and my old laptop with openbsd as a local server. I play music from that obsd server upstairs, which thus fills the whole room down to my desktop through the plugged-in speakers. My hosted library plays fine with mpd and ncmpcpp, and I just figured out it's not so difficult to use mpv to play streamed youtube videos, since firefox in XQuartz streaming from xenocara is way too slow anyhow.

There is an alternative: I ended up using Xquartz to give me an X11 environment and then running StumpWM as my tiling window manager. I used this for all my productive stuff, running full screen in MacOS, then a quick keypress got me back to the Mac environment.

I also used Xquartz. Emacs was better for me though because capturing text output and documenting what I captured was so much easier than X-window.

Link

I used a Mac for router software testing for over 20 years. I ran a shell on my mac either through Emacs (on occasion) or X-quartz with terminal connections to a dozen or more routers, linux and or Windows systems. In all that time, I opened the terminal on my mac maybe 5 times.

you can work on it

https://blink.sh/

see also https://docs.blink.sh/advanced/code

Fixes for the new OS, general improvements, and tons of thanks to all testers for their help! https://github.com/blinksh/blink/discussions/1850

You can already do that with an iPad (sans fat OS). If you're using Blink Shell (https://blink.sh) the external display is independent of what's on the iPad too, which works really neatly. This is the exact setup I used as my main dev machine in a previous role.

Would be very nice to see if this works on the new iPhones. A thin client with decent security in your pocket with keyboard/mouse/display at both home and work seems like a very approachable computing setup.

I use blink[0] with a 40% keyboard to develop linux program on a vps.

If you want to do programming without wireless interenet, another option is to connect a raspberry pi zero 2w (with usb gadget mode enabled) to the usb c port using a single usb cable. Then the rpi zero will share a ethernet network with iOS device. Then you can use blink (again) to mosh to raspberrypi.local to do the development on the pi.

The reason that I don't do it on android with termux is that there's no high quality terminal emulator like blink on android.

[0]: https://blink.sh

There's also Blink [1] which includes a local shell (limited), ssh and mosh support, and comes with a local-first, but remote-dependent, vscode implementation. Works with vscode.dev, code-server (the coder.com and microsoft version), coder.com etc. Not free but a free TestFlight versions available if you accept to be a beta tester of sorts.

I've had moderate success using it, but overall the code-server experience has been a bit lacking, in part due to languages I use, in part due to lots of software still assuming a local-first development environment (code-server/coder.com help with this by e.g. proxying http ports in your dev environment). A real IDE/code editor running on a MacBook is still way superior.

[1] https://blink.sh

If you're okay with a subscription model for a terminal type shell, I would recommend Blink. Does everything Prompt did and more. They have a 1-week trial, and then you can subscribe for $20 a year.

I also opened https://github.com/blinksh/blink/issues/1777 so from now on everyone is able to see the commit reference that was used for the build.

I took a wild stab at finding a non-subscription iOS app that supports Ed25519-sk, but ended up just moving back to ephemeral per-device ed25519 keys instead. Both Blink.sh and Terminus purport to support -sk / HW passkeys behind subscription paywalls, but I can't verify as I don't pay for subscription model apps.

Big fan of Blink, makes it super easy to quickly ssh into a remote machine

SSH or mosh (via https://blink.sh/) back to a cloud/remote NixOS VM. The iPad is purely a self-contained interface with a local browser.