Top all-time · #4499
K. Mandla
Personal blog · kmandla.wordpress.comsystemsproductivity
K. Mandla writes Motho ke motho ka botho, a personal blog at kmandla.wordpress.com about systems and productivity. Since 2010, 17 different Hacker News readers have linked it 24 times, most often “A comparison of text-based browsers”. The last post was in 2015, but the archive is still widely read.
K.Mandla's blog of Linux experiences
Most-linked posts?
- A comparison of text-based browsers3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-02-08
- /2010/08/11/how-to-use-teapot-like-a-pro/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-08-16
What Hacker News says?
Wow, big long thread here will take me some time to read but I know what the OP is saying. A few pages not mentioned already... The mysterious K Mandla gives 10 reasons not to buy a new computer http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/ten-reasons-not-to-b... The TOPLAP project (a real hack - give a teenager an old laptop and Ubuntustudio or similar, light blue touch paper, retreat). By the way, if anyone has resourc…
Comment linking /2008/10/28/ten-reasons-not-to-buy-a-new-computer/
on “The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones”Submitted A comparison of text-based browsers as a story · 14 points
HN discussionThis with WINE is what I think is the perfect combination of GUI and CLI... but as a long-time Windows user, several things stood out and made it look slightly off: the menu bar and padding around the icon labels is too tall the window borders are slightly too wide (compared to the default) scrollbar buttons shouldn't disable at end of travel sort direction indicator in header control (which first appeared in Win2k)…
Comment linking /projects/lookalike-windows-xp-classic/
on “Make Linux look like Windows 95”Submitted Sorry Microsoft: No cookie for you as a story · 6 points
HN discussionI can do that with GNU teapot. No VR needed. Heck, you could do that even with a 486 and a terminal attached to it. https://github.com/samuelludwig/teapot GNU teapot intro from the old K.Mandla: https://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/how-to-use-teapot-l...
Comment linking /2010/08/11/how-to-use-teapot-like-a-pro/
on “Excel 2.0 – Is there a better visual data model than a grid of cells?”Submitted Things to do with an old computer. Anyone can add more ideas? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionHaving wasted my childhood lurking the (unfortunately stale) KMandla's precious blogposts [0] to find new ways to squeeze functionality out of my EeePC701, I did not really find this video particularly interesting. Maybe i'm not the target audience. [0]( https://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/howto-switch-to-a-c... )
Comment linking /2010/10/19/howto-switch-to-a-console-lifestyle/
on “Can you use the terminal for everything? [video]”Submitted Computing Zen: How to switch to a console lifestyle as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThere's also Teapot, with FLTK or ncurses-based UI: https://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/how-to-use-teapot-l... Archived homepage of the project: https://web.archive.org/web/20211124073408/https://www.synta... Its most relevant feature seems to be 3-dimensional tables. From the home page: "Instead of the unflexible and complicated syntax used to address the values of cells in traditional spread sheets ("B1" or "…
Comment linking /2010/08/11/how-to-use-teapot-like-a-pro/
on “VisiCalc Executable for the IBM PC (1999)”Submitted A comparison of text-based browsers (2011) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIf you're into running GNU/Linux on older hardware, I can't recommend kmandla's blog[0] (abandoned since 2015, also skip the last post to go to the juicy bits) and Inconsolation[1] (by the same guy, abandoned since 2015 too) enough. [0] https://kmandla.wordpress.com/ [1] https://inconsolation.wordpress.com/
Comment linking /
on “4MB Laptop How-To: How to put a “grown-up” Linux on a small-spec laptop (2000)”Submitted A quick look at framebuffer applications as a story · 1 points
HN discussionhttp://www.syntax-k.de/projekte/teapot/ Tutorial: https://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/how-to-use-teapot-l...
Comment linking /2010/08/11/how-to-use-teapot-like-a-pro/
on “SES: Simple Emacs Spreadsheet”Submitted An antitechnoegalitarianizationist manifesto as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThe GUI elements look right for the most part, but the font and spacing gives it away --- the way it's rendered just screams "Linux" to me, for some reason. Here's a previous attempt at something similar, and once again the fonts produce a "something is off" feeling: https://kmandla.wordpress.com/projects/lookalike-windows-xp-...
Comment linking /projects/lookalike-windows-xp-classic/
on “Chicago95 Linux Theme”Hv3 -- tiny browser written in Tcl/Tk: https://lwn.net/Articles/311823/ Chimera -- from 1995: http://freshmeat.sourceforge.net/projects/chimera-www There's also an euphoric thread on Arch Linux forums around it: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=56814 In the command line world, there are also retawq and netrik. A fun comparison of these and other text browsers by kmandla: https://kmandla.wordpress.com/2011/…
Comment linking /2011/01/13/a-comparison-of-text-based-browsers/
on “A Fun List of Browsers”One of my favorite bloggers is K. Mandla, who runs command line only systems on older hardware: http://kmandla.wordpress.com/
Comment linking /
on “Life in Text Mode”Linux Mint does this on their LMDE version. A rolling release will mean that Canonical must provide an easy way to rollback to previous package versions or to save snapshots of the user's machine before upgrading. You can't expect that an Ubuntu end-user to have the same technical knowledge as someone with experience with Debian, Gentoo or the BSDs to troubleshoot when suddenly their computer is not booting and that…
Comment linking /2010/05/05/maximalism-is-a-better-word/
on “Canonical might switch Ubuntu to rolling releases for 14.04”When talking about Linux workflows on older devices it is always worth it to remind people of the existence of kmandla[0] and their later website Inconsolation[1] Too bad they don't seem to publish anymore. [0] https://kmandla.wordpress.com/projects/ [1] https://inconsolation.wordpress.com/
Comment linking /projects/
on “Using bad hardware: why I work in the terminal (2024)”Wordstar -> jstar from joe(1). Or try wordgrinder https://kmandla.wordpress.com/2008/11/30/howto-use-wordgrind...
Comment linking /2008/11/30/howto-use-wordgrinder-like-a-pro/
on “Ask HN: What's your favorite CLI or ncurses program?”glances is nice if you want to get an overview of your system resources: https://github.com/nicolargo/glances bmon and iftop can be used to see network usage: https://github.com/tgraf/bmon/ http://www.ex-parrot.com/pdw/iftop/ Similar to iftop there is also iotop, but instead of showing network usage, it shows disk usage: http://guichaz.free.fr/iotop/ Side note: There was a blog a couple years ago, which isn't being…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What's your favorite CLI or ncurses program?”I second that. For more terminal apps, check out kmandla's blog: http://kmandla.wordpress.com/software/
Comment linking /software/
on “Ask HN: Linux from Scratch.. Should I try it?”http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2006/12/25/ill-let-you-in-on-a-... The Linux version (complete with sorting office analogy).
Comment linking /2006/12/25/ill-let-you-in-on-a-little-secret/
on “How much computer memory do you need?”
