Echasnovski (pt 2): Linux, Terminals, and Tools (Ghostty vs Kitty, NixOS, Arch)

Joshua Blais: Back Pain in Tech, Guix, Emacs, 34-Keys, Going Offline

Joshua Blais is back on the podcast, and this episode goes all over the place: Guix, Nix breaking, distro hopping, Emacs, Neovim, 34-key keyboards, home row mods, back pain, ADHD, Adderall, phone addiction, online presence, AI, spirituality, gratitude, community, and making money on YouTube. We start with Linux and editor talk, including why Nix broke, what Guix is, why Joshua uses Emacs, whether he might go back to Neovim, and the difference between Doom Emacs and vanilla Emacs. Then we get into the ergonomic side of tech: back problems, chairs, keyboard placement, Colemak, concavity, 34 keys, where Shift goes on a tiny keyboard, ZMK, QMK, switches, and how keyboard choices affect your body. The second half gets more personal. We talk about substance abuse, Adderall, the ADHD trend, putting your phone away, whether kids should have phones or tablets, trying to build an online presence while also wanting to go offline, monetizing YouTube, having a community, IRC, networking, AI, spirituality, gratitude, and whether the Luke Smith path is the right path. Video: https://youtu.be/9ziLQK_kmKY [https://youtu.be/9ziLQK_kmKY] What's the best way to support me? https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enough [https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enough] Timeline: 00:00:00 Intro 00:00:00 Highlights 00:03:17 Nix: the unbreakable OS broke 00:05:15 What is GUIX? 00:06:06 Topics and who is who in the thumbnail 00:07:23 The podcast has its own youtube channel now 00:08:24 Distro hopping and GUIX 00:18:10 Plans on going from Emacs to Neovim (again)? 00:21:15 Doom emacs vs vanilla emacs 00:26:03 Back problems in the tech community 00:35:50 Yoga balls? Herman Miller chairs are garbage 00:37:50 How do you sleep, you like to be hugged or be the hugger? 00:40:40 Back problems aggravated by your keyboard, colemak? 00:47:24 Where can people find your book? 00:49:50 34 keys, homerow mods, where you put shift? 00:52:34 Hot take about keyboard concavity, keyboard placement 01:00:50 zmk, qmk, gui tool for configuring or in text editor like a chad? 01:03:18 What type of switches, soft, hard, noisy, silent 01:05:20 Difference between linear and tactile switches 01:06:45 Resources for learning emacs as a beginner? 01:10:51 Substance abuse and adderal consumption, the ADHD fashion 01:18:05 Can you put your phone away for a couple of days? 01:19:47 Will you give phone or tablet to your kids? 01:22:00 Tough to try to have an online prescence but trying to go offline? 01:34:05 How to monetize this youtube thing 01:37:09 Having a community? IRC? 01:40:39 My networking journey 01:42:48 How do you feel about AI nowadays? 01:45:35 Thoughts on spirituality? 01:52:35 Being grateful 01:57:58 Is the Luke Smith path the right path?

FFF Claims to Be the Best Neovim File Picker. Is It?

Interview with Dmitriy Kovalenko, creator of FFF, a fast file search picker for Neovim that describes itself as “the best file search picker for neovim. Period.” We’ll talk about why he built FFF, how it compares to tools like Telescope, fzf-lua, and snacks.nvim, and why file picking in Neovim is still such a hot topic. We’ll also get into performance, memory usage, plugin bloat, Rust, Neovim workflows, and the fun drama that happens when someone says their tool is the best. Dmitriy is also known for having strong opinions online. We’ll talk about open source, controversial takes, what makes a Neovim plugin actually good, and whether modern Neovim setups are becoming too bloated. Video: https://youtu.be/HRx3B5wYcrI [https://youtu.be/HRx3B5wYcrI] What's the best way to support me? https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enough [https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enough] Timeline: 00:00:00 - Highlights 00:01:14 - Why are you so hated in the Neovim Subreddit? 00:06:22 - Snacks smart picker demo and why fff was born 00:09:44 - FFF weird view when small resolution. Previewing images 00:12:19 - What is FFF? Demo comparing it to snacks in chromium codebase 00:17:47 - Can you change the sorting options in FFF? 00:20:29 - Thoughts on telescope? 00:21:07 - how to search in hidden files? 00:26:49 - fff jacket giveaway 00:27:53 - Why Neovim and not other editor? 00:31:51 - Why Kitty and not Ghostty? 00:35:11 - Kitty sessions? Thoughts on Tmux? 00:38:57 - Kitty Sessions demo 00:40:48 - FFF sloppy 00:42:23 - FFF vs Snacks on the linux kernel codebase demo 00:44:34 - Typos for being so fast? 00:50:20 - Thoughts on mini.pick and Echasnovski's plugins 00:52:50 - Rust is your main language? 00:58:07 - Why are you daily driving macOS? 00:59:39 - Any apps that leverage FFF in a GUI? 01:04:08 - FFF sorting capabilities? 01:05:24 - Plans for future projects? 01:12:48 - Dmitriy Kovalenko youtube channel 01:14:33 - What do you do for a living? 01:15:25 - Feel depressed about AI? 01:19:30 - Chat content idea: react to folke's plugins, do you hate Folke? 01:27:42 - What does FFF stand for? 01:28:47 - FFF started as a Neovim plugin, what is it now? 01:30:57 - Where can people find you on twittter or github? 01:31:38 - Why can't AI edit videos?

Kovid Goyal on Kitty: Drag and Drop, Pixel Scrolling, and What’s Next

Mitchell Hashimoto wasn’t able to join this episode for personal reasons, so we made a small pivot. A lot of people already knew about the original Ghostty vs Kitty livestream, so I wanted to explain that clearly here too. Mitchell couldn’t make it this time, and I completely understand. We’ll see what happens in the future. That said, this still turned into a really fun conversation with Kovid Goyal, creator of kitty and calibre. In this episode, we talk about kitty, recent popular features, terminal UX, design choices, performance, workflows, and some of what may be coming next. Kovid also talks about things like pixel scrolling with momentum, drag and drop for kitty UI elements like windows and tabs, and an early look at a possible future drag and drop protocol for terminal programs, which could make things like transferring files between two different computers much easier. So even though this is no longer a Ghostty vs Kitty conversation, I still think this episode will be really interesting if you care about terminal emulators, keyboard-driven workflows, macOS, Linux, Neovim, native apps, developer tools, and open source software. Video: https://youtu.be/UDNVICQMXB0 [https://youtu.be/UDNVICQMXB0] What's the best way to support me? https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enough [https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enough] Timeline: 00:00:00 - Highlights 00:02:10 - Who is Kovid and what protocols he has contributed to the terminal ecosystem 00:11:00 - What's the difference between the kitty graphics protocol and sixel? 00:13:50 - What is Chafa? 00:15:11 - In terms of Neovim, can you explain what the Keyboard Protocol is? 00:18:43 - Undercurl, another protocol provided by Kovid to terminals 00:19:30 - Text sizing protocol, what is it? 00:25:22 - Neovim: What is needed to have variable font size? 00:27:55 - PR for kitty graphics protocol in Neovim terminal? 00:29:58 - choose-files kitten 00:31:51 - Will you add the chenglou pretext thing? 00:34:19 - Kitty Clipboard Protocol 00:35:57 - Kitty keyboard protocol coming to Ghostty? Works on macOS 00:36:56 - Does it replace OSC52? 00:38:33 - So are you trying to make Kitty like emacs? 00:39:57 - Drag and drop requested by developer of Yazi 00:41:11 - Drag and drop Kitty tabs? 00:43:39 - Why so many editors in the AI era, why Neovim like if its the 70s? 00:47:32 - Demos start: Resize kitty windows with mouse 00:48:46 - Drag tabs and windows around, even out to a new window 00:50:48 - Pixel scrolling, partial scrolling 00:52:14 - Momentum scrolling 00:52:48 - Partial scrolling works only with default scrollback, not in neovim 00:53:48 - Drag and drop links current behavior 00:56:12 - Drag and drop protocol 00:56:47 - kitten mouse-demo 00:57:33 - Demo drag and drop over SSH 00:59:48 - How do you feel about new features in kitty, you accept everything? 01:01:28 - What are your top 5 CLI tools? 01:03:43 - Dolev creator of gh-dash asks about browsers 01:05:23 - Demo: Kovid's top 5 neovim plugins? 01:08:38 - Conditional mappings depending on the state of the focused window 01:09:59 - Thoughts on alcohol and drugs? 01:12:40 - Thoughts on religion

Neovim 0.12 Release with the Core Team

In this episode, I’m joined by members of the Neovim core team to talk about the Neovim 0.12 release, the biggest new features, project direction, AI, workflows, plugins, and why people still use Neovim in a world full of AI editors and modern IDEs. This is not just a Neovim 0.12 feature overview. It’s also a conversation to help people get to know the humans behind the project. We talk about what changed in Neovim 0.12, how the release came together, what maintainers care about, how they personally use Neovim, and where they see Neovim going next. We talk about Neovim 0.12 features, multicursor, the new intro screen, the new build system, UI improvements, Ghostty progress bar support, checkhealth, bug reports, :restart, tmux-related workflows, terminal rendering, Doom in Neovim, LazyVim and Neovim 0.12, AI in Neovim, and more. If you use Neovim, Vim, LazyVim, Ghostty, tmux, or you’re just curious why people still care so much about terminal-based editors, this episode should be for you. -------------------------- Guests in this episode: Justin Keyes, Neovim lead maintainer GitHub: https://github.com/justinmk [https://github.com/justinmk] Maria Solano, Neovim core maintainer GitHub: https://github.com/MariaSolOs [https://github.com/MariaSolOs] Gregory Anders, Neovim core maintainer GitHub: https://github.com/gpanders [https://github.com/gpanders] bfredl, Neovim core maintainer GitHub: https://github.com/bfredl [https://github.com/bfredl] -------------------------- Video: https://youtu.be/EiBg91LTOYk [https://youtu.be/EiBg91LTOYk] What's the best way to support me? https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enough [https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enough] Timeline: 00:00:00 - Highlights 00:00:59 - What is Neovim? 00:06:45 - Why people still use Neovim with so many other options? 00:14:31 - How much AI are you integrating into Neovim? 00:17:21 - How is the money (donations) side of things going for Neovim? 00:19:44 - Who is Bfredl (Full time Neovim Employee, living the dream) 00:22:17 - Who is Maria Solano - MariaSolOs 00:23:37 - Who is Gregory Anders - gpanders 00:25:32 - What about Mitchell Hashimoto's Libghostty 00:29:12 - Who is Justin Keyes? 00:31:45 - What about multicursor? 00:33:13 - Justin asking: What do you see as the project direction? 00:43:04 - Bredl throwing Justin under the bus. Multicursor demo 00:44:12 - New Intro screen demo 00:46:37 - Ok, now really multicursor 00:50:11 - bredl demo: the new build system 00:53:24 - Maria demos 00:57:32 - How do I upgrade to neovim 0.12 as a mac virgin? 00:58:19 - What about LazyVim users and Neovim 0.12? 00:59:02 - Frontend andies that need to see their colors 01:01:12 - gpanders demo 01:02:01 - Progress bar when using Ghostty 01:04:12 - nvim_open_term to show rendered terminal output without escape sequences 01:06:06 - Playing Doom in Neovim 01:08:32 - Kitty scrollback works with neovim 0.12 no plugins 01:09:28 - Justin demo, super K for help files 01:12:29 - Checkhealth, bug report on GitHub 01:14:16 - UI 2 overview 01:19:07 - How does :restart work? 01:19:50 - Tmux functionality, attach, detach, etc

Echasnovski (pt 2): Linux, Terminals, and Tools (Ghostty vs Kitty, NixOS, Arch)

Part 2 of my 3+ hour chat with Echasnovski (mini.nvim / MiniMax) goes full Linux and tooling mode. We continue our Neovim discussion, then we get to know the nvim-mini team, talk about EndeavourOS + Arch (and the Ubuntu-to-Arch jump), how he approaches updates, thoughts on NixOS, and the macOS “it’s expensive” misconception. Then we get into terminals: why Ghostty over Kovid Goyal’s Kitty, whether the performance difference is real, and his thoughts on Kovid. If you’re into distros, terminals, and practical dev workflows, this one is for you. Video: https://youtu.be/UqlkKK7imjo [https://youtu.be/UqlkKK7imjo] What's the best way to support me? https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enough [https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enough] Timeline: 00:00:00 - Highlights 00:01:58 - MiniMax LSP config 00:06:19 - The team behind the nvim-mini project 00:08:40 - Are you a dictator like Justin and Kovid? 00:10:51 - Why do you do all this. Accept donations? 00:13:01 - Is each plugin a separate repo? How does that work? 00:14:46 - Why each plugin was moved to a separate repo? 00:17:43 - Background, studies, job 00:22:24 - Echasnovski needs support 00:24:27 - Are you part of the Neovim Core team? 00:25:03 - Contributions to Neovim 00:27:03 - Why this love for Neovim? 00:28:06 - Thoughts on Tmux and neovim tabs 00:29:31 - Relative line numbers? 00:33:23 - Thoughts on purists saying you have to stick to defaults 00:35:04 - Thoughts on extending Neovim 00:36:32 - Gregory Anders beef with the .setup call 00:46:45 - Thoughts on AI generated PRs 00:48:30 - Thoughts on AI, or should we say LLMs? 00:52:20 - Why Ghostty and not king Goyal's terminal? 00:55:58 - Felt performance difference between Ghostty and Kitty? 00:57:38 - Are you a fangirl of Kovid? (Kitty and Calibre creator) 00:58:59 - Which Linux distro do you use? EndeavourOS 01:01:10 - From Ubuntu to Arch 01:04:52 - Do regular updates on a day you have time 01:09:21 - Thoughts on NixOS 01:10:17 - Thoughts on macOS and the misconception that its expensive 01:15:17 - Thoughts on Echasnovski's accent 01:17:35 - From LazyVim to MiniMax?