Stephen Ramsay

Professor of English and Fellow at the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Writer of books. Mainly #DigitalHumanities.

Way into #Linux and #UNIX #Programming (esp. #CLIs). I teach all that, plus #TheoryOfNewMedia, and #TheaterHistory. Fanatical about #ElectronicMusic (especially #drone), #FountainPens, and #Coffee.

I always come back to C.

Thoughts are my own. I think.

Homepage: https://stephenramsay.net
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7741-9219
OpenPGP: https://stephenramsay.net/pgp
SourceHut: https://git.sr.ht/~sramsay/

Public Key

npub1c3hlels3q0d5w7qkya4qjyunw6hxsmeuhfmpe22vj3whvnlnxvesty2r2x

NIP-05 Address

sramsay_at_hcommons.social@momostr.pink

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Publishing to

relay.snort.social

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

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Published at

2026-10-23T04:58:02Z

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Last Notes

2026-08-17 15:52:11 UTC

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This is without running cmatrix, though, which I'd normally have running constantly. ;)

2026-08-17 15:49:12 UTC

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I want to run some more controlled tests, but basically: there is no meaningful difference (in terms of power draw) between cage+foot+tmux and kmscon+tmux. There isn't even that big a difference between those two and just starting tmux in your console. It's all very efficient. What isn't efficient is running a browser. So in some sense, these systems might be more useful for the energy discipline they tend to impose than for any inherent quality.

2026-08-17 14:38:07 UTC

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I now have this running. It is really much easier -- no futzing with ttys, no dealing with hardware quirks. Escape to browsers/viewers if you need them. It's really slick. I'm going profile your way, my way, and sway (s-way?) with powertop and see how they do. I suspect the difference between the first two will be negligible, though I actually don't know how much power a wayland compositor eats up. Also: foot was already my favorite terminal, so my beautiful config just works.

2026-08-17 14:08:57 UTC

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Yikes! I am definitely going to try it your way. kmscon is cool, but it can get easily you in a situation where you're kind of locked out.

2026-08-17 13:51:14 UTC

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It is entirely possible that what I'm attempting here is not a distro or an overlay, but a README for the odd person that wants to join my weird, GUI-hostile cult.

2026-08-16 22:39:07 UTC

I've been sort of playing around with a project that may turn into something.
Basically, I've set up a really fancy console-based Linux system. There's nothing terribly new; it uses kmscon and tmux. But here's the thing: it *looks* really cool, because I've hacked a theme for it.
It's true that any Linux install can be headless (server installs by definition), but this makes me wonder about a distro that is *for* framebuffers only. Not servers, but ancient laptops, low-power systems with displays . . .
#Linux #CLI

2025-08-12 14:12:25 UTC

Just discovered that ToneBoosters now has all their plugins in beta for Linux.
I used to use their stuff when I was on the Mac (in particular, Reelbus, which is an excellent tape saturation plugin). There have always been rumors that their offerings were more-or-less equal to that of certain rather famous Dutch developers (at a fraction of the price).
I've been playing with their limiter (Barricade) and their Reverb, and I think those rumors are true.
https://www.toneboosters.com/
#linuxaudio

2025-03-26 14:14:17 UTC

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You know? I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't quite know what guix was about. I'm a 20+ year #gentoo user, so I haven't paid attention to Nix and all that. It does look reallly, really cool.

2025-03-26 14:07:05 UTC

I'm not sure I can trace how I got there, but something had me playing around with GNU Guile (I've always liked the idea of an embeddable Scheme, I just never got around to looking at it closely).
Anyway, Guile is way cooler than I thought -- way more "unix-y" than other Schemes I've known.
But the real surprise was a static site generator -- Haunt (https://dthompson.us/projects/haunt.html) -- and a full-blown web framework -- Artanis (https://artanis.dev/)!
I am so glad both of these things exist.
#Scheme #Guile #Webdev