rawdogging C in vim like it’s 90s cause im too lazy to set up my nixvim on the server
photo of macbook pro 15 screen, it’s running linux and cosmic desktop. vim with snac C code is opened. i show “V” sign with fingers to cam, nails are freshly painted matte black
The notification filter is a great quality-of-life improvement, and the implementation looks clean. Thanks for taking care of the UI helper and the small code style fixes as well.
I ran similar measurements on my Slackware system using ps (RSS per process), focusing on the desktop itself rather than applications. With evilwm, Xorg + WM stays around ~95 MB, and ~165 MB including PipeWire and my usual terminal.
For comparison, pekwm on the same setup is roughly ~80 MB heavier, which matches its additional features. Really nice to see careful and transparent measurements like this. Congrats on the post.
Screen editors (nvi, vim, etc.) assume you want to scroll,
see context, and move a cursor interactively.
Huge files break those assumptions.
For large files (1GB+):
Inspect: head, tail, grep
Understand structure: awk, sed -n (stream, don’t load)
Surgical changes: ed or sed
Open a screen editor only when you need to rewrite text.
Benchmark (1GB text file):
nvi -> 20.1s (eager line indexing ~25M lines)
vim -> 7.7s (lazy loading, deferred UI cost)
ed -> 4.0s (I/O-bound buffering, no TUI overhead)
Large files don’t need better editors.
They need better workflows.
For huge files, the right solution is not tuning screen editors,
but using the right tools:
shell tools for inspection
ed for known, surgical changes
screen editors when interactive rewriting is actually needed
PS:
nvi chooses predictability over perceived speed.
The slowdown is not a flaw — it’s the cost of preserving
classic vi semantics within a screen-editor model.
yes, exactly 👍
less -n (or less -N depending on the need) is a great example of using the right tool for inspection.
Fast startup, streaming, and search without loading the whole file into a screen editor.
Screen editors (nvi, vim, etc.) assume you want to scroll,
see context, and move a cursor interactively.
Huge files break those assumptions.
For large files (1GB+):
Inspect: head, tail, grep
Understand structure: awk, sed -n (stream, don’t load)
Surgical changes: ed or sed
Open a screen editor only when you need to rewrite text.
Benchmark (1GB text file):
nvi -> 20.1s (eager line indexing ~25M lines)
vim -> 7.7s (lazy loading, deferred UI cost)
ed -> 4.0s (I/O-bound buffering, no TUI overhead)
Large files don’t need better editors.
They need better workflows.
For huge files, the right solution is not tuning nvi,
but using the right tools:
shell for inspection, ed for known changes,
and nvi when interactive rewriting is actually needed.
PS:
nvi chooses predictability over perceived speed.
The slowdown is not a flaw — it’s the cost of correctness
within a screen-editor model.
That’s really cool 😄
KDE 1 on Slackware 15 is a nice throwback.
A SlackBuild for it would be awesome — especially for people who enjoy retro / historical desktops.
I’ve been reading a bit about this and went through the OpenZFS Slackware doc, plus a Portuguese guide + video that actually shows encrypted ZFS root working.
What struck me is that encrypted ZFS root on Slackware doesn’t really feel like a first-class path in either case. Both seem to rely on very strict dataset layout and initrd ordering, without much safety net.
The “breaks during zpool import / can’t mount on /mnt” thing usually looks like the root dataset being touched at the wrong moment (missing -N, canmount=noauto, or the key not being there yet in initrd).
The video works because it’s very explicit about when the pool gets unlocked, importing without mounting, and only mounting one ROOT dataset.
ZFSBootMenu sounds useful later on, but it doesn’t really avoid having to get those basics right first — especially on Slackware where nothing is automated.
I spent the last days building and testing a few minimalist X11 window managers on Slackware: evilwm, shod and Notion — even patching Notion to build with GCC 15.
evilwm is still my lightweight, workspace-oriented backup WM, but for a tab-based, rule-driven stacking workflow, nothing I tried comes close to pekwm.
Firefox, terminal and mail living in one frame, out of the way — that’s still the sweet spot for me.
Same here — the mouse is basically only used to open apps like Firefox or st.
After that, pekwm rules handle everything, so there’s no need to manually group windows or use middle-click at all.
For example, I use autoproperties like this:
Property "Firefox" {<br></br> Group { Name = "main" }<br></br>}<br></br><br></br>Property "st" {<br></br> Group { Name = "main" }<br></br>}<br></br><br></br>Property "aerc" {<br></br> Group { Name = "main" }<br></br>}<br></br>
Once started, those apps always land in the same tabbed frame automatically — fully keyboard-driven and very laptop-friendly.
I've just published version 2.86 of #snac, the simple, minimalistic #ActivityPub instance server written in C. Once again, most of the work has been done by fellow developers because they are the best. It includes the following changes:
Truncate RSS titles at UTF-8 character boundaries (contributed by lxo).
Link contacts to single-user people pages. Also, user's posts are shown (contributed by lxo).
Added emoji reactions (contributed by violette).
Mastodon API: Fix for some client notifications (contributed by violette), fix for a status visibility error (contributed by fruye).
If the query variable terse of a public post page is set to anything, no header is shown.
Fixed search failures when the query string has any leading blank.
📦 Just published a new note: Nerdctl and Containerd on Slackware 🚀
A lightweight alternative to Docker, no systemd required.
Covers install via SlackBuilds, rc.containerd, CNI networking, and some handy nerdctl examples.
It's time to consider switching to another instance again; one that's not totally out of sync with daily life, but has a more technical focus. I miss that emphasis from fosstodon.
Just stumbled upon this amazing tool called zk! It's a command-line assistant for maintaining a plain text Zettelkasten or personal wiki. Perfect for programmers and note-takers alike! 🌟
Plasma 6.4 is available now for your #slackware current based systems. I messed up the changelogs (and don’t have time to fix them) but we’ve removed ‘drkonqi’ and there’s 2 new pkgs ‘aurorae’ & ‘kwin-x11’. Please add drkonqi to your blacklists and remove the 6.3.5 release! #slackaroni#kde6https://slackware.lngn.net/
I've still never gotten into fzf (and maybe I never will!) but I think it's really cool that you can use a fzf 1-liner to make things like this little UI for reviewing git commits
(fzf stands for "fuzzy finder" but I think it's interesting that you can use it for many things that do not involve searching or finding at all!)
