Date: 2025-05-31 Cosplay 1993 Some my articles are horrible and some are even worse. This one is one from those worse. I already wrote it, so you have to read it. Keep in mind that your opinion never matters. So let's move into the article. You spent years cutting. Stripping away. Removing until only what matters remains. Your system is lean, deadly. You command it like a sword. But here's the truth that no purist wants to admit: Sometimes, the right answer is a GUI. Not because it's easier. Not because it's pretty. But because it works better. For that job. For that context. For that moment. And if you're honest, brutally honest that's what being honest with yourself demands. The web browser. You can read HTML in w3m. You can dance around CSS in lynx. You can even pipe curl through grep and pretend it's practical. But let's not lie to ourselves. Modern web is not built for the terminal. You want to read an article? Search efficiently? Navigate a web app that's a tangled mess of JavaScript and floating divs? You are not hacking, you are suffering. A GUI isn't evil. It's an interface and sometimes, a better one. When reading, browsing, viewing, scanning eyes beat keys. When clicking one icon gets you there faster than typing three aliases and piping through less click. The web is bloated, chaotic, ad-ridden mess. It's marketing over content. It's broken by design. But it's still the primary medium for information. The web is a medium, not a master. You don't need to love the web. You need to extract from it. Get in, get the value, get out. No guilt. No shame. Just clarity and efficiency. Don't fake it with terminal wrappers around GUI problems. Don't suffer because of pride. Use the GUI when the GUI is better. Gopher or NEX over web proxy? The proxy is the tool. You don't owe purity to the Gopher or NEX protocol. You owe clarity to yourself. If a proxy serves you better, use it. If a browser renders it cleaner, view it. And when you are done, kill it. Don't do some extra work to pretend. But isn't Gopher meant for terminals? Sure. So is plain text. So is shell. But the question is always: what works best, now, with the least pain? And if you're already in a browser and it's one you control then using it to access Gopher isn't sin. It's smart. You use the shell when it wins. You use the browser when it wins. You use the proxy when it gets you to the content with zero bullshit. You don't build a shrine to protocol. You read the damn text. Real rebels aren't dogmatic. Holy terminal! Let it be said, clearly, without apology: The terminal is not sacred. You think you escaped the bloat. You think you are pure because you don't use GUI. But you're sitting inside a teletype emulator from the 1970s, pretending it's clean just because it doesn't have icons. You're not on Plan 9. You're not running a shell that speaks directly to the system like a living organism. You're running a fake TTY. You are emulating a piece of obsolete hardware so you can pretend the past was better. News flash: it wasn't. The terminal is a lie too. You type text into it, and it sends characters as if you're on some goddamn telegraph machine. This is not purity. This is legacy theater. You're swimming in escape sequences, terminal control codes, outdated standards. You copy, paste and watch the terminal vomit garbage because it's still pretending to be a VT100. You open tmux just to stack more lies inside each other like some twisted software nesting doll. You want clean? Try Plan 9. then we can talk again how Firefox is pile of trash. Plan 9 dumped the TTY because it was already garbage in the 90s. And here we are, in 2025, still piping text into xterm, foot, urxvt, whatever. All pretending to be a dead piece of hardware. Don't fall for the myth that terminal is minimal. It's just another GUI without mouse. Yes, it's useful. Yes, it's powerful. But it's still legacy junk. You didn't escape the system. You're just in a different prison. So use what works. Sometimes that's a browser. Sometimes that's a GUI email client. Sometimes it's even the damn terminal. But never pretend it's pure. Plan 9 - The system that was never adopted because it made too much sense. Plan 9 didn't patch the past. It replaced it. No TTY. No terminal emulator. You type into a window. A real window. The shell is not pretending to be hardware. It's not pretending to be 1975. Input and output go in and out. Why didn't it win? Because people are lazy. Because Plan 9 doesn't let you drag the corpse of legacy Unix with you. Because it forces you to think. It broke compatibility. It broke expectations. And that's exactly why it was right. Plan 9 wasn't slow, it was ignored. Because the industry doesn't want clarity, it wants control. Do you want to be free? Try Plan 9. Really use it. Not in a VM as a joke. Not as a toy OS to feel smart. Use it as your daily environment. Even for just a few days. Feel the difference. Plan 9 and the Mouse. The flaw in the purity. Plan 9 is clean. Plan 9 is elegant. But Plan 9 is also deeply mouse-centric. You can't ignore it. You use Acme, Rio, Sam, the mouse is everywhere. Selection, command execution, even navigation. It all leans hard into mouse interaction. The question is always: what gets in your way? In this case, it's probably the mouse. It's not unfixable. Plan 9 could have been built keyboard first. But it wasn't. Plan 9 is the cleanest OS ever made. But it's not sacred. Nothing is. Not even elegance. Browser vs Terminal: The Raw Truth Next time someone talks trash about using a web browser, hand him their fake-ass minimal terminal, and smash it over his head like a broken keyboard. You worship the terminal? You're worshipping a lie. The terminal is not pure. It's a teletype emulator. You're sitting inside a legacy interface, built to mimic a device that stopped being real before you were born. You're not in control. You're not special. You're emulating hardware built for 1970s mainframes. You say browsers are bloated? Sometimes the GUI is not a weakness. It's the correct fucking interface. You talk down on the browser while running X11? Spare me. Your terminal emulator is a GUI. You're in Xorg, Wayland, framebuffer hacks. It's all graphics. You're just pretending you're pure. Minimal, simple, clean does not mean broken retro. So next time you hear some bearded neck-tweaker mock your web browser from his broken-ass zsh prompt, remind him he's typing into a corpse. And if he opens his mouth again, you can print out his ~/.bashrc and strangle him with it. Browser wins. Terminal is dead. Use what works. Burn the rest. Minimalism is not pretending. It's deleting. Deleting everything that slows you down, whether that's your bloated desktop or your fake-purist terminal emulator. No gods. No brands. No sacred tools. Only what serves, what works. The moment you defend your tool instead of your work, you are already lost. It's not about having less. It's about having nothing in the way. Your system does not love you. Stop making excuses for its bullshit. That's all. We are done here. Your favorite tool will betray you. Be ready to kill it. You want less software? Start with your ego.