chesheer

https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@chesheer

My name is Ivan.
I am: Christian, Russian, translator, in that particular order, probably.

Homepage: https://iyer.ru

Public Key

npub14hwd80f4xt6dq7fqrgz9scxdw0zy6fh2tttey6x865e0s4h37gvstg2yzn

NIP-05 Address

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs2mhxnh56n9axs0ysp5pzcvrxh83zdym4944ujdrra2vhc2mclyxgpzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejsz9rhwden5te0wfjkccte9ejxzmt4wvhxjmcpp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqv3u5nr

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nostr.wine

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub14hwd80f4xt6dq7fqrgz9scxdw0zy6fh2tttey6x865e0s4h37gvstg2yzn

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Last Notes

2026-07-20 14:17:41 UTC

Newest additions to my library. I just can't help myself and always buy these good old CS books.
https://media.bsd.cafe/bsdmmedia01/media_attachments/files/116/952/721/956/415/308/original/4e433d69308dc9ac.jpg

2026-06-29 18:59:31 UTC

So I wanted to share with you this little project of mine. I delved into "retro-necromancy" and reanimated one very old UNIX utility called ile written by Robert Pendleton in 1988. I found it on one of the Walnut Creek source code CDs from 1994.
What it does is simply works like an input line editor (hence ile) for shells and programs that do not support interactive line editing. To put it simply, it adds Emacs-style keybindings like ^A, ^E, ^K, ^U and so on and command history that you can easily navigate.
Of course, these days it's hard to find a shell that doesn't support line editing.
But this little tool can still be usable, for example, with ed. It's nice to have Emacs-style editing in ed.
It can work like shell replacement or just run like a "middleman" between any given program. It respects terminal settings and doesn't get in a way. Keybindings are configurable.
Needless to say, the code from 1988 wouldn't run on any modern system. It was written in K&R style because there was no ANSI C standard yet! And #UNIX was quite a different beast back then.
So I ported it to modern systems, rewrote outdated bits (like sgttyb ioctls and brutal utmp handling).
Currently it builds and runs on #Linux, #OpenBSD, #FreeBSD and #NetBSD. Hopefully without too much bugs.
You can find it on Codeberg:
https://codeberg.org/chesheer/ile

2026-06-03 06:23:15 UTC

This is so Microsoft on so many levels.
Imagine buying Microsoft Office 2019 for your Mac. Perpetual licence. Just a good ol' software in a box (except without a box, I guess, times are digital).
"It's so great to own a real software and not a subscription", you think to yourself.
Now Microsoft basically says: "I'll do ya one better, pal. Now your Office 2019 will work in read-only mode. Hope you wrote everything you needed. Get a subscription already".
I didn't know you can do that. Sell a software and then just brick it with a proper announcement like it's the most natural thing to do.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/05/28/microsoft-is-killing-office-2019-for-mac-and-iphone-and-you-cant-do-much-about-it

2026-03-29 06:55:24 UTC

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I can absolutely understand it can do amazing and potentially groundbreaking things in some scientific fields if used right. Things we sometimes aren't capable of.
But I never understood why we need more code. We already have so much code no one probably ever read. And they want even more.
And then I remember they just want more money, and for them more money means more code... But when that money is spent what the hell are we gonna do with so much code no one will ever read?

2026-03-15 18:56:00 UTC

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Installed it right now and can confirm it works. No crashes.

2026-01-25 08:13:41 UTC

Stumbled upon this golden joke that says volumes:
WinRAR is more profitable than OpenAI.

2026-01-22 11:25:22 UTC

The Interwebs are full of interesting people. Like locksmiths who maintain #IRIX software distributions in their free time somewhere in the middle of Virginia.
https://media.bsd.cafe/bsdmmedia01/media_attachments/files/115/938/477/623/464/883/original/e32a4f586083e9c1.png

2025-12-24 18:24:18 UTC

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Well, I guess it's somewhat already done in NsCDE that is based on FVWM.

2025-12-24 17:28:52 UTC

This is a CDE on Mageia 9. It took me several hours and consultations with friendly people on Mageia forums to make it work.
CDE is very archaic so I had to rebuild the whole Motif library reverting some recent patches before compiling CDE itself. My tiny HP Stream 14 laptop with Intel N3060 CPU had a hard time building this monstrosity.
Now the hardest part comes: figuring out why I did this and what do I actually do with it.
#Mageia #CDE #Motif
https://media.bsd.cafe/bsdmmedia01/media_attachments/files/115/775/699/291/664/821/original/63f09f5a8a730b85.png

2025-10-08 13:51:09 UTC

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I'll see if I can reproduce it with all sensitive data deleted from file.

2025-10-08 13:45:49 UTC

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I mean "File -> Export..." then choosing Microsoft Office 2003 XML. Actually I wanted XLS file, but didn't put an extension manually, so LibreCalc exported to pure XML.
I used LibreOffice 7.4.7.2 on LMDE 6 (pretty old, I think).
Now I tested it with the same file on LibreOffice 25.2.4.3 on FreeBSD 14.3. Results are the same: 439 Mb file.

2025-10-07 17:51:44 UTC

So, exporting 73Kb ODS document (several sheets with one small table on each one of them) into XML in #LibreCalc results in 439Mb file.
#Vim basically dies on this file. #Emacs opens it instantly. I can even navigate it freely and syntax highlighting works. Although it doesn't help much.
Here's a catch:
me@desktop:~/temp$ wc -l file.xml
1 file.xml
It's a 439 Mb long line.
I have no idea what's wrong with LibreCalc.

2025-09-12 18:15:34 UTC

I found this screenshot again and I still think it's brilliant. The best OS overview I've ever read.
#Linux #FreeBSD
https://media.bsd.cafe/bsdmmedia01/media_attachments/files/115/192/585/949/051/448/original/33724d98293844ec.png

2025-08-20 08:54:50 UTC

Turns out, if you type #OpenBSD, #FreeBSD or #Linux in DuckDuckGo search bar, cute duck logo changes respectively.
But not for #NetBSD! NetBSD people, rise up!
https://media.bsd.cafe/bsdmmedia01/media_attachments/files/115/060/234/331/537/814/original/d887a779363579e5.png

2025-08-07 16:44:33 UTC

That's probably the stupidest IT thing I've seen this year, but...
My bank retired its smartphone app in favor of just the web page. Like in good old times, right? Wrong.
When you visit the said page, it fully loads, but then a huge banner appears that asks you to scan the QR with your phone.
You scan the QR and... it just opens the same page in your web browser ON THE PHONE. So you can't use the web page on desktop, only on the phone.
Of course I did the only logical thing. I just toggled Developer Tools in my desktop browser, changed the resolution to some phone resolution, opened the page, and IT WORKS.
People get paid for these ideas.

2025-06-27 08:28:45 UTC

Is #NecroComputing a thing? Blogging in 2025 using a 27-year laptop with Pentium II is actually possible.
Hail to #OpenBSD and #BSSG !
https://blog.pipetogrep.org/2025/06/25/blogging-like-it-s-1998/
#RetroComputing

2025-06-07 11:59:25 UTC

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Yeah, probably several years more, and people you'd be talking to via messengers would wonder: "Wait, you're actually writing your messages yourself? Why won't you let ChatGPT reply for you, like every normal person does?"

2025-05-08 06:25:54 UTC

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I love how crazy simple Slackware package format is. Just write a simple 11-liner, provide a file tree, pack it all in tgz, and you're golden.

2025-04-23 06:59:02 UTC

I've been using #Emacs for the last couple of months now for all my daily work (I'm a translator, not a programmer) and here's a thought.
Of course, I stumbled upon rather contrasting recommendations:
1) Don't use vanilla, use #DoomEmacs or #Spacemacs. Preferably Doom. Well, I tried this in the past, but it didn't stick. It''s everything and the kitchen sink, but you generally don't know if you really need all this. So you study Doom, not Emacs. I might get back to it in the future. I did prefer Spacemacs, though (aesthetically).
2) Use vanilla and spend ten years building your own config. This sounds fairly reasonable, because you naturally learn the program itself, not its plugins. But it's a huge timesink when you start to "build your own Emacs". So you'd end up with DoomEmacs, but badly written, slow and constantly breaking on every update.
I went with the second alternative and here's what I got for my personal usecase:
me@desktop:~$ grep "use-package" .emacs.d/init.el | wc -l
8
Eight packages. howm, inkpot-theme, which-key, avy, counsel, general, annotate, markdown-mode. I didn't even bother to make annotate work for now, so it's 7. And I don't really use avy, so it could be 6.
That's all I need for now. For several months I haven't had a moment yet when I thought that I need something else or that my workflow is getting somewhat cumbersome.
Of course, this doesn't mean that my setup is perfect. But my point is: configuring your own Emacs could be way easier than you might think (depending on the workflow), and you probably don't need to fight a bazillion packages waging civil war in your config file.

2025-04-12 06:49:36 UTC

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Knowing ffmpeg and ImageMagick is the closest you can get to knowing black magic.

2025-03-24 13:48:38 UTC

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I can't believe the old adage is true: It's always DNS.
Looks like you're right. I pulled my Ethernet cable off and did some reboots. Hostname does not change across reboots.
So openSUSE really just listens to whatever router tells.
Honestly, I've never seen a distro doing such thing.
Thank you very much!

2025-03-24 11:48:57 UTC

My desktop #openSUSE Tumbleweed is doing some creepy things I can not explain.
Basically, it sets the hostname from the last OS I run on this computer.
For example, I reboot into my #FreeBSD (on a separate SSD). Its hostname is "server". When I boot into openSUSE again, my hostname in openSUSE becomes "server".
When I reboot openSUSE again, it changes hostname back to normal.
When I boot LMDE installation flash drive and later reboot to openSUSE, it changes hostname to "mint". Reboot again, and hostname is back to normal.
And so on. I don't tamper with openSUSE from other OS. FreeBSD doesn't even support XFS.
What the hell is happening?

2024-12-17 18:31:06 UTC

Using Dillo makes you think that modern Web is fundamentally broken. Although, it's not entirely fair, of course, because Dillo doesn't fully support even HTML 4.01 and supports only elements of HTML 5.0. But Web is broken nonetheless, no doubt about that.
I'm glad that my static site in Dillo looks... well, relatively authentic. It's usable.
Dillo brings me back that taste of 00's WWW. When Internet was a free (not as in a free beer) and open space. When sites looked strange and it was fine. When your voice wasn't suppressed by governments on the one side and swarms of activists on the other.
And most of all, when browsers had one digit version numbers.