!How I use SDF in daily life
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agk's diary
07 June 2022 @ 03:35 UTC
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written on GPD Win 1 (2017) via PuTTY
at 24-hour truck stop just off the highway
with $4.80/gal gas and a cup of black coffee
---
I called into SDF's OpenVoIP tonight for the first
time in months. I was excited by the conversation
about teaching new users what---beyond chat---they
can do on our shared unix computer. On the call I
met SDF users in People's Republic of China!
smj suggested I write how I use SDF. I'm a univer-
sity student six months from completing a Bachelor
of Science in Nursing, and mom of a toddler. We
live in a village near the poorest administrative
region of my country. I use second-hand computer/
tablet/phones. I don't have or want a windows,
apple, or google account.
My computer's a GPD Win 1, a five-year-old Windows
10 clamshell laptop the size of a Nintendo DS or
small, thick smartphone. Terminal computing uses
the small screen and 1.6 GHz Atom processor effic-
iently. PuTTY, in full-screen, has no space-wasting
window decorations.
I use SDF how classmates use google suite. They
write papers in docs. I use nano editor in a tmux
session. They check gmail. I hit ^b c to open a new
window in tmux and check email with mutt. They look
up stuff with chrome. I use lynx with duck.com,
etymonline, wikiless, or frogfind. They calculate
with google sheets. I use sc.
To switch running programs, I hit ^b and the number
at the bottom of the screen of the window I want.
If my battery or internet dies, tmux unperturbed
loses no unsaved work. I log back in from anything
capable of ssh or web browsing (ssh.sdf.org), and
type `tmux ls` to list running sessions (this one's
named 0). `tmux attach -t 0` connects me back to
session 0, which is as I left it. To log off on
purpose, type ^b d to detach before hanging up.
My spouse can even watch me work---everything I
type can display on her screen! SDF's wiki tutorial
about tmux taught me you can clone a session to
multiple computers if all connect as the same user:
`tmux new-session -t existing_session -s new_session`
I wasn't joking about using SDF like classmates use
google!
On a secondhand degoogled android with no sim card,
I call people via linphone with SDF voip and a DID.
Friends are used to me saying, "I have bad cell
service here. I'll call back on my Seattle number."
When I had to submit videos of me doing physical
assessment of classmates, teaching patients about
their disease patho and meds, and presenting my
paper on prisoner population health and nursing, I
was permitted to upload private unlisted videos to
SDF toobnix instead of youtube or yuja media.
Best of all, I don't have to be a system adminis-
trator. Membership keeps SDF working and up to
date, so I can do what I logged on to do---write
my essay, check mail, browse www or gopher, calcu-
late spreadsheets, telephone friends, or tune into
a non-radio.
An SDF account is access to a very cool shared
unix computer---you can use it for anything a
computer does! I'm curious how other people use
SDF. :)
