Linkarzu Podcast | Neovim, macOS, Emacs, Linux, Terminals and more.

Joshua Blais is back on the podcast, and this episode goes all over the place: Guix, Nix breaking, distro hopping, Emacs, Neovim, 34-key keyboards, home row mods, back pain, ADHD, Adderall, phone addiction, online presence, AI, spirituality, gratitude, community, and making money on YouTube.We start with Linux and editor talk, including why Nix broke, what Guix is, why Joshua uses Emacs, whether he might go back to Neovim, and the difference between Doom Emacs and vanilla Emacs. Then we get into the ergonomic side of tech: back problems, chairs, keyboard placement, Colemak, concavity, 34 keys, where Shift goes on a tiny keyboard, ZMK, QMK, switches, and how keyboard choices affect your body.The second half gets more personal. We talk about substance abuse, Adderall, the ADHD trend, putting your phone away, whether kids should have phones or tablets, trying to build an online presence while also wanting to go offline, monetizing YouTube, having a community, IRC, networking, AI, spirituality, gratitude, and whether the Luke Smith path is the right path.Video:https://youtu.be/btAOBkcLEkgWhat's the best way to support me?https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enoughTimeline:00:00:00 Highlights 00:02:25 What do you do for a living and what are the coaching sessions about? 00:07:06 How does it feel to work for yourself and not depend on a company? 00:09:46 Why cool hairstyles and looks every week? 00:11:17 Do you make significant money out of YouTube? 00:15:51 What is emacs-plus on macos? 00:16:50 What is the --with-native-comp install flag and is it needed? 00:17:58 How to install emacs as a macos user and why emacs 30? 00:19:52 Emacs --fg-daemon, what is it and why? 00:21:24 I deleted the .emacs.d directory and also created a symlink 00:25:25 Doom emacs, evil mode or vanilla emacs? 00:29:21 Why is Linkarzu trying emacs? 00:32:02 menu-bar scroll-bar visible-bell lexical-binding 00:34:52 How to disable the yellow annoying warning on Mac 00:39:30 Should I finish the emacs tutorial as a beginner? 00:42:17 Why do you use Home, PgDn, PgUp, End 00:45:35 macOS supports emacs keybindings by default 00:50:56 Why you use the arrows to navigate in emacs? 00:53:50 Install some packages, vertico, marginalia, orderless 01:04:58 What do you think of AI for learning emacs? 01:10:14 Install marginalia 01:14:40 M-x marginalia-mode to toggle marginalia 01:15:57 Modify savehist 01:18:15 What is orderless and how to install it 01:26:32 Thoughts on homerow mods, one shot modifiers 01:29:42 Bob gigalord kofi donation. What to talk in coaching sessions. Read superchats 01:33:37 Let's continue with orderless 01:36:40 custom-file, export some config to another file and read from it 01:44:24 How to select text in emacs and configure delsel 01:48:35 Homework for next week, emacs tutorial, create an org file 01:50:58 This first video will be in the podcast channel, the rest in the normal channel 01:53:16 We'll see you live next week

Joshua Blais is back on the podcast, and this episode goes all over the place: Guix, Nix breaking, distro hopping, Emacs, Neovim, 34-key keyboards, home row mods, back pain, ADHD, Adderall, phone addiction, online presence, AI, spirituality, gratitude, community, and making money on YouTube.We start with Linux and editor talk, including why Nix broke, what Guix is, why Joshua uses Emacs, whether he might go back to Neovim, and the difference between Doom Emacs and vanilla Emacs. Then we get into the ergonomic side of tech: back problems, chairs, keyboard placement, Colemak, concavity, 34 keys, where Shift goes on a tiny keyboard, ZMK, QMK, switches, and how keyboard choices affect your body.The second half gets more personal. We talk about substance abuse, Adderall, the ADHD trend, putting your phone away, whether kids should have phones or tablets, trying to build an online presence while also wanting to go offline, monetizing YouTube, having a community, IRC, networking, AI, spirituality, gratitude, and whether the Luke Smith path is the right path.Video:https://youtu.be/9ziLQK_kmKYWhat's the best way to support me?https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enoughTimeline:00:00:00 Intro00:00:00 Highlights 00:03:17 Nix: the unbreakable OS broke 00:05:15 What is GUIX? 00:06:06 Topics and who is who in the thumbnail 00:07:23 The podcast has its own youtube channel now 00:08:24 Distro hopping and GUIX 00:18:10 Plans on going from Emacs to Neovim (again)? 00:21:15 Doom emacs vs vanilla emacs 00:26:03 Back problems in the tech community 00:35:50 Yoga balls? Herman Miller chairs are garbage 00:37:50 How do you sleep, you like to be hugged or be the hugger? 00:40:40 Back problems aggravated by your keyboard, colemak? 00:47:24 Where can people find your book? 00:49:50 34 keys, homerow mods, where you put shift? 00:52:34 Hot take about keyboard concavity, keyboard placement 01:00:50 zmk, qmk, gui tool for configuring or in text editor like a chad? 01:03:18 What type of switches, soft, hard, noisy, silent 01:05:20 Difference between linear and tactile switches 01:06:45 Resources for learning emacs as a beginner? 01:10:51 Substance abuse and adderal consumption, the ADHD fashion 01:18:05 Can you put your phone away for a couple of days? 01:19:47 Will you give phone or tablet to your kids? 01:22:00 Tough to try to have an online prescence but trying to go offline? 01:34:05 How to monetize this youtube thing 01:37:09 Having a community? IRC? 01:40:39 My networking journey 01:42:48 How do you feel about AI nowadays? 01:45:35 Thoughts on spirituality? 01:52:35 Being grateful 01:57:58 Is the Luke Smith path the right path?

Interview with Dmitriy Kovalenko, creator of FFF, a fast file search picker for Neovim that describes itself as “the best file search picker for neovim. Period.”We’ll talk about why he built FFF, how it compares to tools like Telescope, fzf-lua, and snacks.nvim, and why file picking in Neovim is still such a hot topic. We’ll also get into performance, memory usage, plugin bloat, Rust, Neovim workflows, and the fun drama that happens when someone says their tool is the best.Dmitriy is also known for having strong opinions online. We’ll talk about open source, controversial takes, what makes a Neovim plugin actually good, and whether modern Neovim setups are becoming too bloated.Video:https://youtu.be/HRx3B5wYcrIWhat's the best way to support me?https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enoughTimeline:00:00:00 - Highlights00:01:14 - Why are you so hated in the Neovim Subreddit?00:06:22 - Snacks smart picker demo and why fff was born00:09:44 - FFF weird view when small resolution. Previewing images00:12:19 - What is FFF? Demo comparing it to snacks in chromium codebase00:17:47 - Can you change the sorting options in FFF?00:20:29 - Thoughts on telescope?00:21:07 - how to search in hidden files?00:26:49 - fff jacket giveaway00:27:53 - Why Neovim and not other editor?00:31:51 - Why Kitty and not Ghostty?00:35:11 - Kitty sessions? Thoughts on Tmux?00:38:57 - Kitty Sessions demo00:40:48 - FFF sloppy00:42:23 - FFF vs Snacks on the linux kernel codebase demo00:44:34 - Typos for being so fast?00:50:20 - Thoughts on mini.pick and Echasnovski's plugins00:52:50 - Rust is your main language?00:58:07 - Why are you daily driving macOS?00:59:39 - Any apps that leverage FFF in a GUI?01:04:08 - FFF sorting capabilities?01:05:24 - Plans for future projects?01:12:48 - Dmitriy Kovalenko youtube channel01:14:33 - What do you do for a living?01:15:25 - Feel depressed about AI?01:19:30 - Chat content idea: react to folke's plugins, do you hate Folke?01:27:42 - What does FFF stand for?01:28:47 - FFF started as a Neovim plugin, what is it now?01:30:57 - Where can people find you on twittter or github?01:31:38 - Why can't AI edit videos?

Mitchell Hashimoto wasn’t able to join this episode for personal reasons, so we made a small pivot.A lot of people already knew about the original Ghostty vs Kitty livestream, so I wanted to explain that clearly here too. Mitchell couldn’t make it this time, and I completely understand. We’ll see what happens in the future.That said, this still turned into a really fun conversation with Kovid Goyal, creator of kitty and calibre.In this episode, we talk about kitty, recent popular features, terminal UX, design choices, performance, workflows, and some of what may be coming next. Kovid also talks about things like pixel scrolling with momentum, drag and drop for kitty UI elements like windows and tabs, and an early look at a possible future drag and drop protocol for terminal programs, which could make things like transferring files between two different computers much easier.So even though this is no longer a Ghostty vs Kitty conversation, I still think this episode will be really interesting if you care about terminal emulators, keyboard-driven workflows, macOS, Linux, Neovim, native apps, developer tools, and open source software.Video:https://youtu.be/UDNVICQMXB0What's the best way to support me?https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enoughTimeline:00:00:00 - Highlights00:02:10 - Who is Kovid and what protocols he has contributed to the terminal ecosystem00:11:00 - What's the difference between the kitty graphics protocol and sixel?00:13:50 - What is Chafa?00:15:11 - In terms of Neovim, can you explain what the Keyboard Protocol is?00:18:43 - Undercurl, another protocol provided by Kovid to terminals00:19:30 - Text sizing protocol, what is it?00:25:22 - Neovim: What is needed to have variable font size?00:27:55 - PR for kitty graphics protocol in Neovim terminal?00:29:58 - choose-files kitten00:31:51 - Will you add the chenglou pretext thing?00:34:19 - Kitty Clipboard Protocol00:35:57 - Kitty keyboard protocol coming to Ghostty? Works on macOS00:36:56 - Does it replace OSC52?00:38:33 - So are you trying to make Kitty like emacs?00:39:57 - Drag and drop requested by developer of Yazi00:41:11 - Drag and drop Kitty tabs?00:43:39 - Why so many editors in the AI era, why Neovim like if its the 70s?00:47:32 - Demos start: Resize kitty windows with mouse00:48:46 - Drag tabs and windows around, even out to a new window00:50:48 - Pixel scrolling, partial scrolling00:52:14 - Momentum scrolling00:52:48 - Partial scrolling works only with default scrollback, not in neovim00:53:48 - Drag and drop links current behavior00:56:12 - Drag and drop protocol00:56:47 - kitten mouse-demo00:57:33 - Demo drag and drop over SSH00:59:48 - How do you feel about new features in kitty, you accept everything?01:01:28 - What are your top 5 CLI tools?01:03:43 - Dolev creator of gh-dash asks about browsers01:05:23 - Demo: Kovid's top 5 neovim plugins?01:08:38 - Conditional mappings depending on the state of the focused window01:09:59 - Thoughts on alcohol and drugs?01:12:40 - Thoughts on religion

In this episode, I’m joined by members of the Neovim core team to talk about the Neovim 0.12 release, the biggest new features, project direction, AI, workflows, plugins, and why people still use Neovim in a world full of AI editors and modern IDEs.This is not just a Neovim 0.12 feature overview. It’s also a conversation to help people get to know the humans behind the project. We talk about what changed in Neovim 0.12, how the release came together, what maintainers care about, how they personally use Neovim, and where they see Neovim going next.We talk about Neovim 0.12 features, multicursor, the new intro screen, the new build system, UI improvements, Ghostty progress bar support, checkhealth, bug reports, :restart, tmux-related workflows, terminal rendering, Doom in Neovim, LazyVim and Neovim 0.12, AI in Neovim, and more.If you use Neovim, Vim, LazyVim, Ghostty, tmux, or you’re just curious why people still care so much about terminal-based editors, this episode should be for you.--------------------------Guests in this episode:Justin Keyes, Neovim lead maintainer GitHub: https://github.com/justinmkMaria Solano, Neovim core maintainer GitHub: https://github.com/MariaSolOsGregory Anders, Neovim core maintainer GitHub: https://github.com/gpandersbfredl, Neovim core maintainer GitHub: https://github.com/bfredl--------------------------Video:https://youtu.be/EiBg91LTOYkWhat's the best way to support me?https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enoughTimeline:00:00:00 - Highlights00:00:59 - What is Neovim?00:06:45 - Why people still use Neovim with so many other options?00:14:31 - How much AI are you integrating into Neovim?00:17:21 - How is the money (donations) side of things going for Neovim?00:19:44 - Who is Bfredl (Full time Neovim Employee, living the dream)00:22:17 - Who is Maria Solano - MariaSolOs00:23:37 - Who is Gregory Anders - gpanders00:25:32 - What about Mitchell Hashimoto's Libghostty00:29:12 - Who is Justin Keyes?00:31:45 - What about multicursor?00:33:13 - Justin asking: What do you see as the project direction?00:43:04 - Bredl throwing Justin under the bus. Multicursor demo00:44:12 - New Intro screen demo00:46:37 - Ok, now really multicursor00:50:11 - bredl demo: the new build system00:53:24 - Maria demos00:57:32 - How do I upgrade to neovim 0.12 as a mac virgin?00:58:19 - What about LazyVim users and Neovim 0.12?00:59:02 - Frontend andies that need to see their colors01:01:12 - gpanders demo01:02:01 - Progress bar when using Ghostty01:04:12 - nvim_open_term to show rendered terminal output without escape sequences01:06:06 - Playing Doom in Neovim01:08:32 - Kitty scrollback works with neovim 0.12 no plugins01:09:28 - Justin demo, super K for help files01:12:29 - Checkhealth, bug report on GitHub01:14:16 - UI 2 overview01:19:07 - How does :restart work?01:19:50 - Tmux functionality, attach, detach, etc

Part 2 of my 3+ hour chat with Echasnovski (mini.nvim / MiniMax) goes full Linux and tooling mode. We continue our Neovim discussion, then we get to know the nvim-mini team, talk about EndeavourOS + Arch (and the Ubuntu-to-Arch jump), how he approaches updates, thoughts on NixOS, and the macOS “it’s expensive” misconception. Then we get into terminals: why Ghostty over Kovid Goyal’s Kitty, whether the performance difference is real, and his thoughts on Kovid. If you’re into distros, terminals, and practical dev workflows, this one is for you.Video:https://youtu.be/UqlkKK7imjoWhat's the best way to support me?https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enoughTimeline:00:00:00 - Highlights00:01:58 - MiniMax LSP config00:06:19 - The team behind the nvim-mini project00:08:40 - Are you a dictator like Justin and Kovid?00:10:51 - Why do you do all this. Accept donations?00:13:01 - Is each plugin a separate repo? How does that work?00:14:46 - Why each plugin was moved to a separate repo?00:17:43 - Background, studies, job00:22:24 - Echasnovski needs support00:24:27 - Are you part of the Neovim Core team?00:25:03 - Contributions to Neovim00:27:03 - Why this love for Neovim?00:28:06 - Thoughts on Tmux and neovim tabs00:29:31 - Relative line numbers?00:33:23 - Thoughts on purists saying you have to stick to defaults00:35:04 - Thoughts on extending Neovim00:36:32 - Gregory Anders beef with the .setup call00:46:45 - Thoughts on AI generated PRs00:48:30 - Thoughts on AI, or should we say LLMs?00:52:20 - Why Ghostty and not king Goyal's terminal?00:55:58 - Felt performance difference between Ghostty and Kitty?00:57:38 - Are you a fangirl of Kovid? (Kitty and Calibre creator)00:58:59 - Which Linux distro do you use? EndeavourOS01:01:10 - From Ubuntu to Arch01:04:52 - Do regular updates on a day you have time01:09:21 - Thoughts on NixOS01:10:17 - Thoughts on macOS and the misconception that its expensive01:15:17 - Thoughts on Echasnovski's accent01:17:35 - From LazyVim to MiniMax?

Echasnovski is the creator of mini.nvim, as per the website: "Library of 40+ independent Lua modules improving overall Neovim (version 0.9 and higher) experience with minimal effort." He's also the creator of MiniMax:"MiniMax is a collection of fully working self-contained Neovim configs. All of the them: Use mostly MINI to showcase its capabilities. Provide out of the box a stable, polished, and feature rich Neovim experience. Share minimal structure with potential to build upon. Contain extensively commented config files meant to be read." The interview is over 3 hours long, so it is split in 2. Part 2 is going to be released soonVideo:https://youtu.be/ypJTkwarAVEWhat's the best way to support me?https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enoughTimeline:00:00:00 - Highlights00:01:36 - How do we pronounce your name00:04:23 - What do you do in the neovim community?00:07:53 - Neovim 0.5 and the wild wild west of lua plugins00:10:23 - We've been planning this interview for over 6 months00:12:20 - Echasnovski's ban on reddit00:14:59 - Colorscheme theory (that I didn't understand, not normie friendly)00:22:10 - Color theory is very complex as everyone is different00:23:30 - Gruvbox is for old people, highly saturated colors00:27:15 - Echasnovski created the default Neovim colorscheme00:27:38 - Justin Keyes also likes boring colors. Old soul trapped in a young body00:29:17 - Is Justin a dictator?00:32:18 - Why the reddit ban?00:38:49 - long reddit posts go through mod's approval00:40:17 - How does the shadown ban work?00:42:02 - Shoutout to Lukas Reineke00:43:37 - Account restored by a misterious reddit employee00:45:19 - Self hosting git server, codeberg, tangled.org00:48:02 - Why planning on self hosting?00:49:17 - Explaining the repo structure of mini.nvim00:50:44 - You also have a picker? mini.pick00:52:15 - Sylvan Franklin seems to use mini.pick00:52:53 - Custom pickers?00:54:03 - Issues with the matching of some pickers00:56:18 - mini.pick has a frecency option? mini-visits (sounds like a prison conjugal visit)00:59:30 - Thoughts on telescope?01:01:00 - Why did you move from vim to neovim?01:03:48 - Embarrassing experience with vim at work01:05:32 - vscode neovim plugin01:07:21 - Do you remember your first times using vim, was it tough?01:10:38 - Thoughts on distros? What do you recommend to a beginner?01:16:58 - What happened to lunarvim?01:18:23 - Lazyvim distro or kickstart01:19:38 - MiniMax demo01:21:24 - Is MiniMax designed for complete beginners?01:25:59 - mini.clue and why not which-key?01:26:37 - Folke is always on vacation01:29:11 - Did you copy Helix?01:31:01 - The which-key hate continues01:35:29 - Interview with Folke?01:36:02 - The 30_mini.lua config file01:39:21 - What if I want to use my own picker with MiniMax?01:42:14 - Single config file for all plugins or a file per plugin?01:44:21 - Echasnovski allegedly created the new neovim plugin manager vim.pack01:48:10 - Should I wait for Neovim 0.12 before trying MiniMax?01:52:22 - vim.pack doesn't have a healthcheck because it's perfect01:52:54 - vim.pack demo01:54:16 - Do you use any other plugins besides mini.nvim?

This is the 2nd time (or third time, would be forth but he no showed no called me once, MF) that Vimothée Chalamet AKA @sylvanfranklin shows up in my channel. In the last interview we discussed about Neovim, drugs (including Adderall), and many other topics. But it seems that as of Q4 2025 he's going for the kefir, kombucha, yoga pants, breathing techniques, pachamama and on his way to become a zen monk. Or maybe not. Let's see what he's up to because he changes his mind every couple of months.Video:https://youtube.com/live/vLfaiRHT6boWhat's the best way to support me?https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enough

YouTux is a fairly new YouTube channel, only 1.5 years and it has double my subscribers, we'll touch on a lot of interesting and probably controversial topics. If you want to support open source projects, for every $5 donate as superchats, YouTux will donate the same amount to an open source project. All the superchats will also be donated to an open source project.All of the podcast episodes are available in all podcasting platforms, like spotify, apple music, deezer, etc. If you don't find it in one, let me know and I'll add itVideo:https://youtube.com/live/TOUby-uuZ4IWhat's the best way to support me?https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enoughTimeline:00:00 - Introduction and Audio Check02:00 - Guest Introduction and Channel Growth04:00 - Discussing Linux Distributions and Hardware06:00 - Transition to Void Linux and Debian Politics09:00 - Polarization in the Open Source Community12:00 - Debian's Political Changes and Systemd16:00 - Value of Disagreement and Text Editors18:00 - Critique of Systemd and Unix Philosophy20:00 - IBM's Role and Linux Fragmentation24:00 - Wayland vs X11 and Ubuntu's Evolution28:00 - Critique of Zorin OS and Distro Recommendations32:40 - Thoughts on arch35:51 - Donations dynamic37:42 - Zorin OS scam43:55 - What terminal do you use45:00 - Thoughts on Omarchy46:27 - woke non woke48:20 - Debian king, Slackware the queen49:48 - Linkarzu switching to Void Linux?51:15 - 21K subs, burnout?54:44 - background, studies55:38 - sponsorships and intellectual freedom59:00 - tired of watching youtube and the algorithm?01:01:45 - favorite youtubers RiccardoPalombo and antirez 01:04:28 - Bathroom break and pulp fiction mask01:06:33 - Thoughts on NixOS01:07:30 - I have no mercy01:08:12 - The queen @AndreaBorman and why the mask?01:09:45 - Thoughts on macOS01:12:40 - Apple M series hardware01:13:55 - Snapdragon and ARM on Linux?01:14:45 - Thoughts on Window's 01:16:35 - THE "FREE" WORD MISCONCEPTION01:20:00 - immick, Jellyfin, SearXNG, Mail server01:23:28 - how to fix the poor FREE mentality01:26:05 - Is your channel an AI?01:28:57 - AI thumbnail fail01:30:40 - Nobody uses AI, but everyone builds now, suspicious?01:33:35 - Thoughts on substance abuse01:36:00 - 2 favorites movies01:39:00 - books01:40:40 - talking about the queen again01:42:45 - split the channel?01:44:50 - Video analytics and money01:50:00 - Superchats, you will match the donations

Stability wisdom and a peaceful life, or bleeding edge? Some say Debian is a legacy distro with legacy packages, some say Arch gives them nightmares. I'm still trying to get a response for the question I've been asking in all these interviews, which distro should I try first 😂 So who is right then, who should we trust?Video:https://youtu.be/pkLG2SwR7J8Participants: https://youtube.com/⁨@AndreaBorman⁩https://youtube.com/⁨@DistroTube⁩https://youtube.com/@tony-btwhttps://youtube.com/@LinuxRenaissanceWhat's the best way to support me?https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enoughTimeline:00:00:00 - Highlights00:01:55 - 4 linux queens vs 1 mac gigachad00:03:23 - Andrea Borman00:06:51 - DistroTube00:10:44 - Darth00:14:21 - Tony00:17:53 - Darth's hat and red hat00:20:30 - FreeBSD00:21:27 - Andrea Borman Demo00:24:45 - SuperChat by Darth00:26:36 - DistroTube Demo00:30:37 - Wheres DT from and weather00:32:30 - DT switching to CachyOS and audio issues00:36:42 - Copyright strikes00:41:25 - DT strikes tony on the "Propietary Garbage" phrase00:41:53 - Andrea issues with ads, brave, firefox, chromium00:43:45 - Darth demo00:49:15 - Wallpapers do most of the heavy lifting when ricing00:49:57 - Transparent terminal?00:50:45 - Tony's demo (OXWM)00:53:49 - Only If you do YouTube you need more than 1 monitor00:56:01 - Andrea, why Debian and not Arch00:59:23 - DT's thoughts on Debian01:01:49 - Darths thoughts on Arch as a Debian user01:06:18 - Gaming and streaming at the same time on Debian01:08:08 - Malware in the AUR01:09:26 - DT: Do you trust the AUR with your soul?01:10:23 - Andrea dissing on the AUR01:11:54 - Dependencies and the chaotic AUR01:13:48 - Tony's thoughts on Debian01:14:20 - Debian is gentoo with a GUI installer01:16:13 - Dependency hell in Debian01:17:05 - Thoughts on Omarchy01:25:02 - Tonarchy01:27:32 - X11 vs Wayland