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/btAOBkcLEkg
What's the best way to support me?
https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enough
Timeline:
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_kmKY
What's the best way to support me?
https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enough
Timeline:
00:00:00 Intro
00:00:00 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/HRx3B5wYcrI
What's the best way to support me?
https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enough
Timeline:
00:00:00 - Highlights
00:01:14 - Why are you so hated in the Neovim Subreddit?
00:06:22 - Snacks smart picker demo and why fff was born
00:09:44 - FFF weird view when small resolution. Previewing images
00:12:19 - What is FFF? Demo comparing it to snacks in chromium codebase
00:17:47 - 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 giveaway
00:27:53 - 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 demo
00:40:48 - FFF sloppy
00:42:23 - FFF vs Snacks on the linux kernel codebase demo
00:44:34 - Typos for being so fast?
00:50:20 - Thoughts on mini.pick and Echasnovski's plugins
00:52:50 - 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 channel
01:14:33 - 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/UDNVICQMXB0
What's the best way to support me?
https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enough

Timeline:
00:00:00 - Highlights
00:02:10 - Who is Kovid and what protocols he has contributed to the terminal ecosystem
00:11:00 - 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 terminals
00:19:30 - 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 kitten
00:31:51 - Will you add the chenglou pretext thing?
00:34:19 - Kitty Clipboard Protocol
00:35:57 - Kitty keyboard protocol coming to Ghostty? Works on macOS
00:36:56 - 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 Yazi
00:41:11 - 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 mouse
00:48:46 - Drag tabs and windows around, even out to a new window
00:50:48 - Pixel scrolling, partial scrolling
00:52:14 - Momentum scrolling
00:52:48 - Partial scrolling works only with default scrollback, not in neovim
00:53:48 - Drag and drop links current behavior
00:56:12 - Drag and drop protocol
00:56:47 - kitten mouse-demo
00:57:33 - Demo drag and drop over SSH
00:59:48 - 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 browsers
01:05:23 - Demo: Kovid's top 5 neovim plugins?
01:08:38 - Conditional mappings depending on the state of the focused window
01:09:59 - 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/justinmk
Maria Solano, Neovim core maintainer
GitHub: https://github.com/MariaSolOs
Gregory Anders, Neovim core maintainer
GitHub: https://github.com/gpanders
bfredl, Neovim core maintainer
GitHub: https://github.com/bfredl
--------------------------
Video:
https://youtu.be/EiBg91LTOYk
What's the best way to support me?
https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enough
Timeline:
00:00:00 - Highlights
00:00:59 - 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 - MariaSolOs
00:23:37 - Who is Gregory Anders - gpanders
00:25:32 - What about Mitchell Hashimoto's Libghostty
00:29:12 - 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 demo
00:44:12 - New Intro screen demo
00:46:37 - Ok, now really multicursor
00:50:11 - bredl demo: the new build system
00:53:24 - Maria demos
00:57:32 - 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 colors
01:01:12 - gpanders demo
01:02:01 - Progress bar when using Ghostty
01:04:12 - nvim_open_term to show rendered terminal output without escape sequences
01:06:06 - Playing Doom in Neovim
01:08:32 - Kitty scrollback works with neovim 0.12 no plugins
01:09:28 - Justin demo, super K for help files
01:12:29 - Checkhealth, bug report on GitHub
01:14:16 - UI 2 overview
01:19:07 - How does :restart work?
01:19:50 - Tmux functionality, attach, detach, etc