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     <title>Cem's Website</title>
     <description>Personal blog/website on Linux/tech/nerdy stuff</description>
     <link>https://cemkeylan.com</link>
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     <lastBuildDate>Tue Oct 19 2021 12:00</lastBuildDate>
 <item>
 <title>My thoughts on execline</title>
 <pubDate>Tue, 12 Oct 2021</pubDate>
 <dc:creator>Cem Keylan</dc:creator>
 <link>https://cemkeylan.com/blog/20211012-execline.html</link>
 <description>&lt;h1&gt;My thoughts on execline&lt;/h1&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;With the gaining popularity of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.skarnet.org/software/s6-rc/&quot;&gt;s6-rc&lt;/a&gt;, I have recently decided to check out
 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.skarnet.org/software/execline/&quot;&gt;execline&lt;/a&gt;. It is a shell-like scripting language that is built around chaining
 commands together. There is no interpreter, there is no &amp;lsquo;built-in&amp;rsquo; functionality
 even though the docs might make you think there are. Execline is best described
 as a suite of tools that imitate the functionality of a shell.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;There are a ton of information on the execline&amp;rsquo;s page, especially discussing
 why skarnet prefers execline instead of &lt;code&gt;/bin/sh&lt;/code&gt;. Those points are mostly
 valid, shells are a nightmare, and they suck at being compliant to the POSIX
 specification. What I don&amp;rsquo;t agree with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skarnet.org/software/execline/dieshdiedie.html&quot;&gt;why not sh&lt;/a&gt; page, however, is the
 part on performance. Even though execline does not have an interactive shell
 implementation of its own, it is still much slower than other shells simply by
 its design. Since the design of execline is built on process chaining, it
 requires spawning new processes for things as basic as variable declaration.
 Variable manipulation is the cheapest operation you would expect from a shell,
 but in execline, every operation costs the same regardless of how simple it is.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;Throughout my weeks of toying around with execline, I have came to the
 conclusion that execline is much better in simple scripts only. Execline is
 as usable as any shell out there, but even with its advantages over &lt;code&gt;sh&lt;/code&gt;,
 execline is only better if it&amp;rsquo;s simple. Execline is really good for certain
 specific situations such as service scripts (as used in s6-rc), or where you
 were already meant to chain a couple of commands together. After all, skarnet
 already presents these limitations on the website of execline.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;Execline can be leveraged as how s6-rc compiles service databases with other
 utilities, but I don&amp;rsquo;t think it can be used as a shell replacement itself. It&amp;rsquo;s
 not the next shiny thing to jump on to replace all your shell scripts with
 (unless you have really basic shell scripts). It does not have the flexibility
 nor the performance of the shell for scripts that can be considered a little
 over than the &amp;ldquo;basic&amp;rdquo;.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
 </item>
 <item>
 <title>Reimplementing `sysmgr` in C</title>
 <pubDate>Fri, 02 Oct 2020</pubDate>
 <dc:creator>Cem Keylan</dc:creator>
 <link>https://cemkeylan.com/blog/20201002-reimplementing-sysmgr-in-c.html</link>
 <description>&lt;h1&gt;Reimplementing &lt;code&gt;sysmgr&lt;/code&gt; in C&lt;/h1&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;For a while, I have been thinking about implementing &lt;a href=&quot;https://git.ckyln.com/sysmgr&quot;&gt;sysmgr&lt;/a&gt; in C. I started
 thinking about the inefficiencies of sysmgr. POSIX sh isn&amp;rsquo;t particularly
 designed to have ultimate control over child processes. There are basic job
 management features that are &lt;em&gt;just enough&lt;/em&gt; for sysmgr to do its job. The
 biggest pain is having to use tools like &lt;code&gt;sleep(1)&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;kill(1)&lt;/code&gt;. Calling
 sleep every second, and using the kill command to check whether a process is
 alive or not is extremely inefficient. Some shells &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; include these commands
 built-in, but it isn&amp;rsquo;t specified by POSIX, but one should never take this as
 granted.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;Lately, I have been adding C utilities to sysmgr to make it more efficient. This
 defeats the initial purpose of sysmgr, being a service manager in pure POSIX
 shell. My main purpose, however, is making sysmgr efficient and simplistic. It
 mostly imitates &lt;code&gt;runit&lt;/code&gt; without dealing with all the complexity of the
 over-thinked &lt;code&gt;supervise&lt;/code&gt; directory, nor the logging stuff. Most of these can be
 handled by the service script itself anyway. That&amp;rsquo;s why instead of this ugly
 C/POSIX sh hybrid, I decided to implement it all in C.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;I am not a C expert or anything, I am learning a lot as I am writing the
 program. I want it to be C99 and portable (for BSD). It&amp;rsquo;s currently not
 functional at all, but, you can see its current state &lt;a href=&quot;https://git.ckyln.com/sm&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;EDIT Oct 10 2020:&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;I did the initial release of this C version of sysmgr, which is more stable,
 and performant than the POSIX sh version. It still has rough edges, but is
 completely usable.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
 </item>
 <item>
 <title>Trust in Distributed Environments</title>
 <pubDate>Tue, 08 Sep 2020</pubDate>
 <dc:creator>Cem Keylan</dc:creator>
 <link>https://cemkeylan.com/blog/20200908-trust-in-distributed-environments.html</link>
 <description>&lt;h1&gt;Trust in Distributed Environments&lt;/h1&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;A few days ago, in the &lt;code&gt;#kisslinux&lt;/code&gt; IRC channel, jedahan mentioned an
 implementation for trust in the package manager. While I was intrigued by the
 idea initially, I decided not to implement this for the upcoming 4.0.0 release.
 That is because the package manager and the distribution itself is already
 centered on trust. However, this idea made me think a lot about &amp;ldquo;trust&amp;rdquo; in
 distributed environments.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;Who and what would you trust? Would you trust Microsoft? Would you trust a
 binary? Would you only trust a so called &amp;ldquo;reproducible&amp;rdquo; build?&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;Jedahan mentioned the possibility that a repository maintainer could create a
 package that would be normally in the distribution so they could mess your
 system up. He suggested a &amp;ldquo;source&amp;rdquo; system where you know where each package
 comes from. This way the package manager can warn you when the source of a
 package is changed. As I have said this idea intrigued me at the beginning, but
 here is why it is complex and unnecessary.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;The package manager would warn you every time you fork a package and apply your
 changes. Both with kiss and CPT, you already see git logs when the repositories
 are fetched. Those logs address each and every file that has been edited, added,
 removed, or renamed. CPT also has support for rsync, which is called verbosely.
 While not as descriptive, rsync also shows what&amp;rsquo;s changed/added and what&amp;rsquo;s
 deleted.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;Also, back on April, I have added submodule support to my fork of kiss, which
 Dylan adapted on May 19. I have added this feature because it solves a similar
 issue. I want to have only some packages from a repository and leave the rest
 of them. This way I am the one in control of what goes inside my repositories.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;Minor annoyances aside, would this solve the issue of trust? Maybe this evil
 repository maintainer decides to botch a package that was already in their
 repository not provided by your distribution. Should we then track the source
 files, build files as well? But those change all the time.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;I believe that this environment is as trustworthy as it can get, a repository
 system with package build instructions that easy to read and understand, easy to
 history check, easy to limit, and easy to allow. KISS and Carbs Linux have a
 single maintainer. I maintain Carbs and Dylan maintains KISS. You are not
 trusting an organization, you are trusting individuals that you can easily
 converse on the internet. The same goes for most community repository
 maintainers out there. Trying to implement more would be a &amp;ldquo;security theater&amp;rdquo;
 that would be a hassle for the maintainers, the users and the package manager
 without a noticeable benefit to any.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
 </item>
 <item>
 <title>wpa_add script</title>
 <pubDate>Fri, 28 Aug 2020</pubDate>
 <dc:creator>Cem Keylan</dc:creator>
 <link>https://cemkeylan.com/blog/20200828-wpa-add-script.html</link>
 <description>&lt;h1&gt;wpa_add script&lt;/h1&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;I have this script named &lt;code&gt;wpa_add&lt;/code&gt;, which I use to easily add new WiFi when I
 am outside, possibly in a cafe. I have written this script because I don&amp;rsquo;t like
 the way my girlfriend looks at me while thinking that I am an absolute moron for
 not using Windows 10, and the entirety of Linux is a circlejerk. It is only
 natural that she thinks this way. I use my own distribution that doesn&amp;rsquo;t have
 things like &lt;code&gt;dbus&lt;/code&gt;, or &lt;code&gt;NetworkManager&lt;/code&gt;, or one of those common desktop
 environments. You could install it by creating a simple package, but I am happy
 to not have any of those in my system.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;This script uses wpa-supplicant to add a new network and reconfigure. It uses
 dmenu for input, however you could replace dmenu calls with some command line
 prompts. I am doing the following assumptions:
 - You can manipulate &lt;code&gt;wpa_supplicant&lt;/code&gt; without root access.
 - The configuration is on &lt;code&gt;/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf&lt;/code&gt;.
 - You can edit &lt;code&gt;/etc/wpa/supplicant.conf&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;If you want to ensure the above just do the following (as root):&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code class=&quot;sh&quot;&gt;# Add yourself to the wheel group if you aren&apos;t already.
 adduser user wheel
 
 # Change the ownership of /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
 chown root:wheel /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
 
 # Make sure the configuration can be edited by the wheel group.
 chmod 664 /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
 &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;Your &lt;code&gt;wpa_supplicant&lt;/code&gt; configuration must include the following line (or something similar):&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code class=&quot;plaintext&quot;&gt;ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=wheel
 &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;Here is the script&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code class=&quot;sh&quot;&gt;#!/bin/sh
 # Script to add wpa_supplicant networks through dmenu
 
 if [ &quot;$1&quot; ]; then
     name=$1
 else
     name=$(dmenu -p &quot;Please enter network name, leave empty if you want to search&quot; &amp;lt;&amp;amp;-)
 fi
 
 [ &quot;$name&quot; ] || {
     wpa_cli scan
     name=$(
     wpa_cli scan_results | sed 1,2d | while read -r _ _ _ _ ssid _; do
         # Hidden wifi are not to be returned
         [ &quot;$ssid&quot; ] || continue
         echo &quot;$ssid&quot;
     done | sort -u | dmenu -l 10 -p &quot;Please choose WiFi&quot;)
     [ &quot;$name&quot; ] || exit 1
 }
 
 pass=$(dmenu -P -p &quot;Please enter your password, leave empty if the network has open access.&quot;)
 
 if [ &quot;$pass&quot; ]; then
     wpa_passphrase &quot;$name&quot; &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF&amp;gt;&amp;gt; /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
 $pass
 EOF
 else
     printf &apos;network={\n\tssid=&quot;%s&quot;\n\tkey_mgmt=NONE\n\tpriority=-999\n}\n&apos; &quot;$name&quot; &amp;gt;&amp;gt; /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
 fi
 
 wpa_cli reconfigure
 &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;As I have said, you could do something similar in a command-line-only tool as
 well. This one uses &lt;code&gt;fzf&lt;/code&gt; on WiFi selection.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code class=&quot;sh&quot;&gt;#!/bin/sh -e
 
 stty=&quot;$(stty -g)&quot;
 trap &quot;stty $stty&quot; EXIT INT TERM HUP
 
 if [ &quot;$1&quot; ]; then
     name=$1
 else
     printf &apos;Network Name, leave empty if you want to search: &apos;
     read -r name
 fi
 
 [ &quot;$name&quot; ] || {
     wpa_cli scan &amp;gt;/dev/null
     name=$(
     wpa_cli scan_results | sed 1,2d | while read -r _ _ _ _ ssid _; do
         # Hidden wifi are not to be returned
         [ &quot;$ssid&quot; ] || continue
         echo &quot;$ssid&quot;
     done | sort -u | fzf --prompt &quot;Please choose WiFi: &quot;)
 }
 
 [ &quot;$name&quot; ] || exit 1
 
 stty -echo
 printf &apos;Please enter your password, leave empty if the network has open access.\nPassword: &apos;
 read -r pass
 
 if [ &quot;$pass&quot; ]; then
     wpa_passphrase &quot;$name&quot; &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF&amp;gt;&amp;gt; /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
 $pass
 EOF
 else
     printf &apos;network={\n\tssid=&quot;%s&quot;\n\tkey_mgmt=NONE\n\tpriority=-999\n}\n&apos; &quot;$name&quot; &amp;gt;&amp;gt; /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
 fi
 
 wpa_cli reconfigure
 &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;These scripts can be found as a gist &lt;a href=&quot;https://git.io/JULL6&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description>
 </item>
 <item>
 <title>Static linking</title>
 <pubDate>Fri, 28 Aug 2020</pubDate>
 <dc:creator>Cem Keylan</dc:creator>
 <link>https://cemkeylan.com/blog/20200828-static-linking.html</link>
 <description>&lt;h1&gt;Static linking&lt;/h1&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;While I was working on a new initramfs generator for Carbs, I was once again
 reminded of the advantages of static linking software. Previously, I was using
 some really dumb script that was just basically using the package manager as a
 library for building the whole initramfs system from scratch. This system
 structure was completely statically linked, and the whole thing weighed around
 1.3MiB.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;Now, while &lt;code&gt;rd&lt;/code&gt; (the small script that I had written) was good enough for me, it
 wouldn&amp;rsquo;t be a fit to distribute with the system. It doesn&amp;rsquo;t deal with dynamic
 binaries, kernel modules or library installation. So I have written this script
 that deals with those (kernel modules aren&amp;rsquo;t done yet, though).&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;The issue with build systems today are that the binaries are built dynamically
 unless you build the whole thing static. As long as there are shared libraries,
 the binaries will be dynamic as well. That&amp;rsquo;s why the core repository of Carbs
 still contains dynamic binaries for gcc, binutils, util-linux and some other
 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;The size of the new image with exactly the same binaries is a whopping 1.9MiB.
 While a size increase of 600KiB might not seem like a huge deal, I just want to
 tell you that busybox is static in both images, leaving ONLY TWO binaries that
 I install to my image; fsck and e2fsck. By switching from a static binary to
 dynamic + lib for only two programs, you require 600 KiB more space, and I have
 been talking about a gzip compressed cpio archive throughout this whole post.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
 </item>
 <item>
 <title>Starting X without Xinit</title>
 <pubDate>Wed, 12 Aug 2020</pubDate>
 <dc:creator>Cem Keylan</dc:creator>
 <link>https://cemkeylan.com/blog/20200812-starting-x-without-xinit.html</link>
 <description>&lt;h1&gt;Starting X without Xinit&lt;/h1&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;Most people who don&amp;rsquo;t use a desktop environment use the &lt;code&gt;startx&lt;/code&gt; command to
 initialize their X windowing system. Now, &lt;code&gt;startx&lt;/code&gt; is a shell script that runs
 the C program &lt;code&gt;xinit&lt;/code&gt; which basically runs &lt;code&gt;xorg-server&lt;/code&gt;. Using xinit obviously
 has some nice perks. It makes some checks and runs your .xinitrc file. We don&amp;rsquo;t
 need any of that though. Here is my X launcher:&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code class=&quot;sh&quot;&gt;#!/bin/sh
 
 export DISPLAY=${DISPLAY:-:0}
 trap &quot;$HOME/.xinitrc&quot; USR1
 
 (
     trap &apos;&apos; USR1
 
     exec X -keeptty :0 vt1
 ) &amp;amp;
 
 wait
 &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;You need to keep in mind that your .xinitrc should be an executable.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
 </item>
 <item>
 <title>Why I dislike Arch and Gentoo</title>
 <pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2020</pubDate>
 <dc:creator>Cem Keylan</dc:creator>
 <link>https://cemkeylan.com/blog/20200508-why-i-dislike-arch-and-gentoo.html</link>
 <description>&lt;h1&gt;Why I dislike Arch and Gentoo&lt;/h1&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;Over the years, I have used many many Linux distributions. The reason I am
 now using a distribution maintained by me, is because I am never truly satisfied
 about other people&amp;rsquo;s work. Not that they are bad at they do, it&amp;rsquo;s just that
 they don&amp;rsquo;t share the same vision as me. And I have felt this way with almost
 every distribution I have used.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;h2&gt;Arch Linux&lt;/h2&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;Arch Linux itself feels like it became a &amp;lsquo;meme distribution&amp;rsquo;. Their user-base
 is a cult-like community that think they are superior for using Arch Linux.
 Now, you might be an Arch user, and might not be like this. I used Arch for
 a long time, and didn&amp;rsquo;t feel this way, ever. I only see this level of cultism
 for Arch and systemd.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;If you ever call Arch bloated on an online community website, you will get
 lots of crap for it. But in fact, Arch Linux is bloated. Now this isn&amp;rsquo;t due
 to having too many packages in the base installation. This is because of their
 packaging of software.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;Arch enables almost every single option in the package configuration, meaning
 lots of unnecessary dependencies, and packages with humongous sizes.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;Pacman is a rather slow package manager, and missing alternatives. For me,
 an alternatives system is a must.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;If you want to use a better binary distribution, use Void Linux. They have
 saner package configurations, and the environment just feels more UNIXy. xbps
 is really fast, and has an alternatives system.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;h2&gt;Gentoo Linux&lt;/h2&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;This will be the longer part, because my dislike for Gentoo is bigger than
 my dislike towards Arch. If you want to see how NOT to maintain a distribution,
 check out Gentoo.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;I&amp;rsquo;ve used Gentoo for a few months, and I&amp;rsquo;m saying this right out of the
 gate. Portage is the slowest piece of software that I have ever used on
 Linux. Maybe that&amp;rsquo;s because I deliberately avoid software using Python,
 but Portage is most probably the slowest package manager that is being
 used.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;Portage depends on Bash, Python, and GNU wget. I have got a line count from
 &lt;code&gt;cloc&lt;/code&gt;, doing a &lt;code&gt;find . \( -name &apos;*.sh -o -name &apos;*.py&apos; \) -exec cloc {} +&lt;/code&gt;.
 The source code of just &lt;code&gt;*.sh&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;*.py&lt;/code&gt; files are over 100k lines of code.
 Then I got curious and runned cloc against the whole repository. Here is
 the output.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Language                      files          blank        comment           code
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Python                          703          20009          21411         102180
 Bourne Shell                     13            643            678           3911
 Bourne Again Shell               44            583            434           3172
 diff                             17             31            298            574
 YAML                              6             32             80            573
 XSD                               1             27             27            494
 C                                 2             56            128            291
 make                              1              7              6             19
 INI                               1              1              0             15
 reStructuredText                  1              5              4              9
 XSLT                              1              0              0              5
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 SUM:                            790          21394          23066         111243
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;That&amp;rsquo;s quite a lot.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;Portage is a package manager that tries to ease the configuration process of
 packages, but at the process makes it terribly complex to compose packages,
 and adds billions of portage configuration options. Configuring your first
 kernel is literally easier than configuring portage in a way you want. Users
 just do not know that they would be better off doing an LFS build for a much
 stabler system. My system was broken countless times while using Gentoo.
 Maintaining a Gentoo system is honestly harder than maintaining my own
 distribution.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EAPI&lt;/strong&gt;, probably the worst thing about the Portage ecosystem. It is the most
 complex, hard to read, hard to learn packaging system ever made. Creating a
 USE flag system shouldn&amp;rsquo;t have been this hard.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
 </item>
 <item>
 <title>Editor Wizardry</title>
 <pubDate>Mon, 13 Apr 2020</pubDate>
 <dc:creator>Cem Keylan</dc:creator>
 <link>https://cemkeylan.com/blog/20200413-editor-wizardry.html</link>
 <description>&lt;h1&gt;Editor Wizardry&lt;/h1&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;To this day, I have tried lots of IDEs and text editors. Visual Studio, PyCharm,
 Sublime, Notepad++, Vim, Emacs, Pico, Atom, etc. The list goes on. I have even
 unironically used ed, and ironically used cat for a while.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;I have settled down after years and years of &amp;ldquo;editor-hopping&amp;rdquo;. I now have 3
 main editors that I use on a daily basis! Yeah, you have read it correct. I use
 3 editors on a daily basis. Those are,&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;ul&gt;
 &lt;li&gt;sed&lt;/li&gt;
 &lt;li&gt;vi (not vim)&lt;/li&gt;
 &lt;li&gt;emacs&lt;/li&gt;
 &lt;/ul&gt;
 
 
 &lt;h2&gt;Emacs&lt;/h2&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;Emacs is a beast. Defining Emacs as a text-editor is wrong. It is a lisp
 interpreter, with text manipulation abilities.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;Now, I do like the concept of Integrated Development Environments. It&amp;rsquo;s a shame
 that all of them suck. With Emacs I can fine-tune everything according to my
 taste, install the packages I need, configure them the way I like. With IDEs you
 get some nice plugins, and a tiny bit of customization, but that&amp;rsquo;s it. You get
 an environment limited by the vision of someone else. Not to mention that most
 IDEs are proprietary software.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;I have stopped using Vim, because it is only meant to be a text editor. You can
 extend its features with plugins, but you can really see the impact with just a
 few of them. Vimscript is also really primitive, that&amp;rsquo;s why people write plugins
 with Python, JS, and such. This further affects the speed of Vim. Most Emacs
 packages I have encountered are written in pure lisp. I have over 70 packages,
 yet my load time and overall speed is better than when I had Vim with 8 plugins.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;h3&gt;Cons&lt;/h3&gt;
 
 &lt;ul&gt;
 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It comes with too many unnecessary features&lt;/strong&gt; Emacs comes with multiple IRC
 clients, a mail reader, rss reader etc. I don&amp;rsquo;t think they are badly
 implemented or anything, I would just prefer building up as I want to instead.&lt;/li&gt;
 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The defaults are not intuitive&lt;/strong&gt; Now, I haven&amp;rsquo;t actually tried any of them,
 but there is a reason &amp;ldquo;Emacs distributions&amp;rdquo;, such as &amp;ldquo;Spacemacs&amp;rdquo;, &amp;ldquo;DOOM
 Emacs&amp;rdquo;, &amp;ldquo;Centaur&amp;rdquo; exist. The base of Emacs, even with its unnecessary
 features, is unintuitive and complicated.&lt;/li&gt;
 &lt;/ul&gt;
 
 
 &lt;p&gt;Also, let&amp;rsquo;s not forget that Emacs uses an ancient Lisp dialect.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;h2&gt;Vi&lt;/h2&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;I mostly use Emacs when I am dealing with projects. If my aim is to just make
 simple changes when I am on the terminal, I just pop up vi provided by busybox.
 I just like that it is fast and featureless. It barely gets the job done, and
 that&amp;rsquo;s why I like it.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;h3&gt;Cons&lt;/h3&gt;
 
 &lt;ul&gt;
 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No syntax highlighting&lt;/strong&gt; Syntax highlighting is an important feature for me
 but I have learned to live without it. Since I don&amp;rsquo;t edit large files with it,
 this is not the biggest con.&lt;/li&gt;
 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hard to configure&lt;/strong&gt; Busybox vi only has a limited featureset, which makes
 it hard to configure. It doesn&amp;rsquo;t read an &lt;code&gt;rc&lt;/code&gt; file, it uses the &lt;code&gt;$EXINIT&lt;/code&gt;
 variable instead. Available options are limited. For example, you cannot
 convert the &amp;ldquo;tab&amp;rdquo; action to use space instead of tabs.&lt;/li&gt;
 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No visual selection support&lt;/strong&gt; Sadly, &lt;code&gt;v/V&lt;/code&gt; isn&amp;rsquo;t implemented in busybox vi.&lt;/li&gt;
 &lt;/ul&gt;
 
 
 &lt;h2&gt;Sed&lt;/h2&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;I use sed for when I am making small changes to small files, because it is
 faster than opening a file, making a change, saving, and exiting. Using regular
 expressions are much faster and efficient at such things.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;h3&gt;Cons&lt;/h3&gt;
 
 &lt;ul&gt;
 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Risky unless you know what you are doing&lt;/strong&gt; Since sed is operated on regex,
 you need to be extra careful. You are running that regex on the entire file
 without an option to &amp;lsquo;undo&amp;rsquo; (unless you have a sed that has a backup
 implementation).&lt;/li&gt;
 &lt;/ul&gt;</description>
 </item>
   </channel>
 </rss>