Notes on Yazi

 Yazi is good.  Real good.  I used it over ssh to cull a directory on my second system; it worked as I had hoped, except, perhaps, for color theming.

 Knock on Wood.

 Viewing/reviewing

One of the needs that yazi has fulfilled for me is rapid viewing.  I can only imagine that should I ever be able to upgrade my current machines (RAM and CPU, as well as Storage), viewing would be even more friendly, especially for images.  The ability to flip through a directory of images, mark, and move, copy, or delete marked files, has made a huge difference to my workflow.  The only other tool that is useful in this regard is xnviewmp.  I use a fairly simple set of commands; probably if I mastered tabs and other complexities and plugins, yazi would be even more helpful.

 

By the way, the terminal "kitty" has wonderful facilities built in to work well for viewing images.   I prefer the black background and contrasty color scheme to any other.

 Ranger was good enough, until it wasn't.

Copy, Paste and move and Notes on plugins.

 [Cautionary note: I have lost files through carelessness here, and yazi has some gotchas to be navigated around.]

This is pretty much self-explanatory.  I will try to address this topic in detail at some future time.  For now, I'll mention a plugin that has helped speed these processes: 

• yamb is a bookmarking plugin that works well.  In the absence of a much needed multi-step backup command, this does a good job when sorting through files and moving or copying them to another directory.  I have gotten around the mentioned limitation by defining  bookmarks for the current from directory, and the currently interesting goto directory,  I define a set of book marks to frequently used directories, as well.  This is an easy tool to master.  Like other plugins, issues have been experienced after updating yazi (it is under fairly intense development).  

• toggle-pane: This helps when viewing both pdfs and images.  It is possible to configure the mazimum size of displayed images (I'm not certain whether this works for pdfs) by putting this code into ~?.config/yazi/yazi.toml:

                       [preview]

                      # Change them to your desired values
                      max_width  = 1800
                      max_height = 1800
  

       Plugins are found on a resources link on yazi's web pages.  Other sites exist with plubins.

 

Filtering

Filtering is a wonderful way to sort.  It has been even more useful to me, because of a filenaming scheme I have adopted.  I stole this idea from Protesilaos's Denote system.  I have not found denote very useful, but the concept of tags at the end of the filename, before the extension has become a useful tool allowing me to sort files more rapidly.  Here is an example.

    Jones--2060--JargonInBiology__taxonomy_nomenclature_zoology.pdf

I have started avoiding underscores in filenames ("_") in favor of using them in tags.  Interestingly, I saw a web page or thread somewhere about tagging styles, and this is one of several.  I used to use a 10 (or so) character at the beginning of lines in a bibliography, where each position had a meaning.  So anything related to crabs would have "c" in the third position (12ctx8urt-Anon-Crabs of the world) would be sorteable by sorting by the third position.  The Unix (GNU/Linux) sort command worked excellently.  

 With filtering  in yazi, one can narrow down a large folder/directory with pdfs about taxonomy: "_taxonom".  Prot has demonstrated the use of regular expressions to sort even more specifically in, I think emacs dired.  To avoid filtering for "_" in filenames, one would theoretically use a regular expression requiring a "__" (double underscore) somewhere before the "_:" single underscore.  This is probably easy.  Filtering is easier, I think.  It may be that emacs would be better, but so far, aside from a couple of learning experiences, Yazi is working well.

Moving around 

In either the getting started or tips section of the yazi main web pages, is a suggestion that makes yazi more useful.  

Inserting this code into .bashrc (and I think .zshrc as well) makes things easy.

 function y() {
    local tmp="$(mktemp -t "yazi-cwd.XXXXXX")" cwd
    yazi "$@" --cwd-file="$tmp"
    if cwd="$(command cat -- "$tmp")" && [ -n "$cwd" ] && [ "$cwd" != "$PWD" ]; then
        builtin cd -- "$cwd"
    fi
    rm -f -- "$tmp"
}

Then, when in a terminal, type "y" to start yazi.  After moving to another directly, quitting with "q" leaves the terminal in this new directory.

 

A Caution or Two 

 Plugins are often not mutually compatible.  I have tried several others, but some collided with these few i do use.  

Some plugins iexplicably use keybindings that are assigned to other functions by default, and it is not always apparently what key bindings may be used.  <F1> may display a help screen, which may be filtered.  Filtering rocks.  Bookmarks rock.

 

2025 May 19

 

 

             

Further notes, after some time with Endeavour

 My initial impression of EndeavourOS/i3wm was a sour one.  Now that I have installed it on two machines, my positive impression of it, this time around, has moderated.  I may uninstall and go the tortuous route, installing Archlinux directly.  Not yet, but perhaps...

I could not do better in expressing my chief complain than another user (anonymous, I fear), who wrote a comment to a thread about i3WM on Endeavour.OS  In effect, this user remarked "It seemed more like one person's favorite custom install than a generally useful one."   Hear hear!!  Another user remarked that a seasoned i3wm user would find the customizations of the EndeavourOS tweak to i3wm, in effect, difficult to use.  

Other users pointed out that during the install an obscure checkbox allows one to skip EndeavourOS (EOS) customizations.  After installation is not a favorable time to learn about this, and it warns me against ever reinstalling this OS.

The OS is slick.  Too slick for i3wm.  Even the login screen is over the top, IMHO.

Another suggestion was to delete the directory ~/.config/i3 completely.  

What I have done is copy over, mostly, my config file from Manjaro.

 

Now I will mention the one thing that EndeavourOS does that works better for me, as I did in my last post: it used Archlinux repos out of the box.  Manjaro has taken pains to filter the repos so that they seem to able to go out of date, as I believe happened to me. 

I can see no need to continue to flog this dead horse.  I will continue to use it until I find time to install something else, probably Arch.  

EndeavourOS GNU/Linux: notes

 I have installed EndeavourOS, i3wm on two machines: a self-built/self-maintained PC, and a Lenovo S1 Yoga.   On both, as of now, it is working well, some 2 weeks in.  Why EndeavourOS?  I'm not sure.  I was experiencing some glitches on my Manjaro systems, and I needed to refresh the Lenovo S1 Yoga i3 installation.  In retrospect, after all of what I list below, it seems to me---though without having anything specific in mind---that Manjaro's i3wm flavor has fallen behind. 

Some key points:

• EndeavourOS i3wm edition incorporates a number of idosyncratic modifications and customizations.  This was my sense on previous short-lived installs, and it remains so, perhaps to an even greater extent, today.
• The first thing one notices is i3wm keybindings.  They differ in almost every respect from i3wm defaults, without, AFAICT, any particular reasons.  
  
• Installing  a printer reveals what may be a well-kept secret: the default firewall blocks a printer; certain adjustments must be made.  The "install-system-printer" tool, not an obvious feature, makes accomodations to this roadblock;  however, it may not be obvious to one who has been installing a printer by usual methods, such as starting up cups and opening "localhost:631" in a browser.  I, for one, was unaware of the firewall settings, making it necessary to chase down the differences.  Fortunately, I stumbled upon the script.
• i3wm's configurations file, located at .config/i3, sources a number of scripts in .config/i3/scripts.  
• The shutdown/resume/etc process found in, for example, Manjaro's i3wm edition, is implemented as a popup menu, via one of these scripts, powermenu, which requires a mouse click to activate.
• EndeavourOS exhibits a fondness for visual icons.  These are overdone, for example, in the powermenu script, and in the status bar, etc.. To my eye, these icons are distracting.
• EndeavourOS seems to reflect a trend toward modernization of i3wm, and perhaps other desktops.  
• Some defaults are welcome; others were troublesome, at least for me. 
• The installation caused some hiccoughs.  I don't remember them; I had to reinstall three or four times, for at least one of my machines.   

One serious problem I encountered during installation was the step, which I had overlooked, of having to choose between a BIOS and a UEFI installation.  This presented a serious problem.  I have never encountered this in any previous installation of Manjaro or Archlinux.  (I have abandoned direct installation of Archlinux because the learning experience touted by the developers has become a hindrance: after at least 10 installations, I have not learned them to any helpful extent; various versions of this process have presented, overall, significant hindrance to productivity. 

I was able to recover, for the most part, to a very nice OS, by copying over my config file from my previous Manjaro i3wm.  To be fair, this file has evolved over a decade or more, and incorporates useful tweaks.  Like Emacs's .emacs file, these tweaks---indeed the entire experience---remain relevant, without interfering with functioning of EndeavourOS.  Tweaks---mostly inspired by a series of videos from the distant past by Luke Smith, include:

• A dropdown terminal (using Kitty in my case)
• A dropdown Emacs instance---extremely useful;
• A dropdown terminal running R, for calculations
• A popup calendar: orage, a wonderful calendar, the best IMHO;
• A popup "ham radio clock," helpful for my calendar work.
• Two additional specific scratchpads, which I seldom use;
• Workspace flipping abilities
• custom bindings of kmag and kde-connect, which I use for microscope work.
  

 These features make i3wm even more useful.  I also customize other features, in minor ways.

 

Another personal note:  I always install on four partitions,  usually requiring some editing of /etc/fstab:

1. /
2. /home
3. /usr/local
4. /boot/efi
5. (and swap; does that count?)

 Using a separate /home parition over the past 15 years or more has helped me to recover when something goes haywire, and it has given me a consistent work and storage setup.  

 

I always use a unique user name; and change the user id to "1004" after installation, by dropping to a superuser virtual terminal before logging in, the first or so time; this renders all user files read+writable, so various work areas, like my "KEEPERS" top level directory, may be copied over instantly.  Group id must be changed likewise, and all files that are not owned by this user:group combination in the current (or other) instance may be harmonized by executing "chown -R newuser:newgroup ~/.

 

A separate /usr/local directory (or folder if one will) enables the ability to carry over programs I have compiled myself, to the new system.   I reinstall texlive using the package "texlive-installer"; this is a wonderful tool.  It is not necessary, but some links may not carry over.  I have been setting up the /usr/local mount by hand in /etc/fstab, because different installers seem to handle the attempt to create it during installation, differently. 

 

Other directories must also be set up by hand, for example:

• ~/Pictures (a large partition)

For now, I am happy enough.   In case of a need to reinstall, I would probably seek a distro that holds true to i3wm defaults.

 

Obviously, I am a fan of i3.  Endeavour would not be my first choice except that it seems well constructed and efficient.  The GUI enhancements are not excessive, but they are too much for me.

 

UPDATE:  I have followed some random advice to uncheck "opengl flipping" after experiencing serious lags upon resuming from suspend.  We'll see....  So far, no lag, but will try again.  

 Ok, I've tried it with only one application running, and things are fine.  What I had experienced were long delays, mouse unresponsive, when resuming.  Fingers crossed.