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

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/UqlkKK7imjo

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

00:01:58 - MiniMax LSP config

00:06:19 - The team behind the nvim-mini project

00:08:40 - 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, job

00:22:24 - Echasnovski needs support

00:24:27 - Are you part of the Neovim Core team?

00:25:03 - Contributions to Neovim

00:27:03 - Why this love for Neovim?

00:28:06 - Thoughts on Tmux and neovim tabs

00:29:31 - Relative line numbers?

00:33:23 - Thoughts on purists saying you have to stick to defaults

00:35:04 - Thoughts on extending Neovim

00:36:32 - Gregory Anders beef with the .setup call

00:46:45 - Thoughts on AI generated PRs

00:48:30 - 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? EndeavourOS

01:01:10 - From Ubuntu to Arch

01:04:52 - Do regular updates on a day you have time

01:09:21 - Thoughts on NixOS

01:10:17 - Thoughts on macOS and the misconception that its expensive

01:15:17 - Thoughts on Echasnovski's accent

01:17:35 - 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 soon

Video:

https://youtu.be/ypJTkwarAVE

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

00:01:36 - How do we pronounce your name

00:04:23 - What do you do in the neovim community?

00:07:53 - Neovim 0.5 and the wild wild west of lua plugins

00:10:23 - We've been planning this interview for over 6 months

00:12:20 - Echasnovski's ban on reddit

00:14:59 - Colorscheme theory (that I didn't understand, not normie friendly)

00:22:10 - Color theory is very complex as everyone is different

00:23:30 - Gruvbox is for old people, highly saturated colors

00:27:15 - Echasnovski created the default Neovim colorscheme

00:27:38 - Justin Keyes also likes boring colors. Old soul trapped in a young body

00:29:17 - Is Justin a dictator?

00:32:18 - Why the reddit ban?

00:38:49 - long reddit posts go through mod's approval

00:40:17 - How does the shadown ban work?

00:42:02 - Shoutout to Lukas Reineke

00:43:37 - Account restored by a misterious reddit employee

00:45:19 - Self hosting git server, codeberg, tangled.org

00:48:02 - Why planning on self hosting?

00:49:17 - Explaining the repo structure of mini.nvim

00:50:44 - You also have a picker? mini.pick

00:52:15 - Sylvan Franklin seems to use mini.pick

00:52:53 - Custom pickers?

00:54:03 - Issues with the matching of some pickers

00:56:18 - 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 work

01:05:32 - vscode neovim plugin

01:07:21 - 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 kickstart

01:19:38 - MiniMax demo

01:21:24 - Is MiniMax designed for complete beginners?

01:25:59 - mini.clue and why not which-key?

01:26:37 - Folke is always on vacation

01:29:11 - Did you copy Helix?

01:31:01 - The which-key hate continues

01:35:29 - Interview with Folke?

01:36:02 - The 30_mini.lua config file

01:39:21 - 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.pack

01:48:10 - Should I wait for Neovim 0.12 before trying MiniMax?

01:52:22 - vim.pack doesn't have a healthcheck because it's perfect

01:52:54 - vim.pack demo

01:54:16 - 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/vLfaiRHT6bo

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