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Matthieu Cneude
Matthieu Cneude

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Building Your Mouseless Development Environment

One and a half year ago, I was wondering: would anybody be interested by a book describing how to build a system where the Linux shell would be the most important tool, from an empty hard disk to a complete development environment? Would anybody like some guidance to build their first "Mouseless Development Environment"?

Many were indeed interested by the idea. But I was working full time and I also knew I wanted to travel, so I put the project on hold.

After some good old burnout due to my job, I began to travel in Asia in January 2020. And then... you know what's coming.

Covid hit. I had to come back in Europe without any flat (I was subleasing it for 6 months). With difficulties and luck, I ended up with my girlfriend in a temporary place. I didn't have any job, only the computer I was traveling with and some clothes.

What a lovely occasion to write a book.

I want to write a book since I'm 10. And now... my first book is out for more than one month already! I'm so happy to write that, you have no idea.

Its lengthy name: Building Your Mouseless Development Environment, powered by amazing tools like Arch Linux, i3, Zsh, the Almighty tmux of course, and Neovim.

I sold already 317 books and the craziest part: nobody asked for a refund! I had only positive feedback.

building your mouseless development environment

Why would you be interested by such a book?

Switching your hands between the keyboard and the mouse takes cognitive energy. It's like multitasking: it's tiring and ineffective. I've written this book to give away everything I know for your hands to stay on the keyboard when you work with plain text.

The cherry of the cake: you might learn two or three things about Linux-based systems, especially if you don't use the shell often.

Here's the result:

  • The book's page.
  • A sample of the book with the whole table of content.
  • A quick video explaining a bit the Mouseless Development Environment we build throughout the book. If you don't want to watch everything, you can jump to the chapter you want.
  • The "behind the scenes": what tools I used to write this book.

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