I use almost only text programs out of convenience except for stuff like web browsing and window management. What exactly qualifies as a text based programs? Does the shell itself count? And the package manager or cat or wget?? Here are some popular programs or tools that I know of (you can probably find them all in the aur): weechat, finch, irssi, alsamixer, screen, vim, emacs, nano, tmux, ranger, mc, nethack, tty-clock, links2, elinks, dwb, mplaer, ncmpcpp, mpdviz, cal, stuff that is not really useful but funny: sl, screenfetch, archey, nyancat, cowsay, ncmatrix, fortune I'm probably forgetting a hundred things, you should probably just google.