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Why I Use Suckless Tools

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Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#41

Post by nsajko »

dhimes wrote: post #25
xiwenc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stronger yet I rarely reboot my systems. Either they run 24/7 or I put them to sleep. There’s definitely good use for these optimized tools. Especially on old systems with low resources and slow CPU’s. I generally like the simplicity of suckless tools. dmenu together with i3 is a nice duo.

You have working sleep? Man I'm so jealous.

> You have working sleep? Man I'm so jealous.

Suspend to RAM does not work for you?!

What distro do you use and what kernel? What do the files /sys/power/state and /sys/power/mem_sleep contain? Maybe it's just a SystemD issue?

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#43

Post by dhimes »

ssb1 wrote: post #32
dhimes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have working sleep? Man I'm so jealous.

I've had working sleep since at least 2010 on ThinkPads and Dell XPS, Ubuntu and now Mint.

Geez. I think my Mint worked for a while. Now Win10 doesn't even work. I have to reboot always- I suspect it's because of my second monitor (I only started using it as a real work machine since the WFH started).

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#44

Post by knubie »

sseneca wrote: post #17

I used st for a while but switched to kitty. kitty obviously has way more features (things like colour switching can be added to st, but requires messing with patches which I dislike, and dislike more than compiling on each configuration change). I've been using kitty for a few months now and performance is great. in fact, the biggest performance gain I saw was when I switched away from "oh my zsh" to a manually writ…

On top of that, kitty’s window management / split pane features are way more performant than tmux’s, which contradicts one of the early points in the article about st.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#45

Post by ryanmjacobs »

tarruda wrote: post #38
hhmc wrote: post #15

> If something goes wrong while using them, you can easily jump right into the code that implements them and nail down issues using basic debugger skills. I feel like we have very different conceptions of what 'easily' fixing a configuration issue looks like.

From the implementation POV, suckless software is very simple, and this makes it easier not only to tweak configuration (which is usually done C headers through defines), but also any kind of customization you might need. Take their window manager dwm as an example. The codebase is only 2000 lines long, so any bug you find will have to be hidden in those 2000 lines. If you take a Sunday afternoon to study the code, y…

This comment strikes home. The "bug-space" is so much smaller, and definitely possible for a lone newcomer to grasp in a day or two

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#46

Post by jdub »

ShinyRice wrote: post #39
jdub wrote: post #22

As much as possible, I try to use software created by kind communities. The behaviours and attitudes in the "suckless" world come across as combative, exclusive, and unpleasant.

Being kind or not doesn't affect the quality of their software. If anything, I'd say they're strongly opinionated, something that seems to be in very short supply these days, and at times it's something to appreciate and welcome. If you want proof, such communities still draw an audience, just look at OpenBSD.

Kindness really does improve the quality of software. Look at the answers to "Why Rust?" in today's Stack Overflow post. The Rust community is opinionated, inclusive, ambitious, and kind, and produces excellent software.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#47

Post by necrotic_comp »

factorialboy wrote: post #34

Back in the day, I used to distro hop, window manager hop and try to find the ever eluding "perfect" setup. This lasted maybe 15 years. There was a sense of vanity in trying to be different yet spectacular. Today I would tell my younger self that use what makes you productive. Even if it is the standard Windows or Mac OS environments. R/unixporn is the nerds equivalent of shirtless beach dudes.

I agree with this. I'd been struggling with using Xmonad et. al. on the desktop for years, figuring that there was something wrong with how I was doing it, hacking on the config to get it just right. Then the pandemic happened, and I had to work from home.

So I went to ICEWM, have my terminal with Tmux in the center screen and my web browsers on my left and right monitors and that's good enough for me to be productive and get my job done.

So yeah, the perfect setup is not the one that's the coolest, it's the one that lets you get things done efficiently. Unfortunately for me, tiling window managers don't seem to do that.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#48

Post by JackFr »

An erratum is a correction included with an already published work. Errata are multiple corrections.

Not sure what “All of these things control various errata.“ means.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#49

Post by ubercow13 »

simias wrote: post #30
Macha wrote: post #4

I get that people enjoy very minimalist computer experiences, but startup time is hardly that different between these programs and other slightly more ergonomic programs which offer conveniences like a config file. If you look at my startup time for my system it goes something like this: 10s - waiting for monitor to wake up to pick OS at dual boot menu 15s - typing disk encryption password 15s - system uses disk encr…

I don't see why you're focusing on speed (does the author even mention it? I skimmed TFA and didn't find it mentioned). Less bloat, simpler code means fewer bugs and it means that it's easy for a hacker/power user to dig into the code to understand and modify it, that 's the killer feature. After one hour poking into DWM I understood how it worked and how I could modify it to fit my needs exactly. I use a bunch of su…

>Less bloat, simpler code means fewer bugs

Often window manager bugs seem to be working around strange behaviours from individual applications. I wouldn't assume simpler code means less bugs, it could mean more. dwm must be very well tested at this point though.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#50

Post by jdub »

kamranjon wrote: post #35
jdub wrote: post #22

As much as possible, I try to use software created by kind communities. The behaviours and attitudes in the "suckless" world come across as combative, exclusive, and unpleasant.

In what way are they combative or unpleasant? I've never experienced this. I enjoy the philosophy and opinionated approach they have to development. I setup an old thinkpad with openbsd and dwm and st and it all worked great and i learned some C along the way. I also used sent - their plaintext slide presentation tool to give a talk at work and it was a pretty cool way to put a presentation together quickly and focus…

Start with the name. That puts it in opposition immediately. They present a lot of that opposition to projects and people, rarely stated kindly.

They could express a positive enthusiasm for simplicity, but that's not the way they go about it.

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