The author primarily uses an iPad Pro, a dedicated remote server, and most work done with ssh, tmux, and Emacs. That is a simplified work environment!
Why I Use Suckless Tools
71–80 of 215 posts
Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools
#72> 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…
> If you take a Sunday afternoon to study the code, you will very likely understand how every piece of the software works, at which point you will be in a position to fix anything you might find. You might even end up forking it and implementing your own window manager (AwesomeWM was originally forked from Dwm).
I don't think I have ever needed to do this "fix" any piece of configuration in any software.
While I understand the concept and approach, I don't think that this is a productive use of most people's time.
Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools
#73As 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…
There was a tweet about Nazi stuff:
https://twitter.com/pid_eins/status/1113738764797534208?s=19
See also
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20845633
I don't know much more about the community, I don't like suckless tools.
Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Accusations of "elitism" being what they may, the name is in fact a slice of humility: they advertise that their software "sucks less", not that it is "without suck".
I guess the name comes from Mutt:
> The Mutt E-Mail Client
> "All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less." -me, circa 1995
The above is in essence a absurdly humorous, self-derogatory show of humility, summarizing the sysiphean task of trying to make any software bug free and useful in any way.
Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools
#75Back 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 producti…
To be fair, IceWM is pretty cool.
No, really. It's the center of my custom linux desktop. You can run a similar setup like described in the article with it, it replaces dwm just fine. Its preferences and winoptions are powerful enough.
Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools
#76This post highlights many of the reasons why I’ve chosen to just stick with a standard, widely-used desktop OS (macOS in my case, but could easily be Windows or some other OS like Fedora), and use almost all the default settings, adapting to the defaults over the years. Would the tiny incremental gain from tweaking one or two specific settings to my perfect liking save me anywhere near the amount of time, happiness,…
Yeah, the closer I can get to just opening Visual Studio and pressing F5 the happier I am. I like to focus on writing software and shipping a product, not troubleshooting toolchains and figuring out config files for each piece involved. I know not everyone feels this way.
Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools
#77Back 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.
My problem is that I was pretty productive with Ubuntu + Unity, significantly more than with Windows or MacOS, or other Linux DEs. This was great because Unity was the default DE for one of the most common Linux distros, so it was well-supported and easy to find information about tweaks and settings online.
But then it got killed off due to a vocal minority constantly complaining about it, and now I'm trying to find an alternative that uses similar UI principles but nothing actually seems to get it right. For example, I often hear people (computer power users) praise OS X. When I see them use it, they're mostly operating it in a "casual" point-and-click fashion like the average casual user. What made the difference for me in Ubuntu/Unity were power user features, like extensive keyboard navigation, or dragging/resizing a window with the middle/right mouse button while holding Alt, or searching the window menu simply by pressing Alt.
Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools
#78This caters to a very specific audience though. This particular concept while labelled suckless sounds like hell to me. To change a config I need to recompile stuff? Jikes To each their own though. I can see how this could work well if one invested a mountain of time into learning & fine-tuning it all
The code is less than 2k lines. It's understandable probably after a weekend.
Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools
#79This post highlights many of the reasons why I’ve chosen to just stick with a standard, widely-used desktop OS (macOS in my case, but could easily be Windows or some other OS like Fedora), and use almost all the default settings, adapting to the defaults over the years. Would the tiny incremental gain from tweaking one or two specific settings to my perfect liking save me anywhere near the amount of time, happiness,…
> I don’t have enough time in my life to debug and recompile my window manager or Terminal app on a regular basis. Maybe a long time ago, when I was single and had a lot more time to burn.
I set up dwm, st, and dmenu once years ago, and have worked flawlessly without faults ever since. I actually use a stripped-down hacked-up dwm that I did on a Sunday years ago and have since lost the source for it; I can't recompile it even if I wanted, heh (which is not ideal, but I have little reason to spend effort on it).
> Would the tiny incremental gain from tweaking one or two specific settings to my perfect liking save me anywhere near the amount of time, happiness, or productivity that I save from just letting someone else choose the defaults for me?
But that's not without overhead either. If you update your Fedora or Windows you'll sometimes need to spend time getting used to new defaults and the like, especially on the long term (e.g. Windows 7 -> 8 -> 10, or if you use Ubuntu, Gnome -> Unity -> back to Gnome). With dwm, my experience has remained unchanged for a very long time.
I can only speak for myself, but your description of a hacker constantly fiddling and compiling their software couldn't be further from what I'm actually doing with suckless/dwm. Funny enough, I like it for much of the same reasons as you like Fedora/Windows: it gets out of my way so I can spend time on more important stuff.
Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools
#80Suckless is all about hacking your own tools. Totally unsurprising that "hacker" "news" doesn't get it. https://suckless.org/hacking/
Most of us have been there, done that since childhood. Once you reach a certain age, it's more important to get things done and not fuss over trivialities in life.