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Why I Use Suckless Tools

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Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#151

Post by ydlr »

MauranKilom wrote: post #92
allis10 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

That's not the way I understand the "-less" composition they use. "harmless" doesn't mean "poses less harm", it means "poses no harm". "colorless" doesn't mean "less color", it means "no color". And so on. So to me, "suckless" means "doesn't suck", no humility. Admittedly, it doesn't exactly follow the normal composition rules so the exact interpretation is more up in the air, but that won't change the fact that many…

I think it means both. The ideal is to be suckless, but practically, the most one can hope for is to suck less.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#152

Post by karatestomp »

ilitirit wrote: post #133
noobermin wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be a little charitable to OP and this reply. The configuration is indeed in code but it's macro defines. It's essentially as simple as changing a text configuration file, it's not like you have to actually edit code (as in new functions, adding actual logic). Things like fonts and sizes and colors is changing defines, it's actually simple. Now when it comes to more complex stuff, like hotkeys, well you're essentially…

I actually am quite familiar with suckless tools and I do consider myself an advanced user, so I'm probably part of their target market as well. But to be honest, from a pragmatic point of view I just don't see how configuration through code is better/worse than configuration through dot/json/ini files in the average "suckless" use-case. Why must this even be something that I care about? If it's a case of their softw…

> I get that too, but personally, why would I care if a piece of software is 70kb or 500kb in this age? YMMV.

I'm torn on this because I am way, way over screwing around with my OS, but I also hate that all the modern standard desktop operating systems (macOS, Win10, Gnome3 or KDE) that you get if you don't want to jack with defaults and configure things or use some way-less-popular so likely to be (even more) janky distro or "spin" or whatever, want to take up a gigabyte or more (way more for macOS and Win10 especially, tens of GB) of disk and hundreds of MB of RAM, while delivering experiences that are marginally better than what we had in the late 90s and early 2000s with sub-GB OS installations and low-tens of MB of memory use when idle.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#153

Post by karatestomp »

mikepurvis wrote: post #18
rejschaap wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, reading a single file will not have a noticable impact, but we all know it will not stop at a single file. Before you know it a full blown web browser is included. The suckless philosophy is pretty extreme, but I'm grateful there are people exploring this space.

I think that's the key thing. It's not about config, it's the fact that the "plugins" are all compiled in as well— meanwhile over here in the real world we have there are entire programs and methodologies dedicated to managing directories of vimscript files, and sharing your personal dotfiles directory on github is a thing.

And then pretty soon the plugins are in one or more scripting languages (probably JavaScript) and your scripting subsystem is 100x the size of all of dwm.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#154

Post by lioeters »

noobermin wrote: post #68

The thing I like about the suckless people and their tools is not breaking what works. Seriously, the primary problem with software today in my assessment is churn. Things change way too fast and you wonder how people get anything done as aging things are constantly being deprecated instead of being considered stabilized. I'm not really a developer (I'm a computational scientist, so I am a different kind of developer…

> militantly minimal

Thanks for a new phrase of the day, that describes the phenomenon well. At some point it can go beyond being a practical matter, and crosses over into fashion and dogma.

> the primary problem with software today..is churn

> stability..is lacking greatly in the open source world

This makes me think, there's a difference between minimalism and simplicity. Software that's stable, backward compatible, with a small and well-defined interface - there are rare gems out there that achieve this simplicity, where it can be used every day for years and just works like a champ.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#155

Post by yiyus »

metalliqaz wrote: post #60

Every time I see these screenshots of tiling window managers like dwm, there is always a browser window smooshed into a block that is barely big enough for a term. I really don't get it. Who uses a web browser like that? I almost always maximize my browser on my desktop, and when i want to share the space with something I'm working on, I maybe will split the screen in half, or just have floating windows on top of eac…

The way dwm works, you have a main window and you have a stack. It is normal to have windows you are not using in the stack. The small window is indeed not very useful, but it is still more than the icon used in other places.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#156

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

geerlingguy wrote: post #66

This 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,…

Counterarguments: tailored clothing, or at least the right fit, made of fabrics which don't scratch or itch, while being sturdy, breathable and not disintegrating during the first wash.

Using a bicycle fitting for your body with good components instead of some shabby and abused rental, which makes you sweat, so you could have jogged instead, and been as fast.

Using a swiss knife, or some other multitool for anything, while more fit for the purpose tools exist. (how often?)

Using camping cutlery instead of proper knife, fork and spoon.

Using (duct)tape to temporarliy fix installations, while avoiding/delaying a true repair.

So much more...

Anyways, happy treadmilling...

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#157

Post by metalliqaz »

yiyus wrote: post #155
metalliqaz wrote: post #60

Every time I see these screenshots of tiling window managers like dwm, there is always a browser window smooshed into a block that is barely big enough for a term. I really don't get it. Who uses a web browser like that? I almost always maximize my browser on my desktop, and when i want to share the space with something I'm working on, I maybe will split the screen in half, or just have floating windows on top of eac…

The way dwm works, you have a main window and you have a stack. It is normal to have windows you are not using in the stack. The small window is indeed not very useful, but it is still more than the icon used in other places.

Windows has a stack too. Most recently used on top. Older windows are either partially or completely covered, but they always have an icon accessible. Would I dedicate a section of my screen to windows down the stack? No, I don't think I would. I guess I just don't get the zen of dwm.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#158

Post by gpanders »

MauranKilom wrote: post #92
allis10 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

That's not the way I understand the "-less" composition they use. "harmless" doesn't mean "poses less harm", it means "poses no harm". "colorless" doesn't mean "less color", it means "no color". And so on. So to me, "suckless" means "doesn't suck", no humility. Admittedly, it doesn't exactly follow the normal composition rules so the exact interpretation is more up in the air, but that won't change the fact that many…

Well in this case, "software that sucks less" is on the top of every page of their website, so the intent behind their name is pretty clear.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#159

Post by alphachloride »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #156
geerlingguy wrote: post #66

This 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,…

Counterarguments: tailored clothing, or at least the right fit, made of fabrics which don't scratch or itch, while being sturdy, breathable and not disintegrating during the first wash. Using a bicycle fitting for your body with good components instead of some shabby and abused rental, which makes you sweat, so you could have jogged instead, and been as fast. Using a swiss knife, or some other multitool for anything,…

Counter-counterargument:

All this assumes the difference in utility between a specialized and a generic software tool is as stark as your examples portray. That difference is quite subjective, and arguably lesser than your examples given how much effort goes into producing modern OSes and their ecosystems.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#160

Post by karatestomp »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #71

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!

I'm getting ready to move toward something like that, but with VMs for each sort of work or task I'm doing. My reasons:

1) I'm leaving Mac hardware for "pro"-tier computing because their gear's swung way back into ZOMGWTF overpriced territory, especially if you want higher-than-basic-but-still-not-actually-that-much core counts, memory, or disk, while also getting worse in some ways (mostly the MBP line), and not keeping up with what ought to be standard base specs for "premium" hardware. I'll keep buying used Apple gear as terminals and light farting-around machines, and iPads are still the only tablets worth a damn and I use them for tons of stuff, so they've still got me for their iOS devices.

2) No software platforms support suspend/restore-this-entire-desktop-session, with multiple sessions available at once (and the ability to run more than one at once), which is an incredibly productive way of working for me short of having a dedicated machine for every purpose (which would be worse in a lot of ways anyway), so the only way I can get something like that is with a big-assed desktop machine with 4x as much RAM as any one of my tasks/sessions needs, running VMs. I'd rather just be able to suspend and resume user sessions, including desktop and application state, as a native OS feature, as that'd save me the PITA of keeping multiple VMs around and up-to-date and all that—alas, no platform supports that.

[EDIT] for the latter, if it's not clear, think "client 1 session", "client 2 session", "side-project 1 session", "side-project 2 session", "gaming session" (probably can't do that one with my set-up as I don't want to screw with gaming in a VM), "book 1 writing/research session", "porn session" (LOL), all isolated and able to suspend/resume from exactly where they were.

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