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Why I Use Suckless Tools

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Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#181

Post by kouteiheika »

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,…

> 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?

I really have to hard disagree on this.

Would letting someone else choose the defaults for me save me more time (and frustration!) considering that I'd have to adapt, again and again, every time those defaults change, or would it be better to just pay that one-time cost of setting up things how I like it, forgetting about it, and not having to worry about the whole environment changing underneath me?

Sorry, but I really don't understand your argument here. How many times did the UI of macOS change? How many times did the Windows' UI change? How many times did the Android's UI change for no good reason? (Like, e.g. it seems that for virtually every new major version they completely redesign the camera app.)

In what way is it less effort to constantly keep adapting to those seemingly arbitrary changes compared to just setting it up yourself once, and then forgetting about it?

I just don't get it.

I've set up my environment many years ago, and I haven't really significantly tweaked anything since. It works the same way as it used to. Still the same tiling window manager, still the same apps, and everything works just as I'd like it. It's great. And I don't have to waste my time dealing with all of the UI churn that happens all around.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#182

Post by sneak »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #170
sneak wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? There are substantial privacy and security benefits to leaving the macOS/Windows ecosystem. Both of these operating systems include a lot of telemetry that is non-trivial to disable,…

[1] https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch maybe?

I wish. See the all caps warning in the README displayed at that link, and note that it hasn’t been maintained in almost a year.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#183

Post by mnm1 »

Seems pretty sucky to me to have to debug your window manager or configure a half dozen apps just to do basic things like changing the sound volume or showing the time. If I didn't know any better, I'd think this was a parody. It's the complete opposite of what I'd call suckless tools. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy doing those things sometimes in my time off and playing with systems, but when I need to get work done, I want a system that requires as few changes as possible from the default and whose basic functionality I don't ever need to debug. OS X used to be this and I'm still using it despite the latest version, even on a brand new mbpro, being unstable. Some Linux distros are close but even in 2020, still require constant debugging of the core system (display drivers, DE bugs, stability, etc.). Windows looks promising but due to it being adware, I never got around to testing it properly.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#184

Post by chapium »

mnm1 wrote: post #183

Seems pretty sucky to me to have to debug your window manager or configure a half dozen apps just to do basic things like changing the sound volume or showing the time. If I didn't know any better, I'd think this was a parody. It's the complete opposite of what I'd call suckless tools. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy doing those things sometimes in my time off and playing with systems, but when I need to get work done, I…

Its just a name, and an interesting project.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#185

Post by 08-15 »

tutfbhuf wrote: post #6
Havoc wrote: post #2

This 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

> suckless tools having their configuration baked into the executable at compile time, they start up instantly I wonder how many milliseconds slower the startup of a C application will be, when it reads a config file from SSD first.

Over millions of application runs, it adds up to hours!

But seriously, reading a config file means there has to be a syntax and a parser, and both have to be maintained. The syntax can be limiting or fiendishly complex, both by accident. The parser can have bugs. Is it really worth adding these headaches just so editing your config file is one instead of two commands?

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#186

Post by aganame »

shawnz wrote: post #139
profsnuggles wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yesterday I posted something about an emacs keybinding and someone pointed out that the command actually doesn't have a default keybinding. I set up that keybinding sometime in the mid 2000's and it hasn't changed since then. Since 2005 home many times have the defaults change in Windows/OSX/Gnome/KDE? (A lot! Gnome3, Plasma, Windows 8) It's something you do once and then leave alone. If someone is tweaking their con…

When new developments are made in computer graphics technology or UX research, I want to be able to take advantage of them. I don't want to limit myself to a design based on the state of the art in 2006 just to avoid having to learn anything new.

We're using 50 year old UX paradigms. Nothing has significantly improved after Engelbart.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#187

Post by gumby »

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,…

> why I’ve chosen to just stick with a standard, widely-used desktop OS..., and use almost all the default settings, adapting to the defaults over the years.

I strongly agree! It saves me time and decreases the number of incompatibilities I have to deal with. Not every program gets this treatment, but as much as possible i try not to change the defaults, especially with the OS.

A colleague also persuaded me that statically linking my binaries was the best long term approach. I started out thinking he was crazy but no, he was right.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#188

Post by junke »

junke wrote: post #150
junke wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

-1 points, I guess some people don't like links

Oh nevermind, I saw the lobster post, FRIGN says he wasn't aware about Charlottesville at the time (living in a basement without internet access, probably).

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#189

Post by csb6 »

faizmokhtar wrote: post #114
blauditore wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For macOS, I've been using [Hammerspoon][1] to solve the extensive keyboard navigation and resizing windows. Try checking it out. You may find it interesting. [1]: https://www.hammerspoon.org/

I second this. There is a really good Hammerspoon plugin called Miro Window Manager that lets you easily resize windows into halves, thirds, and quarters of the screen using simple keyboard shortcuts. It really should be a standard macOS feature.

https://www.hammerspoon.org/Spoons/MiroWindowsManager.html

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#190

Post by shawnz »

aganame wrote: post #186
shawnz wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When new developments are made in computer graphics technology or UX research, I want to be able to take advantage of them. I don't want to limit myself to a design based on the state of the art in 2006 just to avoid having to learn anything new.

We're using 50 year old UX paradigms. Nothing has significantly improved after Engelbart.

If you really believe that, then why aren't you using a 50 year old desktop environment?
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