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Why I Use Suckless Tools

christine.website

201–210 of 215 posts

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#202

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,…

There is a knee in any curve, where costs climbs and benefits slow.

But it still makes sense to reach the knee.

I personally think it makes sense to invest a little time in your tools when things are slow, hopefully for a payoff when things get crazy.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#203
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I am, and so are you, I would think. That's how I understand "paradigm" :)

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of two major, useful new features in desktop GUIs in the last, oh, 20 years? More? And both existed before they went mainstream anyway, I think. Both are basically just search: launching programs by search (replaced program-launch menus all but completely for me) and deep search in deeply-nested menus, guiding you to the item at the current level that contains what you need (as in the macOS settings menu—…

The menu-search feature did exist in Unity on Ubuntu at one point but it was not as nice as the macOS one. I think it's a hugely underrated feature in macOS. Another related feature that I wish some Linux gui framework would adopt is the concept of global keybindings. Every menu in every app in macOS displays by default the shortcut key next to it - if one exists. These are the kinds of features that are easy to over…

Yes, that's is such a pain point in most linux setup. Even copy/pasting has not unified keyboard shortcuts (terminal). I know there are valid explanations for that, but from a user point of view this is a disaster.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#205

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,…

I think that for a lot of people like me, (over)optimising the work environment and tooling is not about productivity. It's a hobby. It sparkles joy! I like my nice setup and I'm proud that I did it myself. That's a side project on its own. Also I suspect procrastination is a source of a lot of great improvements in the tooling.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#206

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,…

Metaphors have the problem of being imprecise - I would say this is more like "are you using normal chef knife or your own special chef knife that nobody has?" or "are you using standard set of tools that every workshop has, or are you used to your own special stuff that nobody else has available"?

You're framing it as if the OP said "fuck fancy text editors or IDEs, I'm using notepad!" but I don't really see it that way.

As I see it, it's more like "do you really get that much gains from customizing your vim / Sublime Text / IDEA so much that you're incapable of working on someone else's machine? Is that worth it?"

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#207
post #188
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-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).

>living in a basement without internet access, probably

Or not in America. As far as worldwide events go, Charlottesville wasn't that noteworthy.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#208
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

>living in a basement without internet access, probably Or not in America. As far as worldwide events go, Charlottesville wasn't that noteworthy.

This was all over the Internet, I do not live in America and this was covered on TV.

And surely not all people knew about that event. The thing is I don't believe he, in particular, would ignore it and I don't trust him anyway fwiw.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#209
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I am, and so are you, I would think. That's how I understand "paradigm" :)

I didn't say, "why arent you using a 50-year old paradigm". I am asking, why are you not literally using a software developed in 1970?

For example, are you using twm? xterm? Admittedly those are only 30 years old but I don't know any older examples that are still supported.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#210
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

The code is less than 2k lines. It's understandable probably after a weekend.

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