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dwm

dwm.suckless.org

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Re: dwm

#31

Post by badsectoracula »

woodruffw wrote: post #11
CyberRabbi wrote: post #2

> Because dwm is customized through editing its source code, it's pointless to make binary packages of it. This keeps its userbase small and elitist. This is the zen of suckless. Unlike other projects that desperately reach for users anywhere they can get them and then suffer the resulting bloat, suckless knows exactly who they are building for. It’s a tough thing to swallow but embracing the opposite of the suckless…

Elitist (and not elite) is correct: my experience as an observer in the *nix "ricing" community is that there's a weak negative correlation between obsessive suckless tool use and programming competency. "Fetishistic" users are over-represented in suckless's userbase. Source: dmenu user.

> there's a weak negative correlation between obsessive suckless tool use and programming competency

So basically what you're trying to say is that the people who use suckless tools are incompetent programmers?

Re: dwm

#32

Post by fouric »

jovial_cavalier wrote: post #27
fouric wrote: post #22

> In contrast to ion, larswm, and wmii [...] dwm has no Lua integration, no 9P support, no shell-based configuration, no remote control, and comes without any additional tools, such as for printing the selection or warping the mouse Holy cow, some of these features seem really useful. I should look at some of those other window managers! > customized through editing its source code Yikes, this is a very bad idea. Thi…

>Suckless tools are developed for the needs (and the benefit) of their own developers, and nobody else. Remember that. Another way of putting it is: if you can use it, you become a suckless developer :)

Another way of putting that is "you are required to become a developer in order to use the tool." Great for developer community, but not great for the average user (or even the above-average user - say, 98th percentile) who wants to use computers for the purpose for which they were intended (and are amazing at) - labor-saving devices.

Heck, even as a developer, I would always rather use a tool that doesn't require me to learn the internals in order for me to use it at a basic level of proficiency. Wouldn't you? (probably not in your specific case - I'm addressing the median HN user) Isn't that the point of abstraction and API boundaries?

If your goal is to make software that artificially requires others to invest a lot of needless time and effort in order to use it, or if you like creating beautiful pieces of code-art then suckless is for you.

If your goal is to build software that saves other humans time and effort, the suckless philosophy is absolutely the opposite thing of what you want[1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29941395

Re: dwm

#33

Post by voldacar »

fouric wrote: post #22

> In contrast to ion, larswm, and wmii [...] dwm has no Lua integration, no 9P support, no shell-based configuration, no remote control, and comes without any additional tools, such as for printing the selection or warping the mouse Holy cow, some of these features seem really useful. I should look at some of those other window managers! > customized through editing its source code Yikes, this is a very bad idea. Thi…

>Suckless tools are developed for the needs (and the benefit) of their own developers, and nobody else. Remember that.

You say that as if it's some kind of terrible problem? seems fine to me.

If you don't like it, I guess it's not for you

Re: dwm

#34

Post by [deleted] »

fouric wrote: post #32
jovial_cavalier wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Suckless tools are developed for the needs (and the benefit) of their own developers, and nobody else. Remember that. Another way of putting it is: if you can use it, you become a suckless developer :)

Another way of putting that is "you are required to become a developer in order to use the tool." Great for developer community, but not great for the average user (or even the above-average user - say, 98th percentile) who wants to use computers for the purpose for which they were intended (and are amazing at) - labor-saving devices. Heck, even as a developer , I would always rather use a tool that doesn't require m…

[deleted]

Re: dwm

#35

Post by 2c2c2c »

CyberRabbi wrote: post #2

> Because dwm is customized through editing its source code, it's pointless to make binary packages of it. This keeps its userbase small and elitist. This is the zen of suckless. Unlike other projects that desperately reach for users anywhere they can get them and then suffer the resulting bloat, suckless knows exactly who they are building for. It’s a tough thing to swallow but embracing the opposite of the suckless…

there's something especially annoying about building the worst performing terminal (https://danluu.com/term-latency/) while having 5% of features and proclaiming everyone else's software sucks

Re: dwm

#36

Post by tomxor »

fouric wrote: post #22

> In contrast to ion, larswm, and wmii [...] dwm has no Lua integration, no 9P support, no shell-based configuration, no remote control, and comes without any additional tools, such as for printing the selection or warping the mouse Holy cow, some of these features seem really useful. I should look at some of those other window managers! > customized through editing its source code Yikes, this is a very bad idea. Thi…

>> Because dwm is customized through editing its source code

> Suckless tools are developed for the needs (and the benefit) of their own developers, and nobody else. Remember that.

Just to flip this on it's head a bit (because different perspectives are more illuminating than crude dichotomies).

One of the underlying principles they use to justify not supporting external configuration, is minimal code. The absence of configs are one of many sacrifices they make for their ~1000 line limit. So on the face of it, it seems elitist, but on the other hand this principle makes the code significantly more accessible... one group (non programmers) have been more excluded; another group (programmers of almost all stripes) have had the barrier to entry significantly lowered due to this principle, not only to configure it, but to very feasibly change any aspect of it as they see fit.

Re: dwm

#37

Post by woodruffw »

badsectoracula wrote: post #31
woodruffw wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elitist (and not elite) is correct: my experience as an observer in the *nix "ricing" community is that there's a weak negative correlation between obsessive suckless tool use and programming competency. "Fetishistic" users are over-represented in suckless's userbase. Source: dmenu user.

> there's a weak negative correlation between obsessive suckless tool use and programming competency So basically what you're trying to say is that the people who use suckless tools are incompetent programmers?

I wouldn't go as far as to say that categorically, since I know a lot of very competent programmers who use individual suckless tools. But it's been my observation that a lot of "hyper-minimal"/"code as configuration" ricer-types tend to both use suckless tools and not be great programmers.

Re: dwm

#38

Post by justinsaccount »

racingmars wrote: post #20
sbysb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I have come to realize I unconsciously have gotten very dependent on - MacOS let's you swap virtual desktops for the monitor you are currently focused on without swapping any of the others. I never realized how intuitive this is until switching back to my XFCE linux installation and getting very frustrated with virtual desktops entirely. I might have to give dwm a try again on my linux machine if it…

Yes! Before I went all-in on desktop Linux, I was a Mac user, and MacOS definitely got virtual desktops exactly right in this regard.

They definitely did not.

OS X has the same issue as a lot of other VMs. You can not simply have a single pool of workspaces and chose to view any N of them, where N is the number of monitors that you have. In OS X you can have workspaces on your left monitor, and workspaces on your right monitor, but you can't easily share the workspaces between the monitors without re-arranging them.

The only WM I have used that gets virtual desktops right for multi monitors is xmonad. Maybe dwm can work the same way, not sure.

In xmonad you can have 10 workspaces and 2 monitors, and pull up any workspace on any monitor. You can have hotkeys to cycle workspaces on either monitor independently and a key to swap the two monitors.

Re: dwm

#39

Post by stonogo »

The feature everyone overlooks in this window manager is that it presents windows according to the set of selected tags, and tags can be added or removed from windows on the fly (this is the 'd' in 'dwm'). Aside from its predecessor wmii, I have not been able to find another window manager with this functionality, and I really miss it on my Wayland systems. Once you're accustomed to dynamic tagging it's difficult to return to the restrictive 'workspace/desktop' paradigm.
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