The Joy of Slow Computing

It was an interesting and different kind of article. I particularly loved his attack on companies' claims to democratize some function. I know there's two meanings to the word but we're better off using (verbally and as consumers) the more important one. They're just cheapening the concept for profit.

The other thing I liked was how the author took ownership of the situation while expecting less at the same time. I had this experience using little-known and semi-custom OS's for high security setups. The secure system lacked access to so much stuff. Yet, it had enough stuff on it to be useful and content-proxies were easy enough to build. I occasionally wanted a certain program, Youtube video, or whatever. Yet, my system did exactly what I designed it to do, nothing more and nothing less. And, like the author, I was happy with it rather than disappointed. It's a strange, good feeling which I'm not sure most people experience while using their computers.

Of course, with KVM switch, I could always go right back to a full Windows/Linux system if I couldn't resist the urge or needed to do something modern. We can have the best of both worlds.

"Democracy" is the reason I hate most of the music I hear.

Neat article. It's good to see non-programmers get some of the value that FOSS brings.

I have a fancy aluminium unibody laptop and the latest shiny phone and all that, but I also keep a couple of netbooks at home on which I run archlinux + xmonad. I do almost everything in the terminal; I wrote a lot of my own tools to e.g. read twitter, my email, manage my todo lists, etc. In a high level language with a wide variety of libraries like Python, it requires very little effort to get stuff running if you're a programmer, and you quickly get a nice foundation to customize your own software and workflows. You can get things to integrate in ways that would be nigh impossible to do with other software. For instance, on one of my netbooks, my terminal's color palette changes with the time of the day (i.e. dark on white at night, white on dark during the day) and time of the year (green + red colorscheme on Christmas day!), which in turn propagates to all of my terminal apps to achieve a consistent look. It's absolutely useless, but tons of fun!

The only non terminal program I use is surf, a minimalistic tabless web browser which helps you focus and not get too distracted. All in all, I really like my setup - it'd be impractical to use it at my job, but I could see myself using it exclusively at a different stage of my life. At the end of the day, most of what I do is write {code|prose}.

I have a side project to clean up my setup and release it as an open source project for other people to use, but time is lacking. Although really, most of the fun comes from building your own environment. A good source of inspiration (despite the silly name) is the /r/unixporn subreddit - the screenshots there tend to encapsulate nicely the kind of basic yet pleasant aesthetic that such a setup can offer. For many years, everyone wanted their Linux desktop to be as flashy as what the professional OSs were promising (remember Compiz, Beryl, Project Looking Glass, etc.?) - but I think a Linux environment is best when it plays to its own strengths.

A couple nitpicks regarding the article because I'm a nerd :)

> Instead of relying on rich kids in a Googleplex somewhere, Slow Computing works best when we’re employing people nearby, like Jamie McClelland, to adapt open tools to local needs. He’s my farmer; May First is my CSA.

Does the author realize that there is a non-negligible overlap between contributors to the software he praises and the rich kids from the Googleplex?

>Despite its scale, the original amateurism of Linux is alive and well; once, when a student was helping me set up my computer for a lecture at his college, he told me that he’d helped design Ubuntu’s icons.

What a gauche formulation that needlessly diminishes the work of the student.

Not a nitpick: Sudo room in Oakland is great. If you're in the Bay Area, check it out. I started going there when I lived in Oakland a couple years ago because noisebridge was too far away and becoming too... unfriendly, and I was not disappointed. One of the main things I miss about living in Oakland for sure.

Are you worried about OS level privacy or baseband proccessor-level privacy?

Thanks, a Ubuntu Phone is a good idea.