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Why I Use Suckless Tools

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Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#211

Post by blauditore »

ognarb wrote: post #111
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…

Disclaimer: KDE dev Did you try Plasma? You can drag a window while holding the Win key, there are tons of keyboard navigation, and your last point can be achieved by this extension: https://github.com/Zren/plasma-hud . There is even some global themes with the look of Unity.

I tried KDE for a while a few years back and found its look quite pleasant. A problem for me was the often different paradigms from more common environments, e.g. that single-clicking a file in Dolphin opens it (as opposed to just selecting it). Another thing I remember was that just hitting the Meta/Win key did not open the launcher menu. Perhaps my expectations are a bit special since I often switch between Windows and Linux, so well-aligned usage patterns help me.

FWIW, the drag while holding a key is actually quite common in Linux DEs, I just miss it in the Big Two.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#212

Post by blauditore »

csb6 wrote: post #189
faizmokhtar wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's kind of what I mean, features like splitting the screen with two windows has been around in the Linux world for ages, and eventually made it to Windows too. MacOS only added something similar many years after that, I find this astonishing.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#213

Post by nerdponx »

karatestomp wrote: post #152
ilitirit wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

All the more reason to not get worked up over including something as mundane as a TOML parser in your dependencies for a config file. So that, you know, you don't have to recompile your WM whenever you want to adjust something.

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#214

Post by nerdponx »

carapace wrote: post #123
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…

> Seriously, the primary problem with software today in my assessment is churn. I agree. The machines are wicked fast, most of the needful algorithms are already sussed out, not to mention how ML solves another swath of problems. Today most "programming" should consist of picking and configuring existing software, and this should be seen as a big win and a sign of maturity. (Instead we have Python 3 and Rust and... )…

Python 3 is a great example of "picking and configuring existing software". If it's not in the standard library, it's on PyPI. A lot of my Python code is just gluing together high-level functionality from various libraries. It's beautiful.

You can complain about this or that aspect of language design, but then you also have to look at what a clusterfuck of historical accidents C and C++ are.

Like what you like, but at least be correct about why you like what you like (and why you don't like what you don't like).

Re: Why I Use Suckless Tools

#215

Post by heavyset_go »

Avamander wrote: post #120
ognarb wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: KDE dev Did you try Plasma? You can drag a window while holding the Win key, there are tons of keyboard navigation, and your last point can be achieved by this extension: https://github.com/Zren/plasma-hud . There is even some global themes with the look of Unity.

I'm not the person you replied to, but yes, KDE seems to be the closest equivalent. However I still miss a nicely working global menu.

There are several global menu options for Plasma, some of which I think are better than the global menu on macOS.
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