A story telling to save me from a therapist consultation.
No space square world. I realize that that this could be my theme philosophy. This is my general approach:
- windows manager: tiling (bspwm)with no spaces, squared windows, no decorations, no visual effects
- theme: transparency and grey background buttons/white text
Over two decades I went from a fancy looking machine to its complete opposite where minimalism is king. How did I make such a big jump?
To make it brief, recreating this comfort look that invaded my real environment felt reassuring at first in my virtual life. But as time went by I noticed that smooth rounded stuff that transiently showed up on my screen created:
- more and more distraction and negatively impacted my productivity
- some frustration when something didn’t run as expected because I felt that everything should be as smooth as the appearance of my screen
I would definitely say that I feel way better now and I’m more efficient but I also admit that I’ve reached an extreme where:
- I don’t appreciate screens over 14" anymore because I feel like it’s taxing on my eyes movement and again a waste of space
- I don’t like wasting a pixel of space if not justified. This is also maybe influenced by preference for small screens
- I need extreme simplicity (which brings efficiency) to all aspects of my workflow. So I use a 36-key split keyboard, a trackball, vim-like keybindings everywhere possible, use terminal as much as I can, use fzf for all my file searches…
Hope you will never end up like me but nice to have friends in this group if it’s too late for you ^^
The whole WM landscape of Linux was a big turn off for me. I had used CDE on Solaris before and never really thought about choosing or customizing my DE. That was one of the big reasons I ended up loving OSX (no choice of WM and very few customization options, along with globally consistent hotkeys) and ended up using that as my primary GUI Unix environment, along with headless Linux for most of the last ~20 years.
Right. Actually one of the things I love about Linux is that it offers so many options so you can make your own combination to create the perfect system for your specific needs.
You can get all the visual distractions out of your way and tweak litterally everything to an incredible granular level. No other OS can pretend to be so user focused while staying so simple in appearance. You’re not adapting to your system, it’s built for you.
The problem I have with customization options is that I don’t want to customize it, and when I go looking for a setting to change, I don’t want to be drowning in options that I’ll never use. The way I always thought about it is when I buy a saw or a hammer, I go straight to using it. I don’t customize my saw or hammer. That’s not why I buy them. I buy them to build things with them. The tool is not the end goal. Similarly, the DE is not the end goal. I want to spend time getting work done, not spend time customizing my environment.
Recently though I’ve been looking around again a little bit, looking for a DE that has what I want out of the box. LXDE seems closest so far.
We’re exactly on the same page: “the tool is not the goal”. The only difference may be that I see chosing options for an app as options for a tool. If I want to cut wood or metal I need a different saw. Even though the tool is basically the same it doesn’t serve the same purpose. Hence I configure options once and for all, like I would consider which hardware I need exactly in terms of use, ergonomic, power… before buying it.
I don’t spend time tweaking the look of a tool because it’s doesn’t fit my approach of things anymore. As such I don’t even use a DE. But I feel the need to build the right tool (i.e. system app) I need to perform a job as efficiently as possible while keeping the tool itself minimalist and as invisible as possible. On my daily use I have tools that I couldn’t live without anymore but if you ask me a list I will either forgot them or put them at the bottom because I will not think about them right away since they became a second nature.
I certainly see the comfort of the out of the box approach and it can serve a lot of people. In my use case I just realize that - using the example above - it could be like using a wood saw on metal in some cases. It may work but not as good as you would expect to have the job done properly. Also, the fit them all approach means building an app with tons of options activated and I prefer to have available to me only the options I really need. The philosophy feels less bloated to me and I’m not overloading my system with stuff I’ll never use. It’s more time consuming at first to chose the right app but with time it became quick enough and it definitely save me way more time in the long run when I use my system.
@friend_of_satan @wwwgem That got to me too the more I used Linux. BSD (OpenBSD specifically) clicked much more for me. Not that it’s any less customisable, but the BSD culture tends towards favouring defaults and refining existing software rather than limitless configuration and novelty. I’ve generalised here but I do have this kind of feeling.
I can see that. I’ve tried OpenBSD before Linux as well. One of the reasons I feel good using Linux is that you can go as crazy or as minimalist as you want. And all along this spectrum you can choose the same level of options but the way you chose them will make you build the system you want for your own needs and liking. As long as the options exist but are not installed or activated by default, I like having the choice (which also means the choice to not use them). It also help me build a consistent system where all my tools can freely interact together (and again the way I want to).
I don’t want to have to comply to the way a developer decided I should use something.
At the end of the day we’re lucky to have the choice in the OS that fits us the best. And most importantly we can evolve and make a switch if we ever feel the need for it :D Like distro in Linux I find it stupid to claim that one OS is best that another. I hope this post didn’t give that impression. What’s best is what’s meet your needs.
@wwwgem Totally agree! :) One of the coolest things about Linux for me is learning about all the different approaches to systems and applications.