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Comment by geerlingguy | Hacker News Reader

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, or productivity that I save from just letting someone else choose the defaults for me?

I don’t have enough time in my life to debug and recompile my window manager or Terminal app on a regular basis. Maybe a long time ago, when I was single and had a lot more time to burn.

But once you get used to an OS and set of tools—warts and all—I think the level of tweaks that are listed in this post are the equivalent of someone spending an hour each day prepping clothing and makeup.

For some people, that’s a fun part of their day. For me, it seems like torture.

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> I don’t have enough time in my life to debug and recompile my window manager or Terminal app on a regular basis. Maybe a long time ago, when I was single and had a lot more time to burn.

I set up dwm, st, and dmenu once years ago, and have worked flawlessly without faults ever since. I actually use a stripped-down hacked-up dwm that I did on a Sunday years ago and have since lost the source for it; I can't recompile it even if I wanted, heh (which is not ideal, but I have little reason to spend effort on it).

> 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, or productivity that I save from just letting someone else choose the defaults for me?

But that's not without overhead either. If you update your Fedora or Windows you'll sometimes need to spend time getting used to new defaults and the like, especially on the long term (e.g. Windows 7 -> 8 -> 10, or if you use Ubuntu, Gnome -> Unity -> back to Gnome). With dwm, my experience has remained unchanged for a very long time.

I can only speak for myself, but your description of a hacker constantly fiddling and compiling their software couldn't be further from what I'm actually doing with suckless/dwm. Funny enough, I like it for much of the same reasons as you like Fedora/Windows: it gets out of my way so I can spend time on more important stuff.

> I actually use a stripped-down hacked-up dwm that I did on a Sunday years ago

Aha, so in some sense the software was still not totally suckless to you.

As per their own definition, "suckless" != "does not suck", but rather "software that sucks less".

All this time I thought it meant software that you didn't have to suck as much.

I also used a more minimalist self made WM based on reading dwm's source: https://github.com/serprex/nobox

The "I don't want to spend time configuring my desktop environment" argument misses the point with these things. Everyone had to learn how to use various interfaces. It's easiest for me to learn something whose code I can mess around with

The point of simple software is that it's malleable.

I removed some of the stuff I don't use because the compiler complained about it after I removed the mappings and I was sufficiently bored that day :-) Being bored was actually the reason I was even looking at dwm in the first place, and somewhat to my own surprise it seems to have stuck.

I don't like dealing with multiple things on my screen (from the WM, tmux panes, Vim windows, whatnot) and like focusing on one thing, so I've had a pretty simple and straightforward "full screen all the things" workflow for years (well before I used dwm) which doesn't demand much from my WM. I mostly use tags/workspaces, tmux windows, and Vim tabs to switch between things.

Another anecdata point:

I had the same experience with dwm, and this is the reason I keep using it.

I spent a day to set my system up a couple of years ago, and never had to touch it again. There are no dependencies, so it does not break on updates. It has so few moving parts that nothing ever goes wrong. It gets out of my way so that I can get the job done.

Moreover, I can sleep sound, not worrying about how they'll replace the toolbar with a start screen in dwm 8.0, only to change it back in dwm 8.1 after I spent the better part of the year relearning my workflow instead of doing my job.

> I set up dwm, st, and dmenu once years ago, and have worked flawlessly without faults ever since

Unless that was the first time you used those tools, how long prior to that did you spend getting to a state where you could do that?

I'm not sure if I completely understand your question, but if you mean "what kind of skills do you need?", then the answer is that you need at least decent familiarity with C, the surrounding toolset, and a general understanding of how Xorg etc. works. In general, you'll need a few years of experience.

I don't think suckless is for everyone; it's pretty explicit about that. I think that's okay: not all software needs to cater to all users; suckless is mostly a hobby project by some devs for their own purposes.

I sometimes see people recommend dwm or st in "what {WM,terminal} should I use?" and I think it's a terrible recommendation, because most of the time people asking those questions don't have the required skill set to be able to use it effectively (not yet, anyway).

I feel the same way. Other than maybe adding plugins to my browser or desktop bar, the curiosity of these tiling window managers always seemed out of reach. There aren't enough hours in the day for a second job of managing an operating system.

But then I found "Regolith". There are a few distributions which have i3 out of the box, but this one had a special keybinding reminder that was one click (or keybinding) away. I was very surprised by how quickly I adapted once the barrier of entry was removed.

Once I switched funny things started happening. I wanted to slightly change the time format of the bar, and found that it was controlled by a tiny shell script. So I made my own tiny shell script that did exactly what I wanted. Eventually this sort of thing happened at lower and lower levels and I started hacking the C code and making PRs. It was really strange that the barrier between my window manager and it's code is smaller than the one between my previous desktop environment (xfce) and the new window manager. It's liberating.

All this said, when I had to use OSX at a previous company, the walled garden was pretty nice. It always worked and the usability was much better than most other environments I had used. But now that I've experienced something custom built to my preferences, I would have a hard time using something else.

> But then I found "Regolith". There are a few distributions which have i3 out of the box, but this one had a special keybinding reminder that was one click (or keybinding) away. I was very surprised by how quickly I adapted once the barrier of entry was removed.

The i3 community variant of Manjaro is also a nice config for new i3 users (I'm one of them) on an Arch derivative.

There is a really really wide gap between sticking with default settings and using suckless tools.

I use a lot of tools that I significantly customize- i3wm, tmux, vim, fish, fzf, etc. I'm certainly no stranger to editing and maintaining configs, but when I've tried the suckless tools in the past they turn everything right up to 11.

My strategy, and this is the same as a few other people I've seen comment here, is to choose a tool that has sane defaults, and only customize to eliminate pain points. If it requires significant configuration just to get it viable, than it's not going to work for me.

Yesterday I posted something about an emacs keybinding and someone pointed out that the command actually doesn't have a default keybinding. I set up that keybinding sometime in the mid 2000's and it hasn't changed since then. Since 2005 home many times have the defaults change in Windows/OSX/Gnome/KDE? (A lot! Gnome3, Plasma, Windows 8)

It's something you do once and then leave alone. If someone is tweaking their configuration all the time it's because they enjoy it. Changing a few settings doesn't doom you to a life of debugging and compiling.

When new developments are made in computer graphics technology or UX research, I want to be able to take advantage of them. I don't want to limit myself to a design based on the state of the art in 2006 just to avoid having to learn anything new.

What's some of the latest and greatest UX research someone might miss out on when they don't use some of the modern desktop systems?

I mean I'm not against new and better ways to interact with a computer, I just like to decide on my own if I want to use the new and shiny thing or not. Fuzzy searching is probably the most significant improvement I opted in in the last couple of years, and it's used basically everywhere on my desktop, while all the "modern" desktop systems like GNOME, Windows 10, macOS, ... still barely make any use of it and their search implementations sometimes even worsened from my point of view (Windows 10).

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—I've actually not seen it done well anywhere else but I want it everywhere that kind of navigation structure exists, having seen how nice it is there)

> launching programs by search

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command-line_completion#Histor...

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 overlook but contribute hugely to the "cohesive" feeling that macOS advocates so often seem to have trouble describing to Linux desktop users.

KDE had global key bindings ab ovo.

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.

Okay.... that's great. Nothing I said precludes that.

Realistically I suspect that at the end of the day the people who are getting things done aren't jumping on every shiny new trend. BUT they also they aren't spending weeks on end tweaking all of their configurations to make them perfect.

I didn't make some grand decision to use emacs (I assume mentioning emacs is what upset you). When I installed linux for the first time the instructions were to use vi or emacs to edit files. I couldn't figure out how to quit vi so after a hard power cycle I use emacs today. It turns out though that if you use a tool for long enough and make small tweaks occasionally it adds up. My environment suits me perfectly. Maybe you would hate it but that's fine too.

Whatever floats your boat. Why be so dogmatic? Why not use a little of the tried and true and mix in a bit of the hip new thing?

I'm not upset and I don't hate emacs (nor love it). I am only addressing the criticism that Windows/macOS/etc change too frequently.

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" :)

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.

> 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.

to give my data point, whenever I was using windows I could never stop trying to change its workflow because of, well, how unefficient it seemed to me ? After years of trying various distros & DEs, building my own config based on i3, rofi, zsh and a couple other tools which took for the most part a couple afternoons, I could never see myself change for anything else again - especially not that wretched mac thing (I have one on my desk, it feels like every single interaction with that computer takes 10x the time it takes me on my main linux box which makes my blood pressure go way too high :-) )

> But once you get used to an OS and set of tools—warts and all

This is the very reason I choose to configure a minimal WM, fed up of the churn and quirky behaviour of large DEs, especially the proprietary ones.

If you install DWM, or i3wm or {minimal wm of your choice}, you don't have to configure it to the nth degree like on unixporn - many of them work out of the box with sensible defaults (i3wm is known for this)... but the nicest thing of all? it stays that way, you may or may not make gradual tweeks over the years if you find a pain point, then when you reinstall or upgrade your system just take a single config file with you - done.

Compare this to macOS or windows where things just dynamically move around and change their behavior "because progress", or you re-install and have to dig through UIs to turn shit off to get back to where you were... I don't want this, I want to get shit done, I also don't want to have to relearn someone's exciting new desktop paradigm every few months at random and inconvenient times, which these days are more and more catered to the lowest common denominator of user.

Using a minimal WM does not necessitate massive time investment, it may take a little getting used to like any new thing, you can invest as much or little into customisation as you can be bothered - the biggest reward: stability, continuity, piece of mind, sanity, less distraction.

Anecdote: I last touched my i3config 4 years ago, my WM behaves the same, I use the same key commands, no new features are automatically injected on updates... zero distraction.

There are substantial privacy and security benefits to leaving the macOS/Windows ecosystem. Both of these operating systems include a lot of telemetry that is non-trivial to disable, and both use opaque, proprietary encryption software with a history of catastrophic bugs, including for disk encryption.

The big one though is spyware: Windows makes no farce of it, and is instrumented up the wazoo. You've got to dig into the registry to disable a lot of it, and firewall the rest. Opting out during install is entirely insufficient.

macOS used to be a lot better, but as of Catalina, even with all of the Apple network services disabled, iCloud turned off, Siri and location turned off, analytics opted out, no Facetime, no iMessage, no App Store, et c et c, it still sends all sorts of traffic to Apple, including some to no-hostname 17./8 IPs for some reason.

To get basic privacy on these systems, you have to do hours of work after install, run third party firewalls, and even then you're who-knows-how-many disk encryption 0days away from a stolen laptop meaning total compromise of your data.

This is not to say there aren't any encryption 0days in linux, but there are certainly a lot more eyeballs on the source, for a much longer time.

Conversely, linux doesn't really have anything comparable to Little Snitch or the per-app per-directory permissions of Catalina, sadly.

[1] https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch maybe?

I wish. See the all caps warning in the README displayed at that link, and note that it hasn’t been maintained in almost a year.

I was you, 10 years ago.

Then at one day I decided to _really_ put a lot of effort on improving and highly customize my workflow.

It took a while to get used to being the fastest around my colleagues. I'll never look back.

We are professionals. The defaults, believe me, are not for us.

> We are professionals. The defaults, believe me, are not for us.

I like this conclusion

I have found that the configuration needs are all in the task. Most tasks are default-friendly by dint of harmonizing well.

The ones that aren't must be acknowledged, and attacked directly and mercilessly with automation. That could mean a bit of custom code, recording a macro for keystrokes or mouse clicks, or transforming the task into data to make it programmable or searchable.

Knowing the tools only means adding more options along these axes. Customizing the WM and editors can help, but it leans more in the direction of directionless tinkering. I develop in Windows and make use of its tiling shortcuts(Win + arrow keys) all the time - it's 80% of a tiling WM and is always there and has been there since Vista. That's the benefit of knowing what defaults can do, and "merciless automation" on top of defaults goes a long way.

Anyway, whatever editor you use, you still depend on the keyboard to type the code, the monitor to view it, and comfortable ergonomics for a long session. Identifying the best thing for the task is an art form. I recently invested in cheaper headphones(!) because they are lighter weight and therefore contribute less to neck strain; I also expect them to last longer since drop impacts will be less forceful.

Yeah, the closer I can get to just opening Visual Studio and pressing F5 the happier I am. I like to focus on writing software and shipping a product, not troubleshooting toolchains and figuring out config files for each piece involved. I know not everyone feels this way.

I don't think it's about wanting to focus on troubleshooting toolchains or figuring out config files for each piece involved. I think the issue generally boils down to technical-minded users being empowered to unblock themselves.

I use tools like Linux and suckless because I am sick and tired of being blocked by shoddy software failing in an inexplicable, opaque way. If something goes wrong in Windows or Mac OS X, I might be able to file a bug off to into the void, and restart everything, to work around it. There's not much other choice. It's just a waste of time every time it happens.

With software I control, whether or not it's a waste of time is up to me.

Yeah exactly; I think "how easy is it when everything works?" is just part of the total question of "how easy is it?" Another part is "how easy is it to figure stuff out if it doesn't work?" I think sometimes people forget to ask that second question. This applies to almost all software.

There's obviously a trade-off here, and no single right or wrong answer. Visual Studio is undoubtedly neat software with a lot of features that help people being productive; but it's indeed not as simple as the previous post made it out to be, IMHO, as it forgot about the second question.

Then again, if you're lucky nothing ever breaks and you win :-) But in my experience people usually aren't that lucky.

You say it like it's so simple, until your OS decides to update and then the things you've been relying on are broken, yet again, or there's some new behavior that requires getting used to. I'm surprised people think the "defaults" don't get in your way because they have for me in the past which is why I looked for alternatives.

I too like to focus on developing my software and doing my research, and am not interested in troubleshooting toolchains, tracking down config files, or messing around with computers in any way unrelated to my work.

And that's exactly why I like dwm so much: it has zero dependencies, and no config files. It just displays the windows of the programs that I actually want to use, and gets out of my way.

Right, until random builds start breaking in Visual Studio because some CSPROJ somewhere because visual studio is looking at the wrong DLL since there is no deterministic way to determine where VS will look for DLLs under many circumstances (maybe it’s looking at the GAC. Maybe it’s looking at the many various paths for Nuget. Maybe it’s looking at some of the default build paths) and picks up a random unpredictable version.

And since you can’t even look at the CSPROJ within VS without gymnastics debugging isn’t even easy to get started with.

This is why I picked Fedora GNOME and stopped worrying. It gives me the confidence that it won't break and that I can focus on other things instead of having to tweak the system or environment for me to work. I adapted to GNOME defaults (I don't even use dash-to-dock) and it feels great, it doesn't get in the way when doing stuff.

Distro hopping and trying a lot of (minimalistic) tools are fine to learn a thing or two, but at some point you'll have to do some work, and having your mind on "how to do this more efficiently" can be distracting.

> This is why I picked Fedora GNOME and stopped worrying. It gives me the confidence that it won't break and that I can focus on other things

Where do you get the confidence from? Because GNOME frequently broke workflows in the past. They removed status and desktop icons, the window titles in the overview vanished, Evince lost some feature with its latest redesign (which I can't remember right now what it was exactly), Nautilus lost its two pane mode, compact view and type-ahead search, which was replaced with a slower full-blown recursive search, ...

These kind of disturbances caused me to move to a much more personally tailored desktop and I can't remember it breaking once in like 5 years and certainly not to the extend the GNOME desktop breaks in almost every release.

I really have to hard disagree on this.

Would letting someone else choose the defaults for me save me more time (and frustration!) considering that I'd have to adapt, again and again, every time those defaults change, or would it be better to just pay that one-time cost of setting up things how I like it, forgetting about it, and not having to worry about the whole environment changing underneath me?

Sorry, but I really don't understand your argument here. How many times did the UI of macOS change? How many times did the Windows' UI change? How many times did the Android's UI change for no good reason? (Like, e.g. it seems that for virtually every new major version they completely redesign the camera app.)

In what way is it less effort to constantly keep adapting to those seemingly arbitrary changes compared to just setting it up yourself once, and then forgetting about it?

I just don't get it.

I've set up my environment many years ago, and I haven't really significantly tweaked anything since. It works the same way as it used to. Still the same tiling window manager, still the same apps, and everything works just as I'd like it. It's great. And I don't have to waste my time dealing with all of the UI churn that happens all around.

I've found the key is to just do small changes and let them build over time. For instance, I recently moved to i3, and it was hard to adjust at first, but now I'm used to it, I'm a bit more familiar to starting changing config to add my own buttons. That said, and like you, I'll be sticking to defaults as much as I can, but I deal with specific pain points when they come up, rather than do the whole thing up front.

There is another dimension to it besides optimizing existing workflows. These tools are so small that you can not only tweak them but also reassemble the concepts into new tools for new workflows. Tweaking those tools is just the first step towards mastering them.

It's like knowing compilers. You don't use that knowlege to tweak c++. You use it to build your own special language when needed.

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, while more fit for the purpose tools exist. (how often?)

Using camping cutlery instead of proper knife, fork and spoon.

Using (duct)tape to temporarliy fix installations, while avoiding/delaying a true repair.

So much more...

Anyways, happy treadmilling...

Counter-counterargument:

All this assumes the difference in utility between a specialized and a generic software tool is as stark as your examples portray. That difference is quite subjective, and arguably lesser than your examples given how much effort goes into producing modern OSes and their ecosystems.

One size does not fit all. Also i don't need a full terraforming capable colonization kit where i am.

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?"

> why I’ve chosen to just stick with a standard, widely-used desktop OS..., and use almost all the default settings, adapting to the defaults over the years.

I strongly agree! It saves me time and decreases the number of incompatibilities I have to deal with. Not every program gets this treatment, but as much as possible i try not to change the defaults, especially with the OS.

A colleague also persuaded me that statically linking my binaries was the best long term approach. I started out thinking he was crazy but no, he was right.

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.

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.

Usually you tune things to your liking and compile them once, not everyday.

From my own experience and talking with other suckless users this seems to be the common behaviour.

How do you "tune something to your liking" if every change makes you recompile the whole thing?

You change config.h to your liking and call `make` and you're done.

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