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Comment by euske | Hacker News Reader

What kind of apps that a typical Linux programmer would need to run these days? For me, they are

- terminal (shell, editor)

- web browser (email client, file viewer, etc.)

- clock

With these, I only need a bare minimum window manager (fvwm2 in my case). In my view, KDE/GNOME are made not to scare away beginners and there isn't much productivity gain in using these environments. Once you're used to using Unix/Linux, you can graduate them and start using a more lean setup (while you don't have to, of course). One thing I can see might be handy is the System Settings / Control Panels apps. Other than that (and inertia), what are the reasons that people stick to these environments?

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You just replicated my DG/UX experience with IBM X Windows terminals in 1995.

Maybe we don't have to be frozen in time and rather use modern tooling?

I have the same question. The longer I've used Linux as my main OS, the less I've needed a desktop environment. My setup for the last half-decade has been basically the same as yours, and I've found it to be more productive than KDE/GNOME (or Windows or MacOS) ever were.

I use KDE now, but not much of it really. I do mostly the same things - terminal/browser/some utilities/text editor. I used lighter WMs in the past and they were interesting, but I didn't have time to sufficiently get past the experimental stage with them. Since I really don't do much, it's easier to just get something with easy and stable defaults with only a few changes I need for a setup.

I like to have dvcs and a terminal multiplexer in the VTE. I do email over ssh and pdfs in mupdf which is way lighter than the browser. I also mess with gEDA some.

But yeah, gnome etc is overkill if `sudo vim etc/blah` doesn't scare you and you only speak english.

My gf does freak out editing networks and such and also needs her thai IME to just work so she runs gnome.

I run atom and terminator (a tiling terminal emulator) in my dev environment. Its rather heavy for 'just' development. On the other side it runs without any issues on my T420. Which is a cheap old laptop.

I also love Gnome. For me this is the best, not in your way, desktop environment ever done. For me however :)

Don't you also need to run whatever you are programming? So a compiler/interpreter, REPL, maybe a database, docker, k8s, etc? I assume most devs still want to be able to compile and test locally?

These things aren't really part of a graphical user interface.

Oh right, I didn't fully read or understand the comment... was thinking more about the minimal computer OP was talking about.

> With these, I only need a bare minimum window manager (fvwm2 in my case). In my view, KDE/GNOME are made not to scare away beginners and there isn't much productivity gain in using these environments

Yeah, everyone who just develops in C and/or web thinks like this. It's one of the primary reasons nobody aside from them uses Linux Desktop.

Probably add VSCode and Spotify nowadays.

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