I want to suckless and you can too
bt.ht
bt.ht
st is my favorite terminal, and I use it daily. It crashes from time to time, but it's manageable.
I used surf as my main browser for a few years, until it refused to compile with the latest WebKitGTK a couple of years ago. I switched to Luakit, and have been mostly happy with the transition.
dwm was unusable for me the few times I tried it. It would crash constantly, and it just doesn't have the features of other lightweight WMs, even with all the patches. I settled on bspwm many years ago, and it's been rock solid.
rofi is better than dmenu. sxlock is better than slock.
I think OP will hit many roadblocks with this all-in suckless approach. There are better tools out there that are similarly lightweight, but with much better UX. You can save yourself many headaches by being pragmatic, and using the right tool for the job.
Out of curiosity, what features were you missing? The point of dwm is to make it easy to write your own features (though the "easy" part might be a bit questionable at times).
That's the thing with suckless tools; most of them are barely usable without any patches. And the patches are distributed on their site, with no guarantees whether they'll apply cleanly, or have conflicts with other patches. Your best bet is to take over maintenance yourself, or use someone else's fork.
I do appreciate the barebones philosophy, but I just don't want to maintain my own window manager and web browser. The tools are only usable if you don't need much functionality, and only apply a few patches.
What would be convenient is if these optional patches were part of the main repository, and kept up-to-date with the main branch, and I could easily select which ones I want to build with, get conflict warnings, etc. This wouldn't stray too much from their philosophy, but would give a much better UX. It would add some burden on the core team, and improving UX isn't really their goal, so I'm clear this will never happen. I'll just keep using other tools that do prioritize this.
It depends on your preferences I guess; I run the standard st with just the colours and font configured, I have my own hacked-up "private fork" of dwm that removes a lot of stuff (and adds/changes a few minor things), and run dmenu with just one patch ("prefix completion" patch).
[1]: Enough to make me stop using urxvtd, which took down all my client terminals with it...
Reason I ask: I don't recall ever having urxvt crash, in many years of use, and counting. Nor recall a crash in earlier decades of use of other versions of rxvt and xterm. I'd expect them to crash, but they haven't.
The source code is very approachable too. It's the simplest terminal program I could find. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to see how it works or make their own.
Maybe it's a sign that suckless tools aren't for everyone, and I'm certainly not an experienced C programmer, but that's the effect of asking your users to also be maintainers of the software.
>The developers also pride themselves on catering to advanced and experienced computer users,
But, no. It's a drumbeat of less code and fewer features. Which is only simple in a specific worse is better sense and frequently infrugal because efficiency would require more code.
Advanced and experienced computer users are not catered to, not catering to anyone who might need a feature is their whole schtick.
From another side of things, I want my SO to be able to use my computer if they need to, and suckless software just puts a huge block in their way.
All said, I'm perfectly happy with Arch Linux and GNOME.
Am I too old?
My first linux install took me days to get to the point of showing a desktop. Not catering to advanced users is the novelty in the linux world imo - and it’s not entirely there yet.
They couldn't be more different.
On the contrary, FreeBSD also dumps you on a command line. But it does have defaults for most things and it took me only a few hours you set up because everything is guided better with the defaults in mind.
I really like the idea of a stable base OS with rolling software also, and the ports collection (which is quite similar to the AUR). But there's more ways to do manual and arch's isn't necessarily the best IMO.
The entire industry is obsessed with onboarding and first-experience ease and intuitive interfaces and making things "just work", etc, etc. This includes Linux, which still has rough edges but the approach of just making things simple instead of easy and aiming at advanced users is very rare these days.
- I like Suckless
- I like Alpine
- I like Void more now
- Here's a script
If you want software to have less complexity, you don't choose a language which gives you options, you choose one which removes ways to make mistakes. That means, emphatically, not C. You don't have to choose Rust, which is complex indeed, but allows your code to be less difficult. If you want strictness, choose Haskell. Or maybe go the middle way and do OCaml. Or maybe Ada.
I don't understand how the suckless community goes from "vulnerabilities are commonplace" and calling out masterminds to writing C, which is famously difficult to code without stepping into undefined behaviour.
Or maybe I do: this checks out if minimalism is more important than vulnerabilities and simplicity.
Similar criticism can be applied to sticking to X11 compared to Wayland, regarding vulnerabilities (any application can see any other) and performance (any application can block the entire server - try ssh -X on a high latency connection to see).
Nah it does not. If minimalism is more important than vulnerabilities and simplicity you use forth, or an advanced assembler.
It's dunning kruger.
Suckless also leads to wild misconceptions about your ability. It has the minimalist and snappy aesthetic of a hacker wunderkind's monitor, even though you're secretly doing equivalent work to everyone else within this setup, often at a reduced rate due to compatibility issues with the rest of your department. So what then? People start saying things like, "Oh, that Mike really knows what he's doing. Have you seen how bonkers his screen looks?" That's a lot to live up to.
Here's an interesting experiment: Pick a random Suckless fanboy on YouTube. Skim through one of their videos. Then skim through another video from 9 months before. Notice how everything about their work-setup constantly changes. These guys never learn to let things lie, never learn about the power of habits and the unique human ability to adapt to almost any interface, rather than forcing their immediate surroundings into a narrow stencil. Flow with it.
It could also be that their circumstances changed and they adapted their setup accordingly? A good non-opinionated workflow does that. I really hated the way I could not customise macOS' desktop to my preferences (and that they kept changing their preferences on me) so I moved to KDE which has a lot more choice. Now I change settings regularly as I need.
Those missing features you mention _is_ the appeal. If, and when, they need a specific feature, they'll add it by making another minimal change to their setup, or try to avoid it altogether by reusing an existing tool.
The fact these tools are snappy and outperform most larger tools is also an appeal. I'm sure that same person you mention can do things in a fraction of the time it takes someone using standard tools.
Sometimes this can be seen as a compromise by others, but it's not due to some radical stubbornness, or a desire to do things differently. They just prefer not using off-the-shelf tools, and conforming to how someone else—or even worse, a committee—decided they should use computers.
It's like people who prefer minimalism in their everyday life, or those who DIY everything rather than buying pre-built products, or those who choose to live off-grid. Sure, there is an aspect of struggle, but it's something that comes with that way of life, and it's a welcomed part of the experience.
This is why suckless is more of a philosophy than just a collection of software. It's not meant for everyone, and it will never be mainstream.
I bought into the whole "do the minimal changes when they arise" thing for many years, but then I realised I was basically just slowly rediscovering what had already been discovered by plenty of others before me: the bundled desktops work fine, and they are not really the problem. The problem for me was actually just a need to feel in control while other things in life felt out of my control. That's probably why I still haven't kicked all suckless stuff entirely. But I would never advise anybody else to go down the suckless path. There are so many better hobbies to explore out there, incidentally so many hobbies that will put you in circles that are more enjoyable company than the suckless circles. Slowly iterating on your own personal set of keybindings and scripty doodads is the digital equivalent of spending an evening playing single player solitaire, except much less challenging.
I don't agree that you should spend time configuring and suckless makes configuration hard on purpose. I think the suckless philosophy embrasses vi over the embarrassing plugin/configuration hellscape of vim.
That's one aspect of it, but I think it's not the driving factor on today's hardware. It's mostly about your computer doing what you want it to do, exactly when you want to do it. If I have to wait for some superfluous animation to load, or deal with several layers of menus to get to what I need, that works against my productivity.
Take dmenu, rofi or sxhkd, for example. I can make them run any command or shell script to do exactly what I want, and it can be triggered in milliseconds via the keyboard. Whereas the typical desktop user would probably place a desktop or taskbar icon, have to navigate with their mouse to launch it, deal with animations, etc. Power users would likely use a keyboard shortcut or their OS' search feature or keyboard launcher, but that assumes that what they want to accomplish is even available in their ecosystem.
This level of customization and adapting your OS to your workflow, rather than the other way around, is just incomparable to pre-built DEs. I'm not sure how you can claim this results in a "reduced rate due to compatibility issues", when efficiency and productivity are the whole point of this setup.
> You pay for that unremarkable performance edge [...] in movie night situations when you're the only person who can control your esoteric computer.
This is where I think there's a disconnect with what you want vs. what these tools offer. While I use some suckless and similar tools on my work machine, I still use KDE and even Windows on other machines when my goal isn't to be productive. My work machine is for my personal use, and I don't expect anyone else to use it. I'm perfectly fine with using other environments for other purposes, just don't expect me to be productive in them.
> There are so many better hobbies to explore out there, incidentally so many hobbies that will put you in circles that are more enjoyable company than the suckless circles. Slowly iterating on your own personal set of keybindings and scripty doodads is the digital equivalent of spending an evening playing single player solitaire, except much less challenging.
I think you're still missing the point of the purpose of these tools, and coming off rather patronizing. This is not some hobby, or about being in "enjoyable company"... Would you say the same thing to someone who chooses to live off-grid? It's much easier to depend on urban power and water infrastructure, than trying to meet your needs independently. People who choose to live this way would tell you it works great for them, and also wouldn't approve of the urban lifestyle. That's not to say that either is objectively right or wrong, but it boils down to personal preference.
For the programs I most frequently launch from my desktop, I have hotkey sequences that do a switch-to-this-program-window-or-start-the-program-if-not-running. For the remaining programs, `dmenu`.
, ((mod3Mask, xK_f), raiseNextMaybe (spawn "/usr/bin/firefox-esr") (className =? "Firefox-esr"))
installer.sh:
mkdir /home/bt/.suckless
cd /home/bt/.suckless
Dwm is written in C. A tradeoff of that is having to recompile it. But it also has upsides like resource efficiency and speed.
I don't daily drive it and never did, but dwm has been a godsend back when I did embed, for implementing a highly restricted work flow easily for embed applications.
I think of it more as a template for quickly throwing together a custom WM from scratch, when resources are at a premium.
Edit: Namedropped the wrong WM.
i3 and sway are written in C but have plain text config files.
No, awesome is implemented in C but uses Lua as its configuration language and is thus extremely configurable....
That said, I still think it’s ridiculous
It’s Linux/BSD, Open we can do as we please. I’m not saying it’s for me but I guess like kinks or other niches “to each their own”.
In dwm, you don't need to learn an additional, inferior language. You simply use C.
When I used to run DWM this wasn't an issue at all, recompiled and relaunched nearly instantaneously. Easily scripted as well, not a problem to get editors to automatically recompile and send the restart signal if you needed to.
- slim + dwm
- bc/dc + gnuplot
- mpv + yt-dlp
- ImageMagick/sox/ffmpeg
Maybe my eyes are just getting bad (I'm ~30) but the lack of that accessibility it makes them unusable for me.
I really like the idea of Suckless, I wish the people involved with it directly addresses what to me seems to be a disturbing political slant at their conferences.
Of course, you can ignore that an just use the software. Or better yet look for other similar software created by people that are apolitical.
OpenBSD seems to be a place that does its best to be minimal, and their network setup to me is far better then anything else in Linux or the other BSDs.
I would like to see this thread stay true to Suckless itself (for a change).
- One dude once blamed post-WWI treatment of Germany for the rise in nationalism that led to Hitler
- They once hiked using torches instead of flashlights. Only they're German so this was near Nuremberg.
- They named a mail server "Wolf's Lair." Only they're German so this was in German.
Is there a public record anywhere of any of them defending the Holocaust or making anti-Semitic statements?
A single developer associated with suckles has a private machine with the "wolfsschanze" hostname. This is a big difference with "suckless has a mail server named wolfsschanze".
Laslo is the first chair of the board, not just "a single developer".
Obviously, you still have to interpret that yourself, but these are the facts about the people behind suckless.
Which site is that?
And?
> they send emails through relays with hostnames like "Wolfsschanze"
A single developer has a private machine named this. There is no plural "they" here.
> devs with official suckless flair post on [website that's basically a clone of HN] complaining about "cultural marxism".
I believe the flair is kind of "sticky" on Lobsters, so that's probably more of an accident than anything else. Regardless, it's a single developer voicing their personal opinion (the same as the one with the "Wolfsschanze" hostname) and there is no plural "they" here either.
Plus, "Vaguely right-wing" or even "extreme right-wing" is not identical to "Nazi".
There is no single person who can speak "for" suckless in the same way some rep can speak "for" Microsoft or Y Combinator or whatnot, so that description doesn't really apply in the first place.
I would bet 98% of all open-source software written is by left-wing or apolitical people. Suckless is one of the few islands of (crypto-)right wing outlook. And if that bothers you and you have to make a fuss, go ahead. But maybe ask yourself why you can't be satisfied with a mere 98%.
So tankies who glorify Stalin and would take away people's right to disagree with them by violent means and sometimes kill and/or imprison them, because "nazis" (and we've all witnessed a very prominent example of exactly this happening in 2022) are just not a thing in your worldview, I take it? "Both sides have extremists" is not just some throwaway remark or whataboutism, it's advising caution about a very real phenomenon.
> nor do they typically suggest that people like me and my friends should be killed or imprisoned for being who we are
I think you should reevaluate that. Far too many people have been cancelled and imprisoned in the world by the self-righteous authoritarians you are defending right now.
Hell, I'm living in a country that's about to descend into literal communism mere days from now. Among the many laws they're going to implement, there are "political intolerance" laws that criminalize intolerance towards leftists in general society, in the job market and pretty much any context. It will be a crime to boycott a business if you don't agree with their politics, for example. They're calling it the "big democracy package" but I don't believe for a second the "right wing nazis" will receive any protection.
I think you're exaggerating a tad.
The president has said multiple times in the past decades that he intends to install socialism in Brazil. He's tried it before in past governments with plans to relativize private property rights, regulate the press, heavily tax great fortunes and whatnot. Even the press that campaigned for him relentlessly these last four years used to criticize that. There's a judiciary dictatorship on top of all that with the congress and senate being completely worthless, just like in Venezuela. Lula is now old, cancerous, with nothing to lose and vengeful due to being arrested for corruption and his party losing the previous election to "fascists". He was openly threatening other politicians who didn't ally with him even before the election. After the election, I saw him tell journalists they could work but "without badmouthing the government".
It's no exaggeration at all to believe this country is finished. Anyone who believed in a moderate government has already jumped ship and wished good luck to anyone still in this shithole. I'm thinking of getting the fuck out of here myself, I only hesitate because of my family.
So how is that different to Bolsanaro?
If you think the next four years are going to be anything like the last four years or even the last two decades, I really don't know what to say.
I suppose the slash and burn agriculture he explicitly encouraged in the Amazon involved legal invaders, so that's fair.
It's a moot point anyway. Bolsonaro no longer matters, and I'm not interested in discussing the past any longer. What matters is the future and it's not looking good. It looks like you have no comments to make on the future so I guess this is where this conversation ends.
Good luck fighting the climate change with nickel and cellulose.
It has a concerning concentration of outright neo nazis.
If that's what you consider acceptable "right wing outlook", I can see how you'd consider "98% of all open-source software written is by left-wing or apolitical people [or "centrists"]", and that this is apparently bad.
You're the only one bringing that up. So congrats on derailing the discussion again.
I also moved away from a major mobile OS since its main dev started a crusade about a competing project. I'll leave the details vague not to get into the discussion. But it gave me an uneasy feeling. Is this the guy I want to maintain critical code on my device?
I'm not aware of the suckless people but the idea that the personal lives of the devs don't matter is not something completely irrelevant IMO.
That is unimportant for the purpose of considering whether or not ReiserFS is any good.
Looking on Wikipedia, I can already find one problem though, which is the year 2038 problem. Wikipedia also says "Some directory operations (including unlink(2)) are not synchronous on ReiserFS, which can result in data corruption with applications relying heavily on file-based locksif the machine halts before it has synchronized the disk."
So, there are a few problems with ReiserFS (although it might have good ideas too). But if the author murdered his wife, that is the problem with the author, not a problem with ReiserFS. (It is still a problem, but it is a problem with something else.)
When you use a product, you're supporting the owner, and the brand. In IT it's not as widely used but clothing brands sell their brand more than they sell a product. A lot of brands aren't that great quality but people wear them proudly as a form of expression. Even regardless of the fact that they're made by little kids in a sweatshop half a world away. People judge us by the products we choose. It's a human thing. Pretending this phenomenon doesn't exist doesn't make it go away.
It can also clarify what to expect from the authors in the future and what direction they will go into with their product. In that sense it's more of a practical continuity-type of thing. In the case of Reiser, it's kinda hard to lead a thriving product when one is in jail for life.
Again I don't know what the deal is with suckless and their people (in fact if Poettering doesn't like them that's a plus for them in my book ;) ), but I don't see the people behind it and the product as two separate things.