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KDEvuan ... in case you like your KDE without systemd.

https://dwm.suckless.org/

... if we can just get an Ubuntu without systemd based on Devuan instead of Debian!

many of the distros that utilize systemd are excellent (even if you consider systemd to be a flaw)

Sure they are excellent, but for how much longer?

I'll stick with Mint 17.3 until Devuan Ascii comes out.

Linux Mint 17 was the last Mint without systemd.
Ubuntu 14 was the last Ubuntu LTS without systemd.
Debian 7 is the last Debian without systemd.

Beyond these versions, there are dragons.

Devuan 1.0 Jessie (Beta 2) was released last week.

• http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/plain/src/cat.c
• https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/blob/master/bin/cat/cat.c

ls is interesting:

• http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/plain/src/ls.c
• https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/blob/master/bin/cat/cat.c

Then again, this comparison has also driven me closer to suckless.

• http://git.suckless.org/sbase/tree/cat.c
• http://git.suckless.org/sbase/tree/ls.c

If it would suck less than you do, I'd be okay with it.

I have developed, in 30 years of programming, to a much more radical position. Technical debt and mounting complexity are major problems, and I want to see a splinter movement within programming that defies the contemporary orthodoxy on how to solve these problems.

Object Oriented Programming is not a solution.

Refactoring is a failure as a solution. INSTEAD: We need to say "NO," from the get-go, to unnecessary technologies. Yes, refactoring is needed, but we've been talking about refactoring for decades now, and we still have so many problems. We need to say "NO" to new technologies, wholesale; To be much more skeptical and dubious of technologies. Don't import a whole system, when you're only really using only 1% of the technology in it. I see so many technologies in use in workplaces, where only 1% of the functionality is needed. (I'm looking at you, Celery.) These massive systems have security flaws, bugs, and inflexibilities, that require custom patching and regular necessary upgrading and updating. They are built on top of other massive systems that have security flaws, bugs, and also require patching and updating. Yet because of "We don't want to implement something that someone else has already implemented better, and actively maintains for us," I see decisions made to get the huge big massive honking thing that ** isn't actually needed. **

When you have 10,000s of lines of glue code, to glue your systems together, and you're actively maintaining them against one another, ... and the alternative was to write a 500 line program that would do EXACTLY what you want, and is easy to modify and understand, ... ... something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

When you're sending massive REST calls in series, with HTTP headers and payloads and everythings, ... ...when a single maintained TCP stream would do just fine, sending 4-byte packets back and forth, ... ... something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

I said above that Object Oriented programming is not the solution. I maintain that. I think we need to seriously re-evaluate what the heck we're doing. I propose that we look at the notations we are using in writing programs. Forth has a radically different notation. APL has a radically different notation. There is great expressive power in these systems. They are compact and powerful. I have come to see that smallness is a great virtue -- not baroqueness.

A great **design** can make a dramatically smaller technology footprint. We're so focused on agile methods, that we don't see that a design can have a dramatic minimizing power. It's not about waterfall. Designs can be iterated after all. If the design has a small footprint, modification is quick and easy. The entire program can be rewritten in a reasonable time, if the design is little.

I am not writing this to convince anybody. Rather, I am writing this so that fellow programmers who resonate with what I'm saying are encouraged. These ideas are very much in the minority, and are drowned out by the mainstream orthodoxy of programming. But I believe that serious programmers who have been looking at what is going on can recognize what I'm saying here. I would like to see more expression of challenge to the orthodoxy here.

My Pointers for more information, for the interested:
* http://suckless.org/philosophy
* deep study of Chuck Moore's ideas on programming
* http://www.colorforth.com/1per...
* Alan Kay's ideas on programming
* the design of the TempleOS, which is extraordinary and powerful while minimal
* "Software Survivalism" and "Neo-Retro Computing" (Sam Falvo)

Specifically urxvt256c. dwm with rxvt is a beautiful thing.

The root of my preferences lies in this need: as much space for _my_ application and as little as possible for the OS, but easily accessible when I need its functions, without running any occult desktop environments :)

Have you heard of tiling window managers? I use AwesomeWM myself; though I hear that i3 is really cool and the same for dwm and xmonad.

I guess I'll be "that guy". I've been using dwm for years and couldn't live without it. There are other options like awesomewm or i3. Your programs will automatically tile in a sane manner using up all the available screen space.

But, the really cool thing is that a window can exist in multiple "tags" which are kind of like "virtual desktops" but a lot more powerful.

I'd recommend at least trying out a tiling window manager and seeing what you think.

You could work (for free...) on some suckless projects. Their projects have line of code limits to prevent over-engineering. You can easily read and understand the code of any suckless project, even if you're not an expert. Patches are really easy to write as well.

All,... I,.... want,.... is,.... an,.... expletive,.... web,.... browser!

Seriously, I just want to access web pages, I want to think about the browser itself as little as possible.

Try surf. It meets and exceeds your requirements by also being able to follow links!

http://surf.suckless.org/

I'll just keep using dwm like I always have. If you've never used a tiling window manager, check it out. You'll never be able to go back to manually managing the size and location of windows after you use it.

I can guarantee such a mentality exists.

From http://dwm.suckless.org/

Because dwm is customized through editing its source code, it's pointless to make binary packages of it. This keeps its userbase small and elitist. No novices asking stupid questions.

It is... a joke! Satirizing the very idea of the existence of such a community.

This "+5 Informative" is like Russian news bureaus citing Onion articles as factoids, when in reality it is just satire.

yeah, but hardly a crowd.

Actually, it's popular enough that there are about a dozen or so spin-offs or ports of dwm.

http://dwm.suckless.org/patches/

Where is the "crowd" that he referred to? Who wants Linux to be "hard"?

I can guarantee such a mentality exists.

From http://dwm.suckless.org/

Because dwm is customized through editing its source code, it's pointless to make binary packages of it. This keeps its userbase small and elitist. No novices asking stupid questions.

Rome wasn't built in a day...

Hopefully E17 will gradually remove the unfree code, and/or other copyfree projects will benefit from the copyfree parts of its code.

Since I don't need a full desktop environment (just a few tiled / tabbed xterms + a Web browser), I'm more hopeful about the latter. Perhaps we'll finally get a decent WebKit-based browser that doesn't require GTK/etc...

--libman

Rome wasn't built in a day...

Hopefully E17 will gradually remove the unfree code, and/or other copyfree projects will benefit from the copyfree parts of its code.

Since I don't need a full desktop environment (just a few tiled / tabbed xterms + a Web browser), I'm more hopeful about the latter. Perhaps we'll finally get a decent WebKit-based browser that doesn't require GTK/etc...

--libman

Sawfish. I'm at the moment using it with the Mate-Desktop (instead of Marco/Metacity) and it's pretty much awesome, I have to say. Highly configurable and has window rules (you want that window always there and in that size without a border, there you go!). Otherwise I've heard good things about OpenBox, BlackBox and Awesome (of course). If you feel really low resource and find some hacking funny...you could try dwm.

Things which start to suck tend to get replaced by things which suck less.

Indeed they do.

You sound like you'd really love surf and tabbed.

You sound like you'd really love surf and tabbed.

And if you want something even simpler that uses straight C, look at dwm. Actually, Awesome was forked from dwm. With dwm, the configuration is a C source file, so you have to rebuild it every time you make a change.

dwm is very minimal. For one, the notification area is actually the root window's title, so you have to use xsetroot in your .xinitrc to customize it. There's no included support for graphical tray icons.

The tradeoff is convenient features for speed and reliability. dwm is about 2000 SLoC. It's blazing fast. There is no lag whatsoever.

If you want to use dwm, really the true way to do it is to get the source and build it. You can get pre-built binaries, but dwm is all about customization.

I use dwm on a laptop with a 15" wide-ratio screen. It's tiling nature is the best way to most efficiently use the screen space, IMHO. However, it also includes a fullscreen window mode and a floating window mode.

Here are some screenshots.

And if you want something even simpler that uses straight C, look at dwm. Actually, Awesome was forked from dwm. With dwm, the configuration is a C source file, so you have to rebuild it every time you make a change.

dwm is very minimal. For one, the notification area is actually the root window's title, so you have to use xsetroot in your .xinitrc to customize it. There's no included support for graphical tray icons.

The tradeoff is convenient features for speed and reliability. dwm is about 2000 SLoC. It's blazing fast. There is no lag whatsoever.

If you want to use dwm, really the true way to do it is to get the source and build it. You can get pre-built binaries, but dwm is all about customization.

I use dwm on a laptop with a 15" wide-ratio screen. It's tiling nature is the best way to most efficiently use the screen space, IMHO. However, it also includes a fullscreen window mode and a floating window mode.

Here are some screenshots.

Since I don't mind fiddling with things to get my environment working the way I like, I have had great success with wmii, a tiling window manager which uses a very accessible runtime interface to allow for all sorts of scripting in a variety of languages. The normal usage of this sort of window manager is to use key commands to launch your apps. When windows get created they are automatically arranged either using scripted setups (like to arrange all of the sub-windows in GIMP) or to a default space where you can move them around, once again, using your keyboard. Development versions of wmii have a built-in dock which integrates into the information bar.

I personally have a personal project I developed as a web app. I then changed direction and it eventually evolved into a media center platform using Nginx, php w/fpm and a customized version of Surf. basically just stripped out all the UI widgets and set it to fullscreen on a Linux box connected to my TV.

Thats not the point though. What I am saying is no matter what you are trying to accomplish you will probably have to find something open source and customize it to your needs. I dont need anything other than Linux support for what I am doing, but I think there are unofficial Win builds of Surf.

You will no doubt have to do customizations though.

Or even better, a dwm user.

The mouse is really just a superficial input device that has no point.

This is true. Mouse free environments suck less.

I still can't figure out what's wrong with using 'login' as a login manager.

UNITY, the great DIVIDER :)

Anyway, Real Men use Xmonad, dwm or Ratpoison. Me? I'm a bit of a wimp, so I use Openbox.

Also, Compiz by itself is a surprisingly capable window manager, for all of you who like your jiggly windows and desktop cubes.

Business as usual: no reason to change from dwm.

So does surf, but using Webkit and integrating with your window manager - allowing you to group windows from different applications together.

I use dwm and do not miss overlapping windows at all. Overlapping is a counter-productive gimmick. The tag/workspace model is much more efficient.

Install ii from Suckless and then you just need to do 'cat $file > server_dir/channel_dir/out'.

Filesystems are awesome.

I'm surprised nobody mentioned dmenu.
dmenu reads lines as items, lets you choose one of them (with tab completion, etc) and prints the choice you made.
Example: FILE=$(ls | dmenu)
dzen does the same thing and much more.
All these tools are very small and only depend on the Xlib. No gtk/qt crap.

I prefer DWM. This is the ultimate in simplicity and usability.

dwm had its multihead support improved back in July. Since pretty much all of dwm's window management is by keyboard, of course it has keyboard shortcuts for moving windows between monitors. So yeah, this feature exists in even one of the most minimalist window managers out there.

In case you haven't already researched them:

Arora
Midori
Kazehakase
surf (Link provided for being downright IMPOSSIBLE to find via web search: http://surf.suckless.org/ )
uzbl

Take your pick. The last two in particular don't waste ANY space.

I configure my window manager to focus a window whent the cursor point on it, so i can change the window in which i want to type very fast. All that with a tiling window manager! DWM - tiling window manager http://dwm.suckless.org/

http://webconverger.com/ uses http://dwm.suckless.org/

DWM is a "new" lightweight Window Manager.

Use a really weird windows manager like WMI such that people won't want to use your computer.

And if the user interface looks cheap and lazy, they're going to think, justified or not, that the entire operating system, therefore, was cheap and lazy. /That/ is why there are so many, as you put it, 'gee whiz' features in new versions - it's the only thing most people will ever see.

But there are other alternatives to cheap and lazy than "gee whiz". Something that you'd describe as "elegant", "sleek", or "classy" is probably not going to be described as "flashy". A reserved look can be beautiful.

Call me crazy, but a non-trivial part of why I run dwm is that I think it looks pretty.

http://www.suckless.org/dwm/

Yes! http://www.suckless.org/common/index.html

And I'd reccomend dwm.

http://www.suckless.org/wiki/dwm

Your usage pattern sounds kind of similar to mine - you might want to look at wmii, which I've changed to. The actual reason was that XFCE and the floating window idea in general don't hold up too well at 2560x1600, but I haven't found much to complain about with wmii yet.

Fluxbox is pretty bloated. Just try to make sense of the >20K lines of code in a reasonable amount of time.

dwm on the other hand, is very lightweight and simple. Not to mention much more usable than Fluxbox.

This is sad that code base of Open Source projects is growing exponentially. Projects become fat ugly and unmanageable. It is also getting harder to debug, port, and even use such programs. http://suckless.org/ has several programs that do their job every well and yet very managable. For example window manager: dwm less than 2K lines of code, is the most feature complete WM I've seen. I've been using it as my main window manager for over year, and was very happy with it. There are few good CLI applications availble that hold approach of been efficient and useful and almost no GUI applications.

I have one of these. The builtin linux is tweakable enough (like by adding standard debian 4.0 repos to the apt config) so you can install dwm - and from there, you have a very light device that boots into a terminal in under 15 seconds, and you can do everything you usually do "online" (irc and mail through ssh, music through nfs or netradio with moc, web with firefox, etc).

It's easily powerful enough to watch movies, play flash (youtube of course), some opengl games. The keyboard is also very good; if you do your coding through the unix interface (make etc) as you should, instead of some GUI BS, it's very usable for programming, too. (Of course, you should use the keyboard instead of a pointing device to do your stuff; but that's true for any computer, not just the EEE.)

Battery is strong enough to give you 3 hours of movie watching over NFS over wifi.

Negative points I could bring up: it gets warmer than my Lenovo 3000 V100 (although the Lenovo is supposed to be a markedly cool model), and the builtin fan (the single moving part) is audible at times. I can live with these problems - and the EEE makes a lovely modern replacement for my old Toshiba Libretto C100.

From "I had assumed the two were integrated like.. IE in Windows XP.." I thought "it" was Tomboy.

I agree with everything you said, except Ion. I'm more of wmii type ;-)