I absolutely love this comparison. Making computers do what you want using a core set of skills, personal taste, some equipment, and a set of reference works i

I absolutely love this comparison. Making computers do what you want using a core set of skills, personal taste, some equipment, and a set of reference works is absolutely analogous to cooking at home for the family. I feel a bit like this touches on operating systems as well. After a decade with macOS — away from Debian, ion3, evince, Firefox, and to some extent the command line — I get that same feeling of overexposure one might feel after eating out for every meal. Restaurant food is polished and diverse but it’s overly tasty and the options for customization are coarse (no pun intended.) You can choose a dish but not how it’s made. The analogy with home cooking makes me want to go back to a computing environment where I get to put the ingredients together that work best for me even if it isn’t something that’s perfect enough to sell to other people. Hackable window managers aren’t the be all and end all but they are a good example of what I’m talking about. Time to buy that $100 Thinkpad, I guess.