69 ms·

Cool desktops don’t change

• AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
  The KDE enthusiast would probably note that KDE was originally called the "Kool Desktop Environment". But even the most ardent KDE enthusiast wouldn't argue that it does not change.
  • noisy_boy 4y ago
    I used KDE many years go and then went the Gnome way in search of "cleanliness". Unfortunately Gnome went a bit too far in the same pursuit and I'm now back at KDE. The bulky KDE of yore is gone and Plasma is great!
  • lmm 4y ago
    That's why you stick with the Trinity Desktop Environment.
• roguas 4y ago
  The problem with bash utils is that they require further context. Where I can write any problem i have to google in one box rather than via 7 bash utils.
• _dave 4y ago
  What's with the repost the day after you submitted it? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31761636 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31761636
  • rbanffy 4y ago
    HN ignores dupes when the original got little traction.
    • _dave 4y ago
      Ah. Guess I still have some learning to do with how things work here a little differently than elsewhere.
  • arm 4y ago
    It may not even necessarily be the submitter themselves that has resubmitted it — I’ve had posts I’ve submitted that have gotten low traction get resubmitted (not by me) hours later (but still with me listed as the submitter). Guessing it’s something the moderation team does when they feel a submission didn’t get enough traction the first time. Edit: Never mind, I see that’s not the case here after looking at their submission history!
• rbanffy 4y ago
  Shame on the OP. Emacs is 46 this year. As is vi (which is not Vim), but we all know Emacs is much better. OTOH, ed is 3 years older (Wow! 3 years between ed and Emacs!), and I'm very happy I don't use it today.
  • agumonkey 4y ago
    I love ed unsarcastically.
    • rbanffy 4y ago
      After all, ed is the standard text editor.
  • alpaca128 4y ago
    Interesting how you only see Vim as Vim but then treat all Emacs implementations as one unit. Emacs back then was probably very different from today's GNU Emacs too, considering it was originally just a set of macros for another editor.
    • rbanffy 4y ago
      GNU Emacs 1.0 was released in early 1985, making it 6 years “better” than Vim ;-). Multics Emacs is from 1978 and, as a standalone editor written in Lisp, it can be called an ancestor of GNU Emacs and hints towards what its most illustrious descendant would be. You are right in that there are many Emacsen, the same way there is more than one Unix.
  • gaws 4y ago
    > Shame on the OP. Emacs is 46 this year. In the Vi user's mind, there is no Emacs.
• PaulHoule 4y ago
  It's a running annoyance of Windows that they are always making small changes to the UI that don't really come across as an improvement or a deterioration but that force you to relearn things. It really drove me crazy when I went from being a linux partisan for being responsible for quite a few different Windows machines and on a given day I could be working with anything from Win 98 to Win ME to Win NT to various editions of Win 2000 and XP and if you had to find something in the UI it would be slightly different in all of those which was a cognitive load. Contrast to to Linux where I did it all on the command line and it stayed the same in that time frame.
  • agumonkey 4y ago
    Surprisingly I find linux quite guilty of the neverending gui papercut too (it's a bazaar after all). Sadly Microsoft is kinda forced to follow the trends, everything moves in all direction (web, phones).
    • PaulHoule 4y ago
      The first thing I do with a Linux install is uninstall X windows. I remember being excited when I saw the first beta test of KDE but it seemed each version got a little bit worse after that and that's been the trajectory of the Linux desktop since 1995 or so.
      • agumonkey 4y ago
        I don't mind X, but I push i3 or xfce and nothing more. I tried bare console linux but there were too many keyboard mapping fu and a few web browsing facility I didn't bother to lose.
      • emptysongglass 4y ago
        How do you surf the web or use GUI programs?
        • PaulHoule 4y ago
• limpbizkitfan 4y ago
  The Lindy effect is horseshit. Things that are good tend to be old because of infant death. There are plenty of old tools in consistent/present use that are cumbersome wrecks, too. Curating good things and calling them some buzzword is silly.
  • jrm4 4y ago
    It's a heuristic, not a rule.
  • pdonis 4y ago
    > The Lindy effect is horseshit. Things that are good tend to be old because of infant death. The Lindy effect doesn't say that the things that have been around a long time have to be good. It just says that their expected lifespan is longer. > There are plenty of old tools in consistent/present use ...that are examples of the Lindy effect even though they are cumbersome wrecks. The point is that they are still in consistent/present use.
• superkuh 4y ago
  My strategy is to keep the software for a desktop computer stable and of it's era forever. If it gets so old that I'm having trouble compiling things because my glib and gcc are so old then I'll build an entirely new desktop with up to date OS and software. Then set it up and use it till it can't do new software again. This happens every 5 to 10 years. I never lose ability. I only gain it. There are many things my 2010 era Core2Duo running Ubuntu 10.04 can do that my fancy new Ryzen desktop with Debian 11 can't and won't ever be able to do. Things I cannot give up because they're too important for my daily life. >And when Wayland finally happens? Well. I guess I’ll have no choice but to stop using computers forever ¯\_(ツ)_/ Wayland isn't going to happen. https://dudemanguy.github.io/blog/posts/2022-06-10-wayland-xorg/wayland-xorg.html https://dudemanguy.github.io/blog/posts/2022-06-10-wayland-x...
  • cowtools 4y ago
    Wayland doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to an improvement over Xorg, which is hampered by its complexity and reverse compatibility.
    • uecker 4y ago
      I do not think the criticism of Xorg is really correct. At its core, it is actually a nice and well-designed protocol. It is also rock-solid, works without any problem in all my configurations, and supports remote desktop.
    • lmm 4y ago
      > Wayland doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to an improvement over Xorg Agreed, but it shows no signs of ever achieving that. Yes, it has mixed DPI support, which is not nothing, but that doesn't generally make up for the areas where it doesn't have parity with Xorg and never intends to reach that parity. (Network transparency, screen recording, ...) > which is hampered by its complexity and reverse compatibility Users don't care about technical elegance. If and when those things start causing user-visible issues with Xorg then Wayland might get a chance.
  • MarioMan 4y ago
• Zababa 4y ago
  The correlary to that is that unless you go out of your way to create a "cool" desktop for yourself, the desktop you use will change every few years, usually breaking your habits and becoming less and less usable. For example, I've been using Pop!_OS for a while. It has the terrible GNOME flaw that you can't see thumbnails in the filepicker, you can only see a preview of the image you currently select. Or you could, a few months ago. Ever since a relatively recent update, I can't even see the preview anymore. They made something that was bad for years even worse. Same thing with Windows. I can't find my ways in the new options or settings or whatever that is. I'm trying to slowly move towards using software. I'm still relatively young, but I don't want to spend my whole life adjusting my habits to new random changes.
• Etheryte 4y ago
  The author makes a common statistical error in interpreting the Lindy effect. The Lindy effect proposes, simplified, that the longer something has been around, the longer it will probably stay around still. The author then makes a quick jump and posits that the opposite is also true, which it is not. Just because something has been around for a short time does not mean that its expected lifespan is somehow short. In other words, A implies B does not mean B implies A as well. All things that have been around for a long time had at one point only been around for a short time.
  • blowski 4y ago
    I’d never heard of the Lindy effect! By the author’s logic, COBOL programs still in use today will long outlive Linux. That could even be true.
  • andrewchambers 4y ago
    It just says visual studio is statistically more likely to die out - as most software does.
  • jinwoo68 4y ago
    A "logical" error rather than a statistical one :)
  • zwieback 4y ago
    Very true but I think what's also implied in the article is that new tools (VS Code) that look very different from old tools (vi/emacs) will probably not last. So, if A is very old and B is very different from A then B is less likely to succeed. I don't believe that, btw, just guessing at the mindset of the author.
    • horsawlarway 4y ago
      Even that's a fairly bad take. Visual Studio Code is based on a much older line (visual studio) which dates back to 1997. It's not nearly so new as it may seem, although I certainly appreciate the refresh from the older, more feature-filled (and feature slowed) visual studio proper. Not to mention - most of the "new stuff" in visual studio code is really just a nice UI layer that's built using mature and incredibly battle tested tooling - HTML/CSS/JS.
• hyperman1 4y ago
  On linux, if you want a calculator, just type python.
  • marcosdumay 4y ago
    And here I go again, recommending Qalculator and its CLI friend qalc. Python is a lousy calculator, unless you want to program it.
    • hyperman1 4y ago
      python is good enough for almost everything you throw at it, and is probably installed. qcalc might be better, but it is probably not installed.
  • Evidlo 4y ago
    Octave is also nice as a calculator
  • markstos 4y ago
    I use Speedcrunch. Launches instantly, so not much time savings to use a CLI tool instead.
  • throwaway742 4y ago
    >>> 1/3 0
    • Macha 4y ago
      $ python Python 3.10.5 (main, Jun 6 2022, 18:49:26) [GCC 12.1.0] on linux Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> 1/3 0.3333333333333333 If you're going to keep using EOL versions, that's on you.
      • throwaway742 4y ago
        Blame the Debian maintainers. That was the default python package.
• pram 4y ago
  IMO he should be using Xaw or Motif applications, the stuff on his desktop is a little too new and pretty. Your desktop should at least be an authentic recreation of the late-80s. Not a convincing act for performative oldness.
  • dredmorbius 4y ago
    WindowMaker enters the chat.
• xupybd 4y ago
  I like this but find I'm more productive in Windows. For one reason Microsoft Office. I have to use to work with others and systems that rely on it. For years I struggled with work arounds. The amount of time and effort I wasted is insane.
  • xnacly 4y ago
    You could use google docs or libre office, both support offices proprietary file formats
• zwieback 4y ago
  I've been using PCs since before GUIs so some of my habits are probably too crusty at this point. However, I don't really mind so much how the graphical shell changes, the command shell in Windows 11 feels like the MS-DOS of my youth, the Linux shell feels like the old HP-UX or Xenix shells from my youth so I can get all the basics done quickly. Having said that, I do think that there's mostly improvement in our GUIs as well, bad ideas that crop up now and then usually disappear quickly.
• jrm4 4y ago
  Not enough attention is paid to the (perhaps now cargo-culting) cause of this mess, which is that we still have companies that do something like "selling operating systems." This is a stupid idea that should have died a long time ago.
  • 13415 4y ago
    I don't know, in the consumer market only Microsoft still sells an operating system but it's dirt cheap, you can get Windows licenses for a few bucks. The problem is perhaps rather that they don't sell operating systems and instead of building a good OS product sell their users' data or use the OS to lock costumers into their platform and hardware. There does not seem to be a competitive OS market at all (and probably there never was a healthy one to speak of).
    • jrm4 4y ago
      Right, I'd argue that "Operating system as for-profit-product separable from the computer itself" should have never existed -- any more than e.g. "OS for cars." Bill Gates had a wonderful very awful idea. :)
• dangus 4y ago
  Long-lived, stable tools are great things. However, it's also not great to be stuck in your ways and being unwilling to adapt. > The problem with most notetaking apps is editing text outside Vim breaks my brain. I see this as an unwillingness to learn. I felt like the tone of the article was of the sort where I was just there to be told that I'm inferior for using a mouse. Microsoft Word is actually an older program than vim (not older than vi), so obviously the author should switch to Word to take notes instead of vim.
  • horsawlarway 4y ago
    Also - as much as the Vim/Emacs folks love to bash on the mouse... it turns out a pointer is actually an incredibly good tool for doing most of the things you might want to do with one - like select some text, or change cursor position, or quickly and accurately select an item from a list of similar items. Having grown up with a mouse playing fps/rts games, I don't really get the hate. A mouse is an excellent tool.
    • dredmorbius 4y ago
      On text selection and movement: - Repositioning the cursor by incrementally searching for the word you want to move to is more accurate, quite fast (3-4 letters is virtually always sufficient to find the word in question), keeps you in the text / document "head", and leaves your hands on the keyboard. - Yank (y) + movement (w for word, ) for sentence, } for paragraph, 'yi<modifier>' for copy within marks (quotes, braces, angle-brackets, parenthesis, etc.) is also amazingly fast. - Visual mode can be used to select specific blocks of text where necessary. - If I want to select specific fields from a file, I'll usually either use tools for that purpose (cut, sed, awk), or read in the entire file and edit it down from within vim. The tools-based approach means I can reproduce the task readily if I need to do it repeatedly. And finally, where I'm dumping text from some GUI app to vim ... it's still usually easier, faster, less error-prone, and more reproducible to grab the entire screenful of text without specifically selecting what I want (e.g., C-A or Cmd-A (Mac)), and then trim to size within vim. Again, vim's tools permit working with text as text rather than with text as a GUI presentation. I'm not saying I never use the mouse for text selection, but it is far less common than you might think, and much more cumbersome.
• rubyist5eva 4y ago
  That's what I like about macos - no drastic changes in the 10+ years that I've been using it. They've added some stuff - some of it I've absorbed into my workflow, some of it I haven't and it stays out of my way.
  • horsawlarway 4y ago
    If this is a real opinion - I don't think you're doing very much with macOS. Hell - just the KEXT changes break about 20 different things in my workflow. honestly, as someone who uses a mix of all three major OSes (Windows/Linux/Mac), Mac has been the least pleasant dealing with upgrades - they make as many breaking changes as linux, and they have dogshite docs.
    • rubyist5eva 4y ago
      My machine only has kexts for Parallels (had? they switched to Virtualization Framework a while ago), and never had any issues as long as I was keeping Parallels up to date. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• markstos 4y ago
  Wayland is viable. Time to try Sway!
  • bravetraveler 4y ago
    I've been using Sway, very happy - just prepare to do a fair bit of fiddling :) A quick tip, imitate this however you see fit -- setting `XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP`: $ cat ~/.config/environment.d/envvars.conf XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP="${XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP:-sway}" ... so that `xdg-desktop-portal-wlr` can share your screen by knowing the environment you're in For whatever reason this isn't set by Sway. This will only set it if another DE hasn't already
    • Arnavion 4y ago
      >~/.config/environment.d/envvars.conf Set it by exec'ing from your sway config instead. Otherwise every session under your user will think it's running in sway, even if it isn't. How to do that is explained in the xdpw wiki. >For whatever reason this isn't set by Sway. It's because sway generally doesn't do any kind of integration with anything not related to Wayland, which in this case is systemd and dbus. It gives you the tools to do it yourself. Distros that provide pre-configured packages of sway should ship such a config by default. Eg OpenSUSE has https://github.com/openSUSE/openSUSEway/blob/ee8fe750a843165b821ccf41aec0ff73973c72db/sway/sway-run.sh#L6 https://github.com/openSUSE/openSUSEway/blob/ee8fe750a843165... + https://github.com/openSUSE/openSUSEway/blob/ee8fe750a843165b821ccf41aec0ff73973c72db/.config/sway/config.d/50-openSUSE.conf#L54 https://github.com/openSUSE/openSUSEway/blob/ee8fe750a843165...
      • bravetraveler 4y ago
        That's fair (RE: setting/sessions). The method I proposed relies on consistency everywhere else (defining that to something), and assumes Sway if not :P It looks like this (on Fedora) is generally dealt with by the 'sway-systemd' package. That provides a drop-in config (/etc/sway/config.d/10-systemd-session.conf) that runs a script and prepares the environment for you (including this variable) $ dnf whatprovides /etc/sway/config.d/10-systemd-session.conf [...] sway-systemd-0.2.2-1.fc36.noarch : Systemd integration for Sway session Repo : @System Matched from: Filename : /etc/sway/config.d/10-systemd-session.conf It's rather similar to the openSUSE approach you shared, but seemingly a little more robust: https://github.com/alebastr/sway-systemd/blob/main/src/session.sh https://github.com/alebastr/sway-systemd/blob/main/src/sessi... As long as you do this in your Sway config, it should be fine: include /etc/sway/config.d/* I forgot about that adventure until now -- with something like this, you don't need either 'manual declaration' approach really I initially missed it moving to Sway because I literally copied my i3 config and only changed it slightly
• jmclnx 4y ago
  Well I have three older objects, Slackware, xterm and fvwm, but who's counting :)
• muhammadusman 4y ago
  I would love to see more guides on how to make vim more like a knowledge/mind notes app like Notion/Roam. I've been on and off looking for something like that.
  • wardedVibe 4y ago
    Look into org-roam, which embeds roam in emacs org mode, and evil, which uses vim keybindings and modal editing in Emacs. Doom emacs has extremely easy ways of installing both of these packages in the setup.
  • machrider 4y ago
    I'm liking vimwiki, for what it's worth. It feels like a pretty small set of changes to vim that make the wiki stuff "just work", and otherwise it's my regular ass plaintext world that I love.
  • arnaudsm 4y ago
    When Notion had a lot of outages in 2020, my entire 200-employee company stopped working hours at a time. I didn't even notice, happily using my markdown notes.
• Animats 4y ago
  And get off my lawn! Counterexamples - technologies that lasted a long time, then hit a hard dead end. - NTSC / PAL video. - Audio on magnetic tape - Video on magnetic tape - Manual transmissions in cars - Daily newspapers - Mimeograph machines - Asbestos
  • dento 4y ago
    > - Manual transmissions in cars Only in US, in EU about 80% of new cars have manual transmission.
    • midasuni 4y ago
      In the U.K. in the 00s and before automatic cars were really rare. Surprisingly though the last 10 years they’ve increased in popularity and have overtaken manuals for new registrations Not aware of any eu stats https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/analysis-are-manual-gearboxes-way-out https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/analysis-are-man...
      • jen20 4y ago
        Why is that surprising? Over the same period they've also demonstrated better fuel economy and performance than manual transmissions, so it makes sense that they're more popular now.
    • bsder 4y ago
      This was driven by the cost of petrol rather than convenience. An automatic transmission is a non-trivial amount of weight--especially on the small cars present in the EU--and affects gas mileage tremendously. Driving a manual in heavy stop and go traffic, however, sucks rocks whether you are in LA or Palermo. You are continuously playing the "rolling game" in order to minimize stress on your clutch to avoid burning it up. I presume these same forces will be the ones that cause the EU to switch to electric cars first.
      • outworlder 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• swayvil 4y ago
  Debian with Mate. As familiar as the back of my hand. Dog simple. Can't recall the last time it broke (without me doing something dumb anyway). (But "pluma"? "Caja"? Wtf names?) And none of this "eternal improvements" bs. At least nothing visible in the ui or anything. For all intents and purposes it is evolutionarily flat. Which is exactly the way I like it. (Except, maybe there is something cleverer than just slapping windows on top of each other willy nilly. I know there are alternatives. I have not been driven to explore there much.) (Also, the Windows OS is flaming garbage. Possibly literally malicious. I don't know how they stay in business.)
  • Ygg2 4y ago
    > Also, the Windows OS is flaming garbage. Possibly literally malicious. I don't know how they stay in business. You don't have to be best, just better than the alternative. MacOS comes with specialized set of hardware. So good luck tailoring Mac, without it costing like an average Ferrari. Linux is just worse for average user. Not average HN user, mind you. But people who struggle to figure out print screen. I fought with Linux in the past. It's death by thousand gremlin bites. Big part of that is lack of drivers, but there are also major fractures in the space: Gnome vs KDE, X.org vs Wayland, etc.
    • Eji1700 4y ago
      >I fought with Linux in the past. It's death by thousand gremlin bites. My experience as well. I wanted to set up a small pi box that i could just keep with me and code on in my downtime. I of course could just use a laptop but this whole setup fit in a small stethoscope case and would get me more used to linux. There's just SO many small things that don't quite work right, and the attitude of the userbase unfortunately tilts towards elitist if not downright hostile. I still want to learn more and get better with it, but I spend enough of my time at work reading doc's and trying to debug, I don't love when my freetime feels almost the same.
  • anthk 4y ago
    Caja -> box in Spanish. Pluma -> Stylo pen. It literally means feather, but you'd obviously guess why it persisted on that name.
• jeromenerf 4y ago
  Haaa, the sweet comfort of having everything set up and humming. The sweet Debian stable way of nothing ever changing. It may not last forever, as kids, or new jobs or new hobbies come to disrupt the harmony, so enjoy your sweet time.
  • swayvil 4y ago
    Why would it change? The only reason I can see is if they outlaw general computing (including linux) and we're all stuck running Patriot Windows 3000. And even then it's gonna be underground.
• dredmorbius 4y ago
  jwz has a comment that addresses this: Look, in the case of all other software, I believe strongly in "release early, release often". Hell, I damned near invented it. But I think history has proven that UI is different than software. The Firefox crew believe otherwise. Good for them, and we'll see. HN-safe archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20120511115213/https://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/04/why-i-use-safari-instead-of-firefox/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120511115213/https://www.jwz.o... Software performance improvements tend to come from hardware (Moore's Law, still-ish), and software algorithm (in the old-school sense of how information is actually processed) improvements. Leaning on the UI for massive performance enhancement is a bit like expecting order-of-magnitude income improvements by increasing your working hours. There's only so much time in a day, and there is only a limited rate at which humans can interact with digitised information --- generally text, images, video, audio, and data. The Mother of All Demos was fifty years ago ... four years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31676445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31676445 And yet, it incorporated very nearly all the basic human-computer interface principles still used today. Apple's Macintosh has seen two principle variants of its desktop UI in the 38 years of its existence. And the second, OSX / Aqua, is now older than Mac Classic was when OSX was introduced by eight years. Apple are highly conservative in UI changes. I'm not principally an Apple user, or fan. But for my desktop, I use an environment inspired by the Mac's predecessor, NeXT, namely Windowmaker. There's been very little development in years, but the product is stable, and still works even on retina-class displays. The fact that I don't have to go hunting down new interactions every few months or years is a tremendous advantage. And if you want, twm is still a serviceable window manager. My own tools collection strongly resembles Cipriani's. Applications and tools learned decades ago still provide me regular use. I can do what I intended when I want without being buffetted by constant winds of change and shifting fashions. And quite frankly, it's awesome and a bit of a superpower.
• NonNefarious 4y ago
  This article proposes that the user set up (and remember) a bunch of alternative utilities that are no better, or at least no less laborious, than a Web search. "I’ve combined XMonad and Chrome to get little floating web apps all over my desktop" WTF, that is the last thing I'd want. The world (even the Mac world) has finally moved away from the asinine floating-window fad.
• outworlder 4y ago
  Lindy effect predicts that Lisp will be running on our civilization's future Dyson sphere.
• throwaway787544 4y ago
  The best desktop is the one I can customize however I want, and then run anywhere, without jumping through hoops. If I can untar some config files in my home dir and install a couple binaries, and have my desktop just appear the way I want it, that is the best desktop. It's not only portable and easier to set up, it's more likely to be both backwards and forwards compatible. If, on the other hand, a given desktop depends on some bizarro set of 20 different services, interfaces, libraries and apps which can only work in one way on one platform, and it's near-impossible to move the settings somewhere else, and most apps can't even use it, that desktop sucks. I don't want a cool desktop, I want a desktop that doesn't suck.
• leephillips 4y ago
  I learned from this that there’s a Debian package that gives me definitions from the justly renowned 1913 Websters, and installed it right away! (The comment on the OA is correct: it’s `dict-gcide`. This is great.
• eternityforest 4y ago
  The Lindy effect is a predictive tool. Whether something is good or not is much more complicated. For one thing, switching GUI tools has almost no cost, if that tool doesn't have a significant amount of non-ephemeral user content. It may be different for people with a strong muscle memory, but I can switch calculators or dictionary apps at any time. Basic GUI apps aren't skills you learn, they're things you get vaguely familiar with, the discoverable UIs guide you even if you don't know what you're doing. The learning time is minutes to days at most. If I have to learn a new app in 3 years, that's fine. It won't take me much more effort than it probably would to maintain the config for enough Vim plugins to get it to act somewhat like I want it to. I could probably even switch away from something as big as LibreOffice without trouble, if they used the same file formats and actually gave a reason I might want to switch. Plus, Android itself is still new, and for most things, Mobile is what really matters to me. Note taking is worthless if I can't access or write down the notes when I think of them or want to check them. Perhaps if I was doing more advanced programming, more of my notes would be taken at a keyboard? These simple old tools seem really use case specific. Like, speed of text editing is less critical if most of what you do is interact with modern frameworks, where things might change too fast and the projects might be too big to memorize, and you're relying much more on IDE features to help you, and spending 2x as much time researching as actually coding.
• hax0rbana 4y ago
  gcide-dict doesn't exist in Debian (anymore?)
  • hax0rbana 4y ago
    The author's `spell` script doesn't work either. No suggestions appear, no definitions, and even entering "0" to get the original text does not copy the word to the clipboard despite the script claiming that is does. Tested on Debian 11.
• ChuckMcM 4y ago
  This is very true, you get more out of honing a small set of useful tools that continue to operate year after year, than you do chasing the next cool thing in UX.
• sbf501 4y ago
  I've been using MWM and the same .mwmrc since AIX in 1991. Same palette, same decor, same .Xdefaults. I've yet to see a GUI (FVWM, KDE, Gnome) that offers something X/Athena/Motif didn't nail 30+ years ago.
  • cyberpunk 4y ago
    Got a screenie?
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • sbf501 4y ago
      https://imgur.com/a/pYKiP2Z https://imgur.com/a/pYKiP2Z Instead of virtual desktops, I just start another VNC session because I don't like losing everything if one session goes down. macOS already has virtual desktops, so no need to reduplicate the effort.
      • mrweasel 4y ago
        Expect for the icons in the lower left corner, it actually looks surprisingly modern. Seeing VSCode and MWM in the same screenshot is oddly fascinating.
        • sbf501 4y ago
          Agreed. The X Window system is pretty damn amazing, despite its warts. Now that you say that, I've anthropomorphized MWM into this old-timer, reflecting what kind of programs it has seen run in it over the years, and what it will see in 30+ more years.
• burrows 4y ago
  What does it even mean to say that vim is 30 years old? The vim program I use is compiled from source code that is completely different from the vim people used 5 or 10 or 20 years ago.
• Symbiote 4y ago
  'units' can also do currency conversions: $ units 100EUR USD * 105.88302 / 0.0094443845 In which case it is useful to enable the service to update the exchange rates: sudo systemctl enable units-currency-update.timer (or something like that...)
  • anthk 4y ago
    Emacs' calc too.
• bredren 4y ago
  I saw a product someone had created to help preserve flow state. It let you record and play back your last programming work session so you could quickly pick up your prior context. Anyone recognize this? I can't remember the name of this product.
• shadowofneptune 4y ago
  Interesting that the author singles out using a search engine as a calculator as a bad idea. I do use proper calculators sometimes, but what makes google attactive as one is that it can handle both unit conversions and natural language. "30 milliliters * 50 in ounces" is an example. It's surprisingly flexible in what it recognizes.
  • the_af 4y ago
    I find myself siding with the author of TFA, even if I don't use the tools he uses, but... ... the search engine complaint strikes me as odd. For me, Google doesn't break my flow at all. I find myself searching the web all day long, as part of my job (and basically everything else, as well). My flow is searching the web a lot, typing some code, googling, typing some more, etc. So it's a completely natural extension of my flow to have Google do my calculations and unit conversion for me. When people talk of futuristic scifi interfaces, they think some disembodied human voice (frequently female) complying with voice commands. But the reality is that Google is already here and I can have it convert between units, do calculations for me, even roll some dice! And I accomplish this just by typing natural language sentences!
    • Eji1700 4y ago
      I literally have command line commands that search google and yt so that i can quickly pull up help on whatever my current issue is.
  • jchw 4y ago
    GNU units may be of interest here.
    • shadowofneptune 4y ago
      That's what the article would prefer people to use. Google though is usually already present when I am at a computer, its output is easier to read, and its input is more forgiving.
• njharman 4y ago
  This is not an argument for unchanging tools. It's an argument for becoming a power user. Pick good, powerful, customizable tools. When they were made is immaterial. Learn them to expert level. The "innovations" toolmakers try to push on you will almost never be worth the cost of losing all your knowledge, customization to your uses, and muscle memory.
  • qayxc 4y ago
    I honestly fail to see how using a different terminal, typing "spell word", looking through a list of suggestions and then entering a number followed by another keypress to copy said word into the clipboard and finally pasting the the result where I actually want it - all providing I actually know and notice potential spelling mistakes - is in any way shape or form superior to a system that highlights spelling mistakes automatically and presents fixes with a single click. > Pick good, powerful, customizable tools. In other words: know ahead of time what you need and how to achieve it efficiently. Discoverability on the command line is atrocious, which might be the reason it feels like such an achievement to finally learn that "tr" stands for "translate or delete characters" or how obscure command line options of grep or cut work to massage text files. > The "innovations" toolmakers try to push on you will almost never be worth the cost of losing all your knowledge, customization to your uses, and muscle memory. One could just as well argue that the mental resources and time needed to acquire these specialised skills are better spent to solve actual problems as opposed to do the same thing over and over again manually (otherwise they won't become "muscle memory") using archaic tools designed for completely different systems. There's another side to the story and I remember vividly that programmers in the late 1980s and early 1990s argued the exact same way when defending their continued use of assembly language versus high level languages.
• jchw 4y ago
  Don’t fear the Wayland. Wait patiently for the pain points to be worked out, and then reap the reward of a smoother and more robust desktop. I’ve been running SwayWM for multiple years and it’s been great. There’s not anything I’m aware of that I can’t do in wlroots compositors; I even have Zoom screenshare working on my work computer under SwayWM. Most stuff, like WebRTC, doesn’t even require manual tweaks; just need the right packages installed. And you get the typical Wayland benefits, like great support for heterogeneous DPI, reduced jank, and potentially better robustness. (Depends on compositor for now; but there is a path towards compositor crash recovery, which should make things far better.) A comparable Wayland compositor to Xmonad will likely rise as a good successor in the future.
  • octoberfranklin 4y ago
    > Wait patiently for the pain points to be worked out Efficient remote desktop. Won't happen, ever. Simply cannot happen. Blits from offscreen to onscreen surfaces bypass the compositor, so it can't implement them as RDP commands and instead has to push the whole image across the pipe every time. This is why xorgxrdp is so crazy fast and responsive compared to every single Wayland RDP server. I use sway (a Wayland compositor) on all my machines. But all of my headless machines run xorgxrdp because there is nothing in the Wayland world that is even close. This is a fundamental problem with Wayland that cannot be fixed until there is a perspective change on the Wayland committees. Sending surface-to-surface-copy commands through the compositor clashes with their worldview, but without it we will never have decent remote display -- even (as they say) as "the task of a higher-layer protocol".
    • jchw 4y ago
      That’s fine, but applications that can efficiently do that are slowly disappearing in favor of direct hardware acceleration, with software rendered offscreen rendering as the fallback, so those days are quite numbered now. That said, the best way to go in the future is probably going to be something more like waypipe. edit: People seem skeptical, but… GTK4: https://discourse.gnome.org/t/gtk4-efficiency-and-performance-in-x11-export-remote-drawing-mode/8786/2 https://discourse.gnome.org/t/gtk4-efficiency-and-performanc... Qt 5: https://forum.qt.io/topic/67371/x11-forwarding-slow-on-qt-5-applications https://forum.qt.io/topic/67371/x11-forwarding-slow-on-qt-5-... Electron/Chromium: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/5243 https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/5243 Even my terminal emulator of choice; only fallback is software rendering. Hope you can stomach video codecs, because that’s where we’re headed unless you stop updating your software.
• mgraczyk 4y ago
  > I stole the calc bash function from Addy Osmani in 2012 and have used it daily since. Do yourself a favor # ~/.bashrc function py { python3 -c "from math import *; print($*)" } $ py 3 + 3 6 $ py "sqrt(7)" 2.6457513110645907 $ py pi / 5 0.6283185307179586
  • mixmastamyk 4y ago
    This is very neat at the CLI. However I always keep a terminal tab/pane with ptpython open. Add math, os, sys, datetime, work libs, etc. to your startup file (see below). With pip, it’s incredible. https://www.assertnotmagic.com/2018/06/30/python-startup-file/ https://www.assertnotmagic.com/2018/06/30/python-startup-fil...
    • LanceH 4y ago
      I write out calculations in an emacs lisp buffer. This lets me adjust them, correct typos, or save the whole thing.
    • noisy_boy 4y ago
      I often forget to quote * which results in multiplications not working when done using the function approach mentioned above. No such issues with the startup approach. Plus I can store the results in variables and play with them (anything more complicated is more suited for LibreOffice Calc).
      • Siira 4y ago
        alias calc='noglob calc-actual-implementation' Disables globs for that particular command in Zsh.
  • ImprovedSilence 4y ago
    why not just use bc -l ?
    • remram 4y ago
• tmlb 4y ago
  I suppose I'm hedging my bets by using vim in VSCode.
• Multicomp 4y ago
  I find the vimmaxxing message common enough but I disagree with it. Not because vim vs nano vs emacs etc. Just that plain text is not enough. I want to be able to encode more of my memory and context to my notes with a minimum of fuss, and therefore want to embed images (gasp!), tables, hyperlinks, and even file or sound embeds in my documents. Yes, open simple file formats are better than closed complex formats (and doing text vs binary formats has something to say for it as well). No, I don't like that Onenote's .ONE file specification is super complex and therefore only semi-open. But I'm not about to lock myself into a DEC dumb terminals 80x24 limitations where I have to learn some greybeard's key bindings for everything, all for the privilege of losing all my ability to embed multimedia combined with said gatekeepers tut-tutting me that I should just make a link in my terminal to the local image file, nevermind that you can't copy/paste an image into a bash terminal and have the file be saved to that directory (ok it probably exists but is some obscure something). So I watch Xournal++ very closely, specifically [this issue](https://github.com/xournalpp/xournalpp/issues/937 https://github.com/xournalpp/xournalpp/issues/937) because it will have the total package, multimedia embeds, ink support, text support, file embeds, all in one file that I can syncthing save to wherever else I like. But until then? Onenote desktop, sorry but not that sorry.
  • mixmastamyk 4y ago
    Terminals have improved a lot since the dumb. Think your comment would do better without the slight. However, I use CUA keybindings myself.
  • retrocryptid 4y ago
    or you could use xterm's vt240 mode (from 1989 or so) and use emacs or vim extensions that embed sixel data in text files. just because you didn't read the manual doesn't mean it can't be done.
    • yCombLinks 4y ago
      There's a million things with manuals to read. I would rather grab something that just works in an obvious way.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• bee_rider 4y ago
  Does calc do something neat that bc -l is missing? It is a funny omission in an article about using old programs -- it is arguably older than vi (not vim).
• badkarma1963 4y ago
  You can do a lot of this in Spotlight
• motohagiography 4y ago
  I have always done everything in vi, and it will likely be around in another 30 years. Just recently got an ubuntu laptop after being on macbooks since probably 2006 - and FreeBSD on latops from their first laptop distros in the 90s to then. I can't believe how much I missed a *nix environment, I had forgotten. It's actually beautiful to see it now. Strange to say it, but using a *nix laptop again makes me feel like myself in a way I hadn't felt in a long time. There's something intrinsically hopeful about using linux as your primary environment. As though it's part of the real internet that is still there. Anyway I actually found myself looking around at Enlightenment as a desktop environment just to see if I could get that old HR Giger theme going again. My .fvwmrc from those days has to be around somewhere as well. Some of these tools don't so much become obsolete as converge on an essential form. Not old, perfect.
  • jen20 4y ago
    macOS is literally a certified UNIX, so I have no idea what could conceivably make it not a "*nix".
    • motohagiography 4y ago
      I use macOS because it is unix and nominally BSD-like in the sense it has bash and a package manager. However, I'd argue we use macOS to manage things, but working with a FOSS OS comes with a feeling of particpation. A bit handwavy and fuzzy, but trying to articulate the appeal.
  • rawoke083600 4y ago
    >. It's actually beautiful to see it now. Strange to say it, but using a *nix laptop again makes me feel like myself in a way I hadn't felt in a long time. There's something intrinsically hopeful about using linux as your primary environment. As though it's part of the real internet that is still there. I too enjoy Linux Desktops and MDMA :D (/s /s /s)
• ruuda 4y ago
  The Gnome desktop environment must be uncool then, it changes its looks and the location of its buttons every six months.
• 3np 4y ago
  On the topic of tiling window managers, has anyone been using Qtile on Wayland extensively? Can't seem to get used to the i3/sway flow and Qtile looks promising in having a very flexible tiling model and being easy to customize, while working across X11 and Wayland. This talk is from 2011 so that should hopefully make it pass the Lindy threshold ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_8om4dsEmw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_8om4dsEmw EDIT: Wayland support seems to be on the way but there are some outstandings: https://github.com/qtile/qtile/discussions/2409 https://github.com/qtile/qtile/discussions/2409
  • vivab0rg 4y ago
    Nice to see Qtile on Wayland. But I'm personally waiting for xmonad on Wayland. https://github.com/waymonad/waymonad https://github.com/waymonad/waymonad
• squarefoot 4y ago
  Another candidate to his list in place of the calc script is bc, which conveniently is 46 years old:) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bc_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bc_(programming_language) I use it also for the most trivial stuff and is way more immediate than firing up any X based graphical calculator.
  • xnacly 4y ago
    I use the build in math command in fish[0] on a daily basis. Its always faster and way more comfortable to just type an equation in instead of waiting for a gui calculator and possibly clicking operators together. Id say for such tasks cli tools always win at the end in terms of user experience and speed. 0. https://fishshell.com/ https://fishshell.com/
• j7ake 4y ago
  What if you want to take notes that are not just text ? Diagrams, photos, images, equations. How do you vim your way out of that? If they are going to use Lindy arguments on note taking, then it should be pen and paper. If you still want to se technology, then use pen and paper to take notes then take a photo of the page afterwards.
  • suction 4y ago
    The author is just another young guy trying to get attention - but not realizing that there's a big world out there and not everybody works the same job with the same workflows as he and the people in his bubble do.
• 11235813213455 4y ago
  as calculator `node -p "15*15"` works well too
• wink 4y ago
  If nothing ever changed I would probably still be using awesome. But some new distro version (maybe it was Ubuntu 10.04?) broke something (not blaming Ubuntu, could as well just be a new awesome version that wasn't backwards compatible) and I snagged a coworker's xmonad config. That xmonad config is still running on my x220 (funny, yes, it's also been 10 years) and has lived through quite a few Debian upgrades, but this time I did invest some time to keep it running every few years. But that's just my travel laptop - on the machines I use productively I've been using i3 for... not sure, probably 7 years? And I think it was again some non-working/incompatible xmonad in the distro I was using at the time (or after getting a new laptop) So not sure if 3 different tiling WMs in 12 years is now good or bad, but apparently I'm open to some change after all, but usually only if pushed.
  • vivab0rg 4y ago
    You should try spectrwm, a "fork" of xmonad not written in Haskell. It effectively replaced i3wm on all my laptops.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• sclangdon 4y ago
  I don't really understand this idea of never taking your hands off the keyboard. Maybe people program differently to me, but most of the time I'm not typing anything. Most of my time is spent thinking. When my thoughts are clear and the problem is solved, then I type. And when I do, it's usually no more than a dozen lines at a time. I get the impression from these people that they are constantly typing things. In fact, they're typing so much that they can't possibly waste valuable seconds using a mouse. I must be misunderstanding what they mean because that just can't be right. And what's with the "you can achieve the same thing faster, without breaking your concentration" in regard to using a spell-checker or a calculator or whatever. Are you being serious? I can achieve the same thing faster? I mean how long do you think it takes to check the spelling of a word? Even if I must look it up in a physical dictionary, how long are we talking here? Guys, seriously, slow down. You're going to burn out. I don't want to judge because I don't know you. Maybe you're a rockstar, but I'd guess that if you're really going this fast, the quality of your code is suffering.
  • vector_spaces 4y ago
    I am similar to you with regard to process and how much I output at a time, but in my case having to fuss with the mouse a whole bunch makes it that much easier for me to lose my train of thought. That said, I don't optimize heavily against this the way some folks do. I use emacs and org-mode and GNOME (well, whatever the System76 folks are calling their reskinned GNOME desktop :)) which I think provide a nice balance. Emacs lets me switch between files with a couple keystrokes rather than having to dig through 10 tabs, and GNOME I think encourages an alt-tab based workflow. I still use the mouse for most other things though.
  • aidos 4y ago
    If you’re thinking, you don’t even need to be at the computer. I can’t speak for others, but I keep my hands on the keyboard a lot of the time because I’m reading. As a (neo)vim geek, the key is to be really good at moving through the code. Being able to jump from where you are to where you want to be in a file far away without stopping allows you to read the code in a more linear way than it’s written.
  • jraph 4y ago
• rawoke083600 4y ago
  Subject + Article aside. I love how personal and passionate we all are about our desktops / workflows. Lol we up to 330+ comments and we talking mostly the correct way to edit text files and where/how those windows should live and behave etc. Of course i3 + 'doom emacs' is the correct answer but happy to continue to hear all the other options, even if they are all wrong /s :P
• forgotmypw17 4y ago
  Cool desktops don't change without the user's consent. It's why I left first Windows and then Mac. My computer is my workstation, and I don't want anything changed without me asking. With FOSS, that's what I get. With Win/Mac, I was at the mercy of the landlords. Still miss how keyboard-accessible early Windows was out of the box, however.
• ricardobayes 4y ago
  It bogs the mind out of 7 billion people only one single company is capable of building both aesthetically pleasing and well-functioning laptops (Apple that is). I wish Lenovo (or someone else) did the right thing and built a Thinkpad-like heavy duty bento box machine with modern internals.
  • aembleton 4y ago
    I have a Macbook for work and a personal Xiaomi laptop. I think the quality of the Xiaomi laptop is just as good. Fingerprint reader doesn't work on Linux, but everything else works as well as on the Macbook. If I were to buy a new laptop now, I'd go with Framework because the ease of changing components appeals to me.
  • elxr 4y ago
    > well-functioning laptops (Apple that is) And even they had a ~4 year period (2016-2019) of putting out sub-par, handicapped laptops. Nowadays, framework's making some pretty great laptops. Repairable, linux-friendly, and nicely proportioned. Don't like them sticking a giant logo in the middle of the lid though, ruins the look a little.
• einpoklum 4y ago
  I am still dumbfound by the fact that no manufacturer seems to have produced a decent laptop after x220, which the author mentions. And by decent, I mean with a decent keyboard, and which doesn't break easily. What is the deal with all of that think junk? ... I mean, ok, ok, I know many people like thin laptops. What about all the rest of us? I need to type, damn it!
• lawl 4y ago
  This is true, I like apps that stay the same and just work. The problem is that github encourages the exact opposite. Constant code churn, because if people see a project with last commit "2 years ago", they assume it's dead instead of just complete. Why do I know that? Because I have also caught myself doing that.
• reacharavindh 4y ago
  As a systems engineer that works with command line and Linux closely for work, I find myself at the opposite of some of this. As good as VIm/Nano/text editors are, they are simply not the most powerful when dealing with modern data formats. I use Apple Notes on my Mac as the universal notebook. I toss just about anything into it(drag and drop images, links, tables, etc) and it indexes them smartly. I can even search for text that was in one of the screenshots I stored there. To take it further, I can markup something on an image in Notes using an Apple Pencil on iPad and continue to take notes on Mac. Tools evolve - if you resist change, you miss out on modern conveniences as well.
• samrocksc 4y ago
  Me: screenshots => desktop, forget to cleanup for 3 years.
• theK 4y ago
  What did he mean with "when Wayland finally happens"? It happened ages ago! :-D
• 0daystock 4y ago
  I don't get it. Is the author literally just flexing about using vim and other basic unix command line tools we've known about for decades? Man, the post quality is really going downhill.
• 5220 4y ago
  I use Notes.
• aftergibson 4y ago
  Plain text is cool and all, but I want to embed rich media, that's how my brain/the world around me works. Yes org-mode, but I've tried multiple times to pick up org-mode but all the concepts and keyboard shortcuts that need to live in my brain just get wearying, maybe I take on too much too soon, but onboarding say Obsidian or Logseq just isn't such a cognitive drain. People use Google/ddg for calculators/weather/etc because the search engine can work out what their intent is. Remembering a bunch of cli app names and how args are parsed etc, is again more cognitive load. There's no discoverability other than reverse searching your shell history and trying to remember the thing. I used to envy people like the author who have this workflow that totally works for them, it's lots of Linuxes, lots of CLI, some tiling window manager, cool stuff. I'd love to be like this. However, it all involved cognitive load that GUIs, Search Engines and human focused design abstract away to reduce that load. So use whatever works for you and ignore what's cool. I have a Thinkpad X230, the model up from the author, running Silverblue and Gnome. Works great. Things will probably change along the way, that's fine, the cost of managing those changes is still lower than learning to live in a CLI.