5 ms·

> and to use no desktop environment, Why do people write comments like this as though it's reasonable way to use an everyday driver PC? "I don't use a DE" - w

by XorNot 4y ago

> and to use no desktop environment, Why do people write comments like this as though it's reasonable way to use an everyday driver PC? "I don't use a DE" - well then yes, obviously but you've also removed like 80% of the functionality to turn the thing into a dumb console. That's not what I want to use a computer for.

nextos 4y ago
No, DE doesn't mean I have a dumb console. It just means it's a bit lighter. I have all services a modern desktop has, I still run X plus a window manager. I imagine Xfce or even GNOME 3 can be tweaked a bit to be almost equally energy efficient.
- NavinF 4y ago
  > no desktop environment > I have all services a modern desktop has LMAO I visit this comment section for the same reason I visit a zoo.
  - nextos 4y ago
    > I visit this comment section for the same reason I visit a zoo. Before making offensive comments, have you thought about the meaning of my statement? For example, a modern DE offers desktop notifications. I still have that by running a desktop notification daemon, dunst, despite just using X plus a window manager but no DE. Linux is very much broken into small composable components, the same way Clojure is. To take this comparison further, it is extremely ignorant to claim you can't have the same functionality Rails offers just because you don't use a big framework (which is the equivalent to a DE).
    - chmod775 4y ago
      I feel like this argument would be moot if all had the same understanding of the terms they were using. People seem bit hazy on what that the term desktop environment actually describes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_environment
    - TylerE 4y ago
      This feels like someone saying: I don’t need a car with a roof, why doesn’t everyone just drive a go kart around?
      - t-3 4y ago
        My car has a roof, it just wasn't chosen for me by someone at MS/Apple/Gnome/KDE. A custom hand-built car is not necessarily more primitive than a factory-standard one, or any less appealing.
  - dang 4y ago
    "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." It's reliably a marker of bad comments and worse threads. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- zwaps 4y ago
  I see no evidence that anyone has ever achieved energy efficiency and battery runtime comparable to windows or macos machines using Xfce or Gnome. Would love to see what it would take.
pmontra 4y ago
This is not a text only console. It's how I was using UNIX workstations circa 1990. Boot to a script running startx to run X11 and a window manager (ttwm?). What was I missing? Probably a start menu / launcher (but I guess it can be installed and run anyway) and a control panel for settings. Which modern software won't run in such a setup? Maybe dbus? Systemd? I think a lot of GUI software would still run, some won't, daemons and servers probably would. Is this something for the nerdiest 1% of the nerdiest 1%? Definitely. I won't do that myself because it's too much of a hassle and I'll probably have to revert to a standard DE to run some software I need for work, but it will work, mostly.
ilyt 4y ago
I mean I don't have icons on desktop but that's about only miss of feature (that I don't use on windows either). Alt + F2 for app launcher + rest of it in autostart and under few bindings for common ones. If anything it's faster than anything under Windows, although definitely a power user thing. Also something like XFCE will still get you the graphical things to fondle without as much power usage as GNOME. The problem is really those (especially GNOME) pissing on performance and thus power usage

by XorNot 4y ago

nextos 4y ago

No, DE doesn't mean I have a dumb console. It just means it's a bit lighter. I have all services a modern desktop has, I still run X plus a window manager. I imagine Xfce or even GNOME 3 can be tweaked a bit to be almost equally energy efficient.

NavinF 4y ago
> no desktop environment > I have all services a modern desktop has LMAO I visit this comment section for the same reason I visit a zoo.
- nextos 4y ago
  > I visit this comment section for the same reason I visit a zoo. Before making offensive comments, have you thought about the meaning of my statement? For example, a modern DE offers desktop notifications. I still have that by running a desktop notification daemon, dunst, despite just using X plus a window manager but no DE. Linux is very much broken into small composable components, the same way Clojure is. To take this comparison further, it is extremely ignorant to claim you can't have the same functionality Rails offers just because you don't use a big framework (which is the equivalent to a DE).
  - chmod775 4y ago
    I feel like this argument would be moot if all had the same understanding of the terms they were using. People seem bit hazy on what that the term desktop environment actually describes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_environment
  - TylerE 4y ago
    This feels like someone saying: I don’t need a car with a roof, why doesn’t everyone just drive a go kart around?
    - t-3 4y ago
      My car has a roof, it just wasn't chosen for me by someone at MS/Apple/Gnome/KDE. A custom hand-built car is not necessarily more primitive than a factory-standard one, or any less appealing.
- dang 4y ago
  "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." It's reliably a marker of bad comments and worse threads. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
zwaps 4y ago
I see no evidence that anyone has ever achieved energy efficiency and battery runtime comparable to windows or macos machines using Xfce or Gnome. Would love to see what it would take.

pmontra 4y ago

This is not a text only console. It's how I was using UNIX workstations circa 1990. Boot to a script running startx to run X11 and a window manager (ttwm?). What was I missing? Probably a start menu / launcher (but I guess it can be installed and run anyway) and a control panel for settings. Which modern software won't run in such a setup? Maybe dbus? Systemd? I think a lot of GUI software would still run, some won't, daemons and servers probably would. Is this something for the nerdiest 1% of the nerdiest 1%? Definitely. I won't do that myself because it's too much of a hassle and I'll probably have to revert to a standard DE to run some software I need for work, but it will work, mostly.

ilyt 4y ago

I mean I don't have icons on desktop but that's about only miss of feature (that I don't use on windows either). Alt + F2 for app launcher + rest of it in autostart and under few bindings for common ones. If anything it's faster than anything under Windows, although definitely a power user thing. Also something like XFCE will still get you the graphical things to fondle without as much power usage as GNOME. The problem is really those (especially GNOME) pissing on performance and thus power usage