9 ms·

I want to suckless and you can too

90 points by bradley_taunt 4y ago

jmclnx 4y ago
Suckless comes up every so often and then it goes on to politics about the Suckless people. 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.
- ohCh6zos 4y ago
  I'm pretty ignorant beyond they're software devs who write stuff I like. I understand if you don't want to bring up their politics here and potentially ruin this thread too, but if it can be done tastefully I'd be curious about their politics.
  - jmclnx 4y ago
    I would just do a search in google :) It was also mentioned by L. Poettering on his twitter account a few years ago. I would like to see this thread stay true to Suckless itself (for a change).
    - dpkirchner 4y ago
      This all looks bad enough that I'm not sure it's reasonable to separate their "politics" from the people.
    - Avshalom 4y ago
      Probably shouldn't have brought it up unprompted in the first comment on the thread then.
    - howinteresting 4y ago
      I think if a project has Nazis involved in it, that should probably be front and center in any discussion about it.
      - torstenvl 4y ago
        The evidence seems to be: - 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?
        Beltalowda 4y ago
        > They named a mail server "Wolf's Lair." Only they're German so this was in German. 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".
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        bbbbb5 4y ago
        > A single developer associated Laslo is the first chair of the board, not just "a single developer".
        kuschku 4y ago
        Wolfsschanze is a word that never occurs accidentally in German language today. If you use it, it's always in a historic or Nazi context.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        4y ago
  - wpietri 4y ago
    I searched a bit and this is what I got: https://www.reddit.com/r/systemd/comments/qg1g88/poettering_on_suckless/ https://www.reddit.com/r/systemd/comments/qg1g88/poettering_...
    - userbinator 4y ago
      The Poettering/systemd crowd are basically mutual enemies of suckless at this point.
    - ericbarrett 4y ago
      Here's the twitter thread that link ultimately leads to: https://twitter.com/pid_eins/status/1113738764797534208 https://twitter.com/pid_eins/status/1113738764797534208
  - kuschku 4y ago
    Well, they're doing torchhikes through the area near Nuremberg on their meetups, they send emails through relays with hostnames like "Wolfsschanze" and devs with official suckless flair post on [website that's basically a clone of HN] complaining about "cultural marxism". Obviously, you still have to interpret that yourself, but these are the facts about the people behind suckless.
    - plugin-baby 4y ago
      > [website that's basically a clone of HN] Which site is that?
      - Beltalowda 4y ago
        https://lobste.rs/ https://lobste.rs/
    - Beltalowda 4y ago
      > they're doing torchhikes through the area near Nuremberg on their meetups 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.
      - bitwize 4y ago
        "Cultural marxism" is a Nazi dogwhistle tho
        Beltalowda 4y ago
        The number "88" can be. Norse mythology can be. A shaven head can be. Military boots can be. Lots of things can be, but you need look at the context. The entire point of a "dogwhistle" is that it looks innocent and that it can be easily confused as such, and this automatically means there are also plenty of innocent uses of such things. A "X is a dog-whistle for Y" assertion is meaningless. Plus, "Vaguely right-wing" or even "extreme right-wing" is not identical to "Nazi".
- _dain_ 4y ago
  Many times, when I see cool software projects are posted here, I go onto the about pages or personal blogs of the authors, to see what else they've made. And what I often see is a lot of absurd, hateful, deranged, wrong, extremist takes on their blogs and twitter feeds. Stuff that I find distasteful or outright horrifying. But they're leftist (or "centrist"), so there's no point complaining about it on HN. 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%.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - djur 4y ago
    There are a lot of conservative, liberal, or left-wing people I disagree with. The difference between them and fascists is that they're not threatening to take away my right to disagree with them by violence, nor do they typically suggest that people like me and my friends should be killed or imprisoned for being who we are. This is a fundamental difference that can't be reduced to a "both sides have extremists" analysis.
    - blueflow 4y ago
      Who is threatening to take away any rights? Who is disagreeing using violence? Is this any real problem right now?
      - matheusmoreira 4y ago
        It very much is. If you live in the USA, please be thankful that you have freedom of expression and a culture that values such rights. This is not the norm in many parts of the world.
        blueflow 4y ago
        Is this related to suckless?
- imiric 4y ago
  > Suckless comes up every so often and then it goes on to politics about the Suckless people. You're the only one bringing that up. So congrats on derailing the discussion again.
  - weakfortress 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    Is it really irrelevant? ReiserFS withered when its namesake dev was jailed for murdering his wife. Perhaps he had good ideas but nobody wants to touch it with a 10 foot pole now. Who wants to support a murderer? 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.
    - zzo38computer 4y ago
      > ReiserFS withered when its namesake dev was jailed for murdering his wife. 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.)
      - wkat4242 4y ago
        Yeah my point is it's not that black and white. 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.
- kjs3 4y ago
  The OpenBSD folks aren't exactly the most friendly folks, so don't think hanging out there is without drama. But at least they don't go out of their way to justify putting nazi imagery on their homepage.
- somat 4y ago
  I agree, but openbsd is actually the opposite of a minimal system, I can do more, out of the box, with an openbsd system than any linux distro I have tried, and yet openbsd feels minimal, openbsd manages to make a very rich system in ~ 1GB, a linux distro takes ~5gb and does less and windows takes ~20gb and I have no idea how it can use so much space and do so little.
BirAdam 4y ago
I’ve always really loved suckless. Only thing I don’t do is dwm. I’ve always preferred evilwm with dmenu.
- jmclnx 4y ago
  me, it is cwm :)
spicybright 4y ago
It's been a while since I've looked into it, but most minimal WMs that I've tried fall over completely on high DPI displays from a lack of a global zoom setting. Maybe my eyes are just getting bad (I'm ~30) but the lack of that accessibility it makes them unusable for me.
- leephillips 4y ago
  I use dwm (the suckless tiling window manager, certainly “minimal”) on a variety of high DPI screens, and there’s no problem. Just set Xft.dpi in your .Xresources file to the “real” screen DPI or to anything you want to scale as you wish.
- blueflow 4y ago
  You need to configure the DPI, either via xrandr --dpi or via xrdb.
Avshalom 4y ago
>>Software with a focus on simplicity, clarity, and frugality. >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.
- mikedelago 4y ago
  I agree - suckless software typically less features and a worse experience for even "advanced and experienced computer users" 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.
  - anthk 4y ago
    My SO just uses a different account with XFCE. I use CWM with XTerms.
- eikenberry 4y ago
  Less code, with fewer features iff combined with well written code is often better than more featureful code for advanced users as it is a better place to start modifying the code into what you need. So instead of a generic tool with tons of features, a simple tool that is simple to modify. Advanced tools have their place as well (eg. ffmpeg). IMO each has it's pros and cons but I wouldn't say one is necessarily superior to the other.
- bmacho 4y ago
  Can't we have both? If the code is modifiable/scriptable enough, we could get more feature, speed, reliability, than with huge codebases. I don't know if it is one of their goals tho.
torben-friis 4y ago
> The developers also pride themselves on catering to advanced and experienced computer users, which is actually a refreshing take in my opinion 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.
- printf_alex_ 4y ago
  My first (arch btw) linux install it took me a whole week to install correctly in the first place, yet to show the DE. This was with prior experience working with linux. I personally liked that it was complicated since it was a good learning experience (much better than the oversimplified Ubuntu install anyways)
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    If you like having a "complicated" install, why not install Debian manually using debootstrap? It's pretty much the same thing, but it leaves you with a much better supported system afterwards.
    - matheusmoreira 4y ago
      Debian has versioned releases and thoroughly patched, extremely old software. Arch Linux has rolling releases and mostly unpatched up to date software. They couldn't be more different.
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    Arch makes things complicated by not having defaults. Leaving the user to pick a network management tool, partitioning scheme, many other things. It's all very well documented and aimed at understanding one's system. I give them that. But in some ways it seems to be intentionally complex for the sake of it. And the one thing I did want to change: systemd, is the one thing you can't. It took me 2 days to get a desktop running and I still ran into weird stuff. 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.
rhn_mk1 4y ago
While I agree with the basic idea, it seems that in practice it's been taken over by ascetes who throw the baby out with the bath water and impose pointless restrictions on themselves just for signalling. 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).
- masklinn 4y ago
  > Or maybe I do: this checks out if minimalism is more important than vulnerabilities and simplicity. Nah it does not. If minimalism is more important than vulnerabilities and simplicity you use forth, or an advanced assembler. It's dunning kruger.
- inkblotuniverse 4y ago
  A wayland port of dwm exists- it's just that few people use wayland, so we never hear about it.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  Suckless.org programs are simple enough that RIIR ought to be an actually viable strategy. Why not just try it yourself, if you're that concerned about safety?
  - rhn_mk1 4y ago
    Trust me, I'm doing what I can :)
hawski 4y ago
As much as I like suckless software (not necessarily the community) it is a pretty contentless article: - I like Suckless - I like Alpine - I like Void more now - Here's a script
gigatexal 4y ago
No, no, no. Suckless’s tiling window manager has no config. To change anything you must recompile and relaunch. Wtf?? What kind of ethos is that?
- ziml77 4y ago
  There is something to be said for the performance benefits of recompiling for config changes. No need to check flags and branch at runtime. That said, I still think it’s ridiculous
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    The performance benefits are negligible. It's mostly just to make the code easier (don't need to parse anything, don't need to deal with filesystem access, etc.) Also makes it easier to hack on dwm.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  Well, for one thing, tiling WMs having "no config" and instead just being configured in the implementation language, is pretty much the standard. See StumpWM, Awesome, xmonad, etc. 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.
  - Arnavion 4y ago
    >Well, for one thing, tiling WMs having "no config" and instead just being configured in the implementation language, is pretty much the standard. See StumpWM, i3/Sway, xmonad, etc. i3 and sway are written in C but have plain text config files.
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
imiric 4y ago
I love the suckless philosophy, but their tools are very hit and miss. 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.
- juliangoldsmith 4y ago
  The tools can be hit-or-miss, but where was dwm crashing? I've used it for over a decade with few issues. Your issues were probably with a patch or combination of patches. 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).
  - imiric 4y ago
    It's been a few years since I tried it, so I don't recall the details, sorry. I did use some patches, so that could've been it. 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.
neilv 4y ago
xmonad pairs nicely with the suckless `dmenu`. 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")) (I've tried using i3wm for a year, and tweaking my config of it, but going back to xmonad is always a relief. The one thing I like better about i3 was that I got the autohide system tray working how I liked it, which was better than I've done with xmonad.)
anthk 4y ago
- slock & doas zzz - slim + dwm - bc/dc + gnuplot - mpv + yt-dlp - ImageMagick/sox/ffmpeg
snhly 4y ago
Suckless can work well if you do things alone and uniquely within text, but when it is time to collaborate in three-dimensional space, you'll find yourself hiding your cringe "Suckless" desktop like a dirty little secret on TTY2. Because who wants to be that guy in the office? Imagine swiveling around to a bewildered colleague, who just watched you struggle to zoom in, scroll down or resize a window. Imagine having to explain to them what they're looking at. 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.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  > 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.
- imiric 4y ago
  I think you're missing the point of why most people choose suckless and similar tools. 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.
rurban 4y ago
I doubt that his installer is useful for other users than bt. installer.sh: mkdir /home/bt/.suckless cd /home/bt/.suckless And then installing lots of outdated x11 tools.

90 points by bradley_taunt 4y ago

Suckless comes up every so often and then it goes on to politics about the Suckless people. 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.

ohCh6zos 4y ago
I'm pretty ignorant beyond they're software devs who write stuff I like. I understand if you don't want to bring up their politics here and potentially ruin this thread too, but if it can be done tastefully I'd be curious about their politics.
- jmclnx 4y ago
  I would just do a search in google :) It was also mentioned by L. Poettering on his twitter account a few years ago. I would like to see this thread stay true to Suckless itself (for a change).
  - dpkirchner 4y ago
    This all looks bad enough that I'm not sure it's reasonable to separate their "politics" from the people.
  - Avshalom 4y ago
    Probably shouldn't have brought it up unprompted in the first comment on the thread then.
  - howinteresting 4y ago
    I think if a project has Nazis involved in it, that should probably be front and center in any discussion about it.
    - torstenvl 4y ago
      The evidence seems to be: - 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?
      - Beltalowda 4y ago
        > They named a mail server "Wolf's Lair." Only they're German so this was in German. 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".
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        bbbbb5 4y ago
        > A single developer associated Laslo is the first chair of the board, not just "a single developer".
      - kuschku 4y ago
        Wolfsschanze is a word that never occurs accidentally in German language today. If you use it, it's always in a historic or Nazi context.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - 4y ago
- wpietri 4y ago
  I searched a bit and this is what I got: https://www.reddit.com/r/systemd/comments/qg1g88/poettering_on_suckless/ https://www.reddit.com/r/systemd/comments/qg1g88/poettering_...
  - userbinator 4y ago
    The Poettering/systemd crowd are basically mutual enemies of suckless at this point.
  - ericbarrett 4y ago
    Here's the twitter thread that link ultimately leads to: https://twitter.com/pid_eins/status/1113738764797534208 https://twitter.com/pid_eins/status/1113738764797534208
- kuschku 4y ago
  Well, they're doing torchhikes through the area near Nuremberg on their meetups, they send emails through relays with hostnames like "Wolfsschanze" and devs with official suckless flair post on [website that's basically a clone of HN] complaining about "cultural marxism". Obviously, you still have to interpret that yourself, but these are the facts about the people behind suckless.
  - plugin-baby 4y ago
    > [website that's basically a clone of HN] Which site is that?
    - Beltalowda 4y ago
      https://lobste.rs/ https://lobste.rs/
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    > they're doing torchhikes through the area near Nuremberg on their meetups 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.
    - bitwize 4y ago
      "Cultural marxism" is a Nazi dogwhistle tho
      - Beltalowda 4y ago
        The number "88" can be. Norse mythology can be. A shaven head can be. Military boots can be. Lots of things can be, but you need look at the context. The entire point of a "dogwhistle" is that it looks innocent and that it can be easily confused as such, and this automatically means there are also plenty of innocent uses of such things. A "X is a dog-whistle for Y" assertion is meaningless. Plus, "Vaguely right-wing" or even "extreme right-wing" is not identical to "Nazi".
_dain_ 4y ago
Many times, when I see cool software projects are posted here, I go onto the about pages or personal blogs of the authors, to see what else they've made. And what I often see is a lot of absurd, hateful, deranged, wrong, extremist takes on their blogs and twitter feeds. Stuff that I find distasteful or outright horrifying. But they're leftist (or "centrist"), so there's no point complaining about it on HN. 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%.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- djur 4y ago
  There are a lot of conservative, liberal, or left-wing people I disagree with. The difference between them and fascists is that they're not threatening to take away my right to disagree with them by violence, nor do they typically suggest that people like me and my friends should be killed or imprisoned for being who we are. This is a fundamental difference that can't be reduced to a "both sides have extremists" analysis.
  - blueflow 4y ago
    Who is threatening to take away any rights? Who is disagreeing using violence? Is this any real problem right now?
    - matheusmoreira 4y ago
      It very much is. If you live in the USA, please be thankful that you have freedom of expression and a culture that values such rights. This is not the norm in many parts of the world.
      - blueflow 4y ago
        Is this related to suckless?
imiric 4y ago
> Suckless comes up every so often and then it goes on to politics about the Suckless people. You're the only one bringing that up. So congrats on derailing the discussion again.
- weakfortress 4y ago
  [flagged]
- wkat4242 4y ago
  Is it really irrelevant? ReiserFS withered when its namesake dev was jailed for murdering his wife. Perhaps he had good ideas but nobody wants to touch it with a 10 foot pole now. Who wants to support a murderer? 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.
  - zzo38computer 4y ago
    > ReiserFS withered when its namesake dev was jailed for murdering his wife. 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.)
    - wkat4242 4y ago
      Yeah my point is it's not that black and white. 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.
kjs3 4y ago
The OpenBSD folks aren't exactly the most friendly folks, so don't think hanging out there is without drama. But at least they don't go out of their way to justify putting nazi imagery on their homepage.
somat 4y ago
I agree, but openbsd is actually the opposite of a minimal system, I can do more, out of the box, with an openbsd system than any linux distro I have tried, and yet openbsd feels minimal, openbsd manages to make a very rich system in ~ 1GB, a linux distro takes ~5gb and does less and windows takes ~20gb and I have no idea how it can use so much space and do so little.

BirAdam 4y ago

I’ve always really loved suckless. Only thing I don’t do is dwm. I’ve always preferred evilwm with dmenu.

jmclnx 4y ago
me, it is cwm :)

spicybright 4y ago

It's been a while since I've looked into it, but most minimal WMs that I've tried fall over completely on high DPI displays from a lack of a global zoom setting. Maybe my eyes are just getting bad (I'm ~30) but the lack of that accessibility it makes them unusable for me.

leephillips 4y ago
I use dwm (the suckless tiling window manager, certainly “minimal”) on a variety of high DPI screens, and there’s no problem. Just set Xft.dpi in your .Xresources file to the “real” screen DPI or to anything you want to scale as you wish.
blueflow 4y ago
You need to configure the DPI, either via xrandr --dpi or via xrdb.

Avshalom 4y ago

>>Software with a focus on simplicity, clarity, and frugality. >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.

mikedelago 4y ago
I agree - suckless software typically less features and a worse experience for even "advanced and experienced computer users" 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.
- anthk 4y ago
  My SO just uses a different account with XFCE. I use CWM with XTerms.
eikenberry 4y ago
Less code, with fewer features iff combined with well written code is often better than more featureful code for advanced users as it is a better place to start modifying the code into what you need. So instead of a generic tool with tons of features, a simple tool that is simple to modify. Advanced tools have their place as well (eg. ffmpeg). IMO each has it's pros and cons but I wouldn't say one is necessarily superior to the other.
bmacho 4y ago
Can't we have both? If the code is modifiable/scriptable enough, we could get more feature, speed, reliability, than with huge codebases. I don't know if it is one of their goals tho.

torben-friis 4y ago

> The developers also pride themselves on catering to advanced and experienced computer users, which is actually a refreshing take in my opinion 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.

printf_alex_ 4y ago
My first (arch btw) linux install it took me a whole week to install correctly in the first place, yet to show the DE. This was with prior experience working with linux. I personally liked that it was complicated since it was a good learning experience (much better than the oversimplified Ubuntu install anyways)
- zozbot234 4y ago
  If you like having a "complicated" install, why not install Debian manually using debootstrap? It's pretty much the same thing, but it leaves you with a much better supported system afterwards.
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    Debian has versioned releases and thoroughly patched, extremely old software. Arch Linux has rolling releases and mostly unpatched up to date software. They couldn't be more different.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  Arch makes things complicated by not having defaults. Leaving the user to pick a network management tool, partitioning scheme, many other things. It's all very well documented and aimed at understanding one's system. I give them that. But in some ways it seems to be intentionally complex for the sake of it. And the one thing I did want to change: systemd, is the one thing you can't. It took me 2 days to get a desktop running and I still ran into weird stuff. 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.

rhn_mk1 4y ago

While I agree with the basic idea, it seems that in practice it's been taken over by ascetes who throw the baby out with the bath water and impose pointless restrictions on themselves just for signalling. 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).

masklinn 4y ago
> Or maybe I do: this checks out if minimalism is more important than vulnerabilities and simplicity. Nah it does not. If minimalism is more important than vulnerabilities and simplicity you use forth, or an advanced assembler. It's dunning kruger.
inkblotuniverse 4y ago
A wayland port of dwm exists- it's just that few people use wayland, so we never hear about it.
zozbot234 4y ago
Suckless.org programs are simple enough that RIIR ought to be an actually viable strategy. Why not just try it yourself, if you're that concerned about safety?
- rhn_mk1 4y ago
  Trust me, I'm doing what I can :)

hawski 4y ago

As much as I like suckless software (not necessarily the community) it is a pretty contentless article: - I like Suckless - I like Alpine - I like Void more now - Here's a script

gigatexal 4y ago

No, no, no. Suckless’s tiling window manager has no config. To change anything you must recompile and relaunch. Wtf?? What kind of ethos is that?

ziml77 4y ago
There is something to be said for the performance benefits of recompiling for config changes. No need to check flags and branch at runtime. That said, I still think it’s ridiculous
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  The performance benefits are negligible. It's mostly just to make the code easier (don't need to parse anything, don't need to deal with filesystem access, etc.) Also makes it easier to hack on dwm.
mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
Well, for one thing, tiling WMs having "no config" and instead just being configured in the implementation language, is pretty much the standard. See StumpWM, Awesome, xmonad, etc. 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.
- Arnavion 4y ago
  >Well, for one thing, tiling WMs having "no config" and instead just being configured in the implementation language, is pretty much the standard. See StumpWM, i3/Sway, xmonad, etc. i3 and sway are written in C but have plain text config files.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago

imiric 4y ago

I love the suckless philosophy, but their tools are very hit and miss. 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.

juliangoldsmith 4y ago
The tools can be hit-or-miss, but where was dwm crashing? I've used it for over a decade with few issues. Your issues were probably with a patch or combination of patches. 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).
- imiric 4y ago
  It's been a few years since I tried it, so I don't recall the details, sorry. I did use some patches, so that could've been it. 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.

neilv 4y ago

xmonad pairs nicely with the suckless `dmenu`. 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")) (I've tried using i3wm for a year, and tweaking my config of it, but going back to xmonad is always a relief. The one thing I like better about i3 was that I got the autohide system tray working how I liked it, which was better than I've done with xmonad.)

anthk 4y ago

- slock & doas zzz - slim + dwm - bc/dc + gnuplot - mpv + yt-dlp - ImageMagick/sox/ffmpeg

snhly 4y ago

Suckless can work well if you do things alone and uniquely within text, but when it is time to collaborate in three-dimensional space, you'll find yourself hiding your cringe "Suckless" desktop like a dirty little secret on TTY2. Because who wants to be that guy in the office? Imagine swiveling around to a bewildered colleague, who just watched you struggle to zoom in, scroll down or resize a window. Imagine having to explain to them what they're looking at. 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.

wkat4242 4y ago
> 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.
imiric 4y ago
I think you're missing the point of why most people choose suckless and similar tools. 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.

rurban 4y ago

I doubt that his installer is useful for other users than bt. installer.sh: mkdir /home/bt/.suckless cd /home/bt/.suckless And then installing lots of outdated x11 tools.