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It is. I used to customize everything. On Windows 95/98/2000/XP - custom cursors, themes, icon packs, custom Windows loading screen, the works. When I used KDE

It is. I used to customize everything. On Windows 95/98/2000/XP - custom cursors, themes, icon packs, custom Windows loading screen, the works. When I used KDE (and Gnome for a while) and compiz came out, I enjoyed flaming windows. Same story - custom icon packs, make grub menu look nice, hell, custom kernels compiled for my CPU, etc. Somewhere along the way I lost interest in customizing the OS. These days I routinely switch between MacOS, Windows and various Linux flavors on lots of computers. The only thing I may customize is I write my .vimrc from memory. On my Android phones, I change the wallpaper and I disable animations. Otherwise, stock everything. Now that I think about it, it can't be the time saved, surely I waste more time on HN. It likely correlates more with using computers for work as opposed to for fun and learning. Even the learning I do these days is rather stressful - if I can steal an hour or two on the weekend, I feel lucky, so spending time to customize the environment seems like a waste. Maybe if life slows down, I'll find joy in customizing my OSes again.

Larrikin 1y ago
Eh, I find a computer not customized to my work flow to be a waste of time. The amount of time I spend using someone else's computer is such a small amount of time.
90s_dev 1y ago
Yes, I have the same history customizing everything! From Windows 3.11 to XP to Linux, and then giving up because life gets busy. On the note of programming not being fun anymore, that's exactly why I'm making my secret project that I hope to release very very soon, maybe in a week or so. I want to make programming fun again, in a similar way that pico8 did, but x100.
- squigz 1y ago
  > It is. I used to customize everything. On Windows 95/98/2000/XP - custom cursors, themes, icon packs, custom Windows loading screen, the works. > I have the same history customizing everything! ... then giving up because life gets busy. I think this might be why some people have such different experiences. I don't try to customize "everything" - just what needs to be. Like, yeah, I would expect it to be difficult to maintain random Explorer customizations. I would not expect it to be difficult to maintain customization for a popular IDE.
  - progmetaldev 1y ago
    I am with you, customizing your daily tools and saving those configurations is far different from customizing every visual element of your operating system. Being able to reproduce your environment is definitely a worthy goal, but at the same time, I think you'd be limiting yourself by not configuring your production software to your own liking/most-efficient way you work.
    - 3036e4 1y ago
      One of the few things I do bother to configure is my window manager, but only because it happens to be well designed and make it easy to store all configuration in my config git repo. Too much software put host-specific stuff in settings files (like absolute paths) or just are not stable enough in general that it is worth trying to maintain a portable configuration.

Larrikin 1y ago

Eh, I find a computer not customized to my work flow to be a waste of time. The amount of time I spend using someone else's computer is such a small amount of time.

90s_dev 1y ago

Yes, I have the same history customizing everything! From Windows 3.11 to XP to Linux, and then giving up because life gets busy. On the note of programming not being fun anymore, that's exactly why I'm making my secret project that I hope to release very very soon, maybe in a week or so. I want to make programming fun again, in a similar way that pico8 did, but x100.

squigz 1y ago
> It is. I used to customize everything. On Windows 95/98/2000/XP - custom cursors, themes, icon packs, custom Windows loading screen, the works. > I have the same history customizing everything! ... then giving up because life gets busy. I think this might be why some people have such different experiences. I don't try to customize "everything" - just what needs to be. Like, yeah, I would expect it to be difficult to maintain random Explorer customizations. I would not expect it to be difficult to maintain customization for a popular IDE.
- progmetaldev 1y ago
  I am with you, customizing your daily tools and saving those configurations is far different from customizing every visual element of your operating system. Being able to reproduce your environment is definitely a worthy goal, but at the same time, I think you'd be limiting yourself by not configuring your production software to your own liking/most-efficient way you work.
  - 3036e4 1y ago
    One of the few things I do bother to configure is my window manager, but only because it happens to be well designed and make it easy to store all configuration in my config git repo. Too much software put host-specific stuff in settings files (like absolute paths) or just are not stable enough in general that it is worth trying to maintain a portable configuration.