very interesting take on "minimalist Linux" -- using a tiling WM and such

I largely agree that "minimalist" is not an accurate term, and that it may be pretty absurd to NIH everything yourself

the blog post doesn't really come to a concrete conclusion, but my takeaway would be that the work being done by GNOME, System76 with Cosmic, and KDE Plasma is really what counts when it comes to making Linux accessible. It's deeply unfortunate that the relationship between "minimalist" Linux users and projects like GNOME has been so negative. It seems hard to avoid since they often clash over middleware components, but maybe it's time for folks to start rethinking their approach and see if collaboration can be made easier without introducing lots of complexity

that said, it's increasingly hard to do this when folks aren't using systemd. But really if you insist on avoiding systemd you have implicitly volunteered to implement shims imho.

https://self-rover.bearblog.dev/absurd-fallacies-of-minimalist-linux/

@cas i think this writer has a misunderstanding of what minimalism means. minimalists on youtube who have, say, minimalist homes or wardrobes etc do not plan for minimum "cognitive load" or ease of use. indeed, many have (sometimes complicated) systems and routines to sustain their lifestyle

minimalism is to do as much (maybe more) with less

The blog post is really just pedantic about word meaning:

uhm akchually calling it “minimalist” is wrong 🤓

@cas I don't see what systemd has to do with this in particular..? it's not like devs seem to target other init systems often at all anyway

services for other inits seem to be 99% comprised of ports which I doubt is that toxic to making linux better

@cas I think what 'minimalist' means depends on who you ask.

For example, I've been on sway + a handful of keybindings (which were ported from my dwl setup (which were ported from my dwm setup (which were ported from my awesomewm setup))) for a few years.. being able to launch everything I use with just a few keybindings is a major plus, and not having to mess around with window management also. It also all felt very user-friendly *to me*. So I mostly stopped using desktops like GNOME and KDE, but not out of hate. I'd still recommend these desktops to other people. I think having choice is great.

But guess what happened when I had to use a Windows 10 desktop after years of being exclusively on that setup.. I was, very confused, to say the least.

I also know of people, not all that tech-saavy, who used Linux exclusively for many years (GNOME, Cinnamon..) .. and for them, Windows is difficult and not user-friendly .. simply because they're used to the UI GNOME or Cinnamon provide.

TL;DR "user-friendlyness" is not the same across multiple different people, it can heavily depend from one person to another

@cas But really, I as someone who uses such a sway setup, I still like KDE, GNOME, COSMIC ... even MATE... I still recognise that projects like them matter. In fact, I think having multiple unique desktop environments, with their own unique experience, matters a lot, because then you have the choice, and you can also obviously imagine that many folks could come up with new, unique UX (e.g. what we saw with GNOME 3 back in circa 2011).

And most importantly, users can have choice on which environment works best with their brain, and will let them work efficiently. For me, it is sway and tiling window managers, but before that it was .. guess what .. GNOME :)

@cas And basically I think folks should use what works best *for them*. Even if it's GNOME, even if it's KDE....

....really, you have the choice to use whatever you want

@cas anyway sorry for the huge wall of text lol