HakFoo

HakFoo , vor einem Monat

I started with some UMSDOS-based "full X11 desktop in 5 floppies" distro on a 486, then went through Slackware, RedHat 5 with glibc breakage, actually bought a SuSE boxed set in the 7.x era, mostly stuck with Slackware unril I realized I wanted stuff like Steam and perhaps some degree of dependency resolution is nice. Bounced off of Arch (the AUR is a terrible concept IMO) and ended up on Void, which gives me Slackware-like vibes, but a little more built for broadband instead of CD images. Been trying Debian Sid latrly, just because I put it on my new laptop and I figured I'd go consistent, but I'm not sure I'm sold. Everything works, but even for an "unstable", the packages are dated and I dislike systemd on principle.

HakFoo , vor einem Monat

I guess I was startled when I went for my go-to desktop (fvwm) and it wasn't in the main repo, but the AUR.

It feels like it means they're not actually maintaining a lot of their package pool, just tossing it off on third parties.

HakFoo , vor 2 Monaten

Cents since 1982 are mostly zinc with a thin shell of bronze. They'll rot badly if compromised with a hole.

HakFoo , vor 2 Monaten

I sort of liked GTK back in the day when it was still the Gimp Tool Kit first and foremost. When it was 1999 and your other choices were a broken Lesstif, an early C++ centric Qt, clumsy Tk, and pre-Cambrian Xaw, it was nice to have something full-featured and tasteful.

Now I hesitate to pull in a GTK app because it won't theme right (I want to use the same bitmap fonts I liked in 1999, but apparently Pango stopped supporting them) and runs the risk of convincing the package manager to dump several gigs of GNOME crud on my drive.

I gather even the GIMP itself no longer tracks current GTK-- it's become solely in service to GNOME and their absurd UI whims (* * * * client side decorations)

HakFoo , vor 2 Monaten

GNOME always seemed to be a solution chasing a problem, particularly once the licensing fears for Qt/KDE were settled.

But now it's one of the things Red Hat seems to impose on the world. Feels like everything controversial comes out of them or Canonical. I guess they have the commercial cash to prop up things like GNOME and Wayland and systemd and snaps until they gain traction, while more community-focused products can't break the world for no reason.

HakFoo , vor 2 Monaten

I do like that there's a reasonably comprehensive website with docs covering a lot of common pain points, which is more manageable than fighting with searching through a galaxy of wikis of varying degrees of currentness and relevance.

Reminds me of the celebrated docs of BSD systems.

There's also a case that going a bit away from "easy Windows replacement" is useful because even trivial users need to get some bearings shifted to avoid floundering when they reach something not-quite-Windowsesque. (I. e. dealing with updates and software distribution is an important lesson that isn't obvious if they hide everything in an ersatz App Store)

Of course, my first proper Linux setup was Slackware with a 2.0.30 kernel. I wanted the Unix-like Experience.

HakFoo , vor 2 Monaten

There's a window manager called "progman" https://github.com/jcs/progman but it gives you the look, but not the program selector.

HakFoo , vor 2 Monaten

I always leaned into "Commercial Unix Workstation Circa 1993". I've considered CDE/NsCDE, but a lot of the pack-in software is of limited value, so I'm going for FVWM on the desktop and MWM on the laptop.

I should mod my big tower case to look like a brother of a HP 712.

HakFoo , vor 2 Monaten

Check my post history, posted the laptop a couple weeks ago.