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List: dng
Subject: Re: [DNG] What do you guys like about Desktop Environments?
From: William Peckham via Dng <dng () lists ! dyne ! org>
Date: 2023-12-26 21:52:32
Message-ID: CAMT6+yYFHku4O7_gKMiauAJEpP5h3r7ntih1oobzSQxwOj-8BQ () mail ! gmail ! com
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I like one that looks nice but gets out of my way and let's me get work
done. Favorites: KDE Plasma since late version 4. They trimmed it down
and sped it up and with my customizations it serves well. My older go-to
is fluxbox. The menu system is simple, easy to customize, and just gets
out of my way faster and easier. I still use it a lot whenever plasma is a
problem or less readily available. On servers I fall back to a pure cursed
non-desktop and 'screen' with the screanie interface: any GUI is wasted
cycles there.
On Tue, Dec 26, 2023, 10:05 <dng-request@lists.dyne.org> wrote:
> Send Dng mailing list submissions to
> dng@lists.dyne.org
>
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> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Re: f2fs missing from the installer (ael)
> 2. Re: What do you guys like about Desktop Environments? (Steve Litt)
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: ael <adrian.lawrence@physics.oxon.org>
> To: dng@lists.dyne.org
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2023 12:22:17 +0000
> Subject: Re: [DNG] f2fs missing from the installer
> On Mon, Dec 25, 2023 at 11:52:48PM +0100, Adrian Zaugg wrote:
> > On the image devuan_daedalus_5.0.1_amd64_server.iso you can find
> mkfs.f2fs:
> > e.g. see https://ftp.fau.de/devuan-cd/devuan_daedalus/installer-iso/
>
> Good. I may try that later today if I have time. Thanks for the pointer.
>
> ael
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Steve Litt <slitt@troubleshooters.com>
> To: dng@lists.dyne.org
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2023 10:04:55 -0500
> Subject: Re: [DNG] What do you guys like about Desktop Environments?
> Didier Kryn said on Mon, 25 Dec 2023 18:48:13 +0100
>
> >Le 25/12/2023 =C3=A0 04:52, Steve Litt a =C3=A9crit :
> >> As far as launching apps, the way I do it is with dmenu from Suckless
> >> Tools. If you're a keyboard kinda person, dmenu is by far the fastest
> >> and most efficient way to launch apps.
> >Le 24/12/2023 =C3=A0 21:27, Gianluca Zoni via Dng a =C3=A9crit :
> >> over a decade ago I started using StumpWM. Desktop environments
> >> are a waste of time: you have to gesture to make yourself
> >> understood by the computer, when we can talk to it or give it the
> >> right commands by typing key combinations in a single "musical
> >> chord" on the keyboard. StumpWM is programmable and integrates
> >> seamlessly with Emacs, Mutt, Conkeror, ... especially because
> >> over the years I've built an entire system of scripts and
> >> programs that I call the "zigzag system".
> >
> > You both, what you achieved is the result of a lot of
> > configuration
> >and scripting work. Instead, any DE works almost fine out of the box
> >and is configurable through a menu.
>
> Yes, but...
>
> I'll elaborate later in this email.
>
> >
> > I think the general answer to the original question is that
> > heavily
> >using menus is less efficient than heavily using command-line,
>
> I believe the opposite: I'm a huge fan of menus, for beginners and pros
> alike. I'm the author of the UMENU and UMENU2 menu systems.
>
> > but, on
> >the other hand, a menu is self-documenting, therefore, more efficient
> >for applications you rarely use.
>
> Pre-Cisely!!! Menus rock!
>
>
> >For example, a terminal emulator is
> >the very interface for command-line, but do you like to spend days in
> >customizing its apearance? No, this very task you do only once is more
> >efficiently done through a menu.
> >
> > In Xterm, everything is configurable through one zilion
> >command-line options, which, in practice would imply to RTFM and write
> >one's own script to start it, because it does not read a config file.
> >Konsole, Gnome-terminal or Xfce4-terminal, what more are they than
> >front-ends to Xterm with config files and menu-driven configuration.
>
> Even though I don't use a Desktop Environment, I use lxterminal and
> xfce4-terminal and Sakura regularly. I never did learn the ins and outs
> of xterm.
>
> >
> > For what regards Dmenu, in all DEs there is an application menu
> > for
> >all applications which are "integrated" in the Freedesktop sense,
> >which just means they come with a .desktop file stored in
> >/usr/share/applications/ .
>
> I never knew that.
>
> > Do you, Steve, find it feasible to
> >automatically read all the .desktop files in /usr/share/applications/
> >and build a Dmenu tree for all of them?
>
> I could certainly do it no problem, but it's just not an itch I need to
> scratch.
>
> > Each .desktop file includes a
> >"category" which drives the structure of the menu as a two-level tree.
> >I think this kind of tool might boost the adoption of Dmenu.
>
> Why only two levels? Why not indefinite? UMENU2 handles an indefinite
> number of levels. Unfortunately, the guy who wrote UMENU2 (me) didn't
> (yet) bother to make it easy to configure (by adding a configuration
> mode), so I can't recommend it to most people.
>
> Back to your original distinction between a lot of configuration and
> working fine out of the box, configurable with a menu...
>
> First of all, I'm a huge fan of menus. I hated it when Gnome and Unity
> dispensed with menus in favor of Chicklets. And as somebody who must
> maintain his wife's Windows box, I hate the Windows' Chicklet
> interface. Menus are the way to go.
>
> And of course you're right. My system took a lot of configuration, and
> more than a little significant scripting. Once!
>
> As one example, about 15 years ago I wrote a program to convert a tab
> indented outline into a multi-level list of links (bookmarks). This is
> where all my bookmarks are. None is in a browser. I can switch browsers
> at the drop of a hat and have my (huge) outline of bookmarks. Using
> Unbound, I've made them available across my LAN. http://littlinks.cxm .
> This code is in my data directories, safe from overwrite by the
> packaging system. Basically, I can install any Linux distro on any
> hardware, tree copy my /d and /home directories, and have all my menus
> and scripts to the point where, regardless of distro or WM or DE, my
> workflow is the same.
>
> For maybe 15 years I've used my Python script called makeHtmlToc.py,
> that takes a well formed HTML file, and creates a table of contents
> based on all the id's of the <h1> tags. A lot of my work is HTML
> authoring, so this has saved me tremendous amounts of time and errors.
>
> Was making this stuff a lot of work? Of course it was. But it was done
> once. Meanwhile, I've had distro after distro go bad on me. First
> Redhat back when Redhat was good, then Caldera for an easier install,
> then Corel when anticipating using Linux as my daily driver, then
> quickly Mandrake/Mandriva when Corel became about the dollars. Because
> Mandrake/Mandriva was always a little shaky and sketchy, I switched to
> Ubuntu for several years until Ubuntu's training wheels became a real
> problem for me, then I switched to Debian just in time for the systemd
> thing, and then switched to Void Linux. It would have sucked to redo my
> workflow every time.
>
> Likewise, I started with fvwm which was just too much for me to handle
> at the time, then I switched to KDE until KDE's bloat slowed and
> crashed my computers. Next was IceWM, which would have been great
> except that its start menu was miserable to deal with and I didn't yet
> know about dmenu. So I switched to Gnome3, which was great until it
> became Gnome4, and I switched to Xfce, which worked great on OpenBSD
> but was glitchy and intermittent in (Ubuntu, I think) Linux. Then came
> LXDE, which is spectacular, but when I discovered dmenu I decided to
> save some screen real estate and go strictly Openbox. From the moment I
> discovered dmenu, my workflow has remained constant, except that when I
> wanted to improve it, I did.
>
> Not everybody's like me. Some haven't had so many distros implode on
> them as I have. Some refuse to do a little shellscripting and
> Pythonning. But I contend that whether you go in and menu-configure
> changes every time you switch distros or DEs or somebody comes out with
> a new version of something, as opposed to biting the bullet and
> hand-assembling programs *once* that do one thing and do it well, tying
> them together with shellscripts and the occasional Python program, over
> the decades it's about the same amount of work.
>
> One other thing that's different about me than some others. I'm a touch
> typist who hates reaching for the mouse. Which is why I use the
> qutebrowser browser so much. It's why I use dmenu and UMENU2. It's why
> I use Vim (not as opposed to Emacs, but as opposed to several mousy
> editors). My observation is that DE key-combos are really hard to
> remembers, so I end up using the mouse, which slows me down immensely.
> If I enjoyed using a mouse more than a keyboard, I'd probably use a DE.
> My setup would be silly for those who prefer to use a mouse, or who
> can't type at least 25 words per minute.
>
> I'm attaching a screenshot of UMENU2, a CLI program I created that
> I usually run in a terminal emulator. Like I said, I don't recommend it
> because of the difficulty of building and maintaining your menu system.
> I should create a configurator tool or configuration mode. But for me,
> it sure comes in handy, even with this disadvantage. Note that the
> ellipses indicate a choice is a menu instead of a command, and a carat
> indicates that the choice goes back up to the previous level, or if at
> the top level exits UMENU2.
>
> SteveT
>
> Steve Litt
>
> Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
> http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
> _______________________________________________
> Dng mailing list
> Dng@lists.dyne.org
> https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
>
[Attachment #5 (text/html)]
<div dir="auto">I like one that looks nice but gets out of my way and let's me \
get work done. Favorites: KDE Plasma since late version 4. They trimmed it down \
and sped it up and with my customizations it serves well. My older go-to is \
fluxbox. The menu system is simple, easy to customize, and just gets out of my way \
faster and easier. I still use it a lot whenever plasma is a problem or less \
readily available. On servers I fall back to a pure cursed non-desktop and \
'screen' with the screanie interface: any GUI is wasted cycles there. \
</div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Dec 26, \
2023, 10:05 <<a href="mailto:dng-request@lists.dyne.org">dng-request@lists.dyne.org</a>> \
wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 \
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Send Dng mailing list submissions \
to<br>
<a href="mailto:dng@lists.dyne.org" target="_blank" \
rel="noreferrer">dng@lists.dyne.org</a><br> <br>
To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit<br>
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or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' \
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When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific<br>
than "Re: Contents of Dng digest..."<br>
Today's Topics:<br>
<br>
1. Re: f2fs missing from the installer (ael)<br>
2. Re: What do you guys like about Desktop Environments? (Steve Litt)<br>
<br><br><br>---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: ael <<a \
href="mailto:adrian.lawrence@physics.oxon.org" target="_blank" \
rel="noreferrer">adrian.lawrence@physics.oxon.org</a>><br>To: <a \
href="mailto:dng@lists.dyne.org" target="_blank" \
rel="noreferrer">dng@lists.dyne.org</a><br>Cc: <br>Bcc: <br>Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2023 \
12:22:17 +0000<br>Subject: Re: [DNG] f2fs missing from the installer<br>On Mon, Dec \
25, 2023 at 11:52:48PM +0100, Adrian Zaugg wrote:<br> > On the image \
devuan_daedalus_5.0.1_amd64_server.iso you can find mkfs.f2fs:<br> > e.g. see <a \
href="https://ftp.fau.de/devuan-cd/devuan_daedalus/installer-iso/" rel="noreferrer \
noreferrer" target="_blank">https://ftp.fau.de/devuan-cd/devuan_daedalus/installer-iso/</a><br>
<br>
Good. I may try that later today if I have time. Thanks for the pointer.<br>
<br>
ael<br>
<br>
<br>
<br><br><br>---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: Steve Litt <<a \
href="mailto:slitt@troubleshooters.com" target="_blank" \
rel="noreferrer">slitt@troubleshooters.com</a>><br>To: <a \
href="mailto:dng@lists.dyne.org" target="_blank" \
rel="noreferrer">dng@lists.dyne.org</a><br>Cc: <br>Bcc: <br>Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2023 \
10:04:55 -0500<br>Subject: Re: [DNG] What do you guys like about Desktop \
Environments?<br>Didier Kryn said on Mon, 25 Dec 2023 18:48:13 +0100<br> <br>
>Le 25/12/2023 à 04:52, Steve Litt a écrit :<br>
>> As far as launching apps, the way I do it is with dmenu from Suckless<br>
>> Tools. If you're a keyboard kinda person, dmenu is by far the \
fastest<br> >> and most efficient way to launch apps. <br>
>Le 24/12/2023 à 21:27, Gianluca Zoni via Dng a écrit :<br>
>> over a decade ago I started using StumpWM. Desktop environments<br>
>> are a waste of time: you have to gesture to make yourself<br>
>> understood by the computer, when we can talk to it or give it the<br>
>> right commands by typing key combinations in a single "musical<br>
>> chord" on the keyboard. StumpWM is programmable and integrates<br>
>> seamlessly with Emacs, Mutt, Conkeror, ... especially because<br>
>> over the years I've built an entire system of scripts and<br>
>> programs that I call the "zigzag system". <br>
><br>
> You both, what you achieved is the result of a lot of<br>
> configuration <br>
>and scripting work. Instead, any DE works almost fine out of the box<br>
>and is configurable through a menu.<br>
<br>
Yes, but...<br>
<br>
I'll elaborate later in this email.<br>
<br>
><br>
> I think the general answer to the original question is that<br>
> heavily <br>
>using menus is less efficient than heavily using command-line, <br>
<br>
I believe the opposite: I'm a huge fan of menus, for beginners and pros<br>
alike. I'm the author of the UMENU and UMENU2 menu systems.<br>
<br>
> but, on <br>
>the other hand, a menu is self-documenting, therefore, more efficient <br>
>for applications you rarely use. <br>
<br>
Pre-Cisely!!! Menus rock!<br>
<br>
<br>
>For example, a terminal emulator is<br>
>the very interface for command-line, but do you like to spend days in <br>
>customizing its apearance? No, this very task you do only once is more <br>
>efficiently done through a menu.<br>
><br>
> In Xterm, everything is configurable through one zilion <br>
>command-line options, which, in practice would imply to RTFM and write <br>
>one's own script to start it, because it does not read a config file. <br>
>Konsole, Gnome-terminal or Xfce4-terminal, what more are they than <br>
>front-ends to Xterm with config files and menu-driven configuration.<br>
<br>
Even though I don't use a Desktop Environment, I use lxterminal and<br>
xfce4-terminal and Sakura regularly. I never did learn the ins and outs<br>
of xterm.<br>
<br>
><br>
> For what regards Dmenu, in all DEs there is an application menu<br>
> for <br>
>all applications which are "integrated" in the Freedesktop sense,<br>
>which just means they come with a .desktop file stored in <br>
>/usr/share/applications/ . <br>
<br>
I never knew that.<br>
<br>
> Do you, Steve, find it feasible to <br>
>automatically read all the .desktop files in /usr/share/applications/ <br>
>and build a Dmenu tree for all of them? <br>
<br>
I could certainly do it no problem, but it's just not an itch I need to<br>
scratch.<br>
<br>
> Each .desktop file includes a <br>
>"category" which drives the structure of the menu as a two-level \
tree.<br> >I think this kind of tool might boost the adoption of Dmenu.<br>
<br>
Why only two levels? Why not indefinite? UMENU2 handles an indefinite<br>
number of levels. Unfortunately, the guy who wrote UMENU2 (me) didn't<br>
(yet) bother to make it easy to configure (by adding a configuration<br>
mode), so I can't recommend it to most people.<br>
<br>
Back to your original distinction between a lot of configuration and<br>
working fine out of the box, configurable with a menu...<br>
<br>
First of all, I'm a huge fan of menus. I hated it when Gnome and Unity<br>
dispensed with menus in favor of Chicklets. And as somebody who must<br>
maintain his wife's Windows box, I hate the Windows' Chicklet<br>
interface. Menus are the way to go.<br>
<br>
And of course you're right. My system took a lot of configuration, and<br>
more than a little significant scripting. Once!<br>
<br>
As one example, about 15 years ago I wrote a program to convert a tab<br>
indented outline into a multi-level list of links (bookmarks). This is<br>
where all my bookmarks are. None is in a browser. I can switch browsers<br>
at the drop of a hat and have my (huge) outline of bookmarks. Using<br>
Unbound, I've made them available across my LAN. <a href="http://littlinks.cxm" \
rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">http://littlinks.cxm</a> .<br> This code \
is in my data directories, safe from overwrite by the<br> packaging system. \
Basically, I can install any Linux distro on any<br> hardware, tree copy my /d and \
/home directories, and have all my menus<br> and scripts to the point where, \
regardless of distro or WM or DE, my<br> workflow is the same. <br>
<br>
For maybe 15 years I've used my Python script called makeHtmlToc.py,<br>
that takes a well formed HTML file, and creates a table of contents<br>
based on all the id's of the <h1> tags. A lot of my work is HTML<br>
authoring, so this has saved me tremendous amounts of time and errors.<br>
<br>
Was making this stuff a lot of work? Of course it was. But it was done<br>
once. Meanwhile, I've had distro after distro go bad on me. First<br>
Redhat back when Redhat was good, then Caldera for an easier install,<br>
then Corel when anticipating using Linux as my daily driver, then<br>
quickly Mandrake/Mandriva when Corel became about the dollars. Because<br>
Mandrake/Mandriva was always a little shaky and sketchy, I switched to<br>
Ubuntu for several years until Ubuntu's training wheels became a real<br>
problem for me, then I switched to Debian just in time for the systemd<br>
thing, and then switched to Void Linux. It would have sucked to redo my<br>
workflow every time.<br>
<br>
Likewise, I started with fvwm which was just too much for me to handle<br>
at the time, then I switched to KDE until KDE's bloat slowed and<br>
crashed my computers. Next was IceWM, which would have been great<br>
except that its start menu was miserable to deal with and I didn't yet<br>
know about dmenu. So I switched to Gnome3, which was great until it<br>
became Gnome4, and I switched to Xfce, which worked great on OpenBSD<br>
but was glitchy and intermittent in (Ubuntu, I think) Linux. Then came<br>
LXDE, which is spectacular, but when I discovered dmenu I decided to<br>
save some screen real estate and go strictly Openbox. From the moment I<br>
discovered dmenu, my workflow has remained constant, except that when I<br>
wanted to improve it, I did.<br>
<br>
Not everybody's like me. Some haven't had so many distros implode on<br>
them as I have. Some refuse to do a little shellscripting and<br>
Pythonning. But I contend that whether you go in and menu-configure<br>
changes every time you switch distros or DEs or somebody comes out with<br>
a new version of something, as opposed to biting the bullet and<br>
hand-assembling programs *once* that do one thing and do it well, tying<br>
them together with shellscripts and the occasional Python program, over<br>
the decades it's about the same amount of work.<br>
<br>
One other thing that's different about me than some others. I'm a touch<br>
typist who hates reaching for the mouse. Which is why I use the<br>
qutebrowser browser so much. It's why I use dmenu and UMENU2. It's why<br>
I use Vim (not as opposed to Emacs, but as opposed to several mousy<br>
editors). My observation is that DE key-combos are really hard to<br>
remembers, so I end up using the mouse, which slows me down immensely.<br>
If I enjoyed using a mouse more than a keyboard, I'd probably use a DE.<br>
My setup would be silly for those who prefer to use a mouse, or who<br>
can't type at least 25 words per minute.<br>
<br>
I'm attaching a screenshot of UMENU2, a CLI program I created that<br>
I usually run in a terminal emulator. Like I said, I don't recommend it<br>
because of the difficulty of building and maintaining your menu system.<br>
I should create a configurator tool or configuration mode. But for me,<br>
it sure comes in handy, even with this disadvantage. Note that the<br>
ellipses indicate a choice is a menu instead of a command, and a carat<br>
indicates that the choice goes back up to the previous level, or if at<br>
the top level exits UMENU2.<br>
<br>
SteveT<br>
<br>
Steve Litt <br>
<br>
Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century<br>
<a href="http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" \
target="_blank">http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21</a><br> \
_______________________________________________<br> Dng mailing list<br>
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rel="noreferrer">Dng@lists.dyne.org</a><br> <a \
href="https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng" rel="noreferrer \
noreferrer" target="_blank">https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng</a><br>
</blockquote></div>
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