| > Snappiness and "outperformance" in the suckless world are usually defined via memory footprint That's one aspect of it, but I think it's not the driving factor on today's hardware. It's mostly about your computer doing what you want it to do, exactly when you want to do it. If I have to wait for some superfluous animation to load, or deal with several layers of menus to get to what I need, that works against my productivity. Take dmenu, rofi or sxhkd, for example. I can make them run any command or shell script to do exactly what I want, and it can be triggered in milliseconds via the keyboard. Whereas the typical desktop user would probably place a desktop or taskbar icon, have to navigate with their mouse to launch it, deal with animations, etc. Power users would likely use a keyboard shortcut or their OS' search feature or keyboard launcher, but that assumes that what they want to accomplish is even available in their ecosystem. This level of customization and adapting your OS to your workflow, rather than the other way around, is just incomparable to pre-built DEs. I'm not sure how you can claim this results in a "reduced rate due to compatibility issues", when efficiency and productivity are the whole point of this setup. > You pay for that unremarkable performance edge [...] in movie night situations when you're the only person who can control your esoteric computer. This is where I think there's a disconnect with what you want vs. what these tools offer. While I use some suckless and similar tools on my work machine, I still use KDE and even Windows on other machines when my goal isn't to be productive. My work machine is for my personal use, and I don't expect anyone else to use it. I'm perfectly fine with using other environments for other purposes, just don't expect me to be productive in them. > There are so many better hobbies to explore out there, incidentally so many hobbies that will put you in circles that are more enjoyable company than the suckless circles. Slowly iterating on your own personal set of keybindings and scripty doodads is the digital equivalent of spending an evening playing single player solitaire, except much less challenging. I think you're still missing the point of the purpose of these tools, and coming off rather patronizing. This is not some hobby, or about being in "enjoyable company"... Would you say the same thing to someone who chooses to live off-grid? It's much easier to depend on urban power and water infrastructure, than trying to meet your needs independently. People who choose to live this way would tell you it works great for them, and also wouldn't approve of the urban lifestyle. That's not to say that either is objectively right or wrong, but it boils down to personal preference. |