danielnechtan

This is the problem with Bay/Valley normies.

More often than not did a CompSci degree (or perhaps a full-stack bootcamp?) because they wanted to work in IT - not for the love of Computer Science.

They push for more and more of the computing world to be abstracted by Web/JavaScript frameworks and equate being productive with the ability (or will) to use and develop within this ecosystem.

Corporate pawns who take for granted those who work in low-level environments and spent decades developing technology to enable them their pretty bells & whistles environments.

Just look at the hostility from Microsoft and Apple zealots because people dare to deviate from what they consider normal and technologically superior.

JavaScript/TypeScript/Swift kernels when?

I used Slack for the first time the other day and I don't see the fascination and buzz behind it. I'd rather an open source / in-house solution, regardless of whether it's for a business or non-profit project; Mattermost or Zulip, for example. Perhaps even IRC.

I wouldn't be drawing anything with a mouse or trackpad, that much is certain - perhaps a tablet with a stylus would be more suitable for those things. I could use a digitiser tablet with Gimp or Krita if I wanted to do some drawing.

That said, I have access to a web browser which allows participation in Slack, Zoom, etc if required as well as any other GUI programs I may want to run in my minimalist environment. Even in the screenshot I have IRC and Matrix - those are used for collaboration, it's just the clients aren't written in JavaScript/TypeScript.

Some people consider Discord essential for collaboration - those people are probably bad dangers.

I'm more productive and my life is better because I know every file on my computer and what it is doing or what it is communicating with at any one time; I can customise everything to be used in the way I find most optimal/efficient without permission from anyone :)

My MBP trackpad feels so silky and sexy gliding around my OpenBSD cwm(1).

The screenshot was mostly to break up the article - it's not a picture book, the meat is in the words.

As a minimalist setup there's not really anything of note you could screenshot; Just a bunch of windows without decorations and some non-bloated software.

I won't reply to every inane comment asking "why use X?", "minimalism is easy if you aren't doing anything", or "MacOS is better because it loads my CP out-of-the-box"...

1) The screenshot was from another system before I decided to do a write-up; my current setup is as per the article without further customisation.

2) cwm provides virtual desktops through grouping. That desktop pictured is what I use for email, IRC, Matrix, and RSS/newsboat.

3) Would I be better off in the console with tmux? No. Could I survive on the console? Yes. I use a web browser and another terminal in desktop 2, and other GUI programs in another virtual desktop. There are very few pieces of software I can't use on OpenBSD; Some people even play Steam games on it!

4) OpenBSD base is exquisite and the operating system itself is so easy to configure and maintain compared to GNU/Linux. It's simplicity and 'retro' configuration doesn't take away from its power or usability in modern computing (for all those saying it looks like an old GNU/Linux screenshot).

Unlike GNU/Linux and the linux kernel itself, the direction of OpenBSD has never and will never be dictated by corporate need or greed. The licence is arguably more open, allowing both innovation in open source and commercial use - but you would never see, for example, Elon Musk's next obsession making its way into the kernel because it was fashionable.

Meanwhile, Ubuntu continues on its downward spiral, Debian has just voted to include firmware blobs by default, and don't get me started on what macOS has become - or should I say 'iMacOS'.

Good point, thank you. I always assumed it was required for Firefox so have automatically enabled it!

I can't think of anything else it could be needed for other than various GTK-bloat IPC so I'll make a note in the article!

Thanks again,

Daniel

OpenBSD base has almost everything else I need.

I don't need nor desire desktop software written with web technologies or other bloated UIs to be productive, thank you.

If you enjoy the bloat of Electron and using your toy mouse to make your computer do what many people do in a terminal then that's your choice. I won't begrudge someone their TOMY computer experience.

Virtual desktop 1 (pictured) is just tmux with a bunch of communications programs I have.

Virtual Desktop 2: Firefox, sometimes an additional terminal

Virtual Desktop 3: More GUI apps, though often vim split with something else, depending on what I'm working on.

I use plenty GUI-based software, but there's a lot of unnecessary bloat - both in resources and on the eyes - that we can do without.