To understand the point of software like "suckless" you first have to understand this phrase:
All software sucks.
As in it doesn't matter if it is Windows 10 or OS X or Linux or Apache or GCC or Vim or whatever. All software sucks. All software is terrible.
The more code you have the more bugs you have. The more bugs you have the more it sucks.
So if you want things to suck less the goal then is to reduce the amount of code and bloat necessary to get what you need done.
Like what is the first real desktop operating system you've used? Windows 95? Windows 98? OS 9? Windows XP? Linux Gnome 1.x?
Now compare that functionality with software we have today. There isn't a whole lot you usefully do in Windows 11 that you can't do in Windows 98SE, for example. It has better hand writing support, better APIs for GPU acceleration, some desktop search features... etc. There are some things that are objectively better.
But why can you run Windows 95 on a system with 128MB of RAM just fine, but Windows 11 requires about 16GB to be acceptable?
It is objectively better and more useful... but is it 12800% more capable?
The answer is, of course, obviously not. Why does a modern Desktop like KDE or Gnome need a minimum of 4GB to display a blank window and a bar that you launch apps from?
What if instead of just bloating things with features software authors just concentrated on making what is needed work as well as it can be and just stay out of the way?
The so the point is that if you want software to suck less you should be using less software to do more.
I feel like the people who make the argument that "why should x use more ram" are people that either have been burnt too many times by crappy software that is lazily written or don't get the new features and it's requirements.
For instance take cache, it doesn't matter how much you "optimize" caching it'll always eat up space, the only real end game is what are you willing to compromise for, according to suckless what should you do? Remove cache entirely despite it's advantages?
In my view really not worth knowing...I still can't decide if it's a satire gone wrong or if they are serious...I tend more to satire.
Basically it's..rejecting every modernization and going back to the pre-90s for developing. The same for features like a config dialog...configuring the source-code and recompiling for a new config is...not unusal for suckles software.
they're completely serious. it's not really about rejecting modernization but to keep it simple. the ideal of the suckless philosophy is to bring simplicity to the software, it's about minimalism. it's easier to write lots of lines of code than to make it simple, yet people are usually more surprised with complex code they can't understand. i believe it isn't necessary to discuss why having simple code is better when it's possible. my idea with this project is to bring minimalism to Linux, the biggest advantages of following the suckless philosophy is the boosts in performance you can experience, less code for your machine to process is always better in terms of performance. for example, my voidlinux machine took 17 seconds to boot with runit (which is considered to be a quite minimalist system) while SFS took only 1 just to count seconds. it was literally instantaneous.
yeah, actually bringing some aspects of pre-90s development isn't as bad haha, have you ever seen those gentoo or arch users claiming to use linux because they can understand their system completely? try to master the linux kernel on your own. you'll never be able to understand it completely! in the 80s you could have a holistic understanding of your system. a modern operating system that brings you this possibility is TempleOS (although people take it as a joke) but with linux, this is all you can do for the userspace.
Unless you got a machine from the 90s what's the point of setting up the software environment to work like the 90s?
Unless you're doing it because you got a microcontroller that only take sin 256kb of ram, you want to learn exactly how things might work or you plan on using it as a baseline for your own ideas then that's fine.
But the problem with suckless is that it's essentially like building a car with no extra features and you can only steer right.
silenceimpaired@reddit
Okay I spent a few minutes browsing … no clue what suckless is.
natermer@reddit
To understand the point of software like "suckless" you first have to understand this phrase:
All software sucks.
As in it doesn't matter if it is Windows 10 or OS X or Linux or Apache or GCC or Vim or whatever. All software sucks. All software is terrible.
The more code you have the more bugs you have. The more bugs you have the more it sucks.
So if you want things to suck less the goal then is to reduce the amount of code and bloat necessary to get what you need done.
Like what is the first real desktop operating system you've used? Windows 95? Windows 98? OS 9? Windows XP? Linux Gnome 1.x?
Now compare that functionality with software we have today. There isn't a whole lot you usefully do in Windows 11 that you can't do in Windows 98SE, for example. It has better hand writing support, better APIs for GPU acceleration, some desktop search features... etc. There are some things that are objectively better.
But why can you run Windows 95 on a system with 128MB of RAM just fine, but Windows 11 requires about 16GB to be acceptable?
It is objectively better and more useful... but is it 12800% more capable?
The answer is, of course, obviously not. Why does a modern Desktop like KDE or Gnome need a minimum of 4GB to display a blank window and a bar that you launch apps from?
What if instead of just bloating things with features software authors just concentrated on making what is needed work as well as it can be and just stay out of the way?
The so the point is that if you want software to suck less you should be using less software to do more.
It is a elitist approach, but not without merit.
monkeynator@reddit
I feel like the people who make the argument that "why should x use more ram" are people that either have been burnt too many times by crappy software that is lazily written or don't get the new features and it's requirements.
For instance take cache, it doesn't matter how much you "optimize" caching it'll always eat up space, the only real end game is what are you willing to compromise for, according to suckless what should you do? Remove cache entirely despite it's advantages?
AiwendilH@reddit
https://suckless.org/
In my view really not worth knowing...I still can't decide if it's a satire gone wrong or if they are serious...I tend more to satire.
Basically it's..rejecting every modernization and going back to the pre-90s for developing. The same for features like a config dialog...configuring the source-code and recompiling for a new config is...not unusal for suckles software.
leenah_uwu@reddit (OP)
they're completely serious. it's not really about rejecting modernization but to keep it simple. the ideal of the suckless philosophy is to bring simplicity to the software, it's about minimalism. it's easier to write lots of lines of code than to make it simple, yet people are usually more surprised with complex code they can't understand. i believe it isn't necessary to discuss why having simple code is better when it's possible. my idea with this project is to bring minimalism to Linux, the biggest advantages of following the suckless philosophy is the boosts in performance you can experience, less code for your machine to process is always better in terms of performance. for example, my voidlinux machine took 17 seconds to boot with runit (which is considered to be a quite minimalist system) while SFS took only 1 just to count seconds. it was literally instantaneous.
yeah, actually bringing some aspects of pre-90s development isn't as bad haha, have you ever seen those gentoo or arch users claiming to use linux because they can understand their system completely? try to master the linux kernel on your own. you'll never be able to understand it completely! in the 80s you could have a holistic understanding of your system. a modern operating system that brings you this possibility is TempleOS (although people take it as a joke) but with linux, this is all you can do for the userspace.
i even skip the use of a bootloader and initramfs
monkeynator@reddit
Unless you got a machine from the 90s what's the point of setting up the software environment to work like the 90s?
Unless you're doing it because you got a microcontroller that only take sin 256kb of ram, you want to learn exactly how things might work or you plan on using it as a baseline for your own ideas then that's fine.
But the problem with suckless is that it's essentially like building a car with no extra features and you can only steer right.
abbidabbi@reddit
https://i.imgur.com/QSCy80r.png
This is only a "good" idea in very specific use cases, where you know exactly what you want and what you will need while running this system.
nicothekiller@reddit
Rilukian@reddit
I like how the page looks like a combination of LFS guide and Tumblr Aesthetic.
leenah_uwu@reddit (OP)
haha, thank you! :)