I make things: electronics and software and music and stories and all sorts of other things.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • They just seem kinda hacky and overcomplicated rn.

    I was on NixOS for a while, which is sort of in this camp since the system build is deterministic an immutable, and I’ve had to switch away bc it’s just annoying. Apps aren’t made for immutability in mind, and sometimes when you (read: your OS) try to force them to, the burden falls on you to maintain it, not just the package maintainer. VS Code is a prime example. Some extensions just don’t work right. It’s not Nix’s fault ofc, but that doesn’t make it less impractical to use, so after 2 years away from Arch now, I’ve had to return.

    Other immutable distros face similar issues.

    On top of that, specific distros have reasons I wouldn’t want to use them. I wouldn’t use Bazzite, for instance, bc it is based on Fedora, and I won’t use Fedora again. I liked Fedora when I used it, and it has things about it I like, but it has a glaring issue: anywhere it can be non-standard it is non-standard. For apps to run on Fedora there always has to have some weird location for a config file or a different way to install a program or some bug that only occurs on Fedora. Fedora be fedorain. That rules out Bazzite, Silverblue, etc. I call it the “RedHat Tax.”

    I wouldn’t say I’m against an immutable distro tho; I just haven’t found one for me yet. For now, BTRFS and backups + Arch are enough







  • Yeah, I may just go back to Gnome/KDE.

    I recently switched OS from NixOS to Arch which is why I wanted to give Hyprland a second try while I was messing with stuff.

    I was on KDE before with not a ton of issue, but well, the tiling options on KDE are few and limited, so I wanted to go back and retry a dedicated tiler. I was on i3 and happy for a long time before switching to Wayland (which happened once I could get decent game performance), then I was on Hyprland for a while, then switched around a bit, and then settled on KDE once I discovered Polonium which I could live with.

    I’m gonna give GNOME a shot for now, and just try not to tweak it too much (other than Pop Shell)


  • why can’t I just stop forcing myself to this PITA and just use the mouse faster?

    You know that i3 has support for mouse, right? Really good support in fact.

    I use the mouse all the time in tiling window managers, not exclusively keyboard shortcuts, especially for well, window management. Win + Right Click and drag to resize and Win + Left Click to move a window into place. However, unlike traditional desktops, when I move the window, it snaps to a reasonable and consistent tiling location instead of just left/right snapping, a random place it can get covered up, or tiled using some awful extraneous system like KDE’s tiling system or some of the Windows little GUI popups. I also sometimes use floating windows.

    The nice thing about tilers is they can do traditional usage well whereas traditional desktops cannot do tiling well. Heck, dynamic tilers can’t even do tiling well.

    I often make use of very complex layouts like this:

    --------------------------------------
    | Win A              | Win B         |
    |                    |               |
    |                    |---------------|
    |--------------------| Win C | Win D |
    | Win E              |---------------|
    |                    | Win F         |
    --------------------------------------
    

    That many windows with different priorities and visible at once is just not possible to do in traditional desktops or even in dynamic tilers like DWM or KDE’s Bismuth plugin.

    I need something that makes window organization EASY, and that is manual tilers.

    I’ll have to look into the scrolling compositor. That does sound interesting.

    without keeping track and managing 10 virtual desktops

    Also, I don’t understand what you mean here. I’m very curious to what troubles you had with workspaces.

    What is there to manage? Do you not use virtual desktops at all anymore? I use them even in traditional desktops (including Windows).

    It’s just a place to put more windows when you run out of room on a screen or when doing a different task, what’s the difficulty there?

    Did you always use all 10? I don’t usually need more than 2, and if I do, then I don’t usually need more than 4


  • Also, are you sure you want to use a tiling compositor on a gaming laptop

    I can’t go back to moving windows around by hand. It’s so tedious. I can’t stand it anymore. Even on Windows which I use for work I always install FancyWM to achieve some sense of tiling. It’s just imo a superior way to use a computer.

    That said, GNOME has the fantastic Pop Shell 2 which functions similar to Hyprland or i3, so that’s fine on GNOME. Honestly, I’m hopeful for COSMIC and plan to try it out once it gets out of Alpha.

    The problem I have with GNOME is I always end up breaking it in a way that I can’t restore it. Some extension or GTK theme tweak or something, even when uninstalled, always seems to get it stuck in a bad state. It doesn’t like customization. KDE does, but it doesn’t have as good tiling support (there’s Polonium, which is… okay).

    Perhaps I’ll try it again tho. I’ve used GNOME for several months at a time before, but I had problems when switching to Wayland a couple years ago initially (which I’m sure are fixed now).