It's said that one day, once the desktop has been perfected, the old bearded unix gods will emerge from the datacenter in the basement and pronounce it to be good.
I find the more I get into customizing a desktop environment, the less I actually accomplish anything. So diminishing returns are very real. And also once I start I don’t really know when to stop because there’s always one more tweak. Getting something like MacOS or an out of the box Linux Distro and doing some basic quality of life changes is more powerful than trying to rice anything beyond some basic aesthetics and binding fundamental shortcuts. Sometimes I enjoy actually just running a very simple out of the box MacOS with very limited customization and I find I actually am forced to focus on the work I actually want to do. I do use open source tools to add window management and ui tweaks but it’s very lightweight. Once I open the Pandora’s box of ricing Linux or rainmetering Windows or anything too granular I get lost in endless hours of playing games *with* my desktop environment. Ultimately I’d rather just play games _on_ my desktop at that point.
@@ghost-user559 we are not talking about being a tool or basing are personality on customizing Linux but the simple fact that customizing has diminishing returns at a certain point.
Chris thank you so much for helping us little guys. Your love and passion for this stuff is apparent in your videos and it goes a long way in helping people learn this stuff. Instead of being deprived of information, like those before us, my generation and upcoming generations are drowning in a vast sea of false information. The internet is crowded with echo chambers that produce ideologist and tribes. Instead of being united, we are being divided by the things we are being led to see via bias search engines and news channels. Thank you for being as unbias as possible and creating a healthy community that's full of students and not ideologist. Also, thank you for helping me get microsoft out of my life. I no longer feel the urge to drop kick my laptop lol
Love your channel! I've been subscribed for like 2 years now, and this is my favorite channel of this niche. Can't really describe how much I've learned thanks to you! Keep up the good work 🎉
Chris!!!!! 0:10 The phrase "Chasing the dragon" 🐲 is definitely not the same as idiom "Chasing the end of a rainbow for a pot of gold". I don't have the heart to speak frank. Help me out guys and gals.
I used bspwm for about 2 years now. Just yesterday I switched over to using gnome. I set up some keybinds for some simple actions and rofi. My reasoning was that most of my workflow is now usually just me having apps open in fullscreen on several desktops, and I think gnome is better for that sort of workflow. I am hoping to get back on bspwm, maybe once I get a wider monitor where having windows side by side is actually useful.
Gnome is too much tablet like imo. Seems like it was made for touchscreen devices lol Even though I am the same type of user as you (open a couple of windows in fullscreen), I still like to use WMs more. I like that you always know where and how the new windows open, it is predictable. I have 9 workspaces in my wm, I rarely use more than 5, but sometimes I do and that is very useful to always have that ability. I also usually mentally assign certain tasks to specific workspace, but not as strict as some other people do. So it is very easy to just be able to do almost anything without using your mouse. I guess you can achieve similar stuff in gnome, but my question is *why the hell* though. I don't follow your reasoning. If you were good to go with bspwm, why switch? Especially to gnome which will bring nothing new/useful to the table. You talk like gnome is somehow undoubtedly better for your purposes but for me it seems like a downgrade in productivity for no reason whatsoever. That's like "No, I don't need this Tesla anymore. I am simple user, I am fine with this cheap Honda. I will do a little bit modifications, add a spoiler, change the engine and it should be good to go. I am hoping to get back on Tesla once the government raises the speed limit on public roads"
I use gnome in PopOs. I use 3 monitors and I set a shortcut to move between workspaces. When I open many windows, and create 6 workspaces, it feels just right for me. e.g.: The first workspace will have a file manager, a Chrome window with 9 tabs, and a Chrome window with 4 tabs. Then I just tap the key Ctrl+Super+Arrow Down and that's it. It will create and open The second empty workspace with additional 3 empty monitors. I can fill it with VsCode, another file manager, and an Android emulator. I can move between them with Ctrl+Super+Arrow Up or Ctrl+Super+Arrow Down. Easy. I love my setup, it had been 2 years more. :)
You only truly reach transcendence when there is no longer a gui visible. We come full circle and all there is left is the terminal, albeit with better font's dimensions and colors. This is why the default dwm look is nearly ideal, ctrl+b and perfection has been achieved.
The perfect linux system for me has been Xubuntu for a while now. No matter how much distro hopping I do, I always land back on Xubuntu. For my desktop, I like a setup with almost no active elements. The few active elements I use live in the taskbar and just give numbers (like CPU/RAM utilization, temperature, bitrate, etc.).
I have also came to the same realization, like you I'm also not that good at designing and recently I've gone back to a very minimal XMonad setup with only some minor changes to the default configuration. I started to hate the complexity of my previous XMonad configuration because it required a lot of packages (it started like 10 programs when I logged in) and the config was very large, I also had other programs that needed their own huge configurations. I like the simplicity of a system that is minimal and stays close to the defaults, and I enjoy using it more because there is less mental overhead and a lot less to maintain.
3:40 i wanted to try that too, i always thought that would be the best way to structure an operating system, a base stable system then overlay that is not critical which is newer and can break without making system unbootable
I've been really happy with Manjaro XFCE, however I like what you're doing, I've heard a lot of people happy with PopOS' Cosmic and their variant of gnome. But I really like what the Nix project is doing.
I gave up the perfect system some years back, still I come back here =). There will never be the one (Neo), the world needs change, feeling etc. I admire you still fight hard for something perfect. Ity shows your hunger for something better like a true engineer. Nowadays I am happy when I make really cool tools that first of all, automates as much as possible (Linux, Windows, Mac and other managers/systems. I do miss one of my systems with compiz back in about 2006 I think it was. Yes, I could probably set up a similar system today but I prefer to build new tools. =) Great video btw Chris. =)
Great video Chris ! I think that you would absolutely love learn more about Nix and especially at NixOS and home-manager. It affords you the tools to make your entire desktop configuration (distribution/system + user/ricing) declarative and reproducible. Once you get in that train you can never go back to traditional package management and configuration !
It's difficult to find more the minimum where you're happy with it not looking ugly while not using many resources. I've ended up going XFCE and lightweight choices, but i'd prefer it much lighter, as i generally end up running more server setups and background processes and less using it directly.
Your Hyprland Desktop Showcase convinced me to try it out as well on my laptop, and i can say i wont go back to stock manjaro that soon. Looks really clean and i like the tiling window manager, even though its my first one. Still struggling with the hotkeys tho 😅
The core of my favorite desktop is openbox/plank/polybar/albert. There's a little fluff like variety for a wallpaper switcher because I like the randomness of it. But overall, that's about all I need. With minimal modification, ll leads to a nice looking desktop that is quite minimal.
I found mine..debian 12 with gnome, very simple, everything works..modern UI, and stable..but different people have different taste so..To each his own
For me it's actually NixOS (kinda hard to learn, but once you learn and using flakes it's worth the pain), i3 with some basic yet aesthetic bar and a good terminal workflow.
this was the same with me for about a year and a half. It was the one system that did everything I wanted it to do. Stable base, atomic update system, lightning fast deployment, almost unlimited customisability. It was just a little too clunky and unreliable for a daily driver though. Now I'm on Fedora uBlue, not 100% pleased with this one either, but it's stable at least, Also it's using NIX on top of it. So it's not like I left nix completely.
I've been trying to switch to using GNU guix on one of my laptops, but it's lacking about 95% of the packages I want, and I'm not good enough at writing guile scheme code to make my own packages quite yet (I'm trying though) I'd use nix if it wasn't for the nix-language, I'm too used to lisp at this point, really wish they were cross compatible (being able to install nix packages on guix (with the guix package manager))
You’re a good-bad influence, brother, as I’m starting to stumble down this rabbit hole myself. While my personal aesthetic is different, I love watching the process unfold for you. Like a behind the scenes for Unix porn, so to speak, ha! Keep up the great work!
Function over form. Now I know why I can relate to you and what you do. The thing about the perfect desktop is it's like a model railway, "It is finished but never completed"
Nix packages have 2 problems: OpenGL apps don't work without a wrapper and typing in other languages using IMEs doesn't work. It's so frustrating because it could literally be the best package manager that can replace flatpak and snap
same experience.. i've tried to use nix packages in several distros, but my main set of apps always fail to launch with some locale, or opengl issue.. finally i just said eff it..
@@onatics wrote, _"100% no"_ You're confusing 'objective reality' with 'subjective preference'. You can't tell another person 'no' to their preferences, just as they can't tell you 'no' to yours. We each prefer what we prefer. There's nothing to disagree about. Live and let live. Now, if you had said something like, "I've heard a lot of people who like your idea. It doesn't work for me. I **prefer** x, y, and z, because I do a, b, and c, and they just feel easier for me to understand' ... that would have been you owning, and expressing, your preferences as... wait for it... **preferences.** The world would be a much nicer place for everyone if we all did that.
I have enjoyed for some time Nobara a lot, because I found it to be the perfect Linux distro for an older computer enthusiast. It is so functional and easy in every aspect. An other favourite distro of mine is LMDE. I am most of the time, however, using Windows 10 and Mac OS due to them being the most developed operating systems for many purposes. I do not anymore game because when you get older, you'll find out that it is just wasted life-time. On the other hand, I do enjoy the System 47 screen saver, thanks Chris!
I gave Nobara a try but it always had issues for me. Nvidia driver issues, software usage issues and just general not sitting well with Fedora based Linux. I gave Manjaro a look and for me it has been so much nicer and smoother to run with. Drivers work and Software I use - no issues. Only issue is to use Gnome or KDE - gave XFCE a spin but it was cludgy for me and not snappy as a user experience. Horses for courses. 👍
If you're going dwm then dwl is a similarly suckless solution, but for Wayland. It's a bit lighter than hyprland. wm = dwl (with autostart, pertag and ipc patches) bar = dwlb status in bar = aslstatus wallpaper = swaybg lock = swaylock idle = swayidle screenshot = grim + slurp night color = wlsunset overlay bar = wob auth = polkit-gnome
@@kimcosmos dwl has it's own set of patches, there are many of them, but I think not as many as the number of dwm patches. I only use three (autostart, pertag and ipc) and they all work great.
I still prefer Hyprland. I swore of DWM and the suckless "philosophy" this year after 3 years on DWM. Just customization the Hyprland conifg is so much easier then patching/editing then restarting for any little change and having all the git commits and branches... Brr (I know there are other ways of patching then git)
Suckless is something every linux tinkerer has to give a go builting a setup on, imo. It gives a fresh perspective on what a system needs and the simplicity of the whole ecosystem makes it really stable and infinetely customizable
for me the perfect system is one where i can fire up casual games directly without any layers,wine,workarounds etc, im by far not gaming that much as ive used to in my younger days, but casually firing up a multiplayer round of call of duty or battlefield,speedrunners etc with my buddies without any hassle and knowing it performs the best natively this way is an essential function for me, next to all the work related stuff obviously.... as much as i love linux and lately especially NIX, having a cleaned up windows host running a ubuntu/linux vm on hyperv beneath where i remote desktop to it or browse its smb share is currently the peak of having a nice system available on my bare metal hardware at home, best of both worlds for me personally
Same principle, just a bit different. The base is using older packages than silverblue and they change with any security updates, but generally will change less than a silverblue install. Since most of the interaction happens in the nix/flatpak package area, the base generally goes untouched, but can be changed if needed giving it a bit more flexibility than a immutable install.
Your hyprland project was a really good base to start on for making my own. It's very different now and I changed many things but for a newbie like me it was helpful
Only just moved from KDE to bspwm+polybar+rofi+dunst, I synchronise the colors to the default polybar colors because I like the black and gold and don't have any fancy scripts running on my polybar (0% CPU utilisation). I made a little script to generate my configs from a central file that I can edit for my other accounts and for my laptop. Bound to keys, I have one script to select a sound output and one to show me a searchable cheat sheet populated live from my sxhkdrc. Took me two or three days to set up but I'm pretty settled on it now, been mostly jumping down the rabbit hole of nvim since, but astro with a couple of community packs seems to fit my needs (surprised how good a latex editor it is actually even with synctex). I may never need to change my setup ever again (until I decide to switch to wayland).
Well Human Changes Overtime, I think the perfect System it will be like easy fade in fade out animation Also in the next 3 days I won't feel boring, because the problem I have right now which is I get boring on something only for 3 days and I will started to tinkering around the config or adding some new packages to make it look better.
My current desktop is leftwm, love the project, nice community and it fits my needs perfectly. But i want to move to wayland at some point, and i'm looking a Hyprland for now, but i would LOVE to build my own compositor, and i'm starting to have a lot of ideas for this. Also LeftWM Wayland support is coming, and that's equally exciting !
I'd say Mac OS Tiger to Snow Leapord has always been my favorite. Just let me focus on making music not the Computer. Although I might argue using a computer for music isn't 100% ideal. I've recently taken the dive into Android development, although in practice it feels like hacking. I've settled on Fedora running Gnome for now. It's definitely using more system resources than I'd like, but runs decent enough on my core 2 quad. Unfortunately tweaking the Linux desktop is not on my priority list. I'm just happy I can put the dock on the left side where it belongs.
Yes Snow Leopard was the best and I stayed on it for a very long time refusing to upgrade. Every other Mac OS was just what ever. I did really like windows 7 a lot more than 10 and never dived into 11 so can’t speak on it.
My favourite linux desktop paradigm was compiz fusion. I loved spinning the cube with the mouse wheel. I had a windows virtual box vm integrated on one side of the cube
I don't know if I've ever actually experienced a system breaking because of package updates. On the contrary, more often I end up finding some really annoying bug that already exists, and is fixed in a newer version of software which either isn't available in my package manager or hasn't been released yet. (And that's when something like the AUR is super handy)
I like the tiling window manager like dwm. I like the automatic layout of tiling. Right now i am using KDE. What i would like with KDE is the ability to tile windows automatically. Like DWM and its its task tabs and icons, i have everything in KDE. I have One konsole open with 5 tab, one for note taking while watching youtup, another for scripting, another for my music, and another with just an empty terminal which i work on scripts etc. With KDE i can split the terminal into 2 panes, where i can work on scripts even deeper. For konsole i use keybindings to move between panes and tabs. My note tab contains my keyboard short cut per package (vim,micro, kde, mc, dwm, etc) and my aliases. I will open new files in that tab as i need to. My hardware is one laptop i7 16g ram, one ssd for system and home, one hdd for backup, external storage using LVM 10T, one ext 4T for yearly backups of everything. Also key to my workflow and configuration, is a second external monitor. This helps me watch series of youtube tutorials taking notes where needed on the laptop screen. Or watching a film while i script a little (would not suggest this as it prone to errors :) ) So what i would like is the ability of KDE doing full out Tiling Windows. I believe POP!OS has an option for turning on tiling windows. I think this is a great option. With this, id work with KDE on Debian. I have no reason, to date to leave KDE. It provides me everything. Funny thing is that a while ago i said the same thing for xfce. We shall see....... Thanks for your time producing the video and giving us your thoughts. Cheers
I'm chasing the perfect system too, but mine requires os level programming and building more kernel work off of Linux, as well as multiple layers like Windows.
Archlinux, i3, Polybar, picom. Right now I'm prefering i3 to dwm because I haven't nailed down all of my keyboard shortcuts, and it's a lot easier to adjust on the fly than dwm, recompiling is fine it's more the syntax of the i3/config file vs writing in new shortcuts to dwm source, (shortcuts, autostarts, and window assignments) I also LOVE i3's scratchpad. Again, polybar is a bit heavy, but super easy to customize as I'm toying with how I want my layout. Easy to build in icon/buttons for things like mpd or volume adjustments, and I love the header that says which window has focus for when I've got my hands off the mouse.
I can sound a bit boobie but for me the perfect system is kde plasma. It is easy to use, has more than a anought customization and just work. I have one panel on the top with all I want, krunner with a couple of add-ons and shortcuts for the most used apps and actions. There are dynamic colors (based on wallpaper) for qt and GTK apps. Also I set animated wallpaper from the wallpaper engine through the plugin, and it is amazing. I tried to use i3, awesome and sway. They work fine and are fun to configure, but don't fit in my workflow
I would love to see you use NixOS with home-manager, flakes ect. That distro and package system is simply superior to everything else, if you learn it. I would dare to say that NixOS is the safest distro (with up-to-date packages) you can use and it is so easy to test different things. Must be perfect for you, Chris.
You can have an excellent OS only if you can build one. Otherwise you must use what's available. Customization means knowledge. The more knowledge you have the better will be your OS. That's the reality.
"The perfect OS" will always be the OS that provides just enough for the end user to install and run only what they want. It takes up minimal space (unlike Windows Vista+), it does not have any extra programs just for telemetry or data collection of any kinds (all of them), and easily works with games/programs (not a strong point with any Linux). It really is sad that Windows XP still seems to be the "King" because it is really the closest to all of these. Since then, no operating system creator has even tried to hit these targets. I know the topic of lack of security on older systems always comes into this target, but all that seems to do is give false sense of security.
I personally think that all of this is quite cool. However, for me, I just prefer that well I am at home, I just want to use my computer and when done, turn it off and move on. That said, I have been into computer for 33 years and in IT for 24 of those 33 years.
I'm still cheering for Openbox and tint2 from CrunchBang and now BunsenLabs. It doesn't even look that "old" when modestly themed and it's mostly out of the user's way, strongly encouraging using rofi and keyboard shortcuts to interact with the system and launch applications. #!
If it wasn't for my Linux, my Being would not have engage with my desktop PC. After Windows 7, with 8 through 10, my Being was distancing with my PC. When IT finally decided to migrate to Linux, that's when my PC was breathed with a new life. ;-)
I have the same goal as you trying to make my pc the perfect gaming and coding environment so I thank you for your guides and tools for helping me get much closer to my goal. I’m trying to use Windows 10 as my main environment but WSL, Hyper-V with debloated W11 & Kubuntu, Dosbox-x, and Windows 95 & 98SE VM’s. Also with WineVDM and other compatibility layers and wrappers. I’m shooting for ultimate compatibility and performance. I’m currently getting my context menu set up so I can right click any file or directory to then run in any of those OS’s or to open with certain compatibility scripts to run with certain compatibility layers and wrappers. I’m more than halfway there with everything I’m doing. I’m mostly done with it being the perfect system I just gotta finish my context menu but the big thing make some scripts to implement into my custom ISO to make all the OS changes, installs, and settings I want as a perfect build to be done all in one swoop. The thing I’m not looking forward to is trying implement all of this into Windows 11, god I hate 11 with a passion. But dx12.2, auto hdr, and all that is a big plus I want and pretty much need. Anyways thanks again Chris
i like how hes doing all this advanced stuff with a mid teir system as in a R5 5600x & rx 5600 i feel like every one is chasing the hardware dragon instead of the software
Funny, I have gone the opposite direction. I am a Debian, LMDE, Linuxmint Ubuntu, Ubuntu, Fedora, ClearLinux fan, - so pretty agnostic in one way. I really find myself heading back to Cinnamon desktop whenever I stray. I have my moments with Gnome & Mate, I even flirt with 'BlackBox' when I want zero clutter. I am a bit like Linus Torvalds in the way that I am pretty keen on just installing without too much tweaking, I just tend to switch to a dark colour scheme. I kinda just treat the distros a bit like you might treat different car brands, you just hop in, drive appreciate the good, tolerate the bad, but adjust the seat and mirrors to suit your liking ;)
Chris, if I want to remove my old HD from my Windows 10 computer and install a new blank SSD and I need to install Windows 10 on it, which software do I use Windows Media Creation Tool or my Recovery Media Creator USB flash drive?
My perfect system is windows 7 but compatible with newer hardware and games and drivers. But I'm going to try Zorin OS again this year and see how close I can get it to the windows 7 interface. I want an OS that's stable, snappy, and that I won't have to update every 4-6 years. I like having separate hard drives I can search and folders I can navigate.
Aylur also created "Aylur's GTK Shell", which is an alternative to Eww. The best advantage IMHO is that Aylur's uses JS as the language rather than Eww's custom rolled Yuck language.
was trying to do this, but now I'm stuck on KDE (and I like the breeze theme so no need to change it). But i feels a bit bloated because there is settings all over the place. I like the minimalism in Gnome but it feels a bit to much "apple", it's our way or the highway thinking.. I don't like tiling window manager at all, I just hate anything that mess with my window position and size, alt+tab switch between two overlapping windows is way less annoying then squishing my browser or file manager in some odd shape. Makes me feel uncomfortable just thinking about it 😅 I do like fiddling around with OpenBox, tint2 & rofi though
you're the exact opposite of me then lol. I'm on windows rn but I use komorebi (a tiling window manager). i hate floating window because when I'm working with a lot of windows I ended up pressing alt+tab a couple times cycling through windows. where in tiling windows I just need to swap workspace.
Hyperland look amazing and I want to try it, however my current system doesn't really support Wayland, so it's not possible on my mainline production setup because I'm using a legacy NVIDIA GPU(Nvidia NVS 4200M). I might try it on one of my Intel based GPU laptops when I have time.
I'd like you to show how to create your best system but for newbies in mind. I don't mind investing my time setting it up as a newbie, but I want it to be low maintenance.
Back in my linux days I had the customization bug as well. Now a days my desktop experience in my mac is basically just cycling between Chrome, the Terminal, a code editor and occasionally finder if I need to do some file stuff via the GUI. Everything else is hidden.
I recently gave Fedora Silverblue a try & I like it so far. I even think, that Silverblue is the way for Linux on laptop - on PC where I need more flexibility maybe not, but probably still it will be a decent experience.
I was a dedicated fedora fan boy until I tried and installed f38. Issues after issues. I've gone back to f37 kde but in saying that I'm literally over short shelf life of a bleeding edge os. I hear f37 eol is just around the corner and thought, enough is enough. Currently using rhel 9 which is basically f34 and rock solid but I found it like debian. Boring. Nobara37 ain't bad but want to try rockylinux kde. Only reason I want kde is Dolphin and using Dolphin as a file picker. All gnome based or anything not kde based I found their file pickers useless meaning that all pics and docs are displayed in list mode and I found it difficult to distinguish what I want to upload.
Back on Linux! ! Yeah 🥳
I'm pretty sure he always was, but just had a Windows vm.
@@benyt3039 IK. Just happy seeing new Linux video
Finally sick of the turd windows crew, who need a script to stop Microsoft selling their info 😂
@@Lucatoni22windows has its uses
The hardier and more complicated Chris's project - the more unshaved he becomes :D
bro.
"the length of a wizard's beard is proportional to their power" - the harder and more complicated the project, the more Chris has to unleash his power
It's said that one day, once the desktop has been perfected, the old bearded unix gods will emerge from the datacenter in the basement and pronounce it to be good.
more time on silly things such as eating or grooming leaves little time for chasing perfection
I respect that. If you got the time to fk around with yo beard, then you got the time to inch ever closer to perfection !
I find the more I get into customizing a desktop environment, the less I actually accomplish anything. So diminishing returns are very real. And also once I start I don’t really know when to stop because there’s always one more tweak.
Getting something like MacOS or an out of the box Linux Distro and doing some basic quality of life changes is more powerful than trying to rice anything beyond some basic aesthetics and binding fundamental shortcuts.
Sometimes I enjoy actually just running a very simple out of the box MacOS with very limited customization and I find I actually am forced to focus on the work I actually want to do. I do use open source tools to add window management and ui tweaks but it’s very lightweight.
Once I open the Pandora’s box of ricing Linux or rainmetering Windows or anything too granular I get lost in endless hours of playing games *with* my desktop environment. Ultimately I’d rather just play games _on_ my desktop at that point.
@@breaddough-vk8gf Only if you base your entire personality around a desktop environment or operating system lol. Use the tools, don’t be the tool.
@@ghost-user559 not the point
@@ghost-user559 your missing the point
@@_vapor Which one?
@@ghost-user559 we are not talking about being a tool or basing are personality on customizing Linux but the simple fact that customizing has diminishing returns at a certain point.
Chris thank you so much for helping us little guys. Your love and passion for this stuff is apparent in your videos and it goes a long way in helping people learn this stuff.
Instead of being deprived of information, like those before us, my generation and upcoming generations are drowning in a vast sea of false information. The internet is crowded with echo chambers that produce ideologist and tribes. Instead of being united, we are being divided by the things we are being led to see via bias search engines and news channels. Thank you for being as unbias as possible and creating a healthy community that's full of students and not ideologist. Also, thank you for helping me get microsoft out of my life. I no longer feel the urge to drop kick my laptop lol
Love your channel! I've been subscribed for like 2 years now, and this is my favorite channel of this niche. Can't really describe how much I've learned thanks to you!
Keep up the good work 🎉
All this and then you spend 80% of the time watching a browser or a vscode window
who gaf
Nobody asked
terminal
F
No bash no life
Chris!!!!! 0:10 The phrase "Chasing the dragon" 🐲 is definitely not the same as idiom "Chasing the end of a rainbow for a pot of gold". I don't have the heart to speak frank. Help me out guys and gals.
ROFL just googled it... It actually is short for some form of heroin thing. /facepalm My bad!
I used bspwm for about 2 years now. Just yesterday I switched over to using gnome. I set up some keybinds for some simple actions and rofi. My reasoning was that most of my workflow is now usually just me having apps open in fullscreen on several desktops, and I think gnome is better for that sort of workflow. I am hoping to get back on bspwm, maybe once I get a wider monitor where having windows side by side is actually useful.
Gnome is too much tablet like imo. Seems like it was made for touchscreen devices lol
Even though I am the same type of user as you (open a couple of windows in fullscreen), I still like to use WMs more. I like that you always know where and how the new windows open, it is predictable. I have 9 workspaces in my wm, I rarely use more than 5, but sometimes I do and that is very useful to always have that ability. I also usually mentally assign certain tasks to specific workspace, but not as strict as some other people do. So it is very easy to just be able to do almost anything without using your mouse.
I guess you can achieve similar stuff in gnome, but my question is *why the hell* though. I don't follow your reasoning. If you were good to go with bspwm, why switch? Especially to gnome which will bring nothing new/useful to the table. You talk like gnome is somehow undoubtedly better for your purposes but for me it seems like a downgrade in productivity for no reason whatsoever. That's like "No, I don't need this Tesla anymore. I am simple user, I am fine with this cheap Honda. I will do a little bit modifications, add a spoiler, change the engine and it should be good to go. I am hoping to get back on Tesla once the government raises the speed limit on public roads"
I use gnome in PopOs.
I use 3 monitors and I set a shortcut to move between workspaces. When I open many windows, and create 6 workspaces, it feels just right for me.
e.g.: The first workspace will have a file manager, a Chrome window with 9 tabs, and a Chrome window with 4 tabs. Then I just tap the key Ctrl+Super+Arrow Down and that's it.
It will create and open The second empty workspace with additional 3 empty monitors. I can fill it with VsCode, another file manager, and an Android emulator.
I can move between them with Ctrl+Super+Arrow Up or Ctrl+Super+Arrow Down. Easy.
I love my setup, it had been 2 years more. :)
You only truly reach transcendence when there is no longer a gui visible. We come full circle and all there is left is the terminal, albeit with better font's dimensions and colors. This is why the default dwm look is nearly ideal, ctrl+b and perfection has been achieved.
True. People will say you need hours to customise your wm blah blah blah. You don't need to. Default configs are enough to do everything.
The perfect linux system for me has been Xubuntu for a while now. No matter how much distro hopping I do, I always land back on Xubuntu.
For my desktop, I like a setup with almost no active elements. The few active elements I use live in the taskbar and just give numbers (like CPU/RAM utilization, temperature, bitrate, etc.).
Thanks for keeping your shirt on this time....!🤣😜 Interesting System...👍
I have also came to the same realization, like you I'm also not that good at designing and recently I've gone back to a very minimal XMonad setup with only some minor changes to the default configuration. I started to hate the complexity of my previous XMonad configuration because it required a lot of packages (it started like 10 programs when I logged in) and the config was very large, I also had other programs that needed their own huge configurations. I like the simplicity of a system that is minimal and stays close to the defaults, and I enjoy using it more because there is less mental overhead and a lot less to maintain.
Just in time for the new video! Great work Chris!
3:40 i wanted to try that too, i always thought that would be the best way to structure an operating system, a base stable system then overlay that is not critical which is newer and can break without making system unbootable
I've been really happy with Manjaro XFCE, however I like what you're doing, I've heard a lot of people happy with PopOS' Cosmic and their variant of gnome.
But I really like what the Nix project is doing.
I gave up the perfect system some years back, still I come back here =). There will never be the one (Neo), the world needs change, feeling etc. I admire you still fight hard for something perfect. Ity shows your hunger for something better like a true engineer. Nowadays I am happy when I make really cool tools that first of all, automates as much as possible (Linux, Windows, Mac and other managers/systems. I do miss one of my systems with compiz back in about 2006 I think it was. Yes, I could probably set up a similar system today but I prefer to build new tools. =) Great video btw Chris. =)
Great video Chris !
I think that you would absolutely love learn more about Nix and especially at NixOS and home-manager.
It affords you the tools to make your entire desktop configuration (distribution/system + user/ricing) declarative and reproducible.
Once you get in that train you can never go back to traditional package management and configuration !
Need to give a shot for NixOS!
I still use your ArchTitus and it's great! I wanna see your next build! Keep on the good work!
It's difficult to find more the minimum where you're happy with it not looking ugly while not using many resources. I've ended up going XFCE and lightweight choices, but i'd prefer it much lighter, as i generally end up running more server setups and background processes and less using it directly.
Your Hyprland Desktop Showcase convinced me to try it out as well on my laptop, and i can say i wont go back to stock manjaro that soon. Looks really clean and i like the tiling window manager, even though its my first one. Still struggling with the hotkeys tho 😅
Get rid of all the keybindings and make your own. I'm very happy with my WASD-Based Fast, Acessible and Productive (FAP) Layout.
The core of my favorite desktop is openbox/plank/polybar/albert. There's a little fluff like variety for a wallpaper switcher because I like the randomness of it. But overall, that's about all I need. With minimal modification, ll leads to a nice looking desktop that is quite minimal.
I found mine..debian 12 with gnome, very simple, everything works..modern UI, and stable..but different people have different taste so..To each his own
For me it's actually NixOS (kinda hard to learn, but once you learn and using flakes it's worth the pain), i3 with some basic yet aesthetic bar and a good terminal workflow.
this was the same with me for about a year and a half. It was the one system that did everything I wanted it to do. Stable base, atomic update system, lightning fast deployment, almost unlimited customisability.
It was just a little too clunky and unreliable for a daily driver though. Now I'm on Fedora uBlue, not 100% pleased with this one either, but it's stable at least, Also it's using NIX on top of it. So it's not like I left nix completely.
I've been trying to switch to using GNU guix on one of my laptops, but it's lacking about 95% of the packages I want, and I'm not good enough at writing guile scheme code to make my own packages quite yet (I'm trying though)
I'd use nix if it wasn't for the nix-language, I'm too used to lisp at this point, really wish they were cross compatible (being able to install nix packages on guix (with the guix package manager))
I like chris when he is attuned with Force... internalizing, focus and refining the hunger to build...
May the force be with you.
its a good day when titus uploads a vid
You’re a good-bad influence, brother, as I’m starting to stumble down this rabbit hole myself. While my personal aesthetic is different, I love watching the process unfold for you. Like a behind the scenes for Unix porn, so to speak, ha! Keep up the great work!
Function over form. Now I know why I can relate to you and what you do. The thing about the perfect desktop is it's like a model railway, "It is finished but never completed"
Nix packages have 2 problems: OpenGL apps don't work without a wrapper and typing in other languages using IMEs doesn't work.
It's so frustrating because it could literally be the best package manager that can replace flatpak and snap
same experience.. i've tried to use nix packages in several distros, but my main set of apps always fail to launch with some locale, or opengl issue.. finally i just said eff it..
I honestly think dwm is the way to go. I've been using it for a little over a year. Hasn't let me down once!
100% no, a debloated windows 11 with no feature updates is probably the smoothest rn
@@onatics wrote, _"100% no"_
You're confusing 'objective reality' with 'subjective preference'. You can't tell another person 'no' to their preferences, just as they can't tell you 'no' to yours.
We each prefer what we prefer. There's nothing to disagree about. Live and let live.
Now, if you had said something like, "I've heard a lot of people who like your idea. It doesn't work for me. I **prefer** x, y, and z, because I do a, b, and c, and they just feel easier for me to understand' ... that would have been you owning, and expressing, your preferences as... wait for it... **preferences.**
The world would be a much nicer place for everyone if we all did that.
NeXTSTEP and IRIX had the best GUI. Felt super solid.
Can you do a build starting with tinycore from the command line ...build from ground up...I'm intrigued to see how you would approach this. 👨🏽💻💗🙌🏽
ditto Chris for the longest time I said the perfect distro didn’t exist but maybe I haven’t found it, built it
I love how you make articles on your videos as well
Thanks for your thoughts.
I have enjoyed for some time Nobara a lot, because I found it to be the perfect Linux distro for an older computer enthusiast. It is so functional and easy in every aspect. An other favourite distro of mine is LMDE. I am most of the time, however, using Windows 10 and Mac OS due to them being the most developed operating systems for many purposes. I do not anymore game because when you get older, you'll find out that it is just wasted life-time. On the other hand, I do enjoy the System 47 screen saver, thanks Chris!
I gave Nobara a try but it always had issues for me. Nvidia driver issues, software usage issues and just general not sitting well with Fedora based Linux. I gave Manjaro a look and for me it has been so much nicer and smoother to run with. Drivers work and Software I use - no issues. Only issue is to use Gnome or KDE - gave XFCE a spin but it was cludgy for me and not snappy as a user experience.
Horses for courses. 👍
Everybody needs hobbies.. desktop building, thats new, very cool and thx for sharing!
Hi! Chris, could you make us a video on how to optimize the new handheld asus, rog ally 🙏
Thanks
If you're going dwm then dwl is a similarly suckless solution, but for Wayland. It's a bit lighter than hyprland.
wm = dwl (with autostart, pertag and ipc patches)
bar = dwlb
status in bar = aslstatus
wallpaper = swaybg
lock = swaylock
idle = swayidle
screenshot = grim + slurp
night color = wlsunset
overlay bar = wob
auth = polkit-gnome
noice. Any of the dwm extensions not working?
@@kimcosmos dwl has it's own set of patches, there are many of them, but I think not as many as the number of dwm patches. I only use three (autostart, pertag and ipc) and they all work great.
@@nickcarlin8736 Thx. That is exactly what I was wondering. They are not cross compatible
I still prefer Hyprland. I swore of DWM and the suckless "philosophy" this year after 3 years on DWM.
Just customization the Hyprland conifg is so much easier then patching/editing then restarting for any little change and having all the git commits and branches... Brr (I know there are other ways of patching then git)
I love that wallpaper, where did you get it 😮
Yep. We need this wallpaper!
google reverse image search
Nice O/S!
Man your debloat tool is what reconciliate me with pc gaming.
Suckless is something every linux tinkerer has to give a go builting a setup on, imo. It gives a fresh perspective on what a system needs and the simplicity of the whole ecosystem makes it really stable and infinetely customizable
Pop!_OS with 90% width transparent Dash to Panel at the bottom, Papirus-Dark icon theme and Adw-GTK3 theme. Perfect.
for me the perfect system is one where i can fire up casual games directly without any layers,wine,workarounds etc, im by far not gaming that much as ive used to in my younger days, but casually firing up a multiplayer round of call of duty or battlefield,speedrunners etc with my buddies without any hassle and knowing it performs the best natively this way is an essential function for me, next to all the work related stuff obviously.... as much as i love linux and lately especially NIX, having a cleaned up windows host running a ubuntu/linux vm on hyperv beneath where i remote desktop to it or browse its smb share is currently the peak of having a nice system available on my bare metal hardware at home, best of both worlds for me personally
Interesting so basically silverbue with nix and flatpak on top intresting looks good
Same principle, just a bit different. The base is using older packages than silverblue and they change with any security updates, but generally will change less than a silverblue install. Since most of the interaction happens in the nix/flatpak package area, the base generally goes untouched, but can be changed if needed giving it a bit more flexibility than a immutable install.
Your hyprland project was a really good base to start on for making my own. It's very different now and I changed many things but for a newbie like me it was helpful
I would much prefer to use one of your distros over anyone else's. A source i can trust to do a good job of it and support it.. Thanks for the video.
I just want that nice-looking terminal
I'm literally in the same boat, can't decide between Hyprland and full neckbeard DWM - well put!
Only just moved from KDE to bspwm+polybar+rofi+dunst, I synchronise the colors to the default polybar colors because I like the black and gold and don't have any fancy scripts running on my polybar (0% CPU utilisation). I made a little script to generate my configs from a central file that I can edit for my other accounts and for my laptop. Bound to keys, I have one script to select a sound output and one to show me a searchable cheat sheet populated live from my sxhkdrc. Took me two or three days to set up but I'm pretty settled on it now, been mostly jumping down the rabbit hole of nvim since, but astro with a couple of community packs seems to fit my needs (surprised how good a latex editor it is actually even with synctex). I may never need to change my setup ever again (until I decide to switch to wayland).
Well Human Changes Overtime, I think the perfect System it will be like easy fade in fade out animation
Also in the next 3 days I won't feel boring, because the problem I have right now which is I get boring on something only for 3 days and I will started to tinkering around the config or adding some new packages to make it look better.
My current desktop is leftwm, love the project, nice community and it fits my needs perfectly. But i want to move to wayland at some point, and i'm looking a Hyprland for now, but i would LOVE to build my own compositor, and i'm starting to have a lot of ideas for this.
Also LeftWM Wayland support is coming, and that's equally exciting !
I'd say Mac OS Tiger to Snow Leapord has always been my favorite. Just let me focus on making music not the Computer. Although I might argue using a computer for music isn't 100% ideal.
I've recently taken the dive into Android development, although in practice it feels like hacking. I've settled on Fedora running Gnome for now. It's definitely using more system resources than I'd like, but runs decent enough on my core 2 quad. Unfortunately tweaking the Linux desktop is not on my priority list. I'm just happy I can put the dock on the left side where it belongs.
Agree with you on Snow Leopard, I was super productive on the version. And that was the last Mac version I used. Been on a Fedora variant ever since.
Yes Snow Leopard was the best and I stayed on it for a very long time refusing to upgrade. Every other Mac OS was just what ever. I did really like windows 7 a lot more than 10 and never dived into 11 so can’t speak on it.
Didn't expect to see Muhammad Nafay on the wallpaper!
My favourite linux desktop paradigm was compiz fusion. I loved spinning the cube with the mouse wheel. I had a windows virtual box vm integrated on one side of the cube
My perfect system is Arch, I always return to it....and it just works on everything
the perfect system is one that works out of the box
Thanks for all the knowledge you share... I have learned so much on this channel...🧑🏽💻🙏
I don't know if I've ever actually experienced a system breaking because of package updates. On the contrary, more often I end up finding some really annoying bug that already exists, and is fixed in a newer version of software which either isn't available in my package manager or hasn't been released yet. (And that's when something like the AUR is super handy)
Yeah, go ahead with dwm. I can't wait to see what you will make !!!
I like the tiling window manager like dwm. I like the automatic layout of tiling. Right now i am using KDE. What i would like with KDE is the ability to tile windows automatically. Like DWM and its its task tabs and icons, i have everything in KDE. I have One konsole open with 5 tab, one for note taking while watching youtup, another for scripting, another for my music, and another with just an empty terminal which i work on scripts etc. With KDE i can split the terminal into 2 panes, where i can work on scripts even deeper. For konsole i use keybindings to move between panes and tabs. My note tab contains my keyboard short cut per package (vim,micro, kde, mc, dwm, etc) and my aliases. I will open new files in that tab as i need to.
My hardware is one laptop i7 16g ram, one ssd for system and home, one hdd for backup, external storage using LVM 10T, one ext 4T for yearly backups of everything. Also key to my workflow and configuration, is a second external monitor. This helps me watch series of youtube tutorials taking notes where needed on the laptop screen. Or watching a film while i script a little (would not suggest this as it prone to errors :) )
So what i would like is the ability of KDE doing full out Tiling Windows. I believe POP!OS has an option for turning on tiling windows. I think this is a great option. With this, id work with KDE on Debian. I have no reason, to date to leave KDE. It provides me everything.
Funny thing is that a while ago i said the same thing for xfce. We shall see.......
Thanks for your time producing the video and giving us your thoughts.
Cheers
unexpected Hungarian at 5:20 !!
I wrote a post install script for Void Linux similarly inspired by Chris' customised Linux.
My perfect system (as of right now) is Zorin Linux. Out of the box, it has pretty much everything I need and it just works (for me).
I'm chasing the perfect system too, but mine requires os level programming and building more kernel work off of Linux, as well as multiple layers like Windows.
Archlinux, i3, Polybar, picom.
Right now I'm prefering i3 to dwm because I haven't nailed down all of my keyboard shortcuts, and it's a lot easier to adjust on the fly than dwm, recompiling is fine it's more the syntax of the i3/config file vs writing in new shortcuts to dwm source, (shortcuts, autostarts, and window assignments)
I also LOVE i3's scratchpad. Again, polybar is a bit heavy, but super easy to customize as I'm toying with how I want my layout. Easy to build in icon/buttons for things like mpd or volume adjustments, and I love the header that says which window has focus for when I've got my hands off the mouse.
Using Windows, Mac and several Linux. For Desktop I like SwayWM the most, lean and minimalistic.
I was devastated you did not in fact talk about UwUntu.
I can sound a bit boobie but for me the perfect system is kde plasma. It is easy to use, has more than a anought customization and just work. I have one panel on the top with all I want, krunner with a couple of add-ons and shortcuts for the most used apps and actions. There are dynamic colors (based on wallpaper) for qt and GTK apps. Also I set animated wallpaper from the wallpaper engine through the plugin, and it is amazing. I tried to use i3, awesome and sway. They work fine and are fun to configure, but don't fit in my workflow
I would love to see you use NixOS with home-manager, flakes ect. That distro and package system is simply superior to everything else, if you learn it. I would dare to say that NixOS is the safest distro (with up-to-date packages) you can use and it is so easy to test different things. Must be perfect for you, Chris.
Hey, do you ever get any actual computing done spending so much time configuring and reconfiguring? :)
You can have an excellent OS only if you can build one. Otherwise you must use what's available. Customization means knowledge. The more knowledge you have the better will be your OS. That's the reality.
This was me in WoW. Building the perfect UI for rank 1 parse.
my friends brother Dylan made neofetch its really cool to see it being used
BeOS was that...hoping its recreation Haiku will be too
"The perfect OS" will always be the OS that provides just enough for the end user to install and run only what they want. It takes up minimal space (unlike Windows Vista+), it does not have any extra programs just for telemetry or data collection of any kinds (all of them), and easily works with games/programs (not a strong point with any Linux). It really is sad that Windows XP still seems to be the "King" because it is really the closest to all of these. Since then, no operating system creator has even tried to hit these targets. I know the topic of lack of security on older systems always comes into this target, but all that seems to do is give false sense of security.
Hi Chris, I'm back. I was afraid to click on your muscle man video but wanted to let you know that I'm now feeling much better.
I personally think that all of this is quite cool. However, for me, I just prefer that well I am at home, I just want to use my computer and when done, turn it off and move on. That said, I have been into computer for 33 years and in IT for 24 of those 33 years.
“Full neckbeard”. Don’t you hate when that happens.
Pure Gentoo gives you lots of control
love your wallpapers thats for sure
I'm still cheering for Openbox and tint2 from CrunchBang and now BunsenLabs.
It doesn't even look that "old" when modestly themed and it's mostly out of the user's way, strongly encouraging using rofi and keyboard shortcuts to interact with the system and launch applications.
#!
If it wasn't for my Linux, my Being would not have engage with my desktop PC. After Windows 7, with 8 through 10, my Being was distancing with my PC. When IT finally decided to migrate to Linux, that's when my PC was breathed with a new life. ;-)
I have the same goal as you trying to make my pc the perfect gaming and coding environment so I thank you for your guides and tools for helping me get much closer to my goal. I’m trying to use Windows 10 as my main environment but WSL, Hyper-V with debloated W11 & Kubuntu, Dosbox-x, and Windows 95 & 98SE VM’s. Also with WineVDM and other compatibility layers and wrappers. I’m shooting for ultimate compatibility and performance. I’m currently getting my context menu set up so I can right click any file or directory to then run in any of those OS’s or to open with certain compatibility scripts to run with certain compatibility layers and wrappers. I’m more than halfway there with everything I’m doing. I’m mostly done with it being the perfect system I just gotta finish my context menu but the big thing make some scripts to implement into my custom ISO to make all the OS changes, installs, and settings I want as a perfect build to be done all in one swoop. The thing I’m not looking forward to is trying implement all of this into Windows 11, god I hate 11 with a passion. But dx12.2, auto hdr, and all that is a big plus I want and pretty much need.
Anyways thanks again Chris
6:28 I like this
i like how hes doing all this advanced stuff with a mid teir system as in a R5 5600x & rx 5600 i feel like every one is chasing the hardware dragon instead of the software
Funny, I have gone the opposite direction.
I am a Debian, LMDE, Linuxmint Ubuntu, Ubuntu, Fedora, ClearLinux fan, - so pretty agnostic in one way.
I really find myself heading back to Cinnamon desktop whenever I stray. I have my moments with Gnome & Mate, I even flirt with 'BlackBox' when I want zero clutter.
I am a bit like Linus Torvalds in the way that I am pretty keen on just installing without too much tweaking, I just tend to switch to a dark colour scheme.
I kinda just treat the distros a bit like you might treat different car brands, you just hop in, drive appreciate the good, tolerate the bad, but adjust the seat and mirrors to suit your liking ;)
Chris, if I want to remove my old HD from my Windows 10 computer and install a new blank SSD and I need to install Windows 10 on it, which software do I use Windows Media Creation Tool or my Recovery Media Creator USB flash drive?
My perfect system is windows 7 but compatible with newer hardware and games and drivers.
But I'm going to try Zorin OS again this year and see how close I can get it to the windows 7 interface.
I want an OS that's stable, snappy, and that I won't have to update every 4-6 years.
I like having separate hard drives I can search and folders I can navigate.
Aylur also created "Aylur's GTK Shell", which is an alternative to Eww. The best advantage IMHO is that Aylur's uses JS as the language rather than Eww's custom rolled Yuck language.
Lol
was trying to do this, but now I'm stuck on KDE (and I like the breeze theme so no need to change it). But i feels a bit bloated because there is settings all over the place. I like the minimalism in Gnome but it feels a bit to much "apple", it's our way or the highway thinking.. I don't like tiling window manager at all, I just hate anything that mess with my window position and size, alt+tab switch between two overlapping windows is way less annoying then squishing my browser or file manager in some odd shape. Makes me feel uncomfortable just thinking about it 😅 I do like fiddling around with OpenBox, tint2 & rofi though
you're the exact opposite of me then lol. I'm on windows rn but I use komorebi (a tiling window manager). i hate floating window because when I'm working with a lot of windows I ended up pressing alt+tab a couple times cycling through windows. where in tiling windows I just need to swap workspace.
Polybar only takes up that amount of resources if you have a module that is constantly updating.
Hyperland look amazing and I want to try it, however my current system doesn't really support Wayland, so it's not possible on my mainline production setup because I'm using a legacy NVIDIA GPU(Nvidia NVS 4200M). I might try it on one of my Intel based GPU laptops when I have time.
I'd like you to show how to create your best system but for newbies in mind. I don't mind investing my time setting it up as a newbie, but I want it to be low maintenance.
thank you so much fron japan 😉
you should set a blank black wallpaper and remove the top bar, it will be the perfect minimal desktop :)
I'm trying nwg-shell on sway. I really like it and it seems stable, but I dont know why it is not so much known by people.
Back in my linux days I had the customization bug as well. Now a days my desktop experience in my mac is basically just cycling between Chrome, the Terminal, a code editor and occasionally finder if I need to do some file stuff via the GUI. Everything else is hidden.
You're the real deal on youtube
I recently gave Fedora Silverblue a try & I like it so far. I even think, that Silverblue is the way for Linux on laptop - on PC where I need more flexibility maybe not, but probably still it will be a decent experience.
I was a dedicated fedora fan boy until I tried and installed f38. Issues after issues. I've gone back to f37 kde but in saying that I'm literally over short shelf life of a bleeding edge os. I hear f37 eol is just around the corner and thought, enough is enough. Currently using rhel 9 which is basically f34 and rock solid but I found it like debian. Boring. Nobara37 ain't bad but want to try rockylinux kde. Only reason I want kde is Dolphin and using Dolphin as a file picker. All gnome based or anything not kde based I found their file pickers useless meaning that all pics and docs are displayed in list mode and I found it difficult to distinguish what I want to upload.