I'll be honest, I can't read this with a straight face with the amount of defence manoeuvring the author does. Uh-huh Mm-hmm Sure, buddy, just put the knife down
I'll be honest, I can't read this with a straight face with the amount of defence manoeuvring the author does.
Let’s take my own experience, for example. One of the initial few software I used to install on a new system was dunst—a notification daemon. Unfortunately, it depends on D-Bus, which is Poetterware; ergo, not on KISS. However, using a system without notifications has been very pleasant.
Uh-huh
Another instance, again involving D-Bus (or not), is Bluetooth audio. As it happens, my laptop’s 3.5mm jack is rekt, and I need to use Bluetooth for audio, if at all. Sadly, Bluetooth audio on Linux hard-depends on D-Bus. Bluetooth stacks that don’t rely on D-Bus do exist, like on Android, but porting them over to desktop is non-trivial. However, I used this to my advantage and decided not to consume media on my laptop.
Mm-hmm
I’m slowly noticing myself favor low-tech (or no-tech) solutions to simple problems too. Like notetaking—I’ve tried plaintext files, Vim Wiki, Markdown, but nothing beats actually using pen and paper.
As I said in another site, the author seems to just want to brag. This is coming from a guy who likes to install Void via chroot using lots of "ignorepkg" to get a minimal system. I do because I...
As I said in another site, the author seems to just want to brag.
This is coming from a guy who likes to install Void via chroot using lots of "ignorepkg" to get a minimal system. I do because I like to do it, I love to thinker and the less things I have, the less my system breaks (it never broke).
But my system never broke too when I was using Fedora KDE some time ago.
There are no real advantages on running something so small and "minimalist". With KDE I simply have everything working and don't have to deal with strange picom behaviours, don't have to write weird .asoundrc config, mess with bizarre udev rules to have my smartphone mount without relying on gvfs/kio and etc.
This distro is simple? It is not.
I have a Bluetooth speaker that I love and not using it would be a no-no.
Even in Void I had to compromise and install pulseaudio because of it. Have you ever tried Bluetooth with just alsa? Good luck.
There is a good middle ground and while I like KISS (or the idea of), having to maintain the packages myself and doing all this work for no return is just too much and against my idea of simple. Which we can agree is extremely subjetive and it became a meaningless word in the Linux world. So many people call Arch simple and minimal, but for me it's extremely bloated.
Void, for me, is the best distro out there. I love Gentoo too, but I don't see the point anymore after using Void and I think the Gentoo underlying mechanisms are "bloated" in a sense. The heavy use of Python for some things is bad and portage is slow as molasses, which I can understand since the thing it does is so complex.
Anyway, I'm just ranting right now. The point is: I don't think the author will stay in this distro for years, nor most of it's users.
I hate the term, but this distro is the very definition of a meme distro and I still like it and find an inspiration. These "extremisms" helps put things in perspective sometimes.
The creator is well aware of this and described their interpretation of KISS in https://k1ss.org/faq. Arch, on the other hand, aims to be simple for the developers, hence why it doesn't split...
we can agree [that "simple"] is extremely subjetive and it became a meaningless word in the Linux world. So many people call Arch simple and minimal, but for me it's extremely bloated.
The creator is well aware of this and described their interpretation of KISS in https://k1ss.org/faq. Arch, on the other hand, aims to be simple for the developers, hence why it doesn't split development files and such (it is not minimal, though).
I hate the term, but this distro is the very definition of a meme distro and I still like it and find an inspiration. These "extremisms" helps put things in perspective sometimes.
I want to note that the distro's author is an extreme minimalist in everything. He does not own any piece of technology other than his laptop, not even a phone, and thus he has no problems regarding stuff like Bluetooth; it seems that his laptop went out of commission and thus he hasn't been online in April at all. He moved to a remote village in Greece with little technology specifically to rely on it less. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by meme here, but my point is that this is actually in line with and serious for him.
I really like the ideas behind KISS, and I think dylanarap's work with bash is inspiring -- but I don't know if I have the gumption to install a bare-bones linux distro any more. I'm running Void...
I really like the ideas behind KISS, and I think dylanarap's work with bash is inspiring -- but I don't know if I have the gumption to install a bare-bones linux distro any more. I'm running Void right now, just because it's what I last installed. My microphone doesn't work which is a pain with all this social-distancing-induced online communication.
On the one hand, I have time now to set up a new os on my laptop; on the other, I don't know if (a) I want to or (b) if it would be KISS or BSD or Ubuntu even.
Yes, this distro is designed to be very opinionated, and really strives to get as minimal as possible; for example, I think they rewrote a Perl script to keep it from base. However, the idea is...
Yes, this distro is designed to be very opinionated, and really strives to get as minimal as possible; for example, I think they rewrote a Perl script to keep it from base. However, the idea is that it's easier to add things than remove them.
Repositories are simply Git repositories and the "main" repository is nothing special. It's just the default, and you can easily replace it or add another one on top of it (this is managed by KISS_PATH, which acts like PATH) and package what you want; someone even packaged systemd, glibc, the whole standard "bloat". But it's no secret that the community is still extremely opinionated and bash (well, both in the shell and the word) a lot of things.
Overall, this distro intentionally isn't for everyone, and there's nothing wrong if you don't want to use it. I often hang around in the IRC channel—mostly for discussing dylan's other projects, but I also often jump in on KISS conversations—and people often assume I use it, but I don't, because it isn't for me (I'll probably try it sometime, though). :)
I read the comments on Lobsters, and thought they made really good points. I've run into some of that weird antagonism with minimalist projects personally, and it's a weird thing. I wonder if it's...
I read the comments on Lobsters, and thought they made really good points. I've run into some of that weird antagonism with minimalist projects personally, and it's a weird thing. I wonder if it's due to the fact that the choice is, basically, ideological: e.g. systemd works, and the biggest reason not to use it as far as I can tell is that it doesn't conform to the Unix philosophy. And maybe it'll become corporateware since it's run by Redhat.
As I said in my other comment, in this case, it's justified by the philosophy that it's easier to add things than remove them. systemd has more features that software can rely on, and therefore...
As I said in my other comment, in this case, it's justified by the philosophy that it's easier to add things than remove them. systemd has more features that software can rely on, and therefore
would be hard to switch to another init system if used by default, while the other way around is much, much easier ("just works", I think) and has been done already in KISS.
But it's also true that dylan and most of the KISS community are very ideological and I'm pretty sure this would have been done anyway without that reason.
Good point on systemd. I think what I was getting at is that, regardless of ideology, it works: it makes the computer do what you want it to do. It's just not very "clean" or "pure". Which I think...
Good point on systemd. I think what I was getting at is that, regardless of ideology, it works: it makes the computer do what you want it to do. It's just not very "clean" or "pure". Which I think is my main critique of the philosophy in KISS or Crux or the nixers community...there's an obsession with purity, which I actually get, and have fallen into, but also have noticed that for me it can lead to obsessive reinstalls to the detriment of work. But that's my personal journey, too.
I use awesomewm and an xprofile with Lightdm. I have pavucontrol, too, and I've messed around with different input settings. The internal mic doesn't pick anything up, and when I've tried plugging...
I use awesomewm and an xprofile with Lightdm.
I have pavucontrol, too, and I've messed around with different input settings. The internal mic doesn't pick anything up, and when I've tried plugging in an external mic the computer only recognizes it as headphones...I have one of those combo jacks.
Thanks for the suggestions though! I'm totally open to trying any others.
How's Void treating you? I've been meaning to try it, but it kind of spooks me, since I only used simple to install distros like Fedora/Ubuntu. I mean, I did build my own rootfs with Buildroot,...
How's Void treating you? I've been meaning to try it, but it kind of spooks me, since I only used simple to install distros like Fedora/Ubuntu. I mean, I did build my own rootfs with Buildroot, but that was for an embedded project, not for daily use. Do you use glibc or musl version?
I use glibc, and I like it fine! The package manager is quite fast. The documentation is quite lacking, however, past the installation step. However, it's pretty similar, administration wise, to...
I use glibc, and I like it fine! The package manager is quite fast. The documentation is quite lacking, however, past the installation step.
However, it's pretty similar, administration wise, to Arch: the biggest differences are the packaging and init systems. I've been doing one kind or another of a diy Linux system for a while, but it's really not hard. Just a lot of steps to check off. Computers are complicated!
I'd recommend building a system from scratch, at least on a VM. It's a good learning experience.
Go for it. Use the glibc version. If you want, Void has a simple installer so you can have a working system just like the live iso you download. Just choose local install and use the defaults.
Go for it. Use the glibc version.
If you want, Void has a simple installer so you can have a working system just like the live iso you download. Just choose local install and use the defaults.
The thing that stopped me from installing it on my laptop is the hard drive encryption. I'm not sure, but I believe it's quite cumbersome to install Void to an encrypted partition (as opposed to...
The thing that stopped me from installing it on my laptop is the hard drive encryption. I'm not sure, but I believe it's quite cumbersome to install Void to an encrypted partition (as opposed to encrypted hard drive as a whole: I use dual boot with Windows and my laptop does not have a slot for a second drive). Do you have any experience with that?
I don't do full encryption. I install the OS and /home on my SSD without encryption and just encrypt my entire HDD and mount it on /home/user/data. The HDD is where i store pics and sensitive...
I don't do full encryption. I install the OS and /home on my SSD without encryption and just encrypt my entire HDD and mount it on /home/user/data. The HDD is where i store pics and sensitive information so this works for me.
This is fine, but you—and everyone else considering this arrangement—should be aware that you leak a crapton of metadata (almost certainly including things like thumbnails and detailed file...
This is fine, but you—and everyone else considering this arrangement—should be aware that you leak a crapton of metadata (almost certainly including things like thumbnails and detailed file histories) of the files in your encrypted partition as the software you use does bookkeeping in your unencrypted home partition. (Even if you encrypt /home, plenty of stuff gets leaked in /var, as well.) The reason to encrypt the entire disk isn't to hide the contents of /usr/bin from the world, but to eliminate the possibility of mistakes leading to information leakage.
Well, I want to install OS on an encrypted partition, the problem is that this partition does not take the whole disk, and in my understanding installers are usually not too happy about that,...
Well, I want to install OS on an encrypted partition, the problem is that this partition does not take the whole disk, and in my understanding installers are usually not too happy about that, since it's less safe, apparently. Anyway, I'll check it out
I'll be honest, I can't read this with a straight face with the amount of defence manoeuvring the author does.
Uh-huh
Mm-hmm
Sure, buddy, just put the knife down
As I said in another site, the author seems to just want to brag.
This is coming from a guy who likes to install Void via chroot using lots of "ignorepkg" to get a minimal system. I do because I like to do it, I love to thinker and the less things I have, the less my system breaks (it never broke).
But my system never broke too when I was using Fedora KDE some time ago.
There are no real advantages on running something so small and "minimalist". With KDE I simply have everything working and don't have to deal with strange picom behaviours, don't have to write weird .asoundrc config, mess with bizarre udev rules to have my smartphone mount without relying on gvfs/kio and etc.
This distro is simple? It is not.
I have a Bluetooth speaker that I love and not using it would be a no-no.
Even in Void I had to compromise and install pulseaudio because of it. Have you ever tried Bluetooth with just alsa? Good luck.
There is a good middle ground and while I like KISS (or the idea of), having to maintain the packages myself and doing all this work for no return is just too much and against my idea of simple. Which we can agree is extremely subjetive and it became a meaningless word in the Linux world. So many people call Arch simple and minimal, but for me it's extremely bloated.
Void, for me, is the best distro out there. I love Gentoo too, but I don't see the point anymore after using Void and I think the Gentoo underlying mechanisms are "bloated" in a sense. The heavy use of Python for some things is bad and portage is slow as molasses, which I can understand since the thing it does is so complex.
Anyway, I'm just ranting right now. The point is: I don't think the author will stay in this distro for years, nor most of it's users.
I hate the term, but this distro is the very definition of a meme distro and I still like it and find an inspiration. These "extremisms" helps put things in perspective sometimes.
The creator is well aware of this and described their interpretation of KISS in https://k1ss.org/faq. Arch, on the other hand, aims to be simple for the developers, hence why it doesn't split development files and such (it is not minimal, though).
I want to note that the distro's author is an extreme minimalist in everything. He does not own any piece of technology other than his laptop, not even a phone, and thus he has no problems regarding stuff like Bluetooth; it seems that his laptop went out of commission and thus he hasn't been online in April at all. He moved to a remote village in Greece with little technology specifically to rely on it less. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by meme here, but my point is that this is actually in line with and serious for him.
I really like the ideas behind KISS, and I think dylanarap's work with bash is inspiring -- but I don't know if I have the gumption to install a bare-bones linux distro any more. I'm running Void right now, just because it's what I last installed. My microphone doesn't work which is a pain with all this social-distancing-induced online communication.
On the one hand, I have time now to set up a new os on my laptop; on the other, I don't know if (a) I want to or (b) if it would be KISS or BSD or Ubuntu even.
Yes, this distro is designed to be very opinionated, and really strives to get as minimal as possible; for example, I think they rewrote a Perl script to keep it from base. However, the idea is that it's easier to add things than remove them.
Repositories are simply Git repositories and the "main" repository is nothing special. It's just the default, and you can easily replace it or add another one on top of it (this is managed by
KISS_PATH, which acts likePATH) and package what you want; someone even packagedsystemd,glibc, the whole standard "bloat". But it's no secret that the community is still extremely opinionated and bash (well, both in the shell and the word) a lot of things.Overall, this distro intentionally isn't for everyone, and there's nothing wrong if you don't want to use it. I often hang around in the IRC channel—mostly for discussing dylan's other projects, but I also often jump in on KISS conversations—and people often assume I use it, but I don't, because it isn't for me (I'll probably try it sometime, though). :)
I read the comments on Lobsters, and thought they made really good points. I've run into some of that weird antagonism with minimalist projects personally, and it's a weird thing. I wonder if it's due to the fact that the choice is, basically, ideological: e.g. systemd works, and the biggest reason not to use it as far as I can tell is that it doesn't conform to the Unix philosophy. And maybe it'll become corporateware since it's run by Redhat.
As I said in my other comment, in this case, it's justified by the philosophy that it's easier to add things than remove them. systemd has more features that software can rely on, and therefore
would be hard to switch to another init system if used by default, while the other way around is much, much easier ("just works", I think) and has been done already in KISS.
But it's also true that dylan and most of the KISS community are very ideological and I'm pretty sure this would have been done anyway without that reason.
Good point on systemd. I think what I was getting at is that, regardless of ideology, it works: it makes the computer do what you want it to do. It's just not very "clean" or "pure". Which I think is my main critique of the philosophy in KISS or Crux or the nixers community...there's an obsession with purity, which I actually get, and have fallen into, but also have noticed that for me it can lead to obsessive reinstalls to the detriment of work. But that's my personal journey, too.
I use awesomewm and an xprofile with Lightdm.
I have pavucontrol, too, and I've messed around with different input settings. The internal mic doesn't pick anything up, and when I've tried plugging in an external mic the computer only recognizes it as headphones...I have one of those combo jacks.
Thanks for the suggestions though! I'm totally open to trying any others.
Yeah -- I'll keep messing with it! Thanks.
How's Void treating you? I've been meaning to try it, but it kind of spooks me, since I only used simple to install distros like Fedora/Ubuntu. I mean, I did build my own rootfs with Buildroot, but that was for an embedded project, not for daily use. Do you use glibc or musl version?
I use glibc, and I like it fine! The package manager is quite fast. The documentation is quite lacking, however, past the installation step.
However, it's pretty similar, administration wise, to Arch: the biggest differences are the packaging and init systems. I've been doing one kind or another of a diy Linux system for a while, but it's really not hard. Just a lot of steps to check off. Computers are complicated!
I'd recommend building a system from scratch, at least on a VM. It's a good learning experience.
That's what I figured, but it's nice to see a confirmation
Seriously? Honestly I can’t tell anymore hahah, I reasoned it came from “wat matig zeg,” for example. Keep in mind Dutch is my second language!
Go for it. Use the glibc version.
If you want, Void has a simple installer so you can have a working system just like the live iso you download. Just choose local install and use the defaults.
The thing that stopped me from installing it on my laptop is the hard drive encryption. I'm not sure, but I believe it's quite cumbersome to install Void to an encrypted partition (as opposed to encrypted hard drive as a whole: I use dual boot with Windows and my laptop does not have a slot for a second drive). Do you have any experience with that?
I don't do full encryption. I install the OS and /home on my SSD without encryption and just encrypt my entire HDD and mount it on /home/user/data. The HDD is where i store pics and sensitive information so this works for me.
This is fine, but you—and everyone else considering this arrangement—should be aware that you leak a crapton of metadata (almost certainly including things like thumbnails and detailed file histories) of the files in your encrypted partition as the software you use does bookkeeping in your unencrypted home partition. (Even if you encrypt
/home, plenty of stuff gets leaked in/var, as well.) The reason to encrypt the entire disk isn't to hide the contents of/usr/binfrom the world, but to eliminate the possibility of mistakes leading to information leakage.Yeah i know, but it's a compromise i'm willing to make for now. It's not super sensitive information.
Well, I want to install OS on an encrypted partition, the problem is that this partition does not take the whole disk, and in my understanding installers are usually not too happy about that, since it's less safe, apparently. Anyway, I'll check it out