
Linux Desktop Setup - def-
https://hookrace.net/blog/linux-desktop-setup/
======
Vinnl
Everyone here scoring serious brownie points with their advanced setups. And
here I am, having used Linux for my personal setup for 15 years, using pre-
installed Ubuntu on a practically default GNOME desktop. It's wonderful that I
can do that and be satisfied with that, without significantly hampering the
possibility of advanced setups like the ones here.

Despite all the systemd's, PulseAudio's and whatnot's, the customisability is
still far greater than it is on OS X and Windows, and we can sometimes fail to
appreciate that.

~~~
ktpsns
Absolutely second that. I also had my nerd times when I dedicated every free
minute to Gentoo compiling, or to configure my screenrc, Xorg.conf, make
menuconfig or whatever was in fashion. But in the end, it's an OS, a GUI, it's
the basis for getting real work done. I used xfce, GNOME, KDE, it all gets the
job done. But somehow I can no more get enthusiastic about spending hours for
configuring a tiling WM like Xmonad. I just cannot seem the benefit behind the
steep learning curve. And I use my touchpad and my trackpoint. Sorry for
that...

~~~
perttir
This is why most of people love i3 as tiling wm. Just put it in top of
gnome/xfce/whatever, run the first installation wizard and you are done.

~~~
karussell
On Gnome I can use "Super key" \+ left key if I need multiple aligned windows
on my screen. Can you still convince me to try i3 :) ?

~~~
opan
You can change window focus from the keyboard, have more than two equally-
sized windows, split in both directions, control the wm via i3-msg commands,
autostart programs easily.

~~~
Zhyl
I've been getting into i3, but I haven't made any use of i3-msg yet. Are there
any good tutorials to get started?

~~~
vondur
Check out Luke Smith. He has a few good tutorials on i3. He’s at lukesmith.xyz

------
javipas
I'm always kind of amazed at this kind of desktop setups, and I guess they're
not suitable for lots of people for the simple reason that most users have a
"consumer" relationship with computers and not a "producer" one.

My biggest question here for people with this kind of text setup would be:
don't you surf the web? Do you use then lynx or another text web browser? What
about services and platforms that are designed from scratch with images and
video as a prominent part of that UI? (Twitter, Facebook, Amazon store for
example)?

I guess you simply switch to a visual browser and some visual tool to play
video (vlc, mplayer), but I'm curious and I wonder if that text/keyboard mode
can be satisfying or convincing for users that are used on the traditional
visual UI with windows, icons and the mouse paradigm.

I see the advantages here (OP mentions some of them), but I wonder if the
trade offs for the normal user are to big to work in this kind of setup. Who
would you recommend this to?

~~~
jstanley
It's not all-or-nothing. Just because you use a tiling window manager and like
to operate it with the keyboard doesn't mean you can't use your mouse any
more.

I used to use i3, and I used Firefox for browsing.

I used the keyboard to layout the windows where it was more convenient, but I
clicked on buttons with a mouse when that was more convenient.

I now use the standard Ubuntu setup, not for any particular reason, just
because it's the default. I often miss being able to conveniently layout
terminal windows with just a few keystrokes. Trying to keep terminal windows
neatly tiled with a non-tiling window manager is so annoying that I don't even
bother.

~~~
karussell
> I often miss being able to conveniently layout terminal windows

You should be able to do that using the "Super key" \+ e.g. left or right

~~~
jstanley
Left and right does nothing, up and down just changes it from maximised to
non-maximised.

------
mseidl
I'm a veteran of Linux for 23 years, and been Windows free for 15 years or so.
I love Linux. I love my lightweight i3 setup. Neovim, neomutt, weechat,
ncmpcpp...

~~~
virtualwhys
> I love my lightweight i3 setup

It's been so many years and I often take for granted what's before my eyes --
i3 is solidly in the "pry it from my cold dead hands" category.

~~~
xyproto
Until you switch to sway, which is basically i3, but for Wayland. Good bye
X11!

~~~
RandomGuyDTB
What's the appeal behind Wayland? I've been using X for a while now (linux
n00b) and I really enjoy having everything like this, there even are a couple
apps I use specifically for X11.

~~~
mgbmtl
It's not perfect, but personally I appreciate the better security model of
Wayland. Although it can be annoying if you have to do
screensharing/recording. On my older laptop, it also feels more responsive.

~~~
antongribok
I'm on Wayland via Fedora, and we use Zoom for company video conferencing.
About 2 months ago they released a new version that started supporting screen
sharing on Wayland. Works perfectly.

Edited for grammar and to add this:

My point being is that it's slowly but surely getting better and better.

~~~
martinsb
Which version are you using right now? I have the latest one and it does not
allow me to share anything else than a white canvas. Do you launch zoom
somehow differently? For me it behaves like a regular XWayland app

~~~
antongribok
zoom-2.7.162522.0121-1.x86_64 which seems to be their latest.

With the previous version I had the same thing, only allowed me to share white
canvas.

Here's the process hierarchy:

    
    
      \_ gdm-session-worker [pam/gdm-password]
          \_ /usr/libexec/gdm-wayland-session gnome-session
              \_ /usr/libexec/gnome-session-binary
                  \_ /usr/bin/gnome-shell
                      \_ /usr/bin/zoom
                          \_ sh -c export SSB_HOME=/home/me/.zoom; export QSG_INFO=1; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/zoom; /opt/zoom/zoom ""
                              \_ /opt/zoom/zoom
    
    

Besides installing the new RPM, I haven't done anything differently.

~~~
martinsb
Sadly I'm not able to test this since I'm not running Fedora and GNOME. I'm
using sway. Interestingly enough, Zoom change log does not seem to mention
anything related to Wayland support: [https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-
us/articles/205759689-New-Upda...](https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-
us/articles/205759689-New-Updates-for-Linux). Thank you for your comment, will
try this in GNOME some time.

------
jccalhoun
Every time I have to use the slow windows computers at the college I teach at
I wish they would put a lightweight linux on them. I wouldn't go full command
line but all I'm doing is a browser and word processing. A chromeos-like
experience would be fine. Of course what really kills my work computer is the
anti-virus. I f I could just disable that then the computer would be a lot
more usable.

~~~
ForHackernews
Can you just boot off a live USB? I used to do that on lab computers at my
university.

~~~
jccalhoun
I was doing that for a couple months but the tech guy detected it and told me
not to do it...

~~~
ForHackernews
Your university has a more paranoid or more competent IT department than mine
did.

------
_e
The author mentions the loss of vim-like web browser controls when the
Pentadactyl extension didn't convert over to the webextensions api.

You get the vim functionality back with the following extensions:

Firefox -- Vim Vixen ([https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vim-
vixen/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vim-vixen/))

Chrome -- cVim
([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cvim/ihlenndgcmojh...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cvim/ihlenndgcmojhcghmfjfneahoeklbjjh))

~~~
mgbmtl
A bit tangential, but would you know if there is an extension that would
provide Vim bindings only in textfields? I really miss not being able to use
regular expressions (or simple search) in a plain text input.

~~~
davewongillies
Wasavi does exactly what you want:

[http://appsweets.net/wasavi/](http://appsweets.net/wasavi/)

[https://github.com/akahuku/wasavi](https://github.com/akahuku/wasavi)

~~~
mgbmtl
wow, this extension is awesome! Thank you!

------
Symmetry
Once upon a time I ran a very minimal setup with using awesome. Tiling windows
were great but I found I missed some things that Gnome had done for me. So I'm
back on Gnome but replaced Metacity with XMonad, which was a surprisingly easy
change. That was back in 2012. Since then there's a lot of churn in Ubuntu
with first Unity then Gnome 3. But it hasn't taken that much work to keep
everything trucking along, especially thanks to gekkio's PPA that now does
most of the work in getting xmonad integrated with Gnome.

I might change one or two things every year, moving from gnome terminal to
kitty recently, for instance, but I'm happy with my setup and it's served me
well.

[https://github.com/aclough/dotfiles](https://github.com/aclough/dotfiles)

~~~
clinta
I do something similar, but running plasma, replacing kwin with i3. I think a
solid desktop environment with a tiling window manager is the best of both
worlds.

------
pi-rat
It's been about 10 years since I used linux on the desktop. I notice this post
on the front page and think: "Great! Let's have a look at what a modern linux
desktop can look like.."

Oh.. It looks exactly like running a high resolution VGA-mode console with
tmux and no X. :P

(Probably very effective though!)

~~~
sevensor
Eye candy remains available. One of the things I love about Linux on the
desktop is that you're free to use that stuff or not, according to personal
taste. And personally, I find that eye candy reduces the space available for
text, which is much more information-dense. A screenshot from my machine would
look much like the one in the article.

~~~
jolmg
> I find that eye candy reduces the space available for text

Not all eye-candy does that. Some years ago, because I missed having some eye-
candy, I installed a compositor, made my windows translucent and got them to
do opening and closing animations. I also put a screensaver as a moving
background. It looked very cool and was just as information dense as it was
originally. However, with so much eye-candy, it was hard to focus on the
content and I felt my eyes strained. I ended up feeling much better when I
turned it all off.

Right now, I don't even have a background, but I find information-dense
tiling-wm setups have their own aesthetics. If you asked me what looked cooler
/ better / more usable, a "modern" GUI (like Windows, OSX, or Ubuntu's
default) or a tiling-wm setup with mainly terminal windows, I'd have to say
it's the latter.

------
jpmattia
Background: Started using vtwm back in the early 90s, then on linux once it
became viable. I now have a muscle memory associated with switching and
manipulating virtual desktops to the point that I can't even tell you what
keys I'm hitting without thinking about it.

Whenever a linux-windows-setup post appears on the HN or reddit front page, I
look at it with interest, and then realize that there's no way I'd achieve any
productivity gains in a reasonable time.

So maybe the moral of the story is: Choose correctly the first time, because
you might be using your wm until you become an old guy/gal too set in your
ways to even think about switching.

------
Insanity
I've been using Linux at home without any windows installation for a couple of
years, and about 11 years in dual-boot. But my installation resembles a
'windows' computer much more.

I use xfce, but most of my time is spend in a terminal with tmux running for
the window configuration. Though, I do have some 'snaps' installed. (Discord,
Spotify). So I'm not running entirely inside of the terminal.

For me, this balance is perfect, for any serious work I can just use the
terminal/tmux/vim setup, and for relaxing I just have spotify, discord,
youtube,.. open on a second monitor.

As for distro, I'm running Debian. I've tried a few others (openSUSE, Fedora,
Ubuntu, #!) and by far #! was my favourite for some time, but when it
discontinued I went for Debian. I should check out BunsenLabs :)

------
psynapse
Nice setup.

A while back I moved to Arch with Xmonad, dmenu, tmux etc, but for about a
year now, my workstation has been the same tools on top of Ubuntu Server. I
have an Ansible playbook that I can apply to a fresh install and have almost
my whole working environment ready to go - just a few things I haven't got
around to including/automating.

The great thing about running this kind of setup is that you need a deeper
understanding of Linux to do all the things that you would otherwise rely on a
fully-fledged DE to do for you. For me, this has translated into greater
fluency on servers, because my daily driver more closely resembles one.

~~~
brightball
I use Ubuntu + Ansible too and love it.

------
0x38B
Off topic, but I really enjoyed his post about commuting to work by bike[1]. I
was in Krakow, Poland, and getting around by bike was a joy. Unfortunately,
here in Ukraine drivers are very aggressive and the infrastructure for biking
is just not in place.

1: [https://hookrace.net/blog/cycling-to-
work/](https://hookrace.net/blog/cycling-to-work/)

~~~
antongribok
The video of the small airfield on that page is awesome!

Reminds me of Gibraltar Airport:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58jaCJ5i9hU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58jaCJ5i9hU)

~~~
def-
Indeed, I'm not even mad when I have to interrupt my commute to let a plane
land or take off. Fun to watch every time.

------
Lapsa
I'm heading in similar direction. also using Arch Linux, VIM. do like i3 &
tmux, using suckless terminal (I like terminal in true colors). and tend to
favor default settings everywhere unless really really forced. installation
takes couple hours (IF you know how) - lasts for eternity.

~~~
adambyrtek
Most modern terminals support true color now [1]. My current favourite is
Alacritty because of the combination of speed (hardware acceleration),
simplicity (no menus or dialogs), and configurability (including key bindings)
with a simple plain-text file that can be kept in version control [2].

[1]
[https://gist.github.com/XVilka/8346728](https://gist.github.com/XVilka/8346728)
[2]
[https://github.com/adambyrtek/dotfiles](https://github.com/adambyrtek/dotfiles)

------
agurk
He has got a nice setup, especially as he's able to choose all of his own
software. I've been using Linux as a primary OS since the 90's but I still
need to interact with Windows for work.

I used to dual boot my work laptop, which was made easier by Office 365
webapps becoming more usable, but still there were lots of gaps.

This summer I got a new work laptop, and just cloned the existing M.2 drive
onto a bigger, faster one I purchased. Now I run the work laptop as a VM image
through QEMU/KVM on top of my regular Debian desktop.

This works remarkably well, and has improved my workflow a lot as I now never
have to dual boot. Windows even runs faster this way, due to the faster M.2
drive. I'm not sure how I'm going to explain it to the IT department if I ever
have to get the laptop repaired though.

~~~
Phenix88be
> I've been using Linux as a primary OS since the 90's but I still need to
> interact with Windows for work.

My current job force me to use a Windows computer. You know, it's the company
policy. Well it's the last time I take a job witch doesn't let me control my
computer and use GNU/Linux. It feel like I m using the wrong tool for my job.
Like use a stone to put nail instead of a hammer.

~~~
sfopdxnonstop
LOL I have a "Don't Want" section on my resume that says no Windows. And I
found such a job! I program on a Mac.

~~~
Phenix88be
This is a really good idea !

------
afraca
Slightly offtopic: the author says the background of
[https://hisham.hm/htop/](https://hisham.hm/htop/) shows live statistics,
that's not the case as far as I can tell, just 4 pre-recorded images shown
successively.

Ontopic: Quite impressive setup. For me it would be too strictly regulated for
a comfortable use, though technically I like it. To each it's own.

~~~
amdavidson
From the htop page:

    
    
      Thanks to Alexander Waldeck for the idea of having htop
      itself as the page background! His page actually presents 
      a live htop session -- mine is just an animated gif with
      a few frames stolen from his page. :-)
    

The drunken-security.at page is offline as far as I can tell, but as I recall
it he eventually had to drop the htop background as people were DDOSing him to
see the results.

------
oblio
So his Linux desktop setup is basically the Linux terminal setup :)

------
emgee_1
Similarly: OS: openbsd (was slackware) WM: cwm Mail, file mgt, authoring:
emacs Agenda calendaring: orgmode Writing: latex Statistics: R ;-)

~~~
mruts
I really love cwm. It’s a really nice window manager. I used to use Emacs a
lot too, but now I just use mg for simple file editing and IntelliJ.

I switched from OpenBSD awhile ago to Linux because 1) OpenBSD is dog slow and
2) a lot of software doesn’t work right with it. However, it’s probably the
nicest operating system I’ve ever used.

------
Uplink
How does your setup work with a second monitor that comes and goes?

Use case: I have a laptop that I take everywhere for me, but I plug into a
second monitor while at work. I also use multiple desktops, and this pattern
is sometimes causing windows to jump to another desktop when disconnecting the
monitor.

~~~
jbjorge
I had the same issue using unity/gnome on a laptop with 1-3 monitors. After I
switched to i3 I was forced to set the monitor config manually with xrandr. I
set up keyboard shortcuts for switching between 1-3 monitors. This fixed all
the issues with automatic window placement since the window manager no longer
tries to do this in an automatic fashion.

Tiling window managers definitely have a learning curve, but after I spent a
weekend switching to one, I can't see myself ever wanting to go back to
floating windows.

------
adrianrocamora
Even though Pentadactyl is not under active development anymore, I'm pretty
happy with Vim-Vixen. It doesn't have "caret mode" (from what I can tell) but
the switch was very smooth. There are also a lot of other options for vi-
browsing for Firefox now.

------
jason_slack
I've been using Ubuntu on an Thinkpad L460 for about 9 months now full-time.
While there is a curve and I'm always looking for new ways to solve problems.
What running Linux has done for me that I didn't expect is to make sure all my
code plays nice with other projects.

Example: I've got processes that make models out of stock data and does
backtesting. Even though I use my own custom code for a lot of things, I make
sure that in the end if someone wants to dump into numpy/pandas they can in
just 2 lines.

I started out with Linux to use a free hand-me-down laptop and I stayed when
it was powerful and I could still make a living coding with it.

------
p4bl0
I have been using a very similar setup for 12 years now. In the past few
months I've been wondering what the Linux experience is like for newcomers and
"normal" users. I am considering doing a clean install with a full fledged
modern desktop environment such as KDE. I may not be able to manage such an
environment, I fear that it's too constrained compared to controlling
everything that runs on my computer. But I'd like to try.

Has anyone done a switch from very minimal keyboard first lightweight
environment to a modern desktop environment? If so, what was it like?

~~~
johnchristopher
I did. It feels good. The interactions are smoother, file managers are more
useful. Had to tweak some shortcuts to emulate some moves I am used to in
tiling managers.

I went from awesome to KDE (kubuntu 18.04lts).

I do webdev, cm and reports at the moment.

I believe the terminal only approach suits most sysadmin, devops and the like
; not your run off the mill wordpress dev.

~~~
p4bl0
In my current setup, I do not even have a file manager installed. I just use
the coreutils (cd, ls, mv, cp, rm, etc.).

I'm not doing webdev, I mostly program in different languages (Racket, OCaml,
C, and Python mostly) and write a lot of LaTeX. Most of my time is spent in
Emacs (it's also were I'm doing my emails) and Firefox.

In addition to graphical file managers, I'm also wondering what it's like to
use a mail client such as Thunderbird, Kmail, or Evolution.

~~~
johnchristopher
Graphical file managers are really good at managing pictures and random
arbitrary selections.

I am not using mail clients anymore, only webmail (I have a thunderbird
install at work that is used as some kind of back-up/dumpster). I don't spend
a lot of time in email or calendars though.

------
danilocesar
it's always surprises me that linux developers still care about ctags...

There are more powerful solutions and easier to setup (YouCompleteMe, for
example). I was completly sold out when I tried for the fist time a few years
ago. I was pretty happy to drop all my ctags's related scripts.

~~~
arendtio
Recently I came across [https://langserver.org](https://langserver.org)

To me, it looks like an upcoming solution to the 'code completion' problem.

~~~
jamesgeck0
Yep! First class Typescript support makes it great for Javascript development
too.

------
jancsika
> rem -m -b1 -q -cuc12 -w$(($(tput cols)+1)) | sed -e "s/\f//g" | less

Regarding composability:

Suppose I want to add the following to that calendar:

1\. two little emojis (or ASCII art) at the top to scroll among months. Bound
to left/right arrow keys, and also clickable with mouse. This is a common
feature of the calendar widgets I've seen.

2\. clickable mutable daily content. So if I peruse my calendar and spot an
error I can click to select, fix it, then click off it to update it.

Can this be achieved only using shell scripting?

------
hpaavola
My Linux desktop setup at work is latest Ubuntu LTS + Sublime Text + Spotify +
Docker. At home I use latest Ubuntu + Sublime Text + Spotify + Steam. If I
ever need to reinstall Ubuntu at home or work, I'l go with the minimal
installation option. I'm guessing that I get to go with the minimal
installation when I buy/get new laptop, since there is no reason to do a fresh
install otherwise.

------
wycy
> I quickly noticed the huge compile time of KDE, which made it a no-go for me

Is compile time of the desktop environment really a discriminating factor?

~~~
sfopdxnonstop
No. It's a virtue signal. Which is fine for him, just not a value shared by
you and me.

------
kyranjamie
Looks trivial to set up.

------
FerretFred
This is great fun. I'm running a very similar setup on a Raspberry Pi Zero W.
I can plug it into an HDMI screen to start it up but then I can just run it
headless via SSH.The "disk" size is 8Gb and my setup occupies 1.6Gb. 12 hours
battery life with a 6000mA/Hr battery...

------
ageofwant
r/unixporn can be a good source for ricing inspiration.

I can recommend the unaboomer's rice vids for a fun evening
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2eYFnH61tmytImy1mTYvhA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2eYFnH61tmytImy1mTYvhA)

------
mixmastamyk
Ubuntu Mate FTW, hit the tweak control panel and dark theme, done.

------
vpcsilva
Really nice setup. I'm using ubuntu for a little while and I'm hooked with the
idea of deeply customizing a linux setup to be energy efficient and highly
productive.

------
zaggynl
Cool setup, being able to mold your Linux desktop into what you need is a good
thing!

I'm happy on Ubuntu LTS with a couple PPAs for latest mesa and some other
applications.

More recreational though, gaming through Steam's Proton or Lutris, big thanks
to Valve for sponsoring wine, dxvk an various other bits and pieces!

------
Arbalest
I recently saw a thing about xmonad not under any circumstances being ported
to wayland, due to its very high level of integration with X. Which to me read
as, would require a rewrite rather than there can be no successor. Still,
someone does have to actually put in the work.

------
tutfbhuf
Try tmux, it works very nice together with vim. I can also recommend polybar.

------
accnumnplus1
Mine is tmux/vim, and firefox. If someone changed the rest of it, I'd think
something looked a little odd, but I'm not entirely sure if I'm using Mint
Mate or Mint Cinnamon.

------
faustocarva
Amazing amount of work spent in constructing an efficient workstation. Makes
me wonder what i am i doing with only custom .dotfiles. Clapping my hands

------
pojzon
Im surprised there were no changes to the default git diff and merge tools.

This is one of the first things i do on a new setup, to chane them to use
"meld".

~~~
fookitty
That's probably because he uses vim

~~~
pojzon
You can change those tools to any editor. Meld is just a popular option.

------
satysin
Great read. Only thing missing was the hardware. I am always interested to see
what kind of hardware people are running on.

~~~
p2t2p
It says Thinkpad x200

~~~
satysin
Doh how did I miss that!

Bit older than I was expecting. I had assumed a ThinkPad T series. Maybe a
T420 with the 1440x900 resolution.

------
purplezooey
Wish there were a terminal calendar program that could sync with O365.

------
moocowtruck
linux user/dev here since 1995, few years ago went back to windows.. never
looked back.. happier now I never have to worry about shit not working and
just do my kernel dev in different ways. I'm no longer interested in tons of
desktop config either, more interested in apps that can do more for me, with
less of me interacting with the computer to make that happen

~~~
rmujica
I've been developing on Windows for the past year, from a mixed OS X / Linux
background, and it has been a seamless experience, the only things I miss are
the ease of installing packages like Node or Redis or Postgres, but those are
done only the first time I boot up a new Windows installation so the pain is
amortized in the time I spend not worrying about random lockups or drivers not
working.

------
htor
this is a terminal, not a desktop. and it's really great at being that.

~~~
cmiles74
I disagree, I think that a terminal implies connection to a larger computer
that is doing most of the work. In this case all of the work is being done on
the local machine.

I do agree that this person has many terminal sessions open, but they are also
running Firefox, playing music, etc.

------
delta1
@def- small typo

> Since i’s a bitmap font

~~~
benj111
To be fair, the apostrophe indicates missing letters, so they've just missed
another letter, and the meaning is clear.

~~~
delta1
Indeed the meaning is clear, but I was letting the author know about it

------
sirusdas
Amazing article!

------
dewijones92
awesome setup

~~~
scbrg
Clearly you didn't read the article. It's an _xmonad_ setup ;-)

~~~
arendtio
For those who don't understand: [https://awesomewm.org](https://awesomewm.org)

------
lostjohnny
That's not a desktop setup.

It's much more complicated than the workstation setup I use at work.

A desktop setup is my Xiaomi laptop with Ubuntu 18.04 that I use as media
caster or to browse amazon while on the couch.

It works flawlessly, much better than the preinstalled Windows 10 in chinese.

~~~
dmos62
I don't see at all why you're saying it's not a desktop setup. It's obviously
a workstation computer with media capabilities. The word desktop implies
pretty much that. In contrast to desktop, there are portable computers and
servers. Today the difference between portable and desktop amounts to just
additional power management tools, so it's pretty much the same. So there's
just workstation and server, ignoring Androids, Google Chrome laptops, etc.
This is certainly not a server.

As to the content itself, the insights, configs and tools listed are great. My
setups have very similar objectives, but solving a lot of these mundane
problems can mean days, so I'm definitely saving this for later.

~~~
PurpleRamen
> It's obviously a workstation computer with media capabilities. The word
> desktop implies pretty much that.

What? No.

A desktop is a computer sitting on the top of your desk. And on the software-
side there is the Desktop Metaphor, which describes an interface that behaves
like the top of your desk, with free arrangement of all meaning of your work.

This article on the other side describes a workspace with multiple machines
and mostly no free arrangement of work-elements. So it's not fullfilling the
hardware-definition, and pretty weak on the software-definition.

This article is clearly about a workspace that blows beyond the classical
workspace-definition of a desktop. Which is good IMHO, but means we need
better namings for such things, and even if it's just for the sake to
distinguish different tools and workflows. We are now moving to integrate
Mobile Devices like iOS&Android into our workspaces, and on Windows-tablets we
have touch-interfaces which start to be very different from normal
mouse&keyboard-interfaces. And then there is also the classical terminal-
interface, which this article is very heavy leaning toward.

~~~
morganvachon
I don't understand the gatekeeping and deliberate misinformation in your post.

> A desktop is a computer sitting on top of your desk.

Besides the fact that the author indicated he's using a laptop hooked up to a
40" monitor, kind of necessitating the computer to be sitting on his desk, his
use of "desktop" in general is referring to his everyday workflow. For some
people, that's Windows and Windows specific apps. For others, it's macOS and
its specific apps. For yet others, it's a Linux or BSD desktop environment,
whether stock or customized. The fact that he's using a laptop as a
workstation does not magically render his established work environment
"mobile", and even if it did, he's still using a desktop environment of his
own making.

> This article on the other side describes a workspace with multiple machines
> and mostly no free arrangement of work-elements.

Maybe we're reading different articles, but I see no mention whatsoever of
what you're going on about. I see where he at one point mentions "multiple
computers", but this in no way invalidates his desktop environment and
software setup as violating some made-up rule about what is or isn't a
"desktop".

I currently use five computers at home not counting my iPhone: A HP EliteDesk
set up as a Windows gaming system, a Dell PowerEdge T310 server running
Slackware Linux, converted into a workstation by adding a GPU and sound card
and tweaking the BIOS, a mac Mini for music production and general Mac-
specific things, a Raspberry Pi 3B+ for experimenting with IoT, and a HP Elite
X2 convertible laptop for quick tasks away from my desk and occasional use at
work.

Now, according to your logic apparently I can't possibly have a "desktop"
setup because I use more than one computer, of more than one form factor, for
more than one task at a time, and not always glued to my desk. That's total
bullshit.

------
fxfan
In similar vein but vastly different:

Firefox + Tridactyl

i3 + i3bar + dmenu + rofi

dunst

Powershell instead of zsh

No desktop manager

~~~
neilsimp1
I have PowerShell installed on Linux, but I don't ever use it. Is that your
main shell? How does that work out for you on Linux?

~~~
fxfan
It's more powerful but lacks a bit in interactive features.

I use zsh for regular getting around and opening stuff but anything that needs
logic I do in pwsh.

------
mruts
I use cwm (initially from OpenBSD) and it’s pretty great. Zenburn terminal
colors with anti-aliased Consolas as my font.

I don’t understand why someone would prefer bitmapped fonts vs ttf. They
really hurt my eyes and look god awful...

