Re: [dwm] musca wm

On May 15, 2009, at 11:07 PM, Preben Randhol <randhol_AT_pvv.org> wrote:

> On Fri, 15 May 2009 17:06:45 +0200
> pancake <pancake_AT_youterm.com> wrote:
>
>> Actually i'm happy with arch linux, but, i really miss a non-gnu
>> linux and minimalistic distribution. We should get a look on
>> alternatives for glibc (google one? uclibc? ..) but maybe the biggest
>> rock we will face it will be the X server...this is probably one of
>> the interesting projects to work on, but without keeping the X
>> compatibility.
>
> Any reason why you need a non-gnu distro? I don't see how that would
> make things suckless. I would wish for a perl-free world, but it would
> probably not happen any time soon.
>
Gnu software is bloated by definition. You only need to take the
'true' program. Just type strings /bin/true :)

I like perl but I agree but it is big for most of uses, but is fast
and powerful. I would prefer to use nqp or miniperl which are minimal
versions of p5 and p6 compiled at build time to compile itself and do
some processing stuff that makes the build process more handful and
controllable than using make.

It is a huge sw, but miniperl is cool :)

About busybox.. The reason to be a single binary with aliases is to
memory usage. The problem maybe is that it ships program we will
probably not use, but it is something to be ignorable on current hw.

If you ever tried to build glibc,gdb,gcc,binutils... You will
understand what I want a minimal distro.

About vim, I like it but I really think that lot of features like
screen handling, colors, ctags, should be external. Pipes are
powerful, and speed can be pretty good if the core is smart enought.

Using a prefork or similar technique done by apache f.ex can really
accelerate such tasks, so a minimal vi editor with nice features can
be really achieved by delegating all such features to external apps or
libraries

> Anyway, it is easy to say that something is bloat, but when you cannot
> dictate the development of hardware, don't expect things not to be
> complicated.
>

Suckless hardware will be the next step :P

> I find rewriting existing software to make it smaller is seldomly a
> productive way. Invent something different and novel in stead.
>
What minimalistic sw offers to me is new point of view, because it is
based on constant refactoring and brainstorming.

We need new things, that's true, but we also need to build them on top
of a decent base system.

Or at least is what I think. And I know that it is not an easy task,
but we are enought people to organize or discuss such kind of projects.
>
Received on Sat May 16 2009 - 01:31:24 UTC