Introduction
In a recent post on misc@openbsd.org Ingo Schwarze, an OpenBSD developer, wrote as follows.
I waste time whenever i have to select anything from any kind of menu, select any icon from any kind of iconbox or desktop background, select any file or directory from any file selection dialogue, or have to click any icon in any dialogue box.
I prefer typing commands and use as little menus, clickable icons, selection lists, and dialogue boxes as possible because it is faster, simpler, and requires less looking at the screen.
My feeling exactly. I favour the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle in computing, although it took me a long time to realise this fully. But looking back I see it’s a continuing trend.
MS-DOS to Linux
I got my first PC in 1992 to replace an Amstrad PCW, if anyone remembers that. The PC came with MS-DOS and Windows 3.0, which was replaced almost immediately by Windows 3.1. I didn’t upgrade. I didn’t see much point in Windows and continued to use DOS until, at some point in the 1990s, I began to experiment with Linux. After an initial unsuccessful attempt to use Slackware I tried Red Hat and got on better with that.
I knew nothing about Unix at this stage; in fact, I still knew very little about computers in general. But I was beginning to enjoy the intellectual challenge they offered and that was what drew me to Linux. At this time it was pretty much entirely reliant on the command line, but this wasn’t a problem for me because I was used to it from DOS and in fact preferred it. But the lack of word processors was a different matter.
Linux and word processors
My practical reason for using a computer was as a writing tool for books and articles. In my Amstrad and DOS days I’d had a word processor called Protext which I liked, but it wasn’t available for Linux. In fact, there weren’t any real word processors for Linux at the time; you pretty much had to use either Emacs or Vim. I tried both and eventually settled on Vim. Some people disliked it because it is modal (you have to alternate between Insert mode to write the text and Normal mode to modify it), but that didn’t worry me because Protext is also modal.
I still use Vim all the time, even though there are now plenty of word processors and similar programs available to me. The only one I have any use for is LyX, which I’ve used to produce seven books, but even there I usually write my text first in Vim and then paste it into LyX for final editing before printing.
Desktop environments and window managers
Together with the switch to Linux I also began to use the graphics mode, and that led me to explore the world of desktop environments. KDE and Gnome intrigued me at first but gradually I realised that I didn’t need or want either of them. Eventually I settled for a simple stacking window manager, IceWM, and was happy with that for a long time, until I tried tiling window managers. Since then I’ve been sold on them; nothing would persuade me to go back to a stacking WM. My favouring tiling WM, as I’ve explained elsewhere, is Spectrwm. (See my previous blog for details.)
From Linux to OpenBSD
I’d long had a curiosity about the Unix philosophy and I tried out FreeBSD, a couple of times, but found it rather frustrating and always went back to Linux. Then I tried OpenBSD, simply from curiosity. Over a period of about six months I became completely hooked, and six years later I still am.
The transition from Linux to OpenBSD was probably easier for me because the Linux distribution I was coming from was Arch, which is often said to be the most Unix-like version of Linux. I very much doubt I shall change my operating system again. Ths Unix philosophy is based on KISS and that’s what suits me.
Conclusion
Looking back now over almost 30 years of messing about with computers (and doing some proper work with them in the process, obviously!) I see that there has been a gradual but quite definite progression towards simplification and minimalism. I know that at least some other people have had a similar experience. If that’s your case I hope you may find these jottings of interest.
A taste for minimalism in computing probably reflects a more general attitude to other things in life. I’ve written a post about that as well.
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