Linux Envy
Note This was written ages ago, well before the previous website took a crap and before I did finally move back to a Window Manager. I publish this here because patrons have had it for ages, so now you do too.
Wouldn’t it be nice to use everything all the time? Maybe it’s just me, but I see other people trying out neat new things, and I have a bit of envy for their experiences. It’s one of the reasons, at least initially, I was excited to try NixOS. I hear so many people say awesome things about what they’ve done on Nix, it had to be good, right?
Well I did try it for 9 months, and it was okay, but not as good as people told me. I suppose the lesson there is that we’re not all the same, and therefore won’t always like the same things. Yada, yada, yada.
But there are other things. Drew over at Just A Guy Linux, and the new podcast co-host, is doing awesome things with DWM and I remember how much fun I had with DWM back in the day. So, I think maybe I should go use that a bit. I see others do awesome things with Hyprland and Gnome and KDE, and you name it, and I think wow, I should try that.
I think the end result is, for me, I end up doing nothing cool. I used to rice, tweak my setup, and create cool scripts to go alongside. Now I use KDE. Hell, I’m even using the Breeze theme. When did I get so boring?
It’s affected my content, too. I’ve had a harder time coming up with topics that are new and fresh lately, and part of that is that all I do at my computer anymore, or so it seems, is do my day job. That doesn’t involve anything to do with Linux, and never really inspires me to make content on this side of the fence.
So, yes, I have some envy for people who are doing exciting things on Linux. I feel a bit left out. Obviously, this is no one’s fault but my own, and I can easily fix it, but it is still how I’ve been feeling lately.
It’s a slump.
It’s one of the reasons why in the latest (as of writing) Patron Pod, I talk about moving back to Xorg. Back when I was an i3 user or a DWM user, I felt like I had way more fun with Linux than I do now. Now I take challenges to use one thing for a long period of time, and that has limited my exposure to new things. Not that I plan on leaving openSUSE or anything, but I have been pretty tied to KDE/Gnome for the last six months, and that has stifled, at least it seems, my enjoyment of Linux.
If you remember back, I blamed it on Gnome. I think that may have been a Patron Pod too, so referencing it for everyone doesn’t make sense (you should subscribe to Patreon if you want to hear me ramble about this stuff), but over there I talked once about how Gnome was just boring, too stable, and it made me not enjoy using my computer. Yeah, turns out it wasn’t Gnome’s fault at all. I’m just bored, period.
The question is, if I go and do cool things in a window manager, pick up scripting again, and ricing, and all that rot, will it cure my boredom? Or will it just make me less productive in my day job? I don’t know the answer to that question. But I do know that some things need to change. I need to feel inspired by Linux again, and the current state of things is preventing that.
How I go about fixing it? I don’t know yet. I’ll be sure to keep you updated.
Matt