Mastodawn

#PSA: Do less.

There's a time to strive and perform, and a time to breathe and exist.

You don't have to self-host.
You don't have to run Linux (although I highly recommend not running Windows, and to a slightly lesser degree, not running MacOS).
You don't have to code.
You don't have to know all the things your friends know and consider to be "basic."

You can just be the very best you you can be.
Start with one little thing at a time. Focus on just one new good habit per week, or per month.

Life is short, but life is also really long. There's no reason to spend it angry or frustrated with yourself.

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Aug 27, 2025

Have any advice for those of us who hypothetically self-host so much they can't tell if the internet or their server is down, have run Linux-only for years, code frequently, and know nothing "basic" but everything "weird"? Asking for a friend.

@amin @rl_dane monitoring via gatus, uptime kuma or nagios on a separate server sending you alerts via ntfy

Of course...all self hostable.

Gatus and kuma will let you know if any of your services are down.
Of course you then run into the problem of "what monitors the monitor", so stick a minimal gatus/kuma on your main fleet that just does uptime checks on you monitoring service

Eaaaasy! 😆

@amin @rl_dane seems maybe I missed the context of the thread...
Apologies! 😆

I cannot help with making friends... 😂

I mean, does it say something about our crazy community that we didn't even miss a beat and just assumed that giving concrete technological recommendations was needed? XD

@rl_dane @amin not so sure about concrete... I tried to imply the solution is absolutely ludicrous, but necessarily ludicrous, because self-hosting is fun except when it isn't

Edit: but even then it still sort of is

And when it isn't, BOY HOWDY it isn't.

"Self hosting NextCloud is super easy! Just install this snap/Docker and make these few configuration changes..."
> "Ok, cool, it's working!"
> "Wait, now it won't start. What do I do?"
"Ellifiknow, you know how to troubleshoot a SQL database?"
> "Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh"

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Aug 27, 2025

No no no no I remember installing NextCloud via snap. It also installed all of gnome-desktop on my tiny VPS completely taking up all CPU cycles to the point I couldn't uninstall anything. I had to slowly run top (which responded super slowly) and kill all the processes.

Oh man, I remember Gnome bringing my computer to its knees circa 2019.

It was gnome-tracker. Killed EVERY box I ever ran Gnome on back in the day. Horrid.

And my little find script runs in (checks...) four seconds at the most once per hour, and the searches are faster than even krunner, using only grep.

How do they make this stuff so stinking BAD?!?

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Aug 27, 2025

GNOME 40 was actually pretty nifty. That was the moment I first fell in love with Linux.

38 was the last one I used, I think. I was kinda done with it when they announced the integer versioning scheme. I've always hated that.

@rl_dane @amin gnome after version 3 is stupid. Gnome 2 forever! Although, back then I was still primarily using xfce4.

sotolf Aug 28, 2025

@paul @rl_dane @amin Yeah, I stopped using Gnome when they moved from 2 to 3 it went from a totally usable desktop interface to a kindergarden tablet interface.

@sotolf @paul @amin

Highly opinionated software/projects are only ok when you opinion doesn't absolutely suck, and especially when that opinion isn't forced on the entire community as the default.

Nobody is yelling at "Hot Dog Linux" (that's actually a thing, named after the garish Windows 3.x theme) for being ugly, because it's not the default anywhere.

Somebody gets the great idea to make something crappy like Gnome 3 or systemd the default everywhere, and then the apologists have the gall to say crap like "You're not being FoRcEd to use it!" as if it's a trivial choice to move away from the defaults, especially when they're system components.

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Aug 28, 2025

@rl_dane @sotolf @paul

People in this thread are forgetting that I actually liked the DE you're all saying no one likes and it was the reason I first fell in love with Linux.

sotolf Aug 28, 2025

@amin @rl_dane @paul Well, you didn't experience the great thing we had before ;)

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Aug 28, 2025

@sotolf @rl_dane @paul

I've seen pictures, and it would not have caught my attention at the time.

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Aug 28, 2025

@sotolf @rl_dane @paul

It looks like Windows (based on the screenshots I'm seeing) and I was in a mindset of avoiding anything that even resembled anything I remembered from Windows.

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Aug 28, 2025

@sotolf @rl_dane @paul

MATE is a fork of GNOME 2, no? I've tried that. Not my thing.

sotolf Aug 28, 2025

@amin @rl_dane @paul I haven't used DEs really since the GNOME 2 days, so I can't really tell you :)

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Aug 28, 2025

@sotolf @rl_dane @paul

Wikipedia says yes.

@amin @sotolf @paul

It is, although they've tried to bring it to more modern times, with varying success.

@amin @sotolf @paul

One thing it has that I don't think any other linux DE has is searchable menus. That's a killer feature, when it works.

mirabilos Aug 28, 2025

@rl_dane @paul @amin @sotolf evilwm
also has searchable menus

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mostly by not having any menus to search

sotolf Aug 28, 2025

@amin @rl_dane @paul If you didn't change it around, kinda, yeah, but with compiz and some theming it could look great :0

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Aug 28, 2025

@sotolf @rl_dane @paul

I was coming from Windows, I wouldn't have known how to do any of that stuff. I was looking for something that would grab my attention out of the box. GNOME 3.8-ish was good enough for me to stay, but it's GNOME 40 that really floored me.

@sotolf @amin @paul

RIP Compiz

@amin @sotolf @paul

I don't have a problem with the DE itself. That's a matter of taste, preference, and workflow.

Its everything else about it that wigs me out. Culture, structure, governance.

Somehow these types of conversations always go sideways due to semantics. Sometimes due to subterfuge, but mostly just honest miscommunication.

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Aug 28, 2025

@rl_dane @sotolf @paul

I haven't looked too much into that side but I've liked what I've seen.

Gerva Aug 28, 2025

@amin @rl_dane @sotolf @paul I use and like gnome. #NoRegerts

@amin @sotolf @paul

I may be way off base, but everything I've seen from that community has been corporate-level insufferable smugness.

sotolf Aug 28, 2025

@rl_dane @amin @paul Yup, that's the same here, so at least you're not alone about that.

@sotolf @amin @paul

This kind of crap used to just incense me. Now I just roll my eyes. --

https://islinuxabout.xyz/systray/

Is Linux About SysTray?

Popular desktop environments have dropped the legacy concept of a SysTray. Here’s a list of newer, capable, cross-desktop APIs to use instead.

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Aug 28, 2025

@rl_dane @sotolf @paul

Hm. That's not what I've seen browsing GNOME Planet or reading the HIG, but it's possible.

@amin @sotolf @paul

I mean, the HIG is fine, I guess, but that's just a document.

And I guess the latter is their forum or whatever, and yeah, I'm sure you'll find some helpful people on there being helpful.

But what about the way they've silenced people and ejected people from their org with zero transparency. (Don't ask me for deets, the last thing I want to do is go look up a lunduke article X'D )

What about their dismissive and condescending attitude towards their own users, saying "for the love of God, don't change this, it breaks my workflow!"

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Aug 28, 2025

@rl_dane @sotolf @paul

And I guess the latter is their forum or whatever, and yeah, I'm sure you'll find some helpful people on there being helpful.

No, no, haha, "GNOME Planet" is essentially a combined feed of the blogs of GNOME designers/programmers. Similar terminology is used by a lot of other projects for similar combined feeds. (For example, Planet Debian: https://planet.debian.org/ )

Planet Debian

sotolf Aug 28, 2025

@amin @rl_dane @paul Of course they are treating the people they agree with well, others that don't follow their dogma and their patterns, not as much..

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Aug 29, 2025

@sotolf @rl_dane @paul

It's just unfiltered articles from RSS feeds of anyone marked as an official developer (and I think possibly from devs of some apps in the ecosystem). 🤷

@amin @sotolf @paul

I've spoken to at least one official dev on here, and while the conversation was mostly cordial, his attitude was a bit much.

Ask @tripplehelix, he probably remembers the convo.

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Aug 29, 2025

@rl_dane @sotolf @paul @tripplehelix

I don't actually have any beef in either direction (I am beefless—vegetarian, even); I don't use GNOME anymore or plan to use it in the forseeable future.

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Aug 29, 2025

@rl_dane @sotolf @paul @tripplehelix

I'm more likely to code my own WM than go back to GNOME.

@amin @sotolf @paul @tripplehelix

You mean compositor, right?

Or are you tilting at the Wayland windmill with your trusty steed X11ocinante?

Because I'd be down to watch that movie. XD

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Aug 29, 2025

@rl_dane @sotolf @paul @tripplehelix

I've toyed with the thought of making an actual window manager but it wouldn't be very compatible with… basically any existing programs. I have a concept but it's not very practical.

@amin @sotolf @paul @tripplehelix

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Aug 29, 2025

@rl_dane @sotolf @paul @tripplehelix

I wrote up some specs in highschool when I was supposed to be working… of course, because I wrote it then, it would've been NodeJS-based.

@amin @sotolf @paul @tripplehelix

* shrivels up into a unix-loving prune and weeps acid tears

mirabilos Aug 29, 2025

@rl_dane @amin @sotolf @paul @tripplehelix better shrivel up into a mulberry, prunes aren’t healthy for nearby cats to eat

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Aug 29, 2025

@mirabilos @rl_dane @sotolf @paul @tripplehelix

MULBERRIES!!!!

ooooooooooor as RL knows I call 'em, toot!

sotolf Aug 29, 2025

@amin @mirabilos @rl_dane @paul @tripplehelix They are called molter in Norwegian, if we are talking about the same berries, those orange yellowish ones that grow in swamplands?

@mirabilos @amin @sotolf @paul @tripplehelix

Good to know. Also, I love mulberries. ALSO, the Persian word for mulberry is TOOT! XD

(Totally channeling my inner Janet, there, à la #TheGoodPlace XD )

mirabilos Aug 29, 2025

@rl_dane @amin @sotolf @paul @tripplehelix (I just searched for shrivelled-looking fruit that a somewhat reliable site (I hope) says is not directly toxic to Mira)

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Aug 29, 2025

@rl_dane @mirabilos @sotolf @paul @tripplehelix

YAAAAAAAAAS

There were so many mulberry trees where we lived.

sotolf Aug 29, 2025

@amin @rl_dane @paul @tripplehelix Hopefully you're still on X, because making "just" a window manager on Wayland is not possible.

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Aug 29, 2025

@sotolf @rl_dane @paul @tripplehelix

I can't get X to work right with my HiDPI screen. If things are scaled right, they're at half the resolution/DPI my screen supports.

sotolf Aug 29, 2025

@amin @rl_dane @paul @tripplehelix So that means I should not have a hidpi screen, I don't see high resolution anyway :p

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Aug 29, 2025

@sotolf @rl_dane @paul @tripplehelix

All of my screens have been HiDPI, so "don't use a HiDPI screen" isn't useful advice in my case.

I've used normal-resolution screens and they're fine; the image being half the resolution the screen supports looks a lot worse than a screen natively being lower-resolution.

sotolf Aug 29, 2025

@amin @rl_dane @paul @tripplehelix Ah yeah, I was not implying you shouldn't use one, just that I shouldn't :)

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Aug 29, 2025

@sotolf @rl_dane @paul @tripplehelix

Makes sense.

@amin @sotolf @paul @tripplehelix

Do you mean you can't get full resolution when running XOrg natively, or just running XOrg programs on top of Sway?

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Aug 29, 2025

@rl_dane @sotolf @paul @tripplehelix

I can’t get either of those to work.

@amin @sotolf @paul @tripplehelix

Ok, I've never seen XOrg not handle full resolution when running natively.
That's quite odd.

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Aug 29, 2025

@rl_dane @sotolf @paul @tripplehelix

I either get full resolution but everything is tiny or full size but half resolution. I haven’t figured out how to scale the UI up without decreasing DPI.

Wayland figures it all out automagically.

mirabilos Aug 29, 2025

@sotolf @amin @rl_dane @paul @tripplehelix you do in photos or in antialiased truetype fonts.

At the moment, you cannot avoid displays with significantly more than 100 dpi, so might as well go for the 200 dpi ones as it’s a simple integer upscale then.

sotolf Aug 29, 2025

@rl_dane @amin @paul @tripplehelix I think I know what it is, and I remember him being a snobby "I know better what your need" attitude in conversation I had as well, or it might be someone else gnome dev at least.

@sotolf @amin @paul @tripplehelix

Yeah, that's pretty much it. Just gave off a really corporate odor.

mirabilos Aug 29, 2025

@amin @sotolf @rl_dane @paul indeed