8 ms·

Joey Hess' minimal approach

269 points by mastar2323 14y ago

mazsa 14y ago
Mmmm.... "What would be your dream setup? I dream of a ARM-based netbook with exceptionally good battery life, an E-ink display, and fully open and non-proprietary hardware. I've put off upgrading for years since this seems such an obvious thing for the market to produce, but the market is fascinated with locked-down tablets instead."
- pplante 14y ago
  While that device does sound nice to have around, I disagree with the notion that it seems such an obvious thing for the market to produce. It would have very little market appeal outside of the development community in my opinion.
fmstephe 14y ago
I love this setup. After the new ARM chromebook came out I got all excited and looked about for a way to dual boot a full OS on my old series 5. It turns out it's easy now (http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/chrubuntu-1204-now-with-double-bits.html http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/chrubuntu-1204-n...) There is a lot of pleasure in using such a small machine. I am definitely looking forward to an e-ink laptop. As I get older my eyes grow more weary, but the e-ink display on my kindle is a joy to look at.
- gvalkov 14y ago
  My main gripe with chromebooks is that they don't have a windows key (KEY_LEFTMETA). As a xmonad user, I have quite a lot of functionality bound to that key and I'm not too sure about moving it over to KEY_LEFTALT (mostly because of conflicts with my Emacs key bindings).
  - fmstephe 14y ago
    Have you tried overloading the search key (used to be caps lock). This key is roughly useless outside chromeos (and I never used it inside chromeos anyway). I am planning to bind that key to my windows-key when I get home tonight so I can use the keyboard to get at my Unity launcher. As an aside, I was very impressed how well Unity runs on relatively anaemic hardware. for running a terminal and a web browser it runs great.
    - gvalkov 14y ago
      That's a reasonable alternative and something that one could get used to. After all, Vim and Emacs people have been rebinding Caps Lock to Esc/Ctrl for a long time. One possible downside is the extra strain that this would put on the pinky. An alternative that I've been wondering about is key sequences (M x) for WM actions and key chords (M-x) for all other things. This seems possible to do in xmonad (last point in this blog post [1]) [1] http://versia.com/2009/10/xmonad-metacity-gnome/ http://versia.com/2009/10/xmonad-metacity-gnome/
- K_REY_C 14y ago
  I've been looking forward to an e-ink laptop as well. I was truly excited years ago by the "noteslate" project, but it never amounted to anything. There's clearly a place for simple, low-power devices. The ever-blurring line between e-readers and phones and tablets and laptops is exciting. With the trend towards minimalism -- distraction free writing applications -- an e-ink unitasker with git-annex syncing could be an amazing item.
lucaspiller 14y ago
"The only other active computer in the house is my home server and internet gateway; a Sheevaplug with a wireless dongle and a dialup modem." Everything else maybe... but I could never go back to dialup!
- potkor 14y ago
  A dial-in might be useful though.
adv0r 14y ago
"I've used nothing else since 1996." Wow, that's impressive but I'm not sure I'd be proud of not "using" any other Operating System than my favourite for 16 years.
- zalew 14y ago
  why? Linux has such a vast ammount of possible usage patterns that his experience is probably much more eclectic than someone's who was hopping between windows and mac systems. (if we're talking about using OS on the desktop, I guess I don't have to start about his Debian knowledge on the server).
- to3m 14y ago
  It's a handy way of ensuring that your time spent dicking about is minimized. I used nothing but Windows from 1999 until mid-2010 (and I used MS-DOS as well between 1993 and 1999). Windows 3.x was horrid, Windows '9x was horrid, and Windows 2000 and following have their disadvantages, but there's a lot to be said for never having to relearn any of the basics. I used only Windows XP from 2002 (or 2003?) until 2010, which made things even more convenient. Some people seem to like shaking things up every few years, but I'm not one of them - it just takes time away from doing what I consider more interesting stuff.
  - mahyarm 14y ago
    I stopped using linux and started using osx because linux always involved way too much dicking around by it's nature.
    - hollerith 14y ago
      Same here. A person who knows how to program and who are easily annoyed by things like inconsistent computer behavior or lack of design aesthetics should probably avoid Linux if their interest in an OS is to help them be productive.
      - icebraining 14y ago
jrajav 14y ago
More on Hess' minimal lifestyle: http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/notes_for_a_caretaker/ http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/notes_for_a_caretaker/ I could have sworn this was a submission at some point, but I can't find it.
- thejosh 14y ago
  It might of been linked in the comments when his kickstarter was linked? That's when I remember reading it last.
zalew 14y ago
> I use the XFCE desktop environment, with the Xmonad window manager. I was just going to try that in my xfce, what a coincidence. In case anyone is interested, here's the instruction http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Using_xmonad_in_XFCE#Configuring_XMonad_to_work_with_Xfce http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Using_xmonad_in_XF...
- gasull 14y ago
  You can accomplish tiling installing x-tile in Xfce.
  - zalew 14y ago
    didn't know about that, looks like a much simpler solution. do you use it? will try out, thanks.
gadders 14y ago
Did I miss this in the article, but whereabouts does Joey actually live?
- secure 14y ago
  whois branchable.com says: zipcode: 37620 city: Bristol state: Tennessee country: United States of America
RyanMcGreal 14y ago
"If it doesn't have a keyboard, I feel that my thoughts are being forced out through a straw." Beautiful.
- kami8845 14y ago
  Yeah. Says the guy doing all his work on a 1024 x 600 display. I mean the guy no harm, but so much of what he says strikes me as incredibly back-worldly. Like using dial-up and limiting yourself to fan-less laptops. I mean I get the "thin terminal" philosophy where you have a shit laptop that connects to something much more potent. But where's the point if the connection sucks as well. I guess in the end we have vastly different use cases, which is perfectly fine. I found it a quite interesting, if a little obscure, article to read.
  - anonymouz 14y ago
    For writing or coding, a decent keyboard seems much more important than a high resolution screen. For consuming stuff the converse is true. (Even though I also prefer a high res display, and he mentions that it took him some time to set up Xmonad in a way that allowed him to effectively work with such a low-res display).
    - lanna 14y ago
      Except the Dell Mini 9 doesn't have anything nowhere close to a decent keyboard.
      - pattern 14y ago
        You begin your sentence with "Except" -- however you and the parent are saying the same thing :)
      - kerno 14y ago
        I owned a Dell Mini 9 hackintosh and recently sold it. I absolutely do not understand how Joey Hess uses it everyday for the sort of work that he does - the keys are roughly 90% of full-size, and I couldn't type more than a few words without hitting the wrong key. I feel admiration mixed with, "why?".
kayoone 14y ago
big respect to this guy and he seems to make awesome software. But using a 5 year old netbook with very low resolution and 2gigs of ram, no external Screen and dialup modems for internet doesnt seem like a very productive working enviroment...but if it works for him, why not, but this is clearly is too minimal for my taste ;)
- hippich 14y ago
  It is just random thoughts, but may be this very limited setup helps to think through software he develop more which probably results in better software overall.
  - antidoh 14y ago
    I probably enjoy using whatever he writes, because it doesn't assume the latest hot.
- mercurial 14y ago
  Probably makes it less tempting to procrastinate on Hacker News. Upgrading Debian Unstable must be fun though. Ugh.
  - hollerith 14y ago
    Actually, it wasn't so bad in 2006 when I was running Debian. I ran apt-get update && apt-get upgrade at 3 am via cron.
    - mercurial 14y ago
      Yeah, the trick must be to run it regularly. Skip the upgrade and you're in for 900MB of upgrades (though deb-delta can help a lot).
      - hollerith 14y ago
        Actually, I was subscribed to the security repository, meaning I only got security updates, and over the year and a half I did this, there were probably no more than 10 megs of updates total IIRC. You're probably (and the OP, Joey Hess is definitely) talking about Debian unstable, though, which does not have a security repo. (I was on testing IIRC.) It was not hard to upgrade to a new version of Debian, either, because the tool I was using to download the necessary files, apt-get, would reliably restart the download where it left off, so I downloaded the files over about 7 consecutive nights. It was pretty sweet, actually. In contrast, I wouldn't have a clue how to keep OS X updated with security patches using a dial-up connection.
mtgx 14y ago
It sounds like the new Chromebook is a pretty good solution for him. Or maybe wait a year more for the next-gen one, which hopefully will have a 4 cell battery.
- th0ma5 14y ago
  I've been looking for a replacement for my Mini 9 and this seems to be about the only thing out there. Microsoft sure has strong armed everyone to make things with regular HDDs because they needed to run Windows... I actually went into Microcenter last year looking for a SSD netbook, and they practically chased me out of the store, and added $50 to everything that wasn't Windows (which they didn't have the prices on anyway). Does anyone know of a company that has Netbooks without Windows on them at a $250 price point? Dell's Linux pages are non-existent. I can't believe that something I bought in 2008 is now double the price.
  - fmstephe 14y ago
    I have been searching for this laptop too. The only solution I found was to dual boot my chromebook. Works beautifully and the hardware is cheap for what it brings to the table.
  - krakensden 14y ago
    I was going to recommend Zareason, but it looks like they dropped their netbook line :(
draegtun 14y ago
For reference - http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=joeyh http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=joeyh
elliott99 14y ago
I've never been to usesthis.com before. What a wonderful website! I would love to see more interviews like this.
- fafner 14y ago
  I like the idea of usesthis. But I'm a bit disappointed that most setups are boring and not really individualized. This makes a lot of the interviews uninteresting if you don't know (care for) the developer. "Spoiler:" 2/3 seem to be using a Mac Book and a fairly common configuration. Please don't misunderstand me. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that configuration. But it's not very interesting to read about. I think Joey Hess is a major exception here because he has a very individual and interesting setup. Stallman, Russ Cox and _why are a few other interesting setups iirc.
  - waferbaby 14y ago
    Yeah, I'm always trying to get interesting people, but I never know ahead of time what they use. Feel free to suggest more, though!
    - elliott99 14y ago
      Actually, while I still very much like the idea of the site, I think I spoke too soon...it's very much focused on the hardware and software used, whereas I thought it was interviews with people in general from all walks of creative/hacker/writing/painting life about their workflow and how they get stuff done. More of these types of interviews would interest me.
  - jarek 14y ago
    I rather liked http://amber.case.usesthis.com/ http://amber.case.usesthis.com/ and http://andrew.huang.usesthis.com/ http://andrew.huang.usesthis.com/, though theirs are not quite in the same vein as Joey's.
  - pmarin 14y ago
    Jason Rohrer has also an interesting configuration. http://jason.rohrer.usesthis.com/ http://jason.rohrer.usesthis.com/
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
mhd 14y ago
Interesting, but not totally unexpected as this is very much in the tradition of Unix terminal users. Never mind that today's "dumb terminal" is probably an order of magnitude more powerful than yesterdays mainframes, and you can fall back to even bigger servers without many problems. But I'm always a bit surprised by small-screen laptop-only users, whether it's this rather charming off-the-grid kind or your average Macbook Air coffee shop inhabitant. I like my mechanical keyboards, large displays (area, not dpi) and desk-bound isolation. Never mind that laptops introduce quite a few technical problems (heat, upgrades, computing power) that are easily avoided by your cheap mini tower. And I guess that's at least one minor way in which I've succeeded over distraction without even trying: I don't have a big need to mix my programming/writing/browsing with outdoorsy and/or (real-life) social elements. I wonder whether the rather common preference of landscape background pictures (e.g. Napa valley) is part of that desire.
- brandall10 14y ago
  5 months ago I transitioned from being a desktop C# app developer for medical devices to a Rails remote contractor. This meant going from a dual quad core 3.33 extreme desktop machine with 3 displays (2 x 24 and 1 21) to an 11" Macbook Air with a 1.7 dual i5. I'm much faster on the air. I have a tiling setup that I can quickly switch/move windows around, it keeps my vision and neck focused and reduces strain to both. It allows me to better mentally focus on what I'm currently working on, instead of having my IDE, source control, collab tool, bug tracker, etc, always visible at the same time. I'd rather do a couple quick chord commands than snap my neck 30 degrees one way for 15 seconds seconds then snap it back in the other direction. As to heat/power? Spectacular with my MBA, this thing is as fast as last year's Macbook Pro and the iMac the year before. I've been writing software professionally since '96 and at least in the windows world, the tools have not changed a whole lot in that time period. The only advantage of a faster machine is faster compiles and db rebuilds/queries. And I'm not doing that enterprise level work of 300k+ code bases and 5 gig databases anywhere. But I did 15 years ago, and yeah, now something that would used to take over an hour might take 2 minutes. On my MBA is might take 5 minutes. For something I'd do a handful of times a day, not a big deal, but again, I don't do those types of things anymore. Don't get me wrong. I'd appreciate more resolution. But probably more inclined to use that for extra clarity rather than increase my desktop space by a significant degree. There's a sweet spot where bad habits begin to creep back in, where just too much info is presented at one time that cognitive overload begins to set in. Just my personal experience, but I've had both setups and the latter works much better for me.
agumonkey 14y ago
Let's make a petition for someone to produce this e-ink open arm laptop. I'd buy one immediately.
- cweiss 14y ago
  My understanding is that the big issue is that e-Ink displays have a miserably slow pixel update time. The new Kindle Paperwhite is on the order of 450ms whereas the average LCD display is in the single digit ms range. Great for static text, but horrid for anything real-time.
  - agumonkey 14y ago
    I should have mentioned that I'd be using text-mode mostly. With my keyboard refresh rate (25key/sec) => 40ms max per redraw. That's .. quite far. If you look at this old kindle refresh rate, used as a terminal screen for a raspberry pi, it's almost usable : http://www.ponnuki.net/2012/09/kindleberry-pi/ http://www.ponnuki.net/2012/09/kindleberry-pi/ I wonder how it would be on a newer eink screen.
    - agumonkey 14y ago
      Another video: vim on eink http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdmX52SCpG0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdmX52SCpG0 not glorious.
  - mhd 14y ago
    This would still be far better than ancient 300 baud terminals. I bet some Unix editors still have the hacks in them to speed up operation over slow connections… Although I don't know how well contemporary eInk displays would handle partial updates. If it e.g. doesn't save much energy compared to a full-screen refresh, there might be huge difference in battery usage, as even slower typists would cause more redraw than the page flips caused by your average reader.
    - agumonkey 14y ago
      Based on crappy youtube videos it seems eink screens support partial redraw.
pdog 14y ago
> Lately I've been focusing on programs that encourage broader use of version control systems, like git. The goal is to harness all the power that's been developed by developers for developers for managing source code, and redirect it to other purposes. This is very interesting, especially his Kickstarter project[1]. I've always wondered how distributed revision control systems could be used in other domains. [1] - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joeyh/git-annex-assistant-like-dropbox-but-with-your-own/ http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joeyh/git-annex-assistan...
_feda_ 14y ago
Regarding all the comments here about dial-up and slow connections whether out of preference or necessity, I can't recommend enough having a slow connection and a data limit for helping you concentrate on the things that are most important to you, but take the most effort to think about or to do. I use a three mobile 3g dongle (UK) and pay £10 a month for 1GB of downloads. I use wget to crawl and download web pages to view offline. I've been doing this for over a year now and it's great for avoiding the huge potential distractions of broadband, torrents for example, being amongst the worst offenders (have you ever downloaded a 100 computer science textbooks and never got round to any of them because you were watching a whole season of star trek: next generation? It's kind of ridiculous.)
jakobe 14y ago
It's great to be reminded that productivity doesn't really depend as much on the tools you use as some might have you believe. I keep thinking about buying a faster laptop, or I'm complaining that getting fiber is way to expensive where I live, and then I read about someone on an ancient tiny netbook on dialup who is probably way more productive than I am.
- agumonkey 14y ago
  And developping on slow hardware is like having a free continuous profiler.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  > I read about someone on an ancient tiny netbook on dialup who is probably way more productive than I am. And you're not him. It doesn't matter how productive he is on "an ancient tiny netbook on dialup", it matters how productive you would be on it. Getting a faster laptop or fiber is a simple matter of weighing the costs against the benefits for you. If it increases your productivity enough to outweigh the costs, then you should get it.
  - jarek 14y ago
    I read that as more of a reflection on the necessity of things. It's possible fiber would be an improvement for jakobe, of course, but perhaps only a local maximum. "This guy does without it - maybe the lack of fiber isn't the biggest thing holding me back."
- bduerst 14y ago
  Best question to ask yourself when buying a new tool or gadget: How often would this actually help me?
- yungchin 14y ago
  Ok, because no-one's made the obvious point yet, I'll bite... What's more likely? That all the research saying more screen space increases productivity is wrong, or that joeyh is simply denying himself that bonus productivity? So just imagine how scarily productive he might become if he had my laptop...
dailo10 14y ago
"I don't use a desk. I work in five or six different places and postures around the house. When the weather's good, I'm outside, or on the porch. My preferred "desktop background" is some interesting view in back of my netbook's rather small screen." This is such a liberating setup. I'm rethinking my need for a home office now.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  > This is such a liberating setup. Yeah, it's "liberating" until you develop chronic back and shoulder pain later in life.
  - jackalope 14y ago
    I'd wager that it's more healthy than most home offices, which tend to restrict you to one position.
  - jsn 14y ago
    To each his own, I suppose. I've been deskless for 4 years, mostly on a couch in a relaxed position with laptop on my, hmm, laps. It's much more comfortable for me than chairs and desks. I sometimes spend 16 hours per day pressing those keys; I don't think I could've survived that in a chair behind a desk.
    - smikhanov 14y ago
      You still need to be careful: 4 years is not that long. Middle Ages people were exposed to very harsh environments and still lived to 30. I started getting neck pains after 11 years into my programming career. I attribute it mostly to programming on a sofa with a laptop -- in this position you constantly look a bit down (if a laptop is on your lap) and your neck will not like it.
  - nevinera 14y ago
    Observing your body and changing positions whenever they become uncomfortable is far better for your long-term health than is a well-engineered chair. I now rotate between a standing desk, a normal desk, a couch (only when reading/exploring - typing here is tougher), and the floor, and all of my back problems have disappeared.
ktf 14y ago
> When power is low, I often hack in the evenings by lantern light. The combination of forward-thinking hi-tech and rustic low-tech makes this feel like something out of science fiction. I picture him as a character in a Stephenson novel: a hermit hacker, off the grid, queuing up data and pulsing it out only when the cells are charged and the skies are clear. Pretty awesome :)
dshep 14y ago
I know for myself at least, upgrading to newer hardware is mostly a big distraction from work or whatever it is I probably should be spending time on. That said, I had a mini9 for a few weeks and typing on that tiny keyboard was pretty painful, so props to Joey for sticking with it. If Joey is reading this... It sounds like you are living in a remote place. It'd be cool to see a more detailed blog post with pictures. Also as someone who has lived with a flaky dialup connection for a long time recently, I can highly recommend mosh. Setup irssi+bitlbee on a server running under tmux. Then connect with mosh and attach to tmux. This way you get reliable chat and irssi should set the important flag for the window, giving you notifications of new messages too. You can also configure irssi to mark you as away when you disconnect.
bravura 14y ago
I love his minimalism. He loves hacking but he hates devices. He lives in the most natural milieu he can construct. "I mean the guy no harm, but so much of what he says strikes me as incredibly back-worldly." No. He approach is incredible modern. There's some Jobs-ian about it. Steve Jobs ultimately hated devices, because a device embodies the barrier between you and the effect you need. That is why Jobs strove to make devices as small, unobtrusive, and natural as possible. (I just started purchasing Apple, and have thus only recently began mulling about Steve Jobs's vision.)
thomasfl 14y ago
"I dream of a ARM-based netbook with exceptionally good battery life, an E-ink display"

269 points by mastar2323 14y ago

mazsa 14y ago

Mmmm.... "What would be your dream setup? I dream of a ARM-based netbook with exceptionally good battery life, an E-ink display, and fully open and non-proprietary hardware. I've put off upgrading for years since this seems such an obvious thing for the market to produce, but the market is fascinated with locked-down tablets instead."

pplante 14y ago
While that device does sound nice to have around, I disagree with the notion that it seems such an obvious thing for the market to produce. It would have very little market appeal outside of the development community in my opinion.

fmstephe 14y ago

I love this setup. After the new ARM chromebook came out I got all excited and looked about for a way to dual boot a full OS on my old series 5. It turns out it's easy now (http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/chrubuntu-1204-now-with-double-bits.html http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/chrubuntu-1204-n...) There is a lot of pleasure in using such a small machine. I am definitely looking forward to an e-ink laptop. As I get older my eyes grow more weary, but the e-ink display on my kindle is a joy to look at.

gvalkov 14y ago
My main gripe with chromebooks is that they don't have a windows key (KEY_LEFTMETA). As a xmonad user, I have quite a lot of functionality bound to that key and I'm not too sure about moving it over to KEY_LEFTALT (mostly because of conflicts with my Emacs key bindings).
- fmstephe 14y ago
  Have you tried overloading the search key (used to be caps lock). This key is roughly useless outside chromeos (and I never used it inside chromeos anyway). I am planning to bind that key to my windows-key when I get home tonight so I can use the keyboard to get at my Unity launcher. As an aside, I was very impressed how well Unity runs on relatively anaemic hardware. for running a terminal and a web browser it runs great.
  - gvalkov 14y ago
    That's a reasonable alternative and something that one could get used to. After all, Vim and Emacs people have been rebinding Caps Lock to Esc/Ctrl for a long time. One possible downside is the extra strain that this would put on the pinky. An alternative that I've been wondering about is key sequences (M x) for WM actions and key chords (M-x) for all other things. This seems possible to do in xmonad (last point in this blog post [1]) [1] http://versia.com/2009/10/xmonad-metacity-gnome/ http://versia.com/2009/10/xmonad-metacity-gnome/
K_REY_C 14y ago
I've been looking forward to an e-ink laptop as well. I was truly excited years ago by the "noteslate" project, but it never amounted to anything. There's clearly a place for simple, low-power devices. The ever-blurring line between e-readers and phones and tablets and laptops is exciting. With the trend towards minimalism -- distraction free writing applications -- an e-ink unitasker with git-annex syncing could be an amazing item.

lucaspiller 14y ago

"The only other active computer in the house is my home server and internet gateway; a Sheevaplug with a wireless dongle and a dialup modem." Everything else maybe... but I could never go back to dialup!

potkor 14y ago
A dial-in might be useful though.

adv0r 14y ago

"I've used nothing else since 1996." Wow, that's impressive but I'm not sure I'd be proud of not "using" any other Operating System than my favourite for 16 years.

zalew 14y ago
why? Linux has such a vast ammount of possible usage patterns that his experience is probably much more eclectic than someone's who was hopping between windows and mac systems. (if we're talking about using OS on the desktop, I guess I don't have to start about his Debian knowledge on the server).
to3m 14y ago
It's a handy way of ensuring that your time spent dicking about is minimized. I used nothing but Windows from 1999 until mid-2010 (and I used MS-DOS as well between 1993 and 1999). Windows 3.x was horrid, Windows '9x was horrid, and Windows 2000 and following have their disadvantages, but there's a lot to be said for never having to relearn any of the basics. I used only Windows XP from 2002 (or 2003?) until 2010, which made things even more convenient. Some people seem to like shaking things up every few years, but I'm not one of them - it just takes time away from doing what I consider more interesting stuff.
- mahyarm 14y ago
  I stopped using linux and started using osx because linux always involved way too much dicking around by it's nature.
  - hollerith 14y ago
    Same here. A person who knows how to program and who are easily annoyed by things like inconsistent computer behavior or lack of design aesthetics should probably avoid Linux if their interest in an OS is to help them be productive.
    - icebraining 14y ago

jrajav 14y ago

More on Hess' minimal lifestyle: http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/notes_for_a_caretaker/ http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/notes_for_a_caretaker/ I could have sworn this was a submission at some point, but I can't find it.

thejosh 14y ago
It might of been linked in the comments when his kickstarter was linked? That's when I remember reading it last.

zalew 14y ago

> I use the XFCE desktop environment, with the Xmonad window manager. I was just going to try that in my xfce, what a coincidence. In case anyone is interested, here's the instruction http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Using_xmonad_in_XFCE#Configuring_XMonad_to_work_with_Xfce http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Using_xmonad_in_XF...

gasull 14y ago
You can accomplish tiling installing x-tile in Xfce.
- zalew 14y ago
  didn't know about that, looks like a much simpler solution. do you use it? will try out, thanks.

gadders 14y ago

Did I miss this in the article, but whereabouts does Joey actually live?

secure 14y ago
whois branchable.com says: zipcode: 37620 city: Bristol state: Tennessee country: United States of America

RyanMcGreal 14y ago

"If it doesn't have a keyboard, I feel that my thoughts are being forced out through a straw." Beautiful.

kami8845 14y ago
Yeah. Says the guy doing all his work on a 1024 x 600 display. I mean the guy no harm, but so much of what he says strikes me as incredibly back-worldly. Like using dial-up and limiting yourself to fan-less laptops. I mean I get the "thin terminal" philosophy where you have a shit laptop that connects to something much more potent. But where's the point if the connection sucks as well. I guess in the end we have vastly different use cases, which is perfectly fine. I found it a quite interesting, if a little obscure, article to read.
- anonymouz 14y ago
  For writing or coding, a decent keyboard seems much more important than a high resolution screen. For consuming stuff the converse is true. (Even though I also prefer a high res display, and he mentions that it took him some time to set up Xmonad in a way that allowed him to effectively work with such a low-res display).
  - lanna 14y ago
    Except the Dell Mini 9 doesn't have anything nowhere close to a decent keyboard.
    - pattern 14y ago
      You begin your sentence with "Except" -- however you and the parent are saying the same thing :)
    - kerno 14y ago
      I owned a Dell Mini 9 hackintosh and recently sold it. I absolutely do not understand how Joey Hess uses it everyday for the sort of work that he does - the keys are roughly 90% of full-size, and I couldn't type more than a few words without hitting the wrong key. I feel admiration mixed with, "why?".

kayoone 14y ago

big respect to this guy and he seems to make awesome software. But using a 5 year old netbook with very low resolution and 2gigs of ram, no external Screen and dialup modems for internet doesnt seem like a very productive working enviroment...but if it works for him, why not, but this is clearly is too minimal for my taste ;)

hippich 14y ago
It is just random thoughts, but may be this very limited setup helps to think through software he develop more which probably results in better software overall.
- antidoh 14y ago
  I probably enjoy using whatever he writes, because it doesn't assume the latest hot.
mercurial 14y ago
Probably makes it less tempting to procrastinate on Hacker News. Upgrading Debian Unstable must be fun though. Ugh.
- hollerith 14y ago
  Actually, it wasn't so bad in 2006 when I was running Debian. I ran apt-get update && apt-get upgrade at 3 am via cron.
  - mercurial 14y ago
    Yeah, the trick must be to run it regularly. Skip the upgrade and you're in for 900MB of upgrades (though deb-delta can help a lot).
    - hollerith 14y ago
      Actually, I was subscribed to the security repository, meaning I only got security updates, and over the year and a half I did this, there were probably no more than 10 megs of updates total IIRC. You're probably (and the OP, Joey Hess is definitely) talking about Debian unstable, though, which does not have a security repo. (I was on testing IIRC.) It was not hard to upgrade to a new version of Debian, either, because the tool I was using to download the necessary files, apt-get, would reliably restart the download where it left off, so I downloaded the files over about 7 consecutive nights. It was pretty sweet, actually. In contrast, I wouldn't have a clue how to keep OS X updated with security patches using a dial-up connection.

mtgx 14y ago

It sounds like the new Chromebook is a pretty good solution for him. Or maybe wait a year more for the next-gen one, which hopefully will have a 4 cell battery.

th0ma5 14y ago
I've been looking for a replacement for my Mini 9 and this seems to be about the only thing out there. Microsoft sure has strong armed everyone to make things with regular HDDs because they needed to run Windows... I actually went into Microcenter last year looking for a SSD netbook, and they practically chased me out of the store, and added $50 to everything that wasn't Windows (which they didn't have the prices on anyway). Does anyone know of a company that has Netbooks without Windows on them at a $250 price point? Dell's Linux pages are non-existent. I can't believe that something I bought in 2008 is now double the price.
- fmstephe 14y ago
  I have been searching for this laptop too. The only solution I found was to dual boot my chromebook. Works beautifully and the hardware is cheap for what it brings to the table.
- krakensden 14y ago
  I was going to recommend Zareason, but it looks like they dropped their netbook line :(

draegtun 14y ago

For reference - http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=joeyh http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=joeyh

elliott99 14y ago

I've never been to usesthis.com before. What a wonderful website! I would love to see more interviews like this.

fafner 14y ago
I like the idea of usesthis. But I'm a bit disappointed that most setups are boring and not really individualized. This makes a lot of the interviews uninteresting if you don't know (care for) the developer. "Spoiler:" 2/3 seem to be using a Mac Book and a fairly common configuration. Please don't misunderstand me. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that configuration. But it's not very interesting to read about. I think Joey Hess is a major exception here because he has a very individual and interesting setup. Stallman, Russ Cox and _why are a few other interesting setups iirc.
- waferbaby 14y ago
  Yeah, I'm always trying to get interesting people, but I never know ahead of time what they use. Feel free to suggest more, though!
  - elliott99 14y ago
    Actually, while I still very much like the idea of the site, I think I spoke too soon...it's very much focused on the hardware and software used, whereas I thought it was interviews with people in general from all walks of creative/hacker/writing/painting life about their workflow and how they get stuff done. More of these types of interviews would interest me.
- jarek 14y ago
  I rather liked http://amber.case.usesthis.com/ http://amber.case.usesthis.com/ and http://andrew.huang.usesthis.com/ http://andrew.huang.usesthis.com/, though theirs are not quite in the same vein as Joey's.
- pmarin 14y ago
  Jason Rohrer has also an interesting configuration. http://jason.rohrer.usesthis.com/ http://jason.rohrer.usesthis.com/

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

mhd 14y ago

Interesting, but not totally unexpected as this is very much in the tradition of Unix terminal users. Never mind that today's "dumb terminal" is probably an order of magnitude more powerful than yesterdays mainframes, and you can fall back to even bigger servers without many problems. But I'm always a bit surprised by small-screen laptop-only users, whether it's this rather charming off-the-grid kind or your average Macbook Air coffee shop inhabitant. I like my mechanical keyboards, large displays (area, not dpi) and desk-bound isolation. Never mind that laptops introduce quite a few technical problems (heat, upgrades, computing power) that are easily avoided by your cheap mini tower. And I guess that's at least one minor way in which I've succeeded over distraction without even trying: I don't have a big need to mix my programming/writing/browsing with outdoorsy and/or (real-life) social elements. I wonder whether the rather common preference of landscape background pictures (e.g. Napa valley) is part of that desire.

brandall10 14y ago
5 months ago I transitioned from being a desktop C# app developer for medical devices to a Rails remote contractor. This meant going from a dual quad core 3.33 extreme desktop machine with 3 displays (2 x 24 and 1 21) to an 11" Macbook Air with a 1.7 dual i5. I'm much faster on the air. I have a tiling setup that I can quickly switch/move windows around, it keeps my vision and neck focused and reduces strain to both. It allows me to better mentally focus on what I'm currently working on, instead of having my IDE, source control, collab tool, bug tracker, etc, always visible at the same time. I'd rather do a couple quick chord commands than snap my neck 30 degrees one way for 15 seconds seconds then snap it back in the other direction. As to heat/power? Spectacular with my MBA, this thing is as fast as last year's Macbook Pro and the iMac the year before. I've been writing software professionally since '96 and at least in the windows world, the tools have not changed a whole lot in that time period. The only advantage of a faster machine is faster compiles and db rebuilds/queries. And I'm not doing that enterprise level work of 300k+ code bases and 5 gig databases anywhere. But I did 15 years ago, and yeah, now something that would used to take over an hour might take 2 minutes. On my MBA is might take 5 minutes. For something I'd do a handful of times a day, not a big deal, but again, I don't do those types of things anymore. Don't get me wrong. I'd appreciate more resolution. But probably more inclined to use that for extra clarity rather than increase my desktop space by a significant degree. There's a sweet spot where bad habits begin to creep back in, where just too much info is presented at one time that cognitive overload begins to set in. Just my personal experience, but I've had both setups and the latter works much better for me.

agumonkey 14y ago

Let's make a petition for someone to produce this e-ink open arm laptop. I'd buy one immediately.

cweiss 14y ago
My understanding is that the big issue is that e-Ink displays have a miserably slow pixel update time. The new Kindle Paperwhite is on the order of 450ms whereas the average LCD display is in the single digit ms range. Great for static text, but horrid for anything real-time.
- agumonkey 14y ago
  I should have mentioned that I'd be using text-mode mostly. With my keyboard refresh rate (25key/sec) => 40ms max per redraw. That's .. quite far. If you look at this old kindle refresh rate, used as a terminal screen for a raspberry pi, it's almost usable : http://www.ponnuki.net/2012/09/kindleberry-pi/ http://www.ponnuki.net/2012/09/kindleberry-pi/ I wonder how it would be on a newer eink screen.
  - agumonkey 14y ago
    Another video: vim on eink http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdmX52SCpG0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdmX52SCpG0 not glorious.
- mhd 14y ago
  This would still be far better than ancient 300 baud terminals. I bet some Unix editors still have the hacks in them to speed up operation over slow connections… Although I don't know how well contemporary eInk displays would handle partial updates. If it e.g. doesn't save much energy compared to a full-screen refresh, there might be huge difference in battery usage, as even slower typists would cause more redraw than the page flips caused by your average reader.
  - agumonkey 14y ago
    Based on crappy youtube videos it seems eink screens support partial redraw.

pdog 14y ago

> Lately I've been focusing on programs that encourage broader use of version control systems, like git. The goal is to harness all the power that's been developed by developers for developers for managing source code, and redirect it to other purposes. This is very interesting, especially his Kickstarter project[1]. I've always wondered how distributed revision control systems could be used in other domains. [1] - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joeyh/git-annex-assistant-like-dropbox-but-with-your-own/ http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joeyh/git-annex-assistan...

_feda_ 14y ago

Regarding all the comments here about dial-up and slow connections whether out of preference or necessity, I can't recommend enough having a slow connection and a data limit for helping you concentrate on the things that are most important to you, but take the most effort to think about or to do. I use a three mobile 3g dongle (UK) and pay £10 a month for 1GB of downloads. I use wget to crawl and download web pages to view offline. I've been doing this for over a year now and it's great for avoiding the huge potential distractions of broadband, torrents for example, being amongst the worst offenders (have you ever downloaded a 100 computer science textbooks and never got round to any of them because you were watching a whole season of star trek: next generation? It's kind of ridiculous.)

jakobe 14y ago

It's great to be reminded that productivity doesn't really depend as much on the tools you use as some might have you believe. I keep thinking about buying a faster laptop, or I'm complaining that getting fiber is way to expensive where I live, and then I read about someone on an ancient tiny netbook on dialup who is probably way more productive than I am.

agumonkey 14y ago
And developping on slow hardware is like having a free continuous profiler.
w1ntermute 14y ago
> I read about someone on an ancient tiny netbook on dialup who is probably way more productive than I am. And you're not him. It doesn't matter how productive he is on "an ancient tiny netbook on dialup", it matters how productive you would be on it. Getting a faster laptop or fiber is a simple matter of weighing the costs against the benefits for you. If it increases your productivity enough to outweigh the costs, then you should get it.
- jarek 14y ago
  I read that as more of a reflection on the necessity of things. It's possible fiber would be an improvement for jakobe, of course, but perhaps only a local maximum. "This guy does without it - maybe the lack of fiber isn't the biggest thing holding me back."
bduerst 14y ago
Best question to ask yourself when buying a new tool or gadget: How often would this actually help me?
yungchin 14y ago
Ok, because no-one's made the obvious point yet, I'll bite... What's more likely? That all the research saying more screen space increases productivity is wrong, or that joeyh is simply denying himself that bonus productivity? So just imagine how scarily productive he might become if he had my laptop...

dailo10 14y ago

"I don't use a desk. I work in five or six different places and postures around the house. When the weather's good, I'm outside, or on the porch. My preferred "desktop background" is some interesting view in back of my netbook's rather small screen." This is such a liberating setup. I'm rethinking my need for a home office now.

w1ntermute 14y ago
> This is such a liberating setup. Yeah, it's "liberating" until you develop chronic back and shoulder pain later in life.
- jackalope 14y ago
  I'd wager that it's more healthy than most home offices, which tend to restrict you to one position.
- jsn 14y ago
  To each his own, I suppose. I've been deskless for 4 years, mostly on a couch in a relaxed position with laptop on my, hmm, laps. It's much more comfortable for me than chairs and desks. I sometimes spend 16 hours per day pressing those keys; I don't think I could've survived that in a chair behind a desk.
  - smikhanov 14y ago
    You still need to be careful: 4 years is not that long. Middle Ages people were exposed to very harsh environments and still lived to 30. I started getting neck pains after 11 years into my programming career. I attribute it mostly to programming on a sofa with a laptop -- in this position you constantly look a bit down (if a laptop is on your lap) and your neck will not like it.
- nevinera 14y ago
  Observing your body and changing positions whenever they become uncomfortable is far better for your long-term health than is a well-engineered chair. I now rotate between a standing desk, a normal desk, a couch (only when reading/exploring - typing here is tougher), and the floor, and all of my back problems have disappeared.

ktf 14y ago

> When power is low, I often hack in the evenings by lantern light. The combination of forward-thinking hi-tech and rustic low-tech makes this feel like something out of science fiction. I picture him as a character in a Stephenson novel: a hermit hacker, off the grid, queuing up data and pulsing it out only when the cells are charged and the skies are clear. Pretty awesome :)

dshep 14y ago

I know for myself at least, upgrading to newer hardware is mostly a big distraction from work or whatever it is I probably should be spending time on. That said, I had a mini9 for a few weeks and typing on that tiny keyboard was pretty painful, so props to Joey for sticking with it. If Joey is reading this... It sounds like you are living in a remote place. It'd be cool to see a more detailed blog post with pictures. Also as someone who has lived with a flaky dialup connection for a long time recently, I can highly recommend mosh. Setup irssi+bitlbee on a server running under tmux. Then connect with mosh and attach to tmux. This way you get reliable chat and irssi should set the important flag for the window, giving you notifications of new messages too. You can also configure irssi to mark you as away when you disconnect.

bravura 14y ago

I love his minimalism. He loves hacking but he hates devices. He lives in the most natural milieu he can construct. "I mean the guy no harm, but so much of what he says strikes me as incredibly back-worldly." No. He approach is incredible modern. There's some Jobs-ian about it. Steve Jobs ultimately hated devices, because a device embodies the barrier between you and the effect you need. That is why Jobs strove to make devices as small, unobtrusive, and natural as possible. (I just started purchasing Apple, and have thus only recently began mulling about Steve Jobs's vision.)

thomasfl 14y ago

"I dream of a ARM-based netbook with exceptionally good battery life, an E-ink display"