TIL di( is a thing, and it is really useful. The whole di thing is great.
In 2026, I want to change my OS. I'm hesitating between
- Arch
- Devuan
- Gentoo
- Guix and
- Void
Things to consider:
- I've already installed and used Arch some years ago; I'm considering Artix, excluding the s6 init (I'm not prepared for this one);
- gentoo and Guix are probably the most complex distros1
- Void is certainly the most comfortable choice.
- It's to install in real hardware: Intel i5-7400 3ghz, ssd 1to, 32gb ram, nvidia geforce 1060 3gb. Yes, I want to play light videogames sometimes
Main purpose would be to learn Linux, Web, writing MarkDown and Org, zettlekasten organisation, etc...
#linux #archlinux #ArtixLinux #devuan #gentoo #GuixSystem #voidlinux #emacs #doomemacs #vim #orgmode #orgroam #vim #HelixEditor #zettlekasten
1: complex ≠ complicated
I upgraded my #DoomEmacs, and now dired-hide-details-mode fails to enable by default.
(add-hook 'dired-mode-hook #'dired-hide-details-mode)
This used to work. It gets added to the hook, and yet, when I visit a directory, it's not active.
This is making me unreasonably angry.
I've been using #Emacs for the last couple of months now for all my daily work (I'm a translator, not a programmer) and here's a thought.
Of course, I stumbled upon rather contrasting recommendations:
1) Don't use vanilla, use #DoomEmacs or #Spacemacs. Preferably Doom. Well, I tried this in the past, but it didn't stick. It''s everything and the kitchen sink, but you generally don't know if you really need all this. So you study Doom, not Emacs. I might get back to it in the future. I did prefer Spacemacs, though (aesthetically).
2) Use vanilla and spend ten years building your own config. This sounds fairly reasonable, because you naturally learn the program itself, not its plugins. But it's a huge timesink when you start to "build your own Emacs". So you'd end up with DoomEmacs, but badly written, slow and constantly breaking on every update.
I went with the second alternative and here's what I got for my personal usecase:
me@desktop:~$ grep "use-package" .emacs.d/init.el | wc -l
8
Eight packages. howm, inkpot-theme, which-key, avy, counsel, general, annotate, markdown-mode. I didn't even bother to make annotate work for now, so it's 7. And I don't really use avy, so it could be 6.
That's all I need for now. For several months I haven't had a moment yet when I thought that I need something else or that my workflow is getting somewhat cumbersome.
Of course, this doesn't mean that my setup is perfect. But my point is: configuring your own Emacs could be way easier than you might think (depending on the workflow), and you probably don't need to fight a bazillion packages waging civil war in your config file.