Thoughts on suckless

2025-06-12

Note: opinions can change

I've been playing with suckless tools: dwm, dmenu, st, surf

Dwm and dmenu are fantastic, st and surf not so much.

Both st and surf have patches that are incompatible, and +often outdated. The user is expected to know how to correct the patch +rejections, which is often possible, but knowledge of C is your best bet.

Suckless software is intended to be somewhat elite. Their web site +is frankly not suckless, perhaps intentionally? Some of the patches proposed +address problems that have already been solved in the main program.

Surf compiles but with GTK warnings about obsolete functions.

St is a headbanger if you want kittygraphics, boxdraw, and ligatures for example.

The educational aspect of suckless software is of course is invaluable, +and if it's the objective, then that's fine. The problem arises when you want to +build something that will fulfill your needs.

Because of all this I use Kitty or Ghostty instead of st, and Librewolf +instead of Surf. I just hope dwm doesn't fall into the same hole of wanting to +be elite to the point of not fulfilling it's task, which would be a terrible shame.