by kkfx | 2026-01-30 12:59:59+00:00
Ever since I discovered EXWM (Emacs) years ago, I've never looked back. It's the most efficient free tiling model I've encountered so far, with windows easily resizable via mouse and/or keyboard, flipping between the current application/buffer and the last one used (`mode-line-other-buffer`), the "minimization" (`bury-buffer`) that remains listed among open applications/buffers etc.

I think the current problem with most desktop environments is the inability of those who develop them to imagine a different desktop. Let's just take how I arrived at EXWM. I was orphaned from OpenSolaris, moved to Ubuntu because coming from FreeBSD first and OpenSolaris (SXDE, CE and then OpenIndiana), GNU/Linux wasn't much by comparison, more development, better hw support, but a fragile and archaic system in too many aspects, archaic even in the mindset of many top developers, I think of Andrew Morton's infamous "rampant layer violation" talking about zfs. To the ridiculous development of BTRFS as a response and Stratis instead of perhaps looking at DragonFly BSD's Hammer as a possible response, after having had and thrown away filesystems like Nilfs2 or never really developed for user use filesystems like F2FS. Today, the love for containers useful only for commercial purposes rather than for declarative distros like NixOS or Guix System. Well, to make a long story short, at the time I chose Ubuntu with the Unity desktop, simply because I had other things to do than play around managing my desktop like in university days and Unity was fine, it was discreet, a thin bar at the top, a disappearing launcher on the side, a dash "search&narrow" style, the HUD wasn't bad for menus etc. Gnome SHell practically copied it while brilliantly managing to LOSE the only truly useful aspect of Unity: being there to serve the user discreetly. Where Unity was discreet, Gnome SHell is a secondary narcissist, trying to put itself at the center and minimizing the importance of the single window. KDE went off on a tangent from KDE4 onwards, becoming substantial bloatware. Simply put, there is no longer a desktop for the modern era because there is no understanding of what a desktop should be.

This must be a single application, fully moldable by the user, completely integrated. Emacs is that, the old Xerox workstations were that, the LispMs were that. We don't need containers that continue to sell packaged ignorance, resource waste, vulnerabilities. We don't need invasive and narcissistic GUIs. We need integration because we have a single mind with which we have fun, work, spend time, the same mind. So our computer exobrain must be one and not made in compartments or produced in competition with other products.

I want to link in my notes relevant emails, relevant RSS-fetched posts, relevant files, all without particular friction, because they have in common being information, generally textual. I want it to be copy-pasteable as needed. I want to be able to compose my UI in text with this becoming an active element where I want it. This is a desktop.

Not rigidity, limited and limiting narcissistic minimalism, not features visible to those who don't want them or absent for those who seek them. The desktop must be a PIM, a personal ERP, free and flexible like Emacs or simply be a relic of the past that won't be transformed from a relic into something modern by adding some graphical sugar. So my system must be declarative, not manually managed "containers" with holes punched everywhere to makes them usable.