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How to configure X11 in a simple way

https://eugene-andrienko.com/en/it/2025/07/24/x11-configuration-simple.html
54•speckx•16h ago

Comments

davydm•16h ago
cool if you want to stay with 30-year-old desktops like fluxbox, but I'm not about to give up my KDE when I have plenty of ram to spare - the plasmoids for system monitoring alone are simple to set up and useful. Yes, I know there are standalone alternatives. Some things (imo) aren't worth optimising.

But to each their own - I'm sure someone will be all into "debloating" like the author.

gen2brain•15h ago
I do not give up on my openbox. I use it with LxQt. Now there is a Labwc, similar to openbox. It uses its XML spec for config and is similar. But I am still on X until all issues are resolved. Can I use openbox on KDE now? It used to be possible, I can choose WM in LxQt. Back then every WM had a --replace option.
LargoLasskhyfv•3h ago
IceWM got some nice updates in the last few years. I preferred it over Openbox and Fluxbox.
hulitu•14h ago
> cool if you want to stay with 30-year-old desktops like fluxbox, but I'm not about to give up my KDE when I have plenty of ram to spare

KDE is slow. Fvwm is much faster.

Zardoz84•13h ago
What drug do you take ?
signa11•6h ago
have you even tried it ? it can probably fit in the entire cpu-cache, and run circles around the likes of kde/gnome/…
LargoLasskhyfv•2h ago
Hrrm. That may still be the case, but on modern systems it doesn't really matter anymore. By modern systems I mean anything since about 2010 with enough RAM. On such systems, even end-of-life/support Intel Kaby Lake Core-I5/7(t(35Watt)) with 4 or 8 cores, and 32GB RAM I couldn't care less about Plasma(KDE), even when they are downclocked to 800Mhz mostly.

On more modern systems even less so.

I'd like to see a demonstration of that fastness, which translates into tangible usability benefits. Not some synthetic microbenchmarking shit.

I tried it, because I still know FVWM2. Was refreshing for a while, felt good because I still could 'do it', but that's it.

The only things I can imagine profiting from it would be running stuff which is at the limit for your physical RAM, where every wasted Megabyte decides between swapping to death, or running through smoothly. But then there is IceWM, which is good enough for such cases. With the exception of FVWMs excellent handling of large virtual desktops.

shmerl•16h ago
Creating custom modelines is far from fun activity, bloat or no bloat.

The last time I had to look into that was to work around amdgpu bug that affected screen blinking in KDE Wayland session.

TacticalCoder•11h ago
> Creating custom modelines is far from fun activity, bloat or no bloat.

Last time I did that was in the nineties, when I was doing stuff like running CRT monitors at weird resolutions, like 848x612 instead of 800x600 so I know more about modelines and modelines computation than most.

And yet I don't even remember last time I had to manually edit modelines: 38" monitor @ 3840x1600 pixels and 34" monitor @ 3440x1440 are all working with stock Xorg config.

Monitors have been detected fine at their native resolution since, what, two decades now!?

whalesalad•16h ago
"in a simple way" proceeds to write a 300 page epic
doublerabbit•16h ago
I would call a 300 page epic simple.

300 pages on explaining things X. I wouldn't say that's bad. Could always be longer.

DonHopkins•15h ago
At least I was able to keep it under 300 pages.

https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-x-windows-disaster-128d398...

xyzelement•14h ago
Omg I literally stumbled upon the unix haters handbook off an old JWZ blog last night and was reading it till 2 in the morning. Thank you!
jcranmer•13h ago
... somehow this is the first time I've realized that you contributed to the Unix Haters Handbook.

(And I've read it in its entirety at least twice!)

exiguus•15h ago
I also aspect a 1000 Word article and stopped reading after the TOC.
cbondurant•15h ago
> For lightweight WMs there are lightweigh compositors exists.

I think that if you're going to take a holier-than-thou, software purity and perfection stance. You probably should make sure to proofread.

If you're gonna be judgemental about other peoples stances and refuse to admit to the existence of such a thing as a "reasonable tradeoff". Talk down to your audience with section headers titled "Compositor (no, not that thing from Wayland)". Maybe make sure what you've written is actually correct.

gen2brain•15h ago
Does FreeBSD even support Wayland? I heard that there is some work.
eikenberry•15h ago
Yes, they have official docs on how to set it up and use it.

https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/wayland/

Here's a 3 year old article going through their freebsd/wayland setup, so it seems like it's been supported for a while now.

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/example-tutorial-pure-way...

anonymousiam•13h ago
How much of this wonderful legacy configurability is supported by Wayback (https://www.phoronix.com/news/Wayback-0.1-Released), so that we can still do this stuff as Wayland replaces X11?
encom•12h ago
I was there, Gandalf. I was there 3000 years ago, when we edited ~~x11~~ xorg config files by hand. I will gladly pay any price in bloat to never have to touch that nonsense again.
tonyarkles•10h ago
And the perpetual underlying vague threat “if you get your modelines wrong you could destroy your monitor”. I suppose I started with XFree86 and switched to xorg whenever Gentoo did.
MPSimmons•9h ago
Immediately did ctrl-f "modeline" and was pleasantly surprised

Do not download the app, use the website

https://idiallo.com/blog/dont-download-apps
889•foxfired•11h ago•486 comments

Open Sauce is a confoundingly brilliant Bay Area event

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/open-sauce-confoundingly-brilliant-bay-area-event
110•rbanffy•2d ago•39 comments

It's time for modern CSS to kill the SPA

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476•tambourine_man•12h ago•273 comments

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131•chrononaut•7h ago•20 comments

Turn any diagram image into an editable Draw.io file. No more redrawing

https://imagetodrawio.com/
58•matthewshere•3h ago•12 comments

The Rise and Fall of the Hanseatic League

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-hanseatic-league/
19•loeber•3d ago•1 comments

Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection

https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/
29•sogen•3h ago•5 comments

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https://news.sparkfun.com/14298
384•jgrahamc•20h ago•248 comments

Keep Pydantic out of your Domain Layer

https://coderik.nl/posts/keep-pydantic-out-of-your-domain-layer/
6•erikvdven•3d ago•2 comments

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https://esafev.com/notes/why-i-do-programming/
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https://twitter.com/premqnair/status/1948420769945682413
568•rfurmani•1d ago•388 comments

Never write your own date parsing library

https://www.zachleat.com/web/adventures-in-date-parsing/
187•ulrischa•16h ago•233 comments

Why MIT switched from Scheme to Python (2009)

https://www.wisdomandwonder.com/link/2110/why-mit-switched-from-scheme-to-python
226•borski•17h ago•187 comments

Efficient Computer's Electron E1 CPU – 100x more efficient than Arm?

https://morethanmoore.substack.com/p/efficient-computers-electron-e1-cpu
203•rpiguy•17h ago•73 comments

Vanilla JavaScript support for Tailwind Plus

https://tailwindcss.com/blog/vanilla-js-support-for-tailwind-plus
246•ulrischa•15h ago•129 comments

Animated Cursors

https://tattoy.sh/news/animated-cursors/
185•speckx•15h ago•40 comments

Experimental surgery performed by AI-driven surgical robot

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/07/experimental-surgery-performed-by-ai-driven-surgical-robot/
93•horseradish•13h ago•98 comments

Show HN: Auto Favicon MCP Server

https://github.com/dh1011/auto-favicon-mcp
12•dh1011•2h ago•2 comments

The future is not self-hosted

https://www.drewlyton.com/story/the-future-is-not-self-hosted/
315•drew_lytle•21h ago•289 comments

Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope

https://www.wired.com/story/steam-itchio-are-pulling-porn-games-censorship/
494•6d6b73•17h ago•644 comments

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https://www.recurse.com/blog/191-developing-our-position-on-ai
208•jakelazaroff•2d ago•65 comments

Ambigrammia: Between Creation and Discovery (Hofstadter, 2025)

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300275438/ambigrammia/
7•lorenzuru•2h ago•2 comments

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https://httptoolkit.com/blog/what-is-x-forwarded-for/
25•ayoisaiah•2d ago•8 comments

A Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern combination would redraw the railroad map

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54•throw0101c•13h ago•82 comments

CO2 Battery

https://energydome.com/co2-battery/
129•xnx•17h ago•114 comments

Programming vehicles in games

https://wassimulator.com/blog/programming/programming_vehicles_in_games.html
269•Bogdanp•19h ago•61 comments

Generic Containers in C: Vec

https://uecker.codeberg.page/2025-07-20.html
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Women dating safety app 'Tea' breached, users' IDs posted to 4chan

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437•gloxkiqcza•18h ago•558 comments

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https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02312-4
114•Bluestein•3d ago•44 comments

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https://github.com/neiltron/apple-health-mcp
177•_neil•2d ago•35 comments