ive been thinking about making a competing "technological frugalism" general thread to antagonize the software minimalism crowd but i want to get a solid treatise done up first. a few points i plan to touch on:
>hard-line minimalism is often sullied by supremacist motivations, like the ideal that "more minimal" = "better than" >frugalism is a holistic rather than absolutist approach that is adapted to the users actual needs >frugalism is applied to a whole system. software, hardware, physical workspace, budget (money & time), etc. >perfect is the enemy of good. if a "good enough" system choice results in a marginally higher use of one resource (RAM), that's *fine*, especially if another resource (TIME) is saved >a focus on hardware frugalism. benefits of used vs new, repairability, mods, upgrades (hi /tpg/) >hopefully through a frugalist approach, the user can find satisfaction in what they already have instead of coveting what theyve not yet acquired. less technological "chasing the dragon" (of newer, faster, smaller, more bleeding edge) is good for overall well-being
tell me what you think and suggest what you think would be some good frugal tech choices people could make
First. Raspberry Pi + Cheap mouse + keyboard with a flip phone is minimal enough without giving up many modern day luxury.
Second. Would terminal applications be more frugal (in terms of resources used) or less frugal due to a learning curve (which takes time) ?
Charles Morales
I'd appreciate it. It always bothered me how there are no tier charts for minimalist software. It's always "use xy no matter what everything else is bloat". You could start looking here github.com/mayfrost/guides/blob/master/ALTERNATIVES.md Yes, it's tailored towards classic software minimalism, but some of the first items in each category are good alternatives to mainstream solutions.
>Would terminal applications be more frugal (in terms of resources used) or less frugal due to a learning curve (which takes time) ? That would depend on the user. No? Splitting categories into GUI and CLI options would probably be a good idea though.
James Perry
more frugal. the time needed to learn the basics is very low. ls, cd, cp, mkdir, less, and nano are all u really need.
Levi Cox
Windows is the ideal tech choice for frugal people. Yeah, it may cost money (which goes against frugalism) but it saves you a ton of time because you don't have to use a timesink OS like Linux.
Evan Anderson
Not necessarily. Running Windows on an old laptop will give you more of a headache and waste more of your time than some mainstream distro with a lightweight DE.
Jose Harris
Whats the most frugal system when considering both time and money? Sure an entire p4 sysyem could be had for a few dollars if you look in the right places but a slightly more expensive core2 duo/quad would provide much better performance.
Henry Bennett
>it may cost money No one pays for Windows. It comes with their PCs.
>tell me what you think and suggest what you think would be some good frugal tech choices people could make honestly people should buy a $1000 macbook once every 5 years and sell it for $350 at the end. That's $130 per year for a computer you never have to fuck with that does everything perfectly
Or buy a rasberry pi and other shit every year for and spend more money and have to fuck with shit all the time
Kevin Green
there is no difference between this and minimalism, user. You just fell for the trolls on /mg/ >hard-line minimalism is often sullied by supremacist motivations, like the ideal that "more minimal" = "better than" so is any other ideology pertaining to consumerism and/or the perception of value in material goods >frugalism is applied to a whole system. software, hardware, physical workspace, budget (money & time), etc 1. technology board 2. my X220, bicycle, used books, and modest but comfortable apartment would like a word, as would plenty of other people who like and use the minimalism threads >perfect is the enemy of good. if a "good enough" system choice results in a marginally higher use of one resource (RAM), that's *fine*, especially if another resource (TIME) is saved the only people who disagree with this are LARPing morons, changing the word of choice to describe the ideology won't change this >a focus on hardware frugalism. benefits of used vs new, repairability, mods, upgrades (hi /tpg/) >hopefully through a frugalist approach, the user can find satisfaction in what they already have instead of coveting what theyve not yet acquired. less technological "chasing the dragon" (of newer, faster, smaller, more bleeding edge) is good for overall well-being by coveting hardware that is repairable, mod-able, and upgradeable? I'm not disagreeing with the merits of used, utilitarian hardware, but I'm not sure what your point here is.
smartphones/tablet + bluetooth keyboard is minimal
>no one paid for windows I agree, like the people who got the windows 10 software for free that's why: WINDOWS IS FREE SOFTWARE! Year of the free software desktop, brought to by your friends at Microsoft.
Henry Brooks
apparently the differentiation needs to be made with all the i3/dwm/idle ram/"lol bloated" dickwaving going on in /mg/ and other threads
Jaxson Perry
ultimately i'd rather frugalism suggest that the best system is the one most accessible, maintainable and needs-fulfilling for the user, instead of decreeing any single make, model, or form-factor the supreme choice
consider a user who bought a macbook however many years ago that apple is dropping macos support for. if they've found themselves not too tied in to that ecosystem and aren't interested in buying newer hardware, maybe they'd want to look up what linux distros would be simple to install. xubuntu can be a good choice for a 2010 c2d macbook air, in that it's reasonably middleweight, full-featured, and has pre-loaded drivers for the geforce 320m and broadcom wifi. some people might turn up their nose at using mac hardware and a ubuntu derivative, but the user has a working, supported system at the end of the day
Owen Adams
>honestly people should buy a $1000 macbook once every 5 years and sell it for $350 at the end. That's $130 per year for a computer you never have to fuck with that does everything perfectly he's right you know
Mason King
>frugalism vs minimalism >implying they are opposites
>ultimately i'd rather frugalism suggest that the best system is the one most accessible, maintainable and needs-fulfilling for the user, macbook
Landon Thompson
>i3/dwm the fact of the matter is these do everything XFCE, GNOME, etc can do, but they do it with more useful functionality (automatic tiling, arranging different applications into tabs), and fewer redundant/useless features (settings and network managers). The idle ram shit is stupid, I agree.
Yeah, but it goes beyond the hate for DEs. Saying you use i3, awesome, openbox, etc. will get you nothing but people complaining about bloat. Nothing but dwm is accepted as window manager, nothing but st as terminal emulator.
David Russell
Minimal means the bottom line limit that is still acceptable. Frugal is about not losing any benefit while not introducing potential roadblocks.
Is this definition ok for you? Because frugalism and minimalism intersect in the so called unix philosophy portrayed in picture in here
there's actually a decent argument to be made about st, though- it really is miles ahead of rxvt and xterm in terms of simplicity and code quality. I personally don't use it (currently using uxterm), but st has its merits, and there really isn't any loss of functionality vs. uxterm. I agree with the window manager thing though. Awesome has some pretty horrendous feature creep but pretty much all of the other common ones (i3, xmonad, etc) are perfectly fine. Maybe not uber-minimal like dwm, but absolutely acceptable. On that note, I had actually been working on pic related to replace the other one that was being used recently.
I respect st for what it is, but at the same time I understand the wish for slightly more advanced stuff like dynamic text-wrapping and a scrollback buffer. There has to be a middle ground between using st and konsole.
Leo Roberts
there is, and it's uxterm. like I said, I do use xterm and I quite like it. The ideal balance of minimalism and functionality is subjective, and some anons place it closer to "gutted, but tiny" than others.
Parker Parker
See quads and trips you got to do better than singles.
>like dynamic text-wrapping and a scrollback buffer. Are you using it vanilla or some shit? My build has both of those.
Ian Brown
i use mx linux on older laptops with ~4gb ram: >deb based >pretty good defaults >mx tools simplifies a lot of common system config and tasks >package installer is very good >mx repo has lots of recent popular software >nonfree firmware easy to install (sorry rms) >fairly low base ram usage
Levi Morris
>That would depend on the user. No? Yes?
David Mitchell
Are you guys trying to differentiate minimalism from productivity? Because despite what he trolls on Jow Forums say you can increase productivity with certain minimalism.
Leo Diaz
>don't have to use a timesink OS like Linux. updates that are forced and break your entire system aren't timesinks?
Carter Ward
bump
Levi Sanchez
Slackware full install. You don't need anything else.
Owen Turner
I'm a big proponent of apatheticalism. You explore things for a bit, and then stick with things randomly until you fossilize all of your habits. That's why I've been using Fedora with KDE, Firefox, emacs and st for five fucking years now.
Nolan Cruz
Depends on what are using, but just buy a decent PC every 3-5 years (select how much of a price it should be according to your needs).
Jeremiah Stewart
>windows >not frugal
Nigga what? If windows has something going on for it is frugality
