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      1 #+title: On digital minimalism, Linux, NixOS and Emacs
      2 #+date: <2020-02-22 Sat>
      3 #+filetags: minimalism digital emacs linux nixos
      4 #+setupfile: ../templates/post.org/
      5 
      6 * Introduction
      7 
      8 I've been reading and listening about Minimalism and Digital Minimalism for a little while
      9 now. I've watch some [[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ24N4O0bP7LGLBDvye7oCA][Matt D'Avella]] youtube video (and documentary), read [[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40672036-digital-minimalism][Digital
     10 Minimalism]] from [[https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/147891.Cal_Newport][Cal Newport]], and read a bunch of [[Links][articles and blog posts]].
     11 
     12 I wouldn't say I am a minimalist, neither am I a digital minimalist *but* it is something
     13 that is a bit appealing and I feel I am slowly taking inspiration from those. I've started
     14 reducing to a minimun what my /smart/-phone does, I've reduced the number of /gadgets/
     15 I've add over time. But in this posts, I am going to focus on my systems and tools — this
     16 means Linux distributions, Emacs and other tools.
     17 
     18 * A little bit of history (or context)
     19 
     20 I've been using GNU/Linux for ages now. It has been around 22 years now that I discovered
     21 Red Hat[fn:1] Linux, 5.2 at the time. I've use it as my primary operating system almost
     22 ever sync. During that time, I've tried so many distribution: from [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandriva_Linux][Mandrake]] (later
     23 Mandriva), to [[https://www.debian.org/][Debian]] (3.0 -> 9.0 on some servers) and [[https://www.ubuntu.com][Ubuntu]] (on the first ever public
     24 release), with a long time on [[https://gentoo.org/][Gentoo]] and later [[https://www.archlinux.org/][Archlinux]]. I've used Gnome, KDE, wmii,
     25 XMonad, awesome-vm. I've used bash, zsh, fish, switching from one to another multiple
     26 times. I've used Emacs, vim, IntelliJ, Eclipse, VSCode… My gentoo/archlinux days made me
     27 try and /use/ a lot of tools (screen, tmux, …) and customization.
     28 
     29 I had the habit to customize everything, down to the theme and icons I use. There was a
     30 time where I would patch and re-package some GTK themes and icons set. *I had to
     31 customize everything*, that was my learning experience. I would often break things and
     32 have to re-install the system — and *it was fun* 😎.
     33 
     34 But the more I /grew/, the more I worked for different companies, the less time I had to
     35 do this. I was also learning a lot about tests, reproducibility at that time. My /will/ to
     36 customization and /instability/ slowly faded, I wanted to be able to focus on what
     37 mattered, and not loose time on silly things that I would break soon after making it.
     38 
     39 * Minimalism and Digital Mininalism
     40 
     41 Let's try to define really quick what is minimalism and digital minimalism about.Digital
     42 minimalism is Minimalism in the digital world, and [[https://www.theminimalists.com/minimalism/][minimalism]] can be seen as [[https://jamesstuber.com/minimalism-as-a-framework/][a Framework
     43 for Decision Making]].
     44 
     45 #+begin_quote
     46 Every decision we make is constrained by limited resources. Money, materials, energy. Even
     47 the richest man in the world is limited by time, and has to make decisions accordingly.
     48 
     49 Here are some factors that make minimalism well suited for decision making:
     50 
     51 - Practicing minimalism helps develop an improved ability to discern what’s important and
     52   what’s not
     53 - It becomes easier to let go of ‘sort of important’ things
     54 - What you choose to keep is a reflection of your values
     55 #+end_quote
     56 
     57 In a gist, Digital Minimalism is about making conscious choice of what you use and what
     58 you do in the digital world, a world of abundance (information, software, …).
     59 
     60 Let's take two examples: our desktops and our phones.
     61 
     62 On desktop, digital minimalism can be something like the follow blog post : [[http://neugierig.org/software/blog/2014/07/anti-dashboard-manifesto.html][Tech Notes:
     63 The Anti-Dashboard Manifesto]].
     64 
     65 #+begin_quote
     66 Now take that reasoning further: It's not useful to reserve a portion of my screen for
     67 displaying which applications are running, as the things that are running are visible and
     68 the things that aren't visible can be found when necessary. There's no need for an icon
     69 displaying wifi status; if I'm connected it's uninteresting and if I'm not connected I'll
     70 surely discover it if I attempt to use the internet.
     71 
     72 I took this reasoning to its conclusion. I run my computers with the screen blank except
     73 for the apps I run, and the apps I run I configure to display a minimal amount of
     74 information. I think of this as being anti-dashboard: against the cognitive clutter of
     75 extraneous information. My computer is not a cockpit and I am at my best when I'm only
     76 thinking about the single task at hand.
     77 #+end_quote
     78 
     79 This is taking things a little bit too far for me *but* it does resonate with me, and as
     80 you'll see in the following articles (and on my configuration), I share some of Evan's
     81 belief. By default, my desktop do only show a background (be an image or a color) and
     82 anything related to time, battery and other status is a keybinding away (the =Win= key).
     83 
     84 And on the phone: [[https://robertheaton.com/2020/03/18/yourself-happier-iphone-worse/][How to make yourself happier by making your iPhone worse | Robert Heaton]]
     85 — which I followed almost word for word, but this isn't the subject of this post.
     86 
     87 * Emacs, Nix, NixOS, =home-manager= and other tools
     88 
     89 How a GNU/Linux distribution like NixOS comes into this. First, let's see what I want :
     90 
     91 - A system that is tailored to my needs, that makes me efficient.
     92 - A system that is customizable, to answer the previous item. I want to be able to modify
     93   the default behavior if it doesn't suit me.
     94 - A system that is reproductible and easy to replicate. If I change my hardware, or if I
     95   need to re-install my system for /any reason/.
     96 - A way to share configuration on my infra. This is probably the developer speaking, but I
     97   want to write something once and re-use it several times.
     98 - A developer environment that is reproductible, on-demand and /safe/.
     99 - Use defaults of the software I use as much as possible. This one is tricky to achiev for
    100   several reasons:
    101   + I am used to customize everything (/easy to fix/)
    102   + I use a custom keyboard layout ([[https://bepo.fr][bepo]]), so if I go with default keybinding, I will have
    103     the wrong /muscle memory/ (and they could be not optimized either)
    104 - Hackable tools that I can manipulate as I want.
    105 - Use the right tool at the right time, trying not to reinvent the wheel.
    106 
    107 As it turns out Nix and NixOS are giving all the components required for my /almost/ ideal
    108 setup.
    109 
    110 If you complete that with a /not really minimalist/ editor, called [[https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/][GNU Emacs]], you've got a
    111 pretty composable system without leaving Emacs. I'll dig more into my Emacs configuration
    112 and my NixOS setup in different posts — and on the [[https://vincent.demeester.fr/configurations/][=configurations=]] pages — but my take
    113 lately is to try to do with what is available (as built-in, in Emacs for example). After
    114 reading the docs, if it's not sufficient, I may look for an external module or tool.
    115 
    116 * Conclusion
    117 
    118 This was a weird post that mixes up tooling, minimalism and thoughts. It's definitely not
    119 what I initially envisioned. But I'm hoping it introduce a bit my take on things.
    120 
    121 * Links
    122 
    123 - [[http://neugierig.org/software/blog/2014/07/anti-dashboard-manifesto.html][Tech Notes: The Anti-Dashboard Manifesto]]
    124 - [[https://blog.zdsmith.com/posts/digital-minimalism-for-the-working-hacker.html][Subset Park: Digital Minimalism for the Working Hacker]]
    125 - [[https://jamesstuber.com/minimalism-as-a-framework/][Minimalism as a Framework for Decision Making | JamesStuber.com]]
    126 - [[https://robertheaton.com/2020/03/18/yourself-happier-iphone-worse/][How to make yourself happier by making your iPhone worse | Robert Heaton]]
    127 
    128 * Footnotes
    129 
    130 [fn:1] And I now work for Red Hat Inc., what a journey 😝