It’s a never-ending quest, isn’t it? Every time i think i’m ‘done’ customizing my dotfiles or finding that ultimate terminal theme, i stumble upon another rabbit hole. Just one more alias, one more keybinding, one more tiny script to automate a task that already takes two clicks. i tell myself it’s about efficiency, but my productivity says otherwise. Anyone else stuck in this cycle? My brain needs an apt update && apt upgrade.
It’s all about the journey.
i got to jump back in recently w a new laptop that came w windows.
i’ve been buying linux first hardware for the last decade and going through this exercise has been eye opening for; i wasn’t aware of much the landscape has changed.
I was, when I was younger. I kind of don’t want to spend the rest of my life I have left tweaking some stupid theme that doesn’t matter in the long run. Whenever I reinstall, I pretty much just use it as is and probably only change the wallpaper and turn the theme to dark mode and that’s it.
I’m at the far end of the desktop tweaking inverted U curve and have achieved nirvana, with the new users at the beginning and you in the middle.
Not the case for me, I’ll typically spend a solid week or two tweaking things after I initially set it up to get all the hardware working perfectly, then never touch the configuration again even as things slowly start breaking with updates.
I’m a bit like you, but I try not to spend to much time into it and learn to be happy with what I have.
That’s a great habit for life too! 😊
It sounds like it brings you joy
I stopped that a long time ago when I noticed my perfect setups started breaking because of updates and incompatibilities with newer versions of e.g. the distro.
As long as it doesn’t hold you back in your real work you can just keep tweaking because it is fun. Just see it as a hobby where you learn things and potentially improve your workflow for other tasks.
This is how I see it. Also, it keeps me sharp for when things go turbo sideways, and I need them skills to fix a thing now now now.
I was like that for about 8 years after switching to Linux. Then I just started accepting most of the defaults. I have my fish configs and my tmux configs, and that’s about it.
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For me it is not a cycle, just a pragmatic implementation of tech catching up to my very specific needs.
Linux has been my primary OS for decades, but because I have edge case tech interests I have maintained a dual boot configuration.
Some of those edge cases have been possible, but also marginal in Linux, at times breaking some key aspects of my personal needs, so in the Unity game engine some required plugins (yes I am seriously looking at GoDot but have decades of investment in Unity), and in video tasks for 3D projection mapping projects, needing some custom scripts to work around codec issues.
The greatest challenges have been in relation to combining Sim games, motion simulation and VR integration.
I am again currently taking another run of that complex integration at the moment, tweaking CashyOS to meet my video editing and 3D projection mapping needs, while also trying to wrangle various proprietary Windows programs to run sim games, use 3rd party programs like CrewChief, and most importantly include telemetry driven haptics and motion simulation.
My Linux nirvana is complicated by some very specific but personally very important edge case needs. I am hoping that current Wine and Proton development has progressed to the point that I can finally totally ditch Window$ forever…fingers crossed!
It’s a familiar feeling. It took many years for me to grow out of it. Eventually, you might get tired of it, like I did. In the meantime, though, keep on tweaking as long as you enjoy it.
Nowadays, my systems have very few tweaks. A wallpaper for aesthetics, a few keyboard shortcuts for efficiency, and a coloured bash prompt for readability. Now that I think of it, these tweaks only address the things I really dislike. Looks like nowadays I can’t be bothered to tweak anything unless some issue drives me mad. 😃
