(A prose text, not really a question. Feel free to boo me.)

I would consider myself an IT person, developing stuff for more than two decades now with only a short pause. That, involuntarily, leads to people who know me randomly asking me for software recommendations for their specific thing. While I still keep in touch with them, I notice that I regularly change my preferences - while they don't. I have recommended text editors, operating systems and even programming languages which I, after enough time has passed, would not use ever again for my own needs.

In communities like LQ it has become usual to ask for "the right tool for a job (and possibly even more than that)" - but, seeing that even my LQ 2017 Poll votes are almost entirely different from what I think is right half a year later, I think the question is wrong in the first place. Having "the perfect setup" needs to be reevaluated every single day, because things change. Every time I change anything in my perfect setup, that new setup is the perfect setup again. The number of "perfect text editors" in my life even outgrows the number of "perfect operating systems", and I had a few of them yet. This is not even limited to software, it also affects general concepts. Tiling or stacking? I changed my mind on that three times in 2017 alone. I cannot even decide on one window manager in each category, there is always that little detail. (This is why I post this text in this section, after all.)

I switched from awesome wm to StumpWM to Window Maker, back to StumpWM, back to Window Maker and now I'm on dwm - all between 2016 and today. I want to have both split terminals and a quick-start bar, both the maximum screen estate and eye-candy. I want tiling with a mouse, but without having to attach that mouse to my laptop. I even know that this text will cause replies like "why use dwm when you can have i3/bspwm?". - While moving between the window managers, I noticed that StumpWM's default, manual tiling suddenly annoys me. Why can't it just rearrange open windows like dwm does? I wonder why I liked that so much before.

Long story short; what I wanted to say is: Do not assume that you will ever be happy with what your setup gives you for more than a week. You will never settle. And there are obvious advantages of using an OS that will not provide more than three or four different desktop environments (or even just one, like macOS does). There are obvious advantages of text editors which you cannot configure in thousands of lines of text files. Those advantages are: You will be happy with what you get - and you will finally make peace with your perfectly imperfect setup. Highly recommended.

I find your post to be interesting for at least a couple of reasons - these are serious comments too.

You seem like the sort of person to me that knows exactly what they want and exactly how to get it. While I do agree with you that things change, personally I've never found a "perfect setup" with any system or single piece of software (application or otherwise) that I've ever used - and yes, even Linux. I have found better software and "setups", but never a perfect one(s). I think part of that is and as you say, things are always changing and also myself. I'll try and give you an example (hopefully my example makes at least some sense to you - sorry in advance if it doesn't);

I remember when I was still using Windows and didn't even know what Linux (or UNIX) was, and thinking that that's the best it got (I'm not trying to have a dig at Windows BTW). I think this was because I simply just assumed that that's all there was to it - other than buying a Mac (I have basically no experience with Mac OS BTW). I remember being introduced to Linux for the first time and thinking this is like nothing I've ever experienced before - once again, because I just assumed that it was either Windows or Mac and that was it. This is why I'm little puzzled by the fact you can't decide which you would prefer - whether that's in relation to OS's or application software.

Anyway, and skipping to when I first started to use Linux (when I was a complete UNIX and Linux n00b myself - I still am pretty much at n00b level with the BSD's), I can't quite remember which Linux distro I first used - I think it may have been Ubuntu (from memory) and either way, I remember not really liking Ubuntu too much (I did like the idea of learning a different system and particularly Linux itself though) so I (like you) started the distro hop, and to cut a long story short, I remember using openSUSE for a number of years (didn't mind it for a while), but unfortunately it's developers started to favor releasing versions of KDE (like KDE4 for a very good example) that where just way too buggie for my liking. But I've always liked KDE, as I also remember that the first DE I ever used I'm pretty sure was GNOME and I just didn't like it compared to KDE; my point there is that I also highly value stability over the latest version of x y or z, therefore openSUSE became no longer an option for me to be able to consider using as my main system. Don't even get me started on the Unity DE , I'm sorry to it's developers, but it to me is a complete eye saw and IMHO is just not usable for my liking.

Hopefully I make sense to you there, but I have a couple of questions that's not real clear to me from your post;

Why exactly did you switch from StumpWM to Window Maker? How come your now using dwm?

(I'm sorry if you've stated the answers to the above questions, but it's just not real clear to me - serious questions - I am honestly interested to know)

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Booooo!

I never strive for perfection in anything, because such a thing is impossible. If anything irritates me enough then I will find a way to get rid of or minimise that irritation, but I have a target level of satisfaction that can probably be described as "quite adequately satisfied". I will even let a distro or desktop environment push me a little, as Mint is doing now with its move to the LightDM display manager and its Software Manager's dependency on Flatpak, before I get irritated enough to say "Ok, that's enough" and look elsewhere.

The only way I get could achieve perfection is to actually design and build a distro myself from the bottom up and no, I ain't got no time for that.

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No need to be that defensive this time.

Mostly. (And sometimes I just write the tool that gives me what I want to have on my own.) But I don't know what I will need tomorrow - or in two hours. The grass on the other side is always greener.

For me, it was S.u.S.E., both at school and at home. Or was it Red Hat? I used both early - and both had some sort of (early) KDE if I remember correctly. KDE was the first "real" desktop environment I liked. But the world was so much smaller back then.

I had initially written an answer to that, but I decided to skip including it here because I did not want to make this thread a replacement for a blog entry about what I used when and why, so I thought nobody would care... but since you asked, I might have been mistaken about the curiosity of my fellow LQ members.

In order to properly answer that, however, I'll need to go back one and a half desktops:
After awesome WM had decided to be a full-featured (thus, heavy) window manager with all bells and whistles, I was aiming for something easier. I gave quite some of them a try, but most fell out because they had no included bar. I don't want to solve a puzzle just to have a working desktop. I like Common Lisp and StumpWM gave me just enough "bells and whistles" without being too offensive with them. - Some time into my journey with StumpWM and having a comfortable configuration, I suddenly noticed that I ran StumpWM in monocle mode most of the time, only using its tiling functionalities for terminals. That felt wrong. I could just have that with any WM/DE and tmux or terminator. So I gave Window Maker a try, which is a window manager which I found very late - two or three years ago, when I was happy with tiling. I'm late to some games...

Window Maker is lovely once you have founds its hidden features. (The documentation is not really awesome - sorry, devs.) But then again, it took more screen space than StumpWM and it required me to plug in a mouse for the best experience. As I had to install StumpWM again anyway (distro switch to Gentoo) and its ecosystem can be annoying to install when you have to compile it on your own, I added dwm to the list because why not? And suddenly, after years of not knowing why people would want to have to compile their window manager for changing its configuration, it dawned on me. After a couple of days of using both StumpWM and dwm, I found it increasingly horrible to have to tile manually, like StumpWM (by default) requires me to. dwm wastes no screen space, it rearranges windows as I open and close them. Maybe I become lazier as I'm growing older ... but I like that!

Probably, spectrwm could be worth a try as well though... hmm.

Yeah I understand; I'm like that to at least some extent myself in that: while I don't mind spending time to config the system/DE/etc to my liking, I'm just too lazy to sit there and do too much more after I've installed the system (said distro of choice - currently CentOS) and done whatever config to x y or z I need.

Like for example;

While one day I would like to install Slackware and get it the way I want, right now I'm just too lazy to really find the energy for such a hands-on system.

So I guess it comes down to the question; how much time and energy are you prepared to spend on your distro/system of choice?

I guess for me; if I didn't want to learn anything and just want to use the system and that's it; I may not be even bothering with Linux - let alone hopefully Slackware or even Gentoo one day. Well that's what I put it down to anyway.

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Debating on whether to sand out the runs on the clear coat paint job I did on my motorcycle gas tanks or just use polishing compound and call it day before I put the death proof vinyl emblems on the tank.

Perfection? Or just good enough? Decisions, decisions?

Oops. This is a linux thread.

I stick with ICEWM. But I can see you like speed and the configuration choices of your Window Managers.
I like speed also. In all things that are things I can use daily though.

It is why I chose to use GNU / Linux. Perfection? As you can tell from my 1st sentence in this post. I am on the fence about that most of the time.

Even using Gentoo is not necessarily a sign of having too much time: I have set it up once and now I mostly make updates without many changes in the core system. "It just works" (except my usual OS-related complaints, of course).

The thing that still requires work is the interactive part - like the user interface. Those options, those too many options!

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Yeah, I think in my case it's more of an "energy" issue more than a "time" issue. You took the words right out of my mouth there: "it just works" - I was going to say something like that in my last post, but I forgot.

As far as options are concerned; my view is basically that regardless of which distro, DE, WM, etc, etc, there's always going to be many different options and to probably a "medium" (if there is such a thing) to a "larger" extent, I'm normally at least reasonably happy with the defaults - some of them I don't even look at either at all or to a large extent once again. I think it just comes down to your own preferences really - only you really know the answer to that, no-one can decide what you like - and vice versa.

Well, that's my "world view" on it, but really it's once again up to you what you like - and fair enough too.

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But why would somebody even want something perfect? Perfect means no improving, right? How fun is that?

I enjoy messing with the internals of my OS, and sometimes it's a little annoying that my system never really breaks. I use xfce for the most part, however I always have Openbox, Tint2 and Vim installed just in case...

I tried MacOS High Sierra in VB the other day, mostly for dev purposes. Almost any Linux DE has tons more features and settings than the supposed "worlds best" DE on Mac. Not to mention the whole OS is so locked down....Oh well at least they had a terminal where you could actually do something.

Linux is an occasion for perpetual hope that everything will keep working, especially after an upgrade.