 All right, I have a brief public service announcement in this video, and that is, stop using i3. You don't need to use i3 anymore. i3's over, DWM is the new cool stuff. Actually, I think DWM has been longer than i3, but it's never been better to use DWM. It's never been better to use suckless software, and it's only getting better, and getting better way faster than everyone else. Okay, I wanna talk in this video about two things, two misconceptions. I really wanna talk about DWM, but this sort of applies to all suckless software. I'm actually thinking about doing a couple videos on my DWM build. I think you should all test it out. All of you who are using my old i3 config, use DWM. This stuff is way cooler, but I might be doing some videos on that. I wanna talk about two reasons. I think that suckless software is just always gonna be better and easier to use once you understand how it works. So here are the two things, okay? First thing is this. When you're, let's put you in the position of someone who's modifying, who wants to get a custom Linux set up on i3, and you wanna have all this fancy stuff, and you wanna make it exactly to your liking and stuff like that, or at least make things more efficient, okay? If you're using i3, or if you're using a non-suckless window manager, the thing about that is they're all designed with config files. That is, if you use i3, you modify that config file, and you're sort of at the mercy of the programmers whatever variables and settings they put in that config file to allow you to edit. So you might be able to change the gaps between windows, you might be able to change what kind of bar you have, or stuff like that, or specific settings, but the thing about that is that there comes a point where you can't modify it anymore. You can't, there are only so many things that are in the config file. Suckless software does not work like that, because suckless software, of course, its config file is the source code. You are intended to modify the source code, and the suckless community or whatever is built around that. So the difference is, now of course, in any suckless program, usually you have config.h, or config.def.h, and this is sort of supposed to be the config file. It's really just part of the source code, but it's supposed to look like a config file in that here's where you set a lot of the variables you use. So for example, here's the border of our windows here, see the little red border here, how big is that? Or gaps, if gaps are active or stuff like that, or your colors, or your fonts, it sort of works like a config file. But in suckless software, this is just one piece of the config file, and I could just as easily, if I want to program in a new feature, I could just as easily open up DWM.C, and edit stuff like that. No, of course you might say, oh, I'm not a programmer. I don't know anything about that. And you don't need to be a programmer. Here's the nice thing. First off, just to be clear, I know a lot of people think, oh, Luke here, you have a YouTube channel and you talk about technology, so that means you're a programmer. No, no, I'm not a programmer at all. I've never said I am. I do a lot of shell scripting for useful stuff, but I'm definitely not a C programmer. I mean, I know basically what I know about C, I learned from suckless, using suckless stuff and figuring things out and fixing bugs if I ever messed something up. But in general, you don't need to know anything about C to understand suckless software because you can just go online and get a patch and install it and you just gotta go into your little file and run patch on your patch. And let's say you pick some kind of, I don't know, let's say you pick this one and you just run it. If there are any errors, you fix them manually. It's not a difficult process to do at all. You don't really need to know. You can do it with any language. You don't need to have an intimate knowledge of C. Now, of course that is good if you wanna add new features. But in my time of using suckless, it's been great that I can just go online and whereas you might look for a feature, oh, if it exists in I3, there is no feature that does not exist in DWM. This is the nice thing because it's supposed to be modified. The core source code is supposed to be modified. So that's the one advantage. There's no border between the config file and the source code. So you're intended to modify the whole thing and the community is built around that fact. The other big advantage of suckless stuff is as follows. And this is gonna sound like the opposite of the truth, but suckless software has more features. It will always have more features. And what I mean by that is this. First off, I'm pulling up the DWM website obviously. I'm gonna go to the patches folder. Now, the first thing you need to realize is so many people are using DWM now, I'm actually very happy. You can look at the number of patches here, look at this. I mean, it's like dozens, maybe over a hundred, maybe over 200 for all I know, I'm not counting them up. But you have so many patches. One year ago, there were like maybe 20 of these. I don't know, there were a lot less, I'll just say that. And I think it's the same with other suckless software. I think it's really taken off recently and that's been great. But here's the thing, suckless software has more features. And what I mean by that is that although you get, you get the Bayer source code, the Bayer build of DWM has really basic features. It does some really cool stuff when you understand how DWM works. I'm thinking about doing another video on that soon because again, I want people to move over because I'm sick of maintaining I3, but it might come with not many features. But here's the thing, suckless, if you just come up with some crazy idea for some stupid feature that only you could use or maybe a couple other people, DWM, I mean, the guys at suckless might just put it up on the website anyway because why not? We don't have to worry if you're asking, well, just to put it in perspective. If you're asking for a feature in I3, okay, let's say you want the ability to, I don't know, some really granulated feature to change the gaps between windows or something like that. Okay, I don't know. You wanna be able to change horizontal versus vertical gaps, okay? You know, the guys at I3 have to think, okay, well, do we wanna add this feature? Is it feature bloat? Is it gonna be too complicated? Is it gonna mess stuff up? Stuff like that. The suckless guys don't need to think about that. No one needs to because they're not, when you ask for a feature, they're not adding it to every build. They're just putting up a patch on the website and most of these patches, I'm sure the guys at suckless are like, those are totally unnecessary features. In fact, some of them are contradictory. They have multiple different gaps packages. They have multiple, I think they have different auto start or refresh packages and stuff like that. Or patches, I should say. So the nice thing about suckless software is that you actually get more features because they don't have to constantly guess, do we really want to have this in our default build? Because they just have a bare bones build and you put in the features you like. And the features that are out there that you can put into DWM, they are way better than all the stuff in other window managers. Oh, I'm sure there's some stuff they haven't touched on yet. But in general, you just have much more. I mean, this is their official site. It has so many potentially installable official features. It's fantastic, okay? So that is the big difference. I think a lot of people get fixated on, well okay, I'll tell you my perspective back when I used i3. I heard that suckless software, you had to modify the source code. I thought that was totally nuts. I just assumed that compiling it would take a long time. It takes like two seconds. Let's actually do it right now just to make sure, pseudo make install, okay? There, that's how long it takes to compile DWM. It doesn't take long. It's not a complicated procedure. As I said, like they have, the reason this config file, config.h file exists is so you can modify features in the most economical way as possible. It's easy to do. It's basically the same. I mean, you could even have them whenever you save this file, automatically just recompile it. So you can think about it in your head as a config file. If you wanna think of, I mean that could be dangerous if you're auto-installing it. You might get a broken build or something like that, but you can put checks in it. But this is one of those things where unlike in other window managers, DWM can add, like people can build just any feature for it. There's nothing keeping them from writing anything and Suclis can even officially, I don't know if it's support, but officially put these on their websites even if they would never include them as features in their actual official build. And so they can be more liberal with features than anyone else. So this is what I like. This is what I like about Suclis software. Is it difficult to use? No, it isn't. It is, oh, like there's a different mindset that goes into it, I think. But it is so, there are so many, there's so much wonkiness of I3 or other window managers you don't have to worry about DWM. As long as you're not fighting against it and you sort of know what you're doing and you'll find out what you're doing, it's not hard to do. Just tinker with it at the beginning and then you'll see where you go. Anyway, I might do some videos on DWM. Actually, just notice I've added in features for a clickable status bar. So now I have all this stuff, got my nice little weather report, just like it is on I3. It's up for even better. I've added in a couple of features to DWM. I might do a video just actually on those. This is just sort of me talking about why it's better. So stop using I3. Stop using whatever window manager you're using. Just use DWM. Or, can't forbid you're using like KDE or something like that, or Nome, or I don't even know what else there is. I just know window managers. All right, see you guys next time. Oh, by the way, check that out. I'm looking at my recording. Perfect E-celeb status. I just instinctually knew that I was right at 10 minutes and I would get my mid-abroad break so I could just stop the video. Wow, I'm just a professional. Anyway, see you guys next time.