1   03 April, 2020
  2
  3The Zen of KISS Linux
  4
  5My thoughts on the distro, the philosophy and my experience in general
  6
  7   [1]I installed KISS early in January on my main machine -- an HP Envy
  8   13 (2017), and I have since noticed a lot of changes in my workflow, my
  9   approach to software (and its development), and in life as a whole. I
 10   wouldn't call KISS "life changing", as that would be overly dramatic,
 11   but it has definitely reshaped my outlook towards technology -- for
 12   better or worse.
 13
 14   When I talk about KISS to people -- online or IRL---I get some pretty
 15   interesting reactions and comments.^[2]1 Ranging from "Oh cool." to
 16   "You must be retarded.", I've heard it all. A classic and a personal
 17   favourite of mine, "I don't use meme distros because I actually get
 18   work done." It is actually, quite the opposite -- I've been so much
 19   more productive using KISS than any other operating system. I'll
 20   explain why shortly.
 21
 22   The beauty of this "distro", is it isn't much of a distribution at all.
 23   There is no big team, no mailing lists, no infrastructure. The entire
 24   setup is so loose, and this makes it very convenient to swap things out
 25   for alternatives. The main (and potentially community) repos all reside
 26   locally on your system. In the event that Dylan decides to call it
 27   quits and switches to Windows, we can simply just bump versions
 28   ourselves, locally! The [3]KISS Guidestones document is a good read.
 29
 30   In the subseqent paragraphs, I've laid out the different things about
 31   KISS that stand out to me, and make using the system a lot more
 32   enjoyable.
 33
 34the package system
 35
 36   Packaging for KISS has been delightful, to say the least. It takes me
 37   about 2 mins to write and publish a new package. Here's the radare2
 38   package, which I maintain, for example.
 39
 40   The build file (executable):
 41#!/bin/sh -e
 42
 43./configure \
 44    --prefix=/usr
 45
 46make
 47make DESTDIR="$1" install
 48
 49   The version file:
 504.3.1 1
 51
 52   The checksums file (generated using kiss checksum radare2):
 534abcb9c9dff24eab44d64d392e115ae774ab1ad90d04f2c983d96d7d7f9476aa  4.3.1.tar.gz
 54
 55   And finally, the sources file:
 56https://github.com/radareorg/radare2/archive/4.3.1.tar.gz
 57
 58   This is literally the bare minimum that you need to define a package.
 59   There's also the depends file where you specify the dependencies for
 60   your package. kiss also generates a manifests file to track all the
 61   files and directories that your package creates during installation,
 62   for their removal, if and when that occurs. Now compare this process
 63   with any other distribution's.
 64
 65the community
 66
 67   As far as I know, it mostly consists of the #kisslinux channel on
 68   Freenode and the [4]r/kisslinux subreddit. It's not that big, but it's
 69   suprisingly active, and super helpful. There have been some interested
 70   new KISS-related projects too: [5]kiss-games -- a repository for, well,
 71   Linux games; [6]kiss-ppc64le and [7]kiss-aarch64 -- KISS Linux ports
 72   for PowerPC and ARM64 architectures; [8]wyvertux -- an attempt at a
 73   GNU-free Linux distribution, using KISS as a base; and tons more.
 74
 75the philosophy
 76
 77   Software today is far too complex. And its complexity is only growing.
 78   Some might argue that this is inevitable, and it is in fact progress. I
 79   disagree. Blindly adding layers and layers of abstraction (Docker,
 80   modern web "apps") isn't progress. Look at the Linux desktop ecosystem
 81   today, for example -- monstrosities like GNOME and KDE are a result of
 82   this...new wave software engineering.
 83
 84   I see KISS as a symbol of defiance against this malformed notion. You
 85   don't need all the bloat these DEs ship with to have a usable system.
 86   Agreed, it's a bit more effort to get up and running, but it is
 87   entirely worth it. Think of it as a clean table -- feels good to sit
 88   down and work on, doesn't it?
 89
 90   Let's take my own experience, for example. One of the initial few
 91   software I used to install on a new system was dunst -- a notification
 92   daemon. Unfortunately, it depends on D-Bus, which is Poetterware; ergo,
 93   not on KISS. However, using a system without notifications has been
 94   very pleasant. Nothing to distract you while you're in the zone.
 95
 96   Another instance, again involving D-Bus (or not), is Bluetooth audio.
 97   As it happens, my laptop's 3.5mm jack is rekt, and I need to use
 98   Bluetooth for audio, if at all. Sadly, Bluetooth audio on Linux
 99   hard-depends on D-Bus. Bluetooth stacks that don't rely on D-Bus do
100   exist, like on Android, but porting them over to desktop is
101   non-trivial. However, I used this to my advantage and decided not to
102   consume media on my laptop. This has drastically boosted my
103   productivity, since I literally cannot watch YouTube even if I wanted
104   to. My laptop is now strictly work-only. If I do need to watch the
105   occasional video / listen to music, I use my phone. Compartmentalizing
106   work and play to separate devices has worked out pretty well for me.
107
108   I'm slowly noticing myself favor low-tech (or no-tech) solutions to
109   simple problems too. Like notetaking -- I've tried plaintext files, Vim
110   Wiki, Markdown, but nothing beats actually using pen and paper. Tech,
111   from what I can see, doesn't solve problems very effectively. In some
112   cases, it only causes more of them. I might write another post
113   discussing my thoughts on this in further detail.
114
115   I'm not sure what I intended this post to be, but I'm pretty happy with
116   the mindspill. To conclude this already long monologue, let me clarify
117   one little thing y'all are probably thinking, "Okay man, are you
118   suggesting that we regress to the Dark Ages?". No, I'm not suggesting
119   that we regress, but rather, progress mindfully.
120     __________________________________________________________________
121
122    1. No, I don't go "I use KISS btw". I don't bring it up unless
123       provoked.
124
125References
126
127   1. https://icyphox.sh/blog/five-days-tty
128   2. https://icyphox.sh/home/icy/leet/site/build/blog/kiss-zen/temp.html#fn:bringing-up-kiss
129   3. https://k1ss.org/guidestones
130   4. https://old.reddit.com/r/kisslinux
131   5. https://github.com/sdsddsd1/kiss-games
132   6. https://github.com/jedavies-dev/kiss-ppc64le
133   7. https://github.com/jedavies-dev/kiss-aarch64
134   8. https://github.com/wyvertux/wyvertux