03 April, 2020

The Zen of KISS Linux

My thoughts on the distro, the philosophy and my experience in general

   [1]I installed KISS early in January on my main machine -- an HP Envy
   13 (2017), and I have since noticed a lot of changes in my workflow, my
   approach to software (and its development), and in life as a whole. I
   wouldn't call KISS "life changing", as that would be overly dramatic,
   but it has definitely reshaped my outlook towards technology -- for
   better or worse.

   When I talk about KISS to people -- online or IRL---I get some pretty
   interesting reactions and comments.^[2]1 Ranging from "Oh cool." to
   "You must be retarded.", I've heard it all. A classic and a personal
   favourite of mine, "I don't use meme distros because I actually get
   work done." It is actually, quite the opposite -- I've been so much
   more productive using KISS than any other operating system. I'll
   explain why shortly.

   The beauty of this "distro", is it isn't much of a distribution at all.
   There is no big team, no mailing lists, no infrastructure. The entire
   setup is so loose, and this makes it very convenient to swap things out
   for alternatives. The main (and potentially community) repos all reside
   locally on your system. In the event that Dylan decides to call it
   quits and switches to Windows, we can simply just bump versions
   ourselves, locally! The [3]KISS Guidestones document is a good read.

   In the subseqent paragraphs, I've laid out the different things about
   KISS that stand out to me, and make using the system a lot more
   enjoyable.

the package system

   Packaging for KISS has been delightful, to say the least. It takes me
   about 2 mins to write and publish a new package. Here's the radare2
   package, which I maintain, for example.

   The build file (executable):
#!/bin/sh -e

./configure \
    --prefix=/usr

make
make DESTDIR="$1" install

   The version file:
4.3.1 1

   The checksums file (generated using kiss checksum radare2):
4abcb9c9dff24eab44d64d392e115ae774ab1ad90d04f2c983d96d7d7f9476aa  4.3.1.tar.gz

   And finally, the sources file:
https://github.com/radareorg/radare2/archive/4.3.1.tar.gz

   This is literally the bare minimum that you need to define a package.
   There's also the depends file where you specify the dependencies for
   your package. kiss also generates a manifests file to track all the
   files and directories that your package creates during installation,
   for their removal, if and when that occurs. Now compare this process
   with any other distribution's.

the community

   As far as I know, it mostly consists of the #kisslinux channel on
   Freenode and the [4]r/kisslinux subreddit. It's not that big, but it's
   suprisingly active, and super helpful. There have been some interested
   new KISS-related projects too: [5]kiss-games -- a repository for, well,
   Linux games; [6]kiss-ppc64le and [7]kiss-aarch64 -- KISS Linux ports
   for PowerPC and ARM64 architectures; [8]wyvertux -- an attempt at a
   GNU-free Linux distribution, using KISS as a base; and tons more.

the philosophy

   Software today is far too complex. And its complexity is only growing.
   Some might argue that this is inevitable, and it is in fact progress. I
   disagree. Blindly adding layers and layers of abstraction (Docker,
   modern web "apps") isn't progress. Look at the Linux desktop ecosystem
   today, for example -- monstrosities like GNOME and KDE are a result of
   this...new wave software engineering.

   I see KISS as a symbol of defiance against this malformed notion. You
   don't need all the bloat these DEs ship with to have a usable system.
   Agreed, it's a bit more effort to get up and running, but it is
   entirely worth it. Think of it as a clean table -- feels good to sit
   down and work on, doesn't it?

   Let's take my own experience, for example. One of the initial few
   software I used to install on a new system was dunst -- a notification
   daemon. Unfortunately, it depends on D-Bus, which is Poetterware; ergo,
   not on KISS. However, using a system without notifications has been
   very pleasant. Nothing to distract you while you're in the zone.

   Another instance, again involving D-Bus (or not), is Bluetooth audio.
   As it happens, my laptop's 3.5mm jack is rekt, and I need to use
   Bluetooth for audio, if at all. Sadly, Bluetooth audio on Linux
   hard-depends on D-Bus. Bluetooth stacks that don't rely on D-Bus do
   exist, like on Android, but porting them over to desktop is
   non-trivial. However, I used this to my advantage and decided not to
   consume media on my laptop. This has drastically boosted my
   productivity, since I literally cannot watch YouTube even if I wanted
   to. My laptop is now strictly work-only. If I do need to watch the
   occasional video / listen to music, I use my phone. Compartmentalizing
   work and play to separate devices has worked out pretty well for me.

   I'm slowly noticing myself favor low-tech (or no-tech) solutions to
   simple problems too. Like notetaking -- I've tried plaintext files, Vim
   Wiki, Markdown, but nothing beats actually using pen and paper. Tech,
   from what I can see, doesn't solve problems very effectively. In some
   cases, it only causes more of them. I might write another post
   discussing my thoughts on this in further detail.

   I'm not sure what I intended this post to be, but I'm pretty happy with
   the mindspill. To conclude this already long monologue, let me clarify
   one little thing y'all are probably thinking, "Okay man, are you
   suggesting that we regress to the Dark Ages?". No, I'm not suggesting
   that we regress, but rather, progress mindfully.
     __________________________________________________________________

    1. No, I don't go "I use KISS btw". I don't bring it up unless
       provoked.

References

   1. https://icyphox.sh/blog/five-days-tty
   2. https://icyphox.sh/home/icy/leet/site/build/blog/kiss-zen/temp.html#fn:bringing-up-kiss
   3. https://k1ss.org/guidestones
   4. https://old.reddit.com/r/kisslinux
   5. https://github.com/sdsddsd1/kiss-games
   6. https://github.com/jedavies-dev/kiss-ppc64le
   7. https://github.com/jedavies-dev/kiss-aarch64
   8. https://github.com/wyvertux/wyvertux