A year of using a FreeBSD laptop without a GUI
I explained that once I’d assembled the VPNs and basic tooling I needed, I realised none of it required a graphical environment at all. I uninstalled Xorg, and since then have been using tmux as my “window manager”.
I’ll admit, I left out that I’d eschewed (gesundheit) a desktop environment for my old friend fluxbox first, but even that seemed redundant given I was only using it to spawn a single terminal window with tabs. Removing xorg entirely was the logical next step.
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It sounds so obvious in retrospect, but not having a wall of distractions in front of your face is fantastic for writing. I’ve made so much more progress in my various silly sci-fi novels, technical writing, and many of the posts I’ve since published here.