For the longest time I’ve stuck with MATE as my primary interface in computers. It is familiar and themed using the old MacOS 9 interface which is retro and comfortable. I have been using the same setup on Mint and Gentoo for over a decade. I moved up to MATE from WindowMaker and hardly anyone recalls WindowMaker.
I wanted to try out Wayland. I try to balance cult of the new and “kids these days” ideals. I’m not a user of systemd and I still prefer nmh and ASCII email. I figured it was time for something new so I migrated my daily driver to Wayland and Sway. I know that eventually X11 will lose ground to Wayland and why not learn how to use it and s new interface: tiles.
I reflected on my user interactions with computers and almost always I sign in, open a terminal, do some work. With Sway I can do exact same thing with fewer mouse movements and less resource consumption. The only thing that took a little getting used to was the lack of a Finder or Menu. In Sway you press Meta-d and type the name of the program you want versus clicking on the menu, clicking on a sub-menu and then clicking on the icon for the application. You want to start firefox, Meta-d f i r e f o <enter> It’s very fast and removes a lot of distractions.
We’ll see if I stick with Sway for a decade or if I fall back into the old MATE habit.
