This was origionally a post on kuro5hin in response to this comment by greentea in the "Who are you, part II" thread. I have taken the liberty of reproducing the point that I was replying to here:

When I discovered unix, i understood how people could be *immersed* in computers. When you can dig around that level in a computer, it becomes almost alive. Like you're tending a little garden. hrm. what a disgustingly cute metaphor, err simile.

A year or so ago, I might have agreed that your similie was disgustingly cute. But as I sit now, I would beg to differ. I think it was moving from the suburbs, where there were lots of trees and plants (though it was still a pretty built-up suburb), into the city, where there aren't, that changed my mind. At first, I enjoyed the city- before the move, I had wanted to be around more people, I felt stifled and out-of-place in a snooty, nosy, poser "small town". After the move, I didn't realize how much I missed places where there were gardens or plants or just woods that no one was trying to mold or sculpt or control until recently, about 2.5 years after I moved here.

The reason that I feel plants and gardens and particularly woods (or whatever untouched land is in your area) are so important is that everyone needs some time to be alone... and sometimes you need to be more alone than others, and there are different types of aloneness. Sometimes being alone in the middle of a mall or the Esplanade or a public plaza is fine- sometimes you want to be in *your* room, where no one but you has affected your surroundings- and sometimes even *that's* not alone enough, and you want to be someplace where no one's been molding your surroundings into any shape at all, where you aren't constantly subjected to the imprints of other peoples' minds and wills and dreams... at least, that's the way it is for me, and I know other people who feel that way too. It's as if the evidence of other peoples' effects on your environment becomes a type of pollution, when you're in a certain mood, and you have to get away from it. And some people are more tolerant of this "pollution" than others.

How does any of this relate to my origional point? Remember I referred above to wanting to be in *your* room, a place that you had control over that didn't have signatures of other people's brains? If you designed a garden all by yourself, wouldn't it be similar? And at least to me, it would be all the more comfortable and beautiful for being filled with other non-human organisms.

I customize my computers all to hell. I have standard aliases and dotfiles and a windowmanager with custom config files and stock set of maybe 200 background images to choose from with my transparent terminals and every time I learn something new about my operating system I decide just how I want that set, too. My computer is always the most customized of any around me. I have Opinions, damnit, and I get cranky if I'm not allowed to exercise them. I've even gotten official reprimands from a boss about just how much customization I've done.

Part of this comes from the concept that a good UI shouldn't get in your way- a philosophy I heartily endorse. One of the biggest reasons I switched to Free OS's from winblowz is that with a Free OS you can choose or even design your own UI. And not everyone wants the same UI- which is why there's room for both KDE and Gnome and those of us who prefer not to use either. But if a good UI doesn't get in your way, a great UI is a joy to behold and use. Every time I finish customizing a new computer to my standards, I take a few minutes to just enjoy the smooth, effortless way I can cause it to do what I wish. I don't have to think about what commands to type or what control keys to use- it all just *works*. And because I designed the configuration myself, there was no learning curve- it was beautifully, elegantly, effortlessly easy from the beginning. That perfection is a thing of beauty in and of itself, and I sometimes pause in my work just to appreciate it.

And, of course, this customization goes beyond the shell or windowmanager (hopefully) to the inner workings of the OS itself- knowing everything that is running on your computer and just what it's doing and why it's there makes *your* computer as comfortable as your room or your favorite pair of shoes (pardon, greentea :). This can make your computer as pleasant a place to work as a garden that you created with your own hands. And if you use terms of appreciation like "elegance" and "beauty" to apply to software, how can you not appreciate a computer that you can use with an effortless ease the way you would appreciate a perfectly laid out garden?