published
updated
All the cool kids do a Uses post, so I figured I'd do one too. Here's a semi exhaustive list of software and hardware I use to go about my computing.
Apparently I'd made a draft post of this back in 2018, but here's an update
Asides from what's listed below, I pay for email with fastmail and also pay feedbin to keep my rss feeds in sync I now host an instance of FreshRSS. I'm planning to replace both of these soon as well. I don't pay for any streaming services.
You'll notice some strange choices amongst the hardware. Lately I've become a strong proponent of Permacomputing, and prefer to repair, ▐▞▔▞ and totally own my hardware as much as I can to ensure they run for as long as I can make them. Where possible and it was necessary, most my hardware has had a battery, screen or peripheral replacement. I try hard to pick hardware that is rugged, cheap, and easily repairable. Failing that, I pick hardware that I know can be rooted or has extensive support for free software.
For the software, something will imediately stand out. I'm a terminal junkie. I do most my computing through a terminal (with the big exception being Firefox, but I'm looking into w3m / elinks!), and I fucking love it. Both aesthetically, and workflow wise. I have spent a lot of time configuring my setup to be primarily keyboard driven, tuning the workflow for tasks I frequently do at my computer to be just perfect for me, and me alone. I absolutely despise reaching for the mouse. Despite my best efforts there are still situations that require a mouse, and so I have one. Another reason I love terminal applications is that I can make them a consistent color, and I have spent a lot of time configuring all colorschemes and making everything align.
I spend so much god damn time at the computer, I want it to feel like home. I have spent an inordinate amount of customizing my machine, honestly I really enjoy tweaking things, perhaps because I'm very particular about my own setup. I also am just a sucker for optmizing my workflow.
Luckily, this forms a virtuous cycle. I like terminal applications, which are lightweight, which means my old, repaired, 2nd hand computers can easily achieve everything I want from computers, in turn making me more capable of doing repairs and drawing out the life of all my devices. Terminal applications tend to be open source because only nerds like them, which means generally you can self host the sync servers, which means I get to learn more about configuring computers and become more powerful, all while maintaing privacy and being "self reliant". Aesthetically and philosophically aligned, nice.
For this reason I also don't really care about specs. I don't train Neural Networks, or play 3D games, and sometimes this is annoying (I would like to be able to work with Blender to create 3D art, but I'm scared of trying. I've also had some annoying experiences with VCVRack because I was under-spec'd) but for the most part I don't feel any need to upgrade.
Here's some photos to keep you enticed.
Hardware
- Thinkpad X270, curve - main computer (purhased 2nd hand)
- Pixel 4a, line - only phone (purhased 2nd hand)
- Assembled PC, box - home server, no graphics card
- Raspberry Pi 2B, pentagon - TV computer
- Onyx Boox Note 2, hyperplane - eink tablet
- Vultr VPS, helix - public VPS running sealight.xyz
- BinaryLane VPS, cube - runs anish.lakhwara.com
- Kobo Glo - ▐▞▔▞ed, no kobo account
- M50 headphones - over 5 years old, going strong
- WF-1000X earphones - only 3ish years old and already starting to give out 😓
- Nintendo Switch - can't be ▐▞▔▞ed 😭
- PSP 1000 - ▐▞▔▞ed, emulation station
- PocketChip
- Some cheap monitor @ 1980x1280
- Ergodox EZ - dvorak
- Keybordio Atrues - dvorak
- MX Master 3
- Reasonably priced local sit-stand desk
- Yubikey
- A bunch of old hard drives
= Software, Desktop =
- nixOS (+ flakes home-manager agenix deploy-rs direnv)
- bspwm (+ rofi polybar dunst)
- kitty
- zsh / elvish (+ starship zoxide fzf rg skim bat exa trash duf)
- neovim (too many plugins to name)
- taskwarrior
- wireguard
- neomutt (+ mbsync msmtp notmuch)
- calcurse (+ vdirsyncer khard)
- password-store
- firefox
- tridactyl
- tree style tabs
- shaarli / wallabag / grasp
- zathura
- feh
- mpv
- nheko
- signal
- ripcord
- NewsFlash
- pipewire
- SuperCollider / Overtone
- TidalCycles
- Orca
- VCVRack
- Quil / Processing
- glslViewer
= Software, Server =
- nixOS
- gitea
- matrix
- shaarli
- radicale
- seafile
- syncthing
- taskwarrior server
- gonic
- unbound DNS
- kodi
- wireguard
= Software, Mobile =
- GrapheneOS (No google play services!)
- fdroid
- signal
- element
- FreshRSS
- wallbag / shaarli
- task-add
- uHabits
- K9 email
- password-store
- tusky
- antenna pod
- newpipe
- costar
- feeel
- loyalty card
- kore
- organic maps
- wireguard