Once upon a time, there was this guy who was obsessed with "free software" as he called it, and for some reason the hacker community thought his ideas were the best and that he was right about everything.
(spoiler alert, he was NOT right about everything1.)
To be fair, some of those ideas were great! One of which is a tradition where tech bloggers posted their equipment, some people flamed their choices, other people who were using the same equipment felt validated, more hackers were introduced to concept of free software/hardware stacks, and the cycle continued.
Usually, this whole ordeal was titled "How I do my Computing", after the original one.
Today, dear reader, we'll repeat the exact same procedure. I'm going to write about equipment I "daily drive". You'll probably scoff at me, and the usesthis.com readers, if there are any left, will rejoice. Hopefully.
And before I begin, here's a note. I intend to update this article whenever I change the tools I use. If this article is modified, you can probably find the older versions in the Wayback Machine.
I own two machines, one Thinkpad E14 that is writing the lines you're reading, and one Raspberry Pi 3 that is hosting the website you're browsing. They both run some form of Debian.
My Thinkpad is okay. It (thankfully) has no NVIDIA GPU and runs entirely on free software. It's a simple laptop, nothing special.
I will detail my thoughts on Debian and other operating systems on one of my next articles. For this one, I'll just state that I'm happy with Debian. It's easy to install, it's free software, it gets things done.
To sum up my taste in hardware, if it works with free software, it works for me!
There are three pieces of software that I'm dependent on the desktop. One is Firefox, one is a terminal emulator.
The odd one out is Anki.
In my opinion, as of this date, the best way to learn anything is through Anki, as it is the best space repetition system today. It helps me study anything in a comprehensive manner.
One of my following articles will be about my workflow with Anki. Stay tuned for that!
On the serverside, I don't use anything except nginx to serve this site, and Forgejo for hosting my personal git server. I do not like Javascript, as I will be writing in another future article.
I use LineageOS on some smartphone. Nearly all the software I use is completely free, except, ugh, WhatsApp. That privacy and security nightmare that I have to deal with because every single one of my contacts requires me to use it. Where I live, not using it is literally grounds for firing you from some jobs. Not only that, it's the preferred method of communication of every single one of my loved ones.
Being tech literate hurts sometimes.
The list of software I deliberately avoid is longer than the list of software I use.
I don't use Windows or MacOS. If you use a non-free operating system, you're not only the reason our technological ecosystem is rotting, you're also actively taking part in what will inevitably become a technofascistic global surveillance network.
I don't use "social" media. Centralized social networks have all the problems of non-free operating systems, but also produce people who are unaware of the world around them. They feed on our emotional weaknesses and our techno-illiteracy in order to turn a profit. While doing that, they waste massive amounts of time. That much time could be used to take care of people you actually care about, being productive for your goals, or literally any other way rather than doomscrolling straight to depression.
At least Windows gets out of the god-forsaken way when you're trying to achieve something.
When it's not doing an hour-long update or causing a global cybersecurity crisis, that is.
I don't use Ubuntu. I find their practices creepy, especially the snap store. On the rare occasion I have to use an Ubuntu derivative, I go for Linux Mint.
I prefer to use independent distributions/operating systems rather than derivatives. In my experience, independent systems are often more stable with less security problems.
Electron can go take a hike as well. Needs no elaboration, really.
I also am not a fan of stylus tablets. Not that there's anything wrong with them, but I'd much rather take notes with a paper notebook, and import them to digital space using LaTeX or Mathjax. Plus, most of them have locked bootloaders, which will render them e-waste in five years time from purchase.
Hopefully, this was a better introduction to my blog compared to the last post. See you next month..?
1) For those unfamiliar with the drama, here's an article.
For any feedback, you can reach me at
mail [at] edteach.net
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