Home About Me Posts Computer Stuff Favorite Books Exercise Routine Contact

Computer Stuff

Operating System

I use GNU/Linux for my personal computing (and now recently, due to personal decisions, MacOS). Right now I am primarly using Ubuntu Unity for my GNU/Linux systems. In the past I have used:

Ubuntu is a solid distro that a lot of people use (therefore a lot of software is available for it) and snapd is really easy to remove if you care about that. I used to care, now I honestly don't really mind, as I don't have a lot of packages installed as snaps (just my web browser).

I used to be very much into Arch and other rolling release style distros. These days I don't really care what distro I use. More importantly, I don't care what distro you use.

I still recommend Ubuntu for newbies to GNU/Linux simply because it is still the most ubiquitous GNU/Linux distribution out there (not most popular, most ubiquitous). A lot of software will work on Ubuntu and is easily available, whereas smaller projects like Solus do not have as many packages.

If you want something that Just Werks™, any of the following will do:

Also check out distrowatch.

I use Windows for work because I have no choice...

Hardware

Until recently, my daily driver personal computer was a Dell Latitude e6440 that I rescued from my university (read: I asked if I could have it because the power port was banjaxed). Until very recently, I've never purchased a personal computer in my entire life—an accomplishment I'm quite proud of. Nevertheless people often find themselves in need of a personal computer, whether because their current one broke or they feel they need to upgrade.

I highly recommend, if you must purchase a personal computer, to buy one used or refurbished. Not only is it better for the environment, it is just plain savvy. Why waste a ton of money on a brand new computer when computers up to 10 years old work just fine?[1] If you must buy a new computer, keep it for a long time.

[1] Computers "slow down" as they age because Windows is awful software. If we're talking about online use it's because most websites are also bad software (Javascript-ridden messes of spaghetti code to load hundreds of megabytes of ads). Install an ad blocker and use something that isn't Windows.

Thinkpads used to be the pinnacle of laptops, but Lenovo is turning them into trash Mac clones like everyone else tries (and fails) to do. Not only that, but thinkpads have turned into hipster accessories. People want thinkpads because it makes them look cool, rather than for the functionality and dependability. Therefore, I recommend getting a Dell or HP equivalent (Dell Latitude series or HP Pavilion series). Apple computers are good but they're definitely overpriced. Not a problem if you buy used or refurbished, most of the time. If you're not into fixing your own computer an Apple will work really well.

Perhaps against my better judgment, Apple managed to get me to buy a new computer: the Macbook Neo. 8GB of ram, 512GB SSD, iPhone processer; from my point of view it's a workhorse disguised as a budget computer. Perhaps that's because I'm used to 10+-year-old hardware with loud fans and hard disks, but at this point in my life literally anything with a modicum of performance will be better than what I'm used to. Apparently this computer can render 4K video in ~30 seconds per minute of footage? To me, that sounds absolutely incredible considering what I'm used to: kdenlive rendering 10 minutes of 720p footage in 20-30 minutes. Turns out when you hold onto hardware for a decade or longer, new things feel more impressive than they are. Regardless, I believe I'll get a lot of mileage out of this computer, and in 10 more years when I find myself needing to upgrade again, I may find that SBCs have gotten so good I can just slot one into this bad boy. We'll see!

Recently there have been a lot of startups focusing on making personal computers that are more customizeable and user-serviceable. I haven't had the good fortune to try any of them out!

Daily Programs

Text Editing

In the past I have used vim for general text editing on my personal computer, and recently I made the switch to Doom Emacs (yay Evil mode!). Generally I am finding the Emacs experience very pleasant! At work I use VSCode like everyone else. I've heard that notepad++ is very good, too. I tried over and over again get into (the cult of) emacs. Perhaps foolishly, I thought using Evil mode kind of defeated the point of switching to Emacs, but I recently determined that the out-of-the-box experience of Doom Emacs, Evil mode or not, is so pleasant that I find myself wondering "why didn't I do this already?". Vim runs, does what I need it to do, and most importantly, is always on remote systems, so I am glad that I learned it first.

Documents

I used to use R markdown compiled to LaTeX, then I changed to using groff. Groff is a much simpler typesetting system than LaTeX but it is very powerful. Now I use typst, which is also free software. It is not yet as powerful as LaTeX (yet), but it is incredibly easy to use and there are many cool features that made me love it.

The benefits of using a typesetting system instead of word processors is that they allow you to focus on the content and worry about the formatting at a different time. They are also deterministic, i.e., you will always get the same results when you compile, whereas word processors like Microsoft Word will randomly break your configuration (if, for example, you insert an image in a spot the word processor doesn't like). Typesetters like groff and LaTeX work with plaintext and compile them into pretty documents. That means you can get all your formatting done separately from your actual work. Track changes can even be done using version control software like git!

Web Browser

I have mainly used Firefox for most of my life. I have used all of the major browsers: Safari, Chrome (and Chromium), Firefox, AOL (yes I mean their web browser), Internet Explorer, Edge, and Brave (technically this is another Chromium flavor). In the end I come back to Firefox because it generally lets me do whatever I want, which is to block every single ad.