TOP/UPDATES/FOUR PILLARS/CINEMA+TV/GAMES/MANGA+ANIME/MUSIC/WRITINGS/FAQ/LINKS
TOP/UPDATES/FOUR PILLARS/CINEMA+TV/GAMES/MANGA+ANIME/MUSIC/WRITINGS/FAQ/LINKS
TL;DR: Arch btw because it's minimal. Skip down for more info on programs.
I was more or less a computer NPC for the longest time and just used whatever the latest edition of Windows was because I wanted to run actual cool programs and play computer games. But I felt that Windows was geting increasingly slow, clunky, and full of ads and spyware. I didn't really have the words for software "bloat" at that time, but that was really what I felt. I did what most normies did at that point: invested in a desktop PC that I built myself with a lot more RAM and a more powerful CPU.
I love my desktop and am glad I finally have one. Desktop PCs feel and look cool. But I also learned that what I was doing was just putting a band-aid on the deeper issue: I was running terrible software on my computer, and the worst piece of it was Windows itself. I was already feeling anxious about being forced to "update" to Windows 11, since I had ran it on my laptop and hated it. Hearing about features like Windows Recall only made it less appealing. This was around the time I had learned in more depth about GNU/Linux and the advantages it presented, so I decided to dual-boot Linux Mint along Windows 10.
It's been quite a learning experience. I haven't been able to get everything I need from my OS working on any Linux distribution yet (mostly games). But I have hope that someday I will get them all working and be able to uninstall Windows 10 altogether. I will still be installing Windows 10 IoT Enterprise in any case as it will give me many more years to wait it out.
That said, I found myself using a laptop for quite a lot of my actual computing time during the day. I often write for my site in my bed or while on the go. And the laptop I was using for it was an old MacBook that my father gave me since he wasn't using it anymore. And I thought that it would be ideal if I could use a Linux distribution when I was using a laptop since it really provided the ideal space for my creative process. At the same time, I wanted to experiment with things like using different window managers without fears of breaking my entire operating system. But I also didn't want to use a laptop which was designed to be an easily-breakable non-repairable piece of shit like a typical Apple product, so I bought a ThinkPad T480.
Taking the GNU/Linux pill makes it less and less tolerable to use Windows or Mac OS. At first I installed Linux Mint on the ThinkPad, but I got more and more interested in the idea of truly having a more intimate relationship with my operating system. I wanted something I could really "build from scratch" and that had a minimal amount of stuff on it that I didn't know anything about. And the Windows/Mac-isms of Mint were starting to be less and less appealing. I hated stuff like the snap store, for example. So I fell for the Arch meme and decided to install Arch Linux on my ThinkPad. Since then, I've never been happier with my OS.
And that's where I am today: I run Arch Linux on a laptop where I do essentially all of my website, writing, and studying. I run Linux Mint and Windows 10 on my PC and pretty much use it for gaming and as a screen to watch anime these days. From here, my ideal would be to basically run an identical version of my laptop's Arch OS on my deskptop and remove the Windows partition entirely, as I'll have figured out how to run all the games I care about on it. Realistically, that might not happen anytime soon. So for now I plan to keep Windows 10 IoT on one partition in case I can't get the program to work on Linux with Wine or something like that. The Platonic ideal of a perfect OS can never exist, but I can get closer and closer.
Some of these are close to perfection. Others are just the least shitty one currently in existence. There's probably nothing here you couldn't hear about from big names in this field like Luke Smith, Mental Outlaw, DigDeeper, etc. who I'm sure you already know about if you are reading this page.
LibreWolf: My web browser of choice. It's
just Firefox with some better security features and disconnected from Mozilla, so
there isn't much here you can't get from just tweaking Firefox in the right ways,
but for me at least I just get depressed whenever I have to see the nu-Firefox icon
and don't like to support Mozilla, so I went for it.
I recommend these add-ons: uBlock Origin,
SponsorBlock,
Return YouTube Dislike,
I still don't
care about cookies, LocalCDN,
ClearURLS,
Redirector,
Linkificator,
Yomitan.
I use Ecosia, Mojeek, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, and wiby as search engines.
dwm: Of course, no one can be part of the Linux cult without loving suckless, and I'm no exception. I use the standard suckless suite of dwm, st, and dmenu and LOVE THEM!! I use alwayscenter, attachbelow, and uselessgap as patches for dwm. Never had any need to patch st or dmenu.
Mullvad: There is simply no VPN that is better than this one. Excellent speeds and very easy installation and use. You can pay without signing up or anything. No subscriptions or "campaigns." It's one of the most honest, no-bullshit businesses I've ever used online. And you can use it entirely from the command line too! The only downside is that it's not free, but the price is quite affordable.
Newsboat: RSS reader for the terminal. I use this to check the sites I care about most efficiently. Someday I still need to set up an RSS feed for my site and possibly some others with no RSS with RSS-Bridge. There is a debloated version called Newsraft but I had issues with it.
Psi+: My XMPP client of choice. Feels very oldschool, like AIM or something. Also one of the most secure. Downsides are that OMEMO is not enabled by default and that image and video sharing can be a but wonky, but those aren't that big a deal.
Element: My Matrix client of choice. I prefer XMPP over Matrix, but this one is useful for getting normies off Discord since it's almost 1:1.
NNN: TINY little file manager! Small and lightweight as can be. The only downside is that it might take some tweaking to get thumbnails for images if you want that (I want to add this someday). But otherwise it's ideal.
Neovim: Yes, I'm one of those Vim people. Well technically Neovim these days. I use the pablo color scheme. I'm still learning a lot about it but I get addicted to the ease and quickness you get when you really internalize its unorthodox use. I thought "Emacs pinky" was just a meme, but I really do notice strain on my pinky when using another Ctrl-intensive program after a long time using Vim. But there are still a lot of things I need a more traditional editor for, in which case I use...
Geany: Excellent IDE that I highly recommend if Vim is still too scary. Has some incredibly useful features, like using templates for webpages and mass-replacing text in all files open in a session. Also monokai color scheme supremacy.
FileZilla: FTP client that I've used for years for accessing my seedbox. I still haven't gotten used to SSH from command line, so I use this for accessing web servers.
pass: A terminal-based password manager... as simple and minimal as can be! If you use dmenu (which you should be), there's a built-in script called passmenu which will automatically let you search through password .gpg files and copy them to the clipboard. Just make sure you have xclip and xdotool installed or it won't work (in my experience).
calcure: Fork of calcurse which I massively prefer. calcurse was too cluttered for my taste. This one lets you switch views more efficiently and gives you more space. Good for people with massive to-do lists like me.
Claws Mail: Very simple yet extension-friendly mail client. Useful for storing emails locally. Very fast and lightweight. Nice interface.
zathura: This was the program which sent me down the rabbit-hole of moving more towards the command-line as my primary method of interface with my OS and learning Vim. The simplest, most beautiful PDF Viewer I've ever used. The best feature is easily being able to invert colors for a white-on-black display. My tired eyes owe this program their lives.
feh: A tiny image-viewer which can set your background and be used to write a simple rotating desktop background (the first bit of "programming" I learned to do on my OS). It defaults to opening images in full-size which can result in super zoomed-in images, but that's something you can change defaults of. nsxiv is another great program but feh is more useful for me these days.
mpv: I've been a VLC cultist for over a decade, but recently there's too much telemetry in it for me. mpv is the ideal. But it will prove a bit hard if you're too addicted to using the GUI for everything.
calibre: I could complain about this program's atrociously ugly GUI, but it would be looking a gift horse in the mouth. NO program is more important for the academic in today's censorship-heavy media enviroment.
Quod Libet: It was very hard to find a music player that lived up to foobar2000. But this one is quite excellent. You can have a great control over the tags of your music. I can't even believe how many things you can tag and sort your music by!
Nicotine+: Just a cooler, FOSS version of Soulseek.
Flameshot: Advanced screenshot software with lots of handy tools. I have it mapped to my PrtSc key with sxhkd.
ImageMagick: Lots of useful ways to manipulate images from the command-line. You can take care of a lot of simple stuff with this program. Otherwise, use Krita or GIMP.
Audacity: Still the ideal for audio recording. Use Sneedacity for no telemetry (I still need to do this).
kdenlive: I'm moving away from DaVinci Resolve to start using this. I still have a lot to learn but it's pretty nice.
Ted: Very good just werks rich text processor. I don't really use any other parts of LibreOffice besides Writer, so this was an excellent lightweight replacement.
Redshift: Daemon that adjusts screen brightness and temperature according to the time of the day. I keep mine pretty dim most of the time.