After many requests, here are the programs I use for everything. I'm
only putting here programs I consider tried and true and have used for a
while.
Software I Use
Priorities
I'm about getting things done quickly and having as little space
between my thoughts and actions on the computer.
I like having vim-like bindings and prefer running programs in the
terminal for simplicity's sake. That said, I'm very much against the
cringey meme that things in the terminal are "cooler" or "nerdier"
XD. Terminals are good for most tasks, but useless for others, for
example, browsing the modern web (I admit this unfortunate fact with
much consternation) or looking at maps or images or modifying videos by
NLE. I do do some image/video editing with imagemagick/ffmpeg, but
only simple, repetitive tasks.
I will say that I think it is indeed a good heuristic to avoid using
non-terminal programs, merely because often using a NLE or something elsewhere
it is not strictly, mortally necessary is probably an anti-pattern. I think
that a preference for terminal programs breeds a simplicity.
Basic
Operating System/Distribution
I use Artix Linux
(vid/site)
which is a fork of Arch Linux except for without systemd. You can
see some of my reasons for using Arch-based distros
here.
Linux distributions are generally not distinct enough to have strong
feelings about, hence the reason I only rarely care to talk about
them. You can see my opinion on Linux distributions generally
here.
Terminal
I use st
(vid/download)
(simple terminal) by
suckless.org, which is one
of the most minimal, yet easily customizable terminal emulators out
there.
Shell
I use zsh as a shell. It has
pretty much all of the features of bash with additional plugins for more
advanced auto-completion and syntax coloring. I do have dash as my system
shell.
Window Manager/Desktop Environment
dwm
(vid/download).
If you want to know "why my computer looks like that", this is
what to check out. The status bar I use for dwm is dwmblocks
(vid/download).
Note that in order to run my builds of dwm/dwmblocks, you need to
install libxft-bgra until a patch is merged into libxft on the
upstream.
Text editing and programming
vim.
Less of a text editor and more of a lifestyle. No, I'm not going to
ever switch to emacs. Technically I use neovim nowadays, but it's
all the same.
Librewolf with the arkenfox
user.js (with some
modifications). Note that while Firefox is a free software browser,
it comes with a multitude of
trackers and
other annoying "features." A custom user.js file like the one
linked above removes all the trash and allows you to customize the
browser to be usable and private. I often recommend the following
add-ons:
lf. In most of my older videos,
I'm using
ranger
which was the original model for lf, albeit written in Python and
somewhat sluggish.
Mail client
neomutt
[1][2].
I keep all my mail offline with isync. Setting up the perfect
terminal-based offline email system can be difficult, so I made
mutt-wizard
for you and me to make it easy.
Music/audio player
mpd with
ncmpcpp
for a library, mpv for playing songs manually when I select them in
lf. I also occasionally use beet for music tagging and
organization.
Video player
mpv. Don't bother with any other video player. The only reason
I've never done a video on mpv is because all the cool kids already
use it.
RSS reader
newsboat.
I've never subscribed to YouTube channels or Twitter accounts or
anything else. You can simply give accounts' feeds to newsboat and
watch videos remotely via mpv without having to open a browser.
UPDATE: I’ve been using newsraft recently which is similar, but I can’t give a full endorsement to it yet.
Torrent client
Transmission, with the transmission-remote-cli as an interface.
Production
Video and Audio
ffmpeg is the tool I use to record all of my
screencasts,
and also splice and combine all of the video and audio when needed.
I several times used Blender for making videos which would require NLE,
but I always begrudged it. If you're a novice at video editing,
kdenlive would probably be better. In general, I never do any video
editing, so ffmpeg is enough.
Writing documents
I used to write documents in either R
Markdown
or
(Xe-)LaTeX
and compile them into either pdf documents or presentations after
that. In some videos, I've also used the
vim-live-latex-preview
for automatic LaTeX/XeLaTeX compilation. I've also used pandoc for
document conversion and compiling markdown to .pdfs. Of course if
you've been watching my channel recently, you know I've been
experimenting with
groff/troff
to much success and recommend it as a much more minimal and elegant
typesetting system, scarcely lacking anything you might need,
although lacking documentation, so it'll probably be a jungle at
first.
Presentations
suckless
sent
is my new favorite presentation software, which creates a
presentation immediately from a plain textfile, but can also handle images. Barring that, and
especially for academic presentations, I use LaTeX
Beamer
which you can also compile from markdown via
pandoc.
I find presenting without software is usually the best in normal
circumstances.
Excel-like spreadsheets
sc-im
for when I need a very visual interface, but I generally use
R
for the things one typically does in a spreadsheet. Most things you
need and excel-like program for can just be done with your core
utilities.
PDF viewer
zathura.
I used to use mupdf, which is good too. Check out that video for
zathura's big benefits though.
Image Viewer
sxiv.
Handles images, animated gifs, has additional thumbnail and
slideshow modes and allows you to run custom scripts and read/write
to standard input/output.
Image modification
GIMP
for big things, but imagemagick commands for most little
modifications, resizing, filter changes, trims, etc.
Cryptocurrencies
Most cryptocurrencies fail to maintain the whole point of a cryptocurrency: to have a decentralized and free-software way to exchange and hold value.
Most of them are constructed as centralized money-making token games.
Bitcoin itself more or less acceptably constructed and is—by default—free and decentralized, but due to the limited block size, it cannot even scale to the level it needs now to actually use the network IRL.
Bitcoin however also is not private.
Their are pseudo-solutions to these problems like the Lightning Network, but none are commonly used or well vetted by real world usage.
Most people who think they own or use bitcoin do not actually own or use it, because they hold in on custodial exchanges.
Monero is the best currency right now for transacting value and the community and developers have decent priorities and it has a decent network of users.
I’ve said I would look at Monero as a checking account and Bitcoin as a savings account.
I suspect Monero will rise in value in dollars, but not nearly as fast as Bitcoin, which I suspect to be a better store of value due to its sheer popularity.
Monero will do better if demand for cryptocurrency rises, but so do regulations.
As of 2025, most expect crypto regulations will soften in America under Trump, so it might be that the conventional Bitcoin will continue to gain faster than Monero.
Avoid custodial cypto exchanges. Use Bisq (or Haveno (WIP)) or other decentralized exchanges or transact in person.
Where can I find good software options?
The program of your dreams is probably listed below:
The main laptop I use is a Thinkpad X220, released in 2011. I bought
mine used on eBay for $90, and it included the ThinkPad Ultrabase,
which I use at home daily (it can also hold an extra hard drive and
I have a 2TB one inside). Old ThinkPads are designed for long term
corporate use, and last forever and are made to be easy to repair
and improve. They have many simple perks, like their uniquely
tactile keyboards, their trackpoints and their ThinkLight (a more
commonsense solution to lighting your keyboard at night). Newer
ThinkPads are not as good, lacking the classical keyboards and
generally being more Mac-like (unrepairable, breakable, and
generally bad for an enormous price). My X220 ThinkPad was
Corebooted by
tripcode!Q/7.
Hard drives
I own two Solid State Drives (SSDs), one for my main laptop (1TB)
and one for my desktop OS (512GB). I think they're both "Crucial"
brand. SSDs are the only thing I recommend using a good bit of money
on in your computer build. They make your computer hugely snappier
and apparently use less power.
Peripherals
I use a Unicomp
Endurapro which is
a classic-style buckling spring keyboard like the old beloved IBM
Model Ms, but also with a trackpoint to use as a mouse. I do not own
or use a mouse aside from this.
Microphone
I record most of my videos with a Blue Yeti, which seems to be the
dominant model on YouTube generally. I can't compare it to other
microphones, but it does the job.
Webcam
Logitech C920. I can record audio decent enough too, although the
Yeti is better. This webcam is passable for a small face in a
portion of the screen, but is nothing special.
What I don't use
Proprietary software
It's sort of weird that my channel has gotten large enough that a
huge slice of my viewership has missed one of the main points of my
channel: the use of only libre software. I will not recommend,
review or test out proprietary software. I'm not going to do a
video on how to "rice" Google Chrome, I'm not going give you
Linux hacks for Slack or Steam. I'm especially not going to endorse
proprietary services that have gone out of their way to spy on or
politically suppress their users, just as Discord or Amazon. One of
the many potential take-aways you should get from my channel is that
the use of libre/free software, by its nature, is more constructive
and extensible—that's the point. There are philosophical reasons
for this you'll run across in time, but for now, suffice it to say
I will not support the usage of non-free software.
emacs
Emacs has little purpose for people who use tiling window managers
like I do. Emacs is also enormous, and for someone like me who often
is in the habit of using my text editor to open just one file, it's
massive overkill and a massive drain on time. My movement in my
computer usage has been constantly gravitating to more and more
lightweight and minimal programs, getting closer to the core of how
Unix-based operating systems work, using emacs on top of things to
replicate the functionality of my current setup violates this
tendency. Everything I've ever needed to do, I can do perfectly
well between vim and my WM.
A cell phone
Don't get me wrong, I own a cell phone, I just don't use it or
carry it around or endorse cell phone usage generally. I use it as a
house phone... except for I don't have reception at my house 😉. I
can't think of a single thing that is more highly correlated with
personal mediocrity more than cell phone usage. If you do use one,
be sure to install F-Droid, which is a application manager for free
software programs, and use applications from that. I have
GrapheneOS installed and have no Google
applications. If you want to install GrapheneOS or another free software OS
on your phone, remember to get a compatible phone that is
unlocked.
These are the apps I have on my phone. Actually, now I've deleted Element.
GrapheneOS also comes with only few stock apps, which is nice. Those you don’t need can be disabled with adb.
