paritybit.ca

What I Use

Last Updated: 2024-08-02

The software and hardware I use. Inspired by uses.tech.

Software

I have used a wide variety of operating systems (OpenBSD, FreeBSD, 9Front, many Linux distributions, MacOS, Windows, etc.). These days I run various OSes depending on my needs, though I prefer to use OpenBSD when I can. At the moment I’m primarily running OpenBSD with cwm (previously spectrwm) on my laptop and ElementaryOS Linux on my desktop.

A screenshot of my desktop with one terminal window open. tmux is running with two panes side by side, one with my neovim configuration and one with this webpage in neovim. At the bottom of the tmux window is my status bar.
CWM on OpenBSD with tmux running in xterm.
A screenshot of my desktop with two terminal windows open, one with vim and the other with a manpage. At the top is a statusbar showing workspaces, system information, and the date and time. Everything is monochrome light themed.
Spectrwm on OpenBSD with a monochromatic light theme.

Over time, my choice in software has shifted from a philosophy of idealistic minimalism to one of pragmatism. I don’t mind a bit of tinkering here and there, but I want a stable workstation and a set of tools that lets me get on with my work. I don’t spend a lot of time chasing the “perfect setup” anymore, instead preferring to tweak things in batches once every 6-12 months when I’ve had a chance to live with my setup and experience the pain points.

I use the fish shell for the superior tab completion and autosuggestion capabilities, plus it doesn’t require a bunch of configuration and the syntax is nicer than in Bourne Shell descendants.

Neovim is my text editor of choice. I use few plugins, and a simple configuration.

For programming I use the Victor Mono font, otherwise I use the IBM Plex font family.

Despite my many misgivings and grievances with Mozilla, Firefox is still my main web browser. I have the uBlock Origin, Cookie AutoDelete, and I Still Don’t Care About Cookies extensions installed, and I make the following about:config changes:

I also use Pocket to save articles for reading later on my Kobo e-reader. Plus I made a Mozilla Account to use pocket and that’s convenient for syncing browser state between my laptop and desktop or for setting up Firefox on a new system with less effort.

My email client is Thunderbird because it Just Works™ for everything I need. I previously used mutt and aerc but found them tiresome. I’d like to write my own mail(1) clone that supports IMAP/Maildir but that’s probably a fair ways off.

My IRC client will be self-hosted soju+gamja once I get around to actually setting things up on my homeserver.

My RSS client is fenen which is a terminal-based reader with a mail(1)-like interface.

My music client is Audacious because it’s easy to use and has a nice “Shuffle by Album” feature.

I use Syncthing to sync files between my laptop and desktop computers.

I keep my dotfiles in a git repository for easy deployment and updating. They are tailored to OpenBSD.

Laptop Computer

A Dell XPS 13 9380 open and on, displaying a blog post in vim in the terminal.

I use a Dell XPS 13 9380 with an Intel i7-8665U, 16GB of RAM, a 256GB NVMe SSD, and a 13.3” 1080p touchscreen display. This runs OpenBSD-current and serves as machine for focused programming and writing.

I use it with a Logitech MX Ergo wireless mouse, for which I have a Logitech Unifying Receiver plugged into one of the USB-C ports via a compact adapter.

This laptop fit my requirements for a laptop almost perfectly and was not terribly expensive, costing about CA$650 in total (US$472/445€ as of 2023-03-16) including a replacement battery. The only thing I would improve would be the aspect ratio of the display and the fan curve.

I previously used a Thinkpad T420s and, before that, a Thinkpad T440s. After then using a 2009 MacBook Pro and then an old Toshiba netbook, I really can’t see myself going back to bigger screens and bulkier form factors.

Desktop Computer

A custom-built PC with the following specs:

PCPartPicker build list.

My choice of monitor is often the subject of curiosity. I use an LG Gram +view 16” portable monitor, mounted on a monitor arm via a VIVO Mount-UVM02 tablet holder, as the sole display for my desktop. This display is compact, well-built, power-efficient, and has a crisp 2560x1600 (16:10) resolution, which is a combination of specifications that’s exceedingly difficult to find for desktop monitors which are often either too large, too wide, too low resolution, or too expensive. It’s connected to my desktop’s GPU using a surplus Dell DP alt mode PCIe card.

I use an HHKB Professional 2 (Black) keyboard and the aforementioned Logitech MX Ergo mouse, for which I have a second Logitech Unifying Receiver that I can switch to by just clicking a button on the mouse.

When it comes to audio, I listen with a pair of Logitech Zone Vibe 100 bluetooth headphones using a Sennheiser BTD600 USB bluetooth adapter. I previously used wired “Hi-Fi” headphones and they do indeed have much better sound quality, but the convenience of a wireless setup is a tradeoff I’m willing to make. I also sometimes use a Bose SoundLink Mini II as a speaker.

For speaking, I have a Blue Snowball Ice which I got sometime in 2017, before I knew anything about audio. It will be replaced with something better when it breaks or when I decide the world needs another podcast.

My Ideal Hardware

I'm not entirely sure. I know that I am very happy with my current keyboard, mouse, and monitor (especially my monitor), and while I may eventually switch to a full-on drawing tablet for mouse input, my current peripherals serve me well.

When it comes to the computers themselves, I keep flip-flopping between two possibilities:

The first would be to have only a single computer: a laptop that is well-specced, well-built, and portable (i.e fits my requirements for a laptop) for computing away from my office, but which could be easily docked so that I can use peripherals at my desk including, perhaps, an external GPU. I'd also love for this laptop to have 360° hinges so I could use it as a tablet for when I want to do some long-form reading or so I can more conveniently set it up on the desk as a second monitor when it's docked. I kind of want an "all-in-one" machine.

The other option would be to keep my two-computer setup but exchange my bulky, power-hungry desktop for a much smaller integrated system like one from Minisforum or something like a Steam Deck. An advantage to keeping two computers is that I could still use OpenBSD on the computer I want to get serious work done on, while also having a separate computer that can play games (I recognise the irony in the statement "I wouldn't be using Linux, but I can't play most games on my preferred OS").

That being said, I have no need to change hardware at this point in time. Although my desktop is a bit overpowered for my needs now and my laptop has a few things I'd like to change about it, everything works well enough and I don't need to change things just for the sake of changing them.

Phone

I have an iPhone 12 mini with 64GB of storage which I purchased second-hand for 361€. I like small phones.

I don’t spend a lot of time on my phone. Screen Time reports that I spend around 45 minutes per day on it. Between using it for maps, podcasts, calls, texts, and reading r/nosleep stories before bed, that makes sense. I also use the greyscale screen filter at about 50%; not for reducing screen addiction, but rather because I prefer the aesthetic and find the normal display a bit too stimulating.

I previously had an iPhone X that was given to me for free by a family member but it developed an issue with phantom touch screen input making the phone intermittently and unpredictably unusable. It needed to be replaced.

Prior to the iPhone X I had an iPhone 6 that was given to me for free by a family friend which is still usable except for a lack of app compatibility (specifically public transit and messaging apps).

Before that I had an ASUS Zenfone 2 Laser that I purchased new for C$300 in 2015. It was (stuck) running LineageOS with Android 8.1 and I primarily replaced it because its original battery failed and then the replacement battery I bought for it failed within a year. Turns out I like iOS more anyways.

My Ideal Phone

Honestly my ideal phone would be no phone. I would switch to using a physical TAN generator for authorising bank transfers and use a physical TOTP token generator for two-factor authentication. I would print my train tickets out and call my family using a W48.

Unfortunately there's just a lot of convenience in having a smartphone in modern society. Not like "oh it's so convenient that I can keep up with my friends at all times or send and receive emails from anywhere", but more like being able to buy a train ticket as I'm stepping onto a train or having a map of the whole world in my pocket so I can figure out where I am in a foreign city or being able to redirect packages to a no-contact pickup station so that I don't have to be home to receive a package and can pick it up at any time.

My only issue, really, is that I cannot stand the size of modern smartphones. I have no idea what I'll get when my current phone breaks and the last iPhone mini goes out of support. I have no interest in FOSS phone jank, and nobody seems to be interested in making a stripped-down-yet-still-functional mini phone so I have no clue. Hopefully enough people (especially those pesky influencers) complain about the death of the small phone enough for someone to come around and make something worth buying.

E-Reader

I use a Kobo Clara HD with the SleepCover and stock interface (I tried koreader but didn’t like it). It serves my needs well, is easy to dump books onto and get highlights off of, and can also browse text-heavy websites decently well. The integration with Pocket is also very useful, since I often find myself wanting to read long-form blog posts through a more suitable medium than a vertical computer screen. I enjoy how hackable and relatively open Kobo’s products seem to be.

Homelab

My email server and website are hosted on a VM with 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM, and a 50GB HDD running OpenBSD and hosted at OpenBSD Amsterdam. It costs 4,33€/mo plus a mandatory 1,25€/mo donation to the OpenBSD Foundation, paid yearly. It’s a pretty good deal.

As a Homelab (for running non-production stuff I want to experiment with such as rrdtool, Docker, or Owncast), I have a Minisforum UN100L with the following specifications:

It gets the job done nicely, quietly, and draws something like 4.5W in total under normal loads. I got it on pre-sale for 229€, which was not much more expensive than the recent generations of used Dell or HP Micro machines with comparable power idle power draw but much worse efficiency under load.