About Technology

This article is about the technology that I use, both in software and in hardware.

Computer Hardware

I personally use a thinkpad X200 which is librebooted and a thinkpad X230, which has the default vendor BIOS. I use old thinkpads because:

• They are reliable and well built.
• They were made to be repaired, unlike other modern hardware.
• They are affordable.
• They have a nice keyboard (at least the X200 does) and they have the red dot (which is better than a mouse in many cases).
• They are upgradable to a large extent.

Also, the feeling of using a thinkpad is just quite nice. There is no real other way to describe it, you just have to try it yourself.

Antiphone

I don't have a phone. Actually, that is a lie. I do have one, but almost never use it. They are not useful to me and I don't use conventional social media so I have no need for them. Computers are much better at making software and articles, and also computers can more easily run open source software (not that it matters inherently but to me most open source software is just better because I can basically do what I want with my computer). It doesn't feel like you own a phone when you buy one; someone else owns the phone, and you buy the rights to use it. With most computers, the general feeling is that you own it.

Software

I try to use minimal software where I can. The general philosophy is one of the UNIX philosophy; you have simple components and you make them do complex things via piping and whatnot.

Operating systems

I would consider using and have used these operating systems:

• Void gnu/linux -- it's quite minimal and has a good package manager.
• Arch gnu/linux -- the same as void, except a little less minimal.
• Trisquel gnu/linux -- an operating system that is actually 100% free software. I run this currently on my X200.
• OpenBSD -- The operating system I run on my X230 currently. Does things correct for the most part and more UNIX.
• 9front -- Yes, I've actually run this before for a little bit. Really liked it, but no modern web browser. Would run again though.

I would recommend all of these to try out. They all have their unique upsides and downsides, though you could probably get all linux distros to work in almost the same way if you wanted to. If you're looking for something new (and better designed than linux in my opinion) you could try OpenBSD and 9front.

Systemd

It doesn't actually matter if your distro uses it or not.

Userland

I tend to use suckless userland programs because they tend to follow the UNIX philosophy and their software is just better than the competition. For example, dwm can do swallowing, and I have not encountered any other window manager that will do that natively (you might need a program to do it for you). The st terminal supports everything as long as you add patches, but even if you don't, it's still better than most other terminal emulators that want to do too much. The dmenu program is just good because you can make custom scripts and that increases the usability of your computer like five-fold.

Also see their rocks/ page for most of the software that I use. You can also see my dotfiles for the software that I use.

For OpenBSD, I mostly use cwm with the defaults and most of the same programs I use for gnu/linux. For 9front, I use the base system mostly (obviously).