Uses

Last updated at 03/10/2026.

I only want my computers to do what I tell them and to stay out of the way while I work.

Software Link to heading

OS: Debian 13 (Trixie). I’ve run various Linux distributions since I was a teenager. Debian is stable, minimal and gets out of the way. I don’t want my OS to be interesting. I rarely need bleeding-edge software and when I do, I’ll compile it from source. Even at work, where I’m forced to run Windows, I spend as much time as possible in Debian under WSL.

Desktop: i3wm with polybar. No desktop environment or display manager. Alacritty is my terminal, rofi launches applications and picom handles compositing. The inner and outer gaps default to 10px and can be changed with keyboard shortcuts. There are no window titles or decorations. Pywal generates a colour scheme from my wallpaper and applies it to polybar, Alacritty and my editor. i3lock provides a plain black lock screen.

Editors: Neovim, although I still call it Vim. Occasionally Kiro, though I mainly use its CLI rather than the IDE now. Both pick up the colour scheme generated by Pywal.

Shell: Just bash. My custom ~/.bashrc and the default PS1 are enough.

Languages: Go, Java, TypeScript, Bash, C and Haskell. At work it’s mostly TypeScript (Node.js) and Java (Spring Boot), with GraphQL, Terraform and AWS infrastructure around them. Lately I’ve been enjoying Odin in my own time.

Hardware Link to heading

Personal laptop: Framework 13. 13th Gen i7-1360P, 32GB RAM and a 1TB WD Black SN770. I like its repairability, though I still miss the build quality of my old ThinkPad X200: the seven-row keyboard, TrackPoint, lid latch, UltraBase docking and brilliant hinges. I flashed Libreboot onto that X200 about a decade ago using a SOIC16 clip and a Raspberry Pi, back before Libreboot softened its stance on binary blobs. I’m hoping for another run of the X210/X2100 mod.

Work laptop: Dell Precision 7760. 11th Gen i9-11950H, 64GB RAM and 2TB storage.

Keyboard: IBM Model M with a silver badge, made in 1986. It is older than I am.

Trackball: Logitech Trackman Marble. Logitech has a habit of discontinuing great products. RIP G400.

Monitors: The laptop sits to the left, my main monitor is centred in landscape and a secondary monitor stands to the right in portrait. If I’m gaming it’ll be on my TV from my sofa, so I couldn’t care less about refresh rates as long as I can read text. I don’t think my secondary monitor is even Full HD.

Music player: Modded iPod with 800GB of storage running Rockbox. No streaming.

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