Tools and Tech I Use

I like Vim and Neovim and used them a lot before I found out about Evil mode for Emacs.

My DE-hopping went something like this: Cinnamon (Mint) → XFCE (Xubuntu) → KDE (very briefly) → GNOME.

Similar to the above, my distro-hopping looked something like this: Mint → Arch → Ubuntu → Gentoo/NixOS → Guix.

Mint was my first real Linux experience, in fact I remember thinking the PC I had was only 32 bit (it wasn't) so for a while ran a 32-bit release of Mint. This might have been 2017-ish.

Arch I used because PCIe passthrough was the meta for Linux gaming circa 2020. I fell for the Arch BTW minimalism meme, though I learnt a lot through breaking and fixing my system every week.

I used Ubuntu after Arch because bleeding edge was a bit too hectic for me, for engineering here in the UK Ubuntu is standard issue so I use it daily. Ubuntu is fine.

Gentoo I liked using a lot for having a tightly customised system, though eventually I got bored of recompiling Firefox or webkit-gtk and distro-hopped to Guix.

I briefly tried Nix on a spare laptop while I used Gentoo on desktop and had a decent time. I didn't really get Nix the language though and thought the same idea using Scheme would suit me better so ended up on Guix.

Guix is alien technology from the future and (I hope) has put an end to my distro-hopping. I like Guix a lot.

VS Code is fine but I don't use it. It's just not Emacs. I notice now a lot of Engineers get frustrated when someone isn't using VS Code.

I grew up with Google Chrome because I'm a zoomer —it's fine but Firefox runs uBlock Origin flawlessly and Chrome now doesn't. I'm not bothered enough about benchmarks or Google account integration or AI to really need to use Chrome.

I've used Chromium and it's okay.

The OS

After using Linux for so long using Windows feels awkward and annoying. There's no software I use that Wine can't handle and all the games I Play run under Steam's Proton.

Emacs runs like ass on Windows and I prefer the look and feel of the major Linux DEs.

The Office Suite

I don't really like Office but it's been years since I've had to use it. Org mode and its various export options is fine for all the writing and presenting I get around to doing and if I need to do any number-crunching I'd know how to knock something reasonable together in Python or BQN.

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