software yesses and no-noes

My friends usually slide into my DMs to ask me for recommendations on software. I really don't think I am the right person for the task but then again, most people are oblivious to how they should use their PCs.

OS

Arch is my OS of choice, not for everyone, but gets the job done for me. It just werks. If you don't know what the fuck you're doing, just go with Mint, you'll be fine. And if you are a gamer or not interested in pouring a bit of time and interest into Linux, just keep using Windows.

userspace

My text editor is Vim, it does the job and is extensible to do anything I need from a text editor. Emacs is cool though, I won't participate in the masturbatory discourse about which one is better, they're good tools. Use them at your heart's content.

I've used a lot of Desktops and Window Managers, my conclusions run as such:

• Despite krashes and fuckery, KDE is the superior DE.
• I absolutely loved my time under dwm, if you're into minimalist software (and know what you're doing) please give it a shot and start patching.
• i3, bspwm and xmonad are the better options for anyone who just wants a nice easy-to-work WM.

If you've got a rice of your own, please share it with me, I'd love to see your desktop!

Please use Redshift (or f.lux if you're on Windows) if you're going to work late hours. Your sleep and overall health is very important and shall not be overlooked.

browser

tl;dr: Librewolf, Pale Moon and Ungoogled Chromium.

Mozilla is a shit company that nobody should ever trust. Sadly, they're the only true competitor to Chrome. I use LibreWolf, even though Pale Moon would be a lovely replacement and I've been pondering to make the switch.

If you are a Chromium user and really just enjoy using the internet without she sluggishness that Gecko sometimes shows, then just go with Ungoogled Chromium. If you rely on your Google or Mozilla account to browse, I'd heavily recommend to just grow a pair and do shit locally. Like, do you really need synced bookmarks and history? As for me, I think history is unnecesary and bookmarks can be replaced with plain text files and a script.

Dear Opera and Brave users, I don't care that your browsers have a gazillion features that bake muffins, pet my cat and give me a foot massage. I just want a browser. Your placebo RAM blockers, embedded notes and free shitcoins are just bloat. End communication.

search :O

4get is great, LibreY is lovely, SearX/NG is kinda good. I refrain from using Google Search, but from time to time reverse search can be useful.

I wouldn't really recommend using DuckDuckGo, I'd use Startpage over it. But yet again, the options listed above are more than enough. Let me guess, you need more?

music! :3

Windows? MusicBee. *NIX? cmus or any mpd-based player. macOS? lol.

Seek within your soul.

messaging

For everyday phone-messaging, I use Signal Messenger. Private, secure and user-friendly. Highly recommend.

misc funsies :3

Krita is my go-to drawing and image manipulation tool. Some may tell you GIMP is good, but fuck that! I don't want to go through context menus to do something as simple as drawing a circle.

My editor of choice for simple edits and not much else is kdenlive. Solid stuff and it rarely breaks unlike some proprietary programs. If I really need to step up the work and make use of my sweet GPU I just bite the bullet and boot up Resolve.