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Tinkering

I'm constantly trying to improve my environment.
Whatever I do, if I know I'm going to be doing it for a long time, I try to make the process more comfortable. Even before cooking, I need to clean the kitchen. Before exercising, I need comfortable clothes and drinking water nearby.

When it comes to working with computers, I know that I will be doing it for more than just the next day. I want to spend my whole life with computers.

So trying to find even a 5% improvement in workflow doesn't seem so useless to me.
And to be honest, I find it very interesting and fun!
I change distributions, terminals, environments, and on and on.

The tools I keep using usually have something in common: they give me control without making the whole system feel like homework. I like software that is understandable, local-first when possible, hackable when needed, and pleasant enough that I do not have to fight it every day.

Tools that I use and have used for some time now

Current tools are highlighted in red.
# Distributions
Fedora Latest software without going fully rolling. Pretty stable. A good place to live before switching to Arch fully.
Arch Great in almost every aspect, but requires some love and patience. Stays close to the system and makes it clear what is actually installed.
Omarchy Arch, but with dotfiles, defaults, and its own mirror. Not really a distro, but not just a config either, idk. A complete opinionated setup that still feels like Arch underneath.
# DE/WM
Gnome It works. Complete, modern, and backed by the libadwaita look and a nice ecosystem of apps.
Sway The simplest tiling WM I know. Most others took too much effort just to feel okay.
Hyprland Takes more effort than Sway, but feels like a first-class Wayland citizen. Vaxry is not only building a tiling compositor, but also tools that make it feel less restrictive: the Hypr ecosystem and plugins.
# Terminal Emulator
Foot Basic terminal. Does the job, but lacks tabs and splits.
Alacritty Live config reload. Edit config, see result, move on. Lacks tabs and splits.
Ghostty Great tabs and splits by default, so I do not need tmux for terminal layout. Live reload and dark/light theme switching are nice too.
# Shell
Zsh A lot of power without a big framework. Add P10k instant theme, fzf-tab, autosuggestions, and syntax highlighting, and it starts to feel like a starship.
Bash + ble.sh Fuck yeah, syntax highlighting, powerful completion, and all that on the default Bash shell. So cool!
# .config manager
Chezmoi It's very flexible. A little too much for my taste.
GNU Stow Unable to preserve symlinks at all, adding a file means recreating it, and a lot of quirky behavior ruins the experience. But I was able to use it, and that's cool.
Yadm Simple and predictable because it is fully Git, but still handles harder use cases with simple templates.
# Browser
Zen From alpha to stable beta. Firefox-based, but with its own interface ideas, privacy focus, and weirdly powerful things like the mods store.
# Notes
Obsidian Not open source, but has great community support. Stable, polished, and easy to extend.
Logseq My note-taking developed from using it: bullets, journals, all notes linked, no folders. It lacks extensions on mobile and feels laggy, but it shaped how I think about notes. Used previously.
Silverbullet Almost everything I need works out of the box. Hackable and scriptable, even with almost no plugins and limited graphical options. Still feels good, and it's OSS.
# Editor
Helix A simple and fast Neovim-like experience with batteries included. Selection first, then action. Multiple cursors without building a huge config.
Neovim Powerful, but easy to turn into a second hobby. I respect it, and LazyVim from Omarchy is useful sometimes, but I do not want my editor to need that much attention.
# Passwords
KeepassXC + KeepassDX Local, easy, and simple, with ssh-agent support, browser integration, and an Android app. Best of the best.
# Syncing
Syncthing Sync between devices without leaving the local network. I just disabled public discovery.
# RSS
Miniflux Simplistic and fast RSS reader. The developer brings strong opinions brutally enough to keep it focused on reading feeds and avoid bloat. I also installed RSS-Bridge to expand its capabilities.
VPN Error code: 451

Selfhosting

All my values naturally converge to self-hosting.

Freedom, privacy, open source, control, and hackability - all this multiplied by the nerd fun of being able to run SaaS-like applications entirely under my control. And I don't care if maintainers disappear or even if the internet disappears completely, I'll still be comfortable and without data loss. So this freedom has become my little hobby.

Right now I'm using a simple system: a router with OpenWrt, and an always-on laptop right underneath it. For my modest tasks, it is completely enough, but I think this system will be expanded in the future.

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      ): :(
      :o_o:
       "-"