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How I Do My Computing

My PC

As of now, I use a relatively good computer, which has a 11th Gen Intel Core i9-11900KF, 32 GB of RAM, a NVIDIA RTX 4060 Ti and 2TB of M.2 SSD RAM. I still use the regular BIOS for the motherboard, because (1) I am scared I'll soft-/hard-lock the computer and (2) I haven't found a guide for my motherboard. Although the computer was pre-build and came with Windows 11, I installed a free OS.

Before that, I used a simple Acer laptop with Windows 10 installed on it. When I leave my home, and therefore cannot use my main computer, I use the laptop with a free OS installed. The laptop is a very low-end laptop, therefore I cannot do resource-intensive tasks while I am out-of-home.

My OS

On main PC, I use a Linux distro called "Gentoo". It is a source based distribution, meaning I compile everything from source. I use it because I like to have the maximum control over my system.

As I mentioned before, I also have a portable laptop. On said laptop, I installed "Endeavour OS as the OS. I chose it because (1) it is Arch-based, so I can enjoy the benefits of the blazingly fast pacman installer and (2) still have a good Out-Of-The-Box experience.

My Installation

I mostly use the terminal, because most of my work is writing code and I just find it more efficient to do that kind of work in a terminal.

I am currently on Hyprland because (1) it looks pretty and (2) it is currently pretty good for NVIDIA support, although I have plans to switch to dwm or similar.

I use Neovim for editing text, because I can, again, control every single gear in the software. I really like the ability to install plugins using Lua (even though I am not the biggest fan of Lua, but everything is better than Python).

I use feh to view images and I use mpv to view videos. I do not like the bloaty feature-rich applications like VLC (although VLC is a very impressive and well-made project).

I generally like playing games, although lately I have not have the time to play any. I really enjoy Minecraft, although the new versions are not really that "minecraft-ty" than the old ones.

How I Connect To The Internet

I connect to the internet via a mobile hotspot. I am very careful what I do on the internet now (although in the past I really wasn't caring about anything). I often use a VPN or connect via the Tor Network.

I do have social media because all my friends/family have it. Sadly, I cannot really get away from it, because (1) I would lose access to many contacts and (2) my relatives do probably not know what Mastodon is, especially not what data gets collected over them.

I use a custom version of LibreWolf that is modified to my preferences. I chose this browser because of all the build-in privacy features and because Firefox-based browsers are easy to modify.

I also use many of the Proton products because of their privacy features (and because they're swiss). I generally communicate either via irc or Signal. I use Mullvad VPN and all the Bitwarden applications. I do not use any AI agent because they are pretty much just "Bullshit generators".

Payments

Of course, sometimes payment is necessary. Although I do not buy anything that infringes my privacy. I have three ways of paying online currently:

Cryptocurrencies

Cryptocurrencies are amazing. Not only because they are digital, but also because they are decentralised. Mainly, I use the following currencies:

  • Bitcoin logoBitcoin
  • Litecoin logoLitecoin
  • Monero logoMonero
  • Dogecoin logoDogecoin

    • Note that I do not regularly use Dogecoin, that would be ridiculous. But I do accept it as a wallet, mainly because mining it is very easy.

    Gift Cards

    If a service does not support any cryptocurrencies, I purchase a gift card at the nearest shop and use that gift card to pay.

    Debit/Credit Cards

    Alas, if some service I use are not up-to-date to the privacy paying standards of mine, I must resort, as a last resort, to using a debit or credit card. I do not like this way of paying online, but if nothing else works, I am forced to do it.

    Programming Languages

    In my opinion, C++, Assembly, C, and BASIC are the best languages. I also sometimes use Bash for scripting, Java when managing some old legacy code, and JavaScript for web development.

    For storing my data, I like to have it organised in either XML or JSON. I also use Markdown for documentation and stuff like that. I do not find XML bad, it is incredibly bad to parse, but it's good for web development.