Tools

I’m currently using two machines: a desktop running Windows and a ThinkPad T420 running Arch Linux. I have Windows installed from before I got familiar with Linux and I’d like to get rid of it, but I’m not mentally ready to make that step because some software I like (read: Elite Dangerous) does not run well on Linux. I recently updated my desktop to a nicer machine with a RTX 3080 and 64GB RAM.

The ThinkPad T420 is loved for being a laptop with a good keyboard. On my desktop, I used a tenkeyless Leopold FC 660M keyboard with blue cherry switches, alongside a cheap Verto Ergonomic mouse from Trust. Unfortunately, I spilled coffee on it so a few keys don’t work anymore. For daily use, I now enjoy a Mistel MD770 split mechanical keyboard with Brown Cherry switches.

On Arch Linux, I used i3wm for several years, but a while back I switched to dwm and I like how simple and fast it is. I kept tinkling with i3 and after a while got fed up with wasting time on this, and regressed into a bare bones setup with the default i3 status bar. Since I was going bare bones anyways, I gave dwm a shot and ended up loving it.

I maintain my own fork of dwm here. I use urxvt as a terminal emulator, in which I run the Z shell with some plugins from oh my zsh.

I do most my work from within Vim, although I’m not being a dick about it. Because the rest of the world does not always share my philosophy, I usually write in Vim and then convert my work to whatever file format someone asks from me using pandoc, which is a Swiss army knife I can’t do without (I love it!).

If my main machine would run Linux, I’d use neomutt for mailing and newsboat daily instead of occasionally.

In case you care, you can find my dotfiles here.