What I Use

This page goes through the different utilities and programs I use on my computer everyday.

Operating System

My primary operating system of choice is Linux. To be more specific, I use ArchLinux on my personal machines and I tend towards AlpineLinux on servers.

ArchLinux tends to be bleeding edge and very configurable, which makes it very nice for desktops. Alpine on the other hand, is very lightweight and leaves me with very little overhead on server environments.

An overview of my favorite server components and tools belongs on another page that has yet to be written.

Desktop Environment

For those unaware, a desktop environment is the collection of software that the user interacts with while using a computer. It handles power management, icons, fonts, toolbars, widgets (if you use those), and of course your windows.

My desktop environment was configured from the ground up using a window manager¹ and other assorted programs. My window manager of choice is i3 because of it’s easy configurability and powerful tiling system.

In addition to i3 for managing my windows, I also use:

• dunst as my notification daemon
• rofi as my application launcher and switcher
• polybar as my desktop panels
• xscreensaver to lock my screen
• feh to set my desktop background

Theming

In theming my system, I set most configuration values using my .Xresources² file. The key things set here are colors and fonts. Currently, I’m using the Dracula color theme for my system, and using Recursive Mono for my monospace font.

Applications

Terminal Setup

My terminal is probably the most used application I have on my system. I currently use st because it’s fast, simple, and it has all the features I need out of a terminal emulator.

St (Simple Terminal) lives up to it’s name and is exactly what it claims: simple. It comes without bloated features or fancy buttons. This means that a lot of people ‘patch’³ specific features into st when they build it. I however, like to keep my st build pretty small and only use a couple patches:

• boxdraw, which enables proper box characters in TUI⁴ applications.
• copyurl, which lets me easily copy a link on screen by pressing ALT+L.
• xresources, which allows st to change some configuration options on runtime using values from Xresources (such as the color scheme).

In replacement of some seemingly core terminal features (like a scrollback buffer), I use tmux. Tmux handles scrolling, multiplexing, and I have it configured to share the system’s clipboard.

Browser

The browser is probably the second most used application on my computer. I use qutebrowser because of it’s tight vi inspired, keyboard focused, interface. Under some circumstances, I will launch Firefox if qutebrowser doesn’t have a feature I need to use.

Text Editor

A good text editor is a crucial part of any system, and I can’t say many would beat vim. I use vim just about any time I edit text, including writing this webpage. My vim configuration is also kept to a minimum. Most the changes are purely quality of life improvements such as: small theme changes, indention settings, and line/column highlighting.

Email

My email setup revolves around neomutt but uses a few helper programs to complete the setup:

• msmtp to send emails
• offlineimap to synchronize emails locally
• khard for contact completion when sending emails

Vim is also used as the text editor when composing emails.

News reader

I currently use newsboat as my RSS newsreader. It’s lightweight, fairly configurable, and easy to use.