Share your setup

[blig-blug]

What's your current setup?

Here's mine:

• Computer: Thinkpad x260. I love it because it's very portable and resistant. However it's not the most ergonomic choice, but as I'm between two places during the year, I don't have reliable access to a desktop computer. I changed its original 250GB SSD for a 1TB one. Lately I'm starting to hit the limits of its RAM.
• OS: GNU Guix, a GNU/Linux distro with a package manager that provides reproducible builds, atomic updates, seamless rollback, ad-hoc containerized shells... Its peculiarities bring some occasional inconvenience, but it pays off when managing dependencies. As you can have however many different environments you want, and all of them can have different (and incompatible) versions of the same packages, including system libraries.
• Window Manager: i3, a tiling window manager. I don't make full use of its features: my screen is so small that at most I have three tiles on a workspace, more usually one or two. But I like being able to fully control it with the keyboard.
• Editor: Emacs. I have set it up to use LSP for the languages I work with, so I get IDE-like features. I also use a lot org-mode, a mode (and syntax) to write documents that then you can export to HTML, Latex (and PDF), ODT... Even create Beamer slides. Except browsing and email, I do almost everything in Emacs, and have been doing so for many years. I'll eventually set it up to handle email, but last time I tried I was having some annoying issues to set up automatic PGP decryption.
• Browser: Firefox as GNU Icecat. It's a Firefox ESR build provided by Guix. It has the propietary parts of Firefox (like DRM) removed, and the telemetry too. I have it hardened with Arkenfox.js, a profile based on the one used by Tor Browser. As for extensions, I use uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger to block ads and tracking, and Violentmonkey to run userscripts.

 

[Transform]

I'm not saying, it's too embarassing (but not windows or mac, at least)

 

[blig-blug]

it's too embarassing

No shaming here!

 

[Transform]

No shaming here!

No, really, I seriously need to obtain a better machine. It's 18 years old, goddammit!

 

[blig-blug]

Now you made it more interesting! And as long as it works... I have rehabilitated a 2010 computer with a very lightweight distro for a relative and it works perfectly well for light loads. And funnily the Windows UI has changed so much that XFCE is more familiar for some long-time Windows users than modern Windows itself!

Edit: also note that my laptop is 9 years old already, and it wasn't very powerful in its day to begin with...

 

[Transform]

Admittedly, it was pretty good back in its day, but the battery's shot with no hope of replacement, afaics. Modern stuff overloads the CPU and RAM if I try to do too many things at once, so I need to find a lighterweight (now officially a word ) OS. Urgh!

[Funnily enough, I was planning on asking you for advice anyhow.]

 

[Jamie01]

Old scratched up phone.

 

[northape]

Thinkpad E495 with Windows 11 LTSC, thanks to massgrave. I use it like a chromebook, basically: to run Chrome, Zoom, and for occasional VLC use.
I used to run Arch Linux in my teens and spent an unholy amount of time tweaking it
My life went in another direction, and I left all IT-related stuff behind. I always got stressed out by all the tech advancements, and when I left that behind, life became much slower and more workable. One good thing that came from my tech obsession is almost full immunity to social nets and smartphone. I read countless sci-fi novels on my old Palm Pilot back in the day, so the smartphone was far from magical for me. Social networks took a bit of effort to kick out of my life. Oh, and I don't code, except in English maybe

 

[blig-blug]

Thinkpad E495

That one looks pretty good for what I want, maybe when mine gives up I buy one of those. Looking it up turns out it's quite cheap second hand nowadays.

I used to run Arch Linux in my teens and spent an unholy amount of time tweaking it

Haha me too! And I suppose breaking it, as well? My data recovery skills got quite good from breaking it so often.

One good thing that came from my tech obsession is almost full immunity to social nets and smartphone

When I was 18, I fell for the smartphone and for some years (the same years I was in a very poor mental health state) I was addicted to it. Not a metaphor: if I left it at home I got cold sweats and could only think about getting it. At one point I realized it was not good for me so I got a dumbphone. Now I only use a smartphone when I'm here in my village to go get signal, a 2014 Motorola Moto G2 running LineageOS.

 

[northape]

That one looks pretty good for what I want, maybe when mine gives up I buy one of those. Looking it up turns out it's quite cheap second hand nowadays.

I bought it cheaply directly from Lenovo when it came out. I love the keyboard on Thinkpads.

Haha me too! And I suppose breaking it, as well? My data recovery skills got quite good from breaking it so often.

It'd break endlessly, mostly because of me. That's one of the reasons I love simplicity now.

When I was 18, I fell for the smartphone and for some years (the same years I was in a very poor mental health state) I was addicted to it. Not a metaphor: if I left it at home I got cold sweats and could only think about getting it. At one point I realized it was not good for me so I got a dumbphone. Now I only use a smartphone when I'm here in my village to go get signal, a 2014 Motorola Moto G2 running LineageOS.

I had a Motorola F3 for a while. It's a fun little phone, but writing sms on it is a chore. Today, I use my smartphone mostly for banking, music, and podcasts. We can't live without smartphones here. Even your ID is digital, and without it everything becomes quite difficult. My use is very simple and minimal, though.

 

[Nydex]

I've always been an avid gamer. Whether that's a manifestation of an escape/coping mechanism or just pure passion for a hobby, I cannot tell, but my setups have always been centered around that. My current PC is running a bit old but still working like a charm for almost all that I need it to do.

Main Rig:

• CPU: Intel Core i5-13600K @ 3,5GHz
• GPU: Palit RTX 3080 12GB LHR
• RAM: Kingston FURY Renegade DDR5, 32GB, 6400MHz @ CL32
• Storage: WD Black 2TB + Kingston NV2 2TB NVMe M.2
• Case: Fractal Meshify 2 RGB
• CPU Cooler: Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360
• Thermal Paste: Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut
• OS: Windows 11 Pro (yeah, I know, blasphemy!)

Peripherals:

• Headset: Beyerdynamics DT 900 Pro X
• Mouse: Razer Deathadder V2 Pro
• Keyboard: Shortcut Studio Bridge75 MAX
• Monitor: LG UltraGear 24'', IPS, Full HD, 144Hz, 1ms

The reason why I'm running windows and not a part of the cool kids Linux club is pretty simple - Windows does everything I need it to do and the things it doesn't do quite in the way I want it to do aren't that big of a deal to me. On top of that, I run a lot of games and music production software which have better compatibility with Windows. Maybe one day I'll make the switch, but for now I simply don't see a point.

The whole gaming rig was built from scratch by yours truly. It was a challenging yet rewarding process to build a machine like that, and now that I've done it, I would never settle for a pre-built setup because of how fun and engaging it is to do it yourself.

 

[blig-blug]

Windows does everything I need it to do and the things it doesn't do quite in the way I want it to do aren't that big of a deal to me

Also, you work with the .NET environment, right? It also makes sense for that.

The whole gaming rig was built from scratch by yours truly. It was a challenging yet rewarding process to build a machine like that, and now that I've done it, I would never settle for a pre-built setup because of how fun and engaging it is to do it yourself.

I intend to do the same myself when I have a more stable location. I have no experience with it, what did you find the most challenging in the process? It's very worth it to learn, you get to tailor it to your needs and it's also cheaper when controlling for quality and specs.

 

[northape]

The reason why I'm running windows and not a part of the cool kids Linux club is pretty simple - Windows does everything I need it to do and the things it doesn't do quite in the way I want it to do aren't that big of a deal to me.

Same here. I like LTSC, because it's stripped of lots of bs. I've disabled Windows Updates, so no surprises coming my way

The whole gaming rig was built from scratch by yours truly. It was a challenging yet rewarding process to build a machine like that, and now that I've done it, I would never settle for a pre-built setup because of how fun and engaging it is to do it yourself.

I used to build my PCs before I moved away from IT. The process was fun and I liked that everything was under my control. I had a dual-boot with Windows/Linux for years, and even Apple's OSx86 at some point. Yeah, that was my escape/coping mechanism

 

[blig-blug]

Tweaking my OS was also my hobby / escape mechanism for many years. For some years I ran Gentoo, tweaking every compile flag, disabling any kernel module not needed by my device and configuring the low level options of the kernel... It didn't really pay off in usability, but it was fun and I learned a lot doing it.

 

[Nydex]

Also, you work with the .NET environment, right? It also makes sense for that.

I mean, you could work with that in Linux as well, but lately I haven't been doing any coding outside of work anyway, so it's a non-issue for now.

what did you find the most challenging in the process

Two things - cable management and the logistics around ordering the components from different vendors, with stuff being late or them sending the wrong one, so you have to put the whole thing on hold while you wait for a correction. That's the main drawback of building your own - you don't get a package warranty and each part has a separate warranty towards a different vendor (in most cases anyway) so if stuff goes wrong it's logistically more challenging to deal with than if you had a pre-built and you just bring the PC to their location and don't think about it at all.

 

[Jamie01]

Lol is it doable to learn really basic stuff on my phone? I had a good comp I got a while back to play with ableton and serato and figured I could learn basic stuff but it’s no longer living.

I just want to learn really basic stuff.

 

[Transform]

Lol is it doable to learn really basic stuff on my phone? I had a good comp I got a while back to play with ableton and serato and figured I could learn basic stuff but it’s no longer living.

I just want to learn really basic stuff.

Basic like what? You've got an internet in your hand here, you can in principle learn whatever you want. How broken is your desktop machine? Is it an OS issue, or actual dead/obsolete components?

 

[Jamie01]

My wife dropped it a few times watching Netflix…I should probly take it in to get it looked at but I just sorta forgot about it.

I don’t know anything about coding so I don’t know what I want to do, just that I want to learn more about it.

 

[Nydex]

My wife dropped it a few times watching Netflix…I should probly take it in to get it looked at but I just sorta forgot about it.

I don’t know anything about coding so I don’t know what I want to do, just that I want to learn more about it.

I'd recommend hitting up any of the big LLMs (Gemini 2.5 Pro, ChatGPT, etc). They should help you out a lot. And in case you get really stuck and they're not of much use, I'd recommend joining the buildapc discord server - Join the buildapc Discord Server! - where you'll find plenty of folks willing to extend a helping hand.

 

[Transform]

My wife dropped it a few times watching Netflix…I should probly take it in to get it looked at but I just sorta forgot about it.

I don’t know anything about coding so I don’t know what I want to do, just that I want to learn more about it.

Ah, OK - a broken laptop. That could be any of several things given the circumstances, and I'm not about to do further diagnostics from this distance except to ask, does it even seem to begin to switch on if you plug it in and press the power button?