/uses

Tools and hardware I use day to day. This changes when something starts annoying me enough. Inspired by uses.tech.

development environment

operating system

• NixOS: primary OS, mostly because I want my machines to be boring to rebuild
• KDE Plasma: desktop environment, because it lets me configure the bits I care about
• Tailscale: VPN mesh between my machines

editor and IDE

• Emacs: primary editor, configured more than is probably reasonable
• Vertico / Consult / Corfu: completion and navigation in Emacs
• org-mode: notes, planning, and bits of personal documentation
• Magit: the Git UI I miss whenever I use anything else

terminal and shell

• Starship: prompt with just enough Git state visible

development tools

• Nix / Flakes: package management and reproducible development environments
• just: project commands without pretending Make is a task runner
• git: version control
• Podman: containers for local development and deployment work

languages and runtimes

• Go: backend services and CLI tools
• Python: scripts, glue code, and data work
• Nix: systems and development environments
• Haskell: learning, mostly
• C++: low-level systems work

productivity and communication

browser

• Brave: browser with ad blocking that mostly stays out of the way

password management

• 1Password: passwords and 2FA

file sync

• Syncthing: selective file sync between my own machines

hardware

main development machine

• Desktop workstation running NixOS
• Multiple monitors, because one screen gets crowded fast

other hardware

• Laptop with the same NixOS + Home Manager configuration
• Lab server for self-hosted services and experimentation

configuration management

Most configuration lives in Git and is applied through NixOS,Home Manager, and flakes. If a machine dies, I want rebuild to be annoying, not interesting.