Author: Naomi Roberts
Date Posted: 29/12/2024
I have three machines I use. Two aren't development devices, but I have used them for that (this post was written on my least-used one!). I name all my devices after Gundams from the various Gundam animes, typically the "cooler"-sounding ones, in my opinion!
This is my main computer, which I bought about 2 or 3 years ago. It's held up pretty well, but it's already starting to struggle with certain tasks because of the ridiculous spec requirements for some games!
CPU: i5 12400f
GPU: RTX 3060 12gb
RAM: 32gb@3200mhz DDR4
OS: Arch Linux (btw) with the linux-lts kernel
Along with this computer, I use a dual-monitor setup, one being a new Dell G2724D - a 1440p 165hz monitor I picked up for £200 back in September, and a 1920x1200 monitor that I have had for 9 or so years that I can't remember the part number of at the moment.
I switched to Linux full-time around July, when the NVidia 555 drivers came out, as they seemed to solve every issue I had encountered when trying to switch before. I originally was on Nobara, a fork of Fedora made by GloriousEggroll, using KDE. This was serving me well, and I chose this because of the simple setup at the time I just wanted to get off Windows as fast as possible (can you blame me?)! While I was using Nobara, I started to use Hyprland as my window manager instead of KDE. Why Hyprland over other WMs like Sway, i3, River or any of the others?
I wanted Wayland, which works better with NVidia from my experience
It was the only one that worked in any reasonable capacity without a lot of tweaks (still quite a few though!)
After a month or so of using Hyprland, I switched over to Arch Linux, which has always been my favourite distro. Since then, I have had problems - one of which is the reason I use linux-lts over just linux, though that "fix" has stopped working recently as well. Most of my current problems seem to stem from the Hyprland compositor, rather than NVidia - even though they are NVidia specific, as they do not seem to occur in other compositors like wlroots or kwin. I haven't been able to figure out the root cause of one of these bugs, and they have pretty badly hampered what I do. I have two major problems - flickering inside Minecraft ("solved") and terrible screen tearing in OBS recordings and Discord screenshares.
I managed to "solve" the Minecraft flickering by disabling explicit sync in my Hyprland config, which is not ideal in the slightest - and using the linux-lts kernel (or anything below 6.10) seemed to fix the tearing, but it has started again recently, possibly due to a linux patch that made its way into linux-lts. I am not smart enough to git bisect the kernel to find the root cause, so I'm not sure what my current solution is other than "cope lmao".
This is my ROG Ally that I bought 2nd hand from a CEX a while back. It's been really great to have for travelling between my parent's house and my flat for university, and brilliant to ignore my sister when I am at my parent's house!
I'm currently still running Windows on it, as I use it for the rare few Windows-only games that I still play, or the programs I was unable to get working through Wine. I've recently completed my first-ever playthrough of Dark Souls and of Cyberpunk 2077 on this little powerhouse, and have started Dark Souls 2 (it's painful).
Worth picking up a handheld gaming device if you have long, frequent commutes like me!
Barbatos is my shitty HP laptop I bought 6 years ago for £300, it's served me well but has started to quite literally fall apart - the spring-based ethernet connector (you know the one, they're dreadful) has snapped off so I can't connect it using ethernet (maybe I'll use this as my first 3d-printing experiment!?).
CPU: Ryzen 3 2200u
GPU: Radeon Vega 3
RAM: 8gb@2400mhz DDR4
OS: Windows 10 22H2 with the Atlas playbook
Still using Windows on this piece of shit as it has a weird problem with linux - the integrated display flickers, even in a TTY.
As far as I can tell, it's probably the display's voltage or something similar being incorrectly reported to the kernel, as the problem will change frequency depending on the battery's charge or if the laptop is on/off charge. There is also a "sweet spot" (unsweet really) where it will happen whether it is plugged in or not, but will stop for a few seconds when plugging in or out the cable.
I'm not sure what the fix is and I can't be bothered to search anymore, so I use Windows 10 as it doesn't have this problem. I hate using this device for basically anything (this is being written while using it, so sad) but at least it's a laptop that can run code sometimes. I cannot do my Minecraft modding work on it, however, because Java is Java and IntelliJ IDEA is IntelliJ IDEA and those two things on a shitbox just don't work.
I've used quite a bit of different software this year, different operating systems and window managers as explained earlier, different editors, terminals, file managers etc. Below is a non-comprehensive list of software I use fairly regularly, plus any that I have something to say about.
VSCodium (open source binaries of VSCode)
Zed (occasionally use it, mainly for Gleam dev)
Helix (my main terminal-based editor, I prefer Helix's Select>Action over Vim's Action>Select)
IntelliJ IDEA (only used for Java/Kotlin as those languages basically need this editor)
Alacritty (I love this terminal, it's fast, cross-platform and has a simple config)
Ghostty (I only got access recently, a few weeks before it went public - I don't like it at all, I might make a separate post about my thoughts on it)
Nobara (super easy to set up, has nice pre-installed software)
Arch Linux (small footprint, rolling release, the AUR is awesome)
NixOS (the concept of Nix interests me, but dear god the Nix language is obtuse - it's been the main barrier for me from switching to Nix. I'm keeping my eye on a project called Glistix, a Gleam->Nix compiler)
Windows 10 (modern Windows sucks, but at least this is usable)
Windows 11 (awful, I only use it on my Ally because that's what it came with)
I dipped my toes in a lot of these this year, whether by choice or for school work.
Gleam (I have fallen in love with Gleam! This website is made using it!)
Rust (honestly, not my favourite. I did more with it last year, but I just can't enjoy using it)
Zig (very interesting language to me, I think I would enjoy it more if the tooling was better)
C# (forced to use it by my uni - it's just worse Java with better tooling)
Java (use it for Minecraft modding, better C# but you have to use gradle instead because fuck you)
Kotlin (Minecraft modding, cool language but it feels held back by Java tooling - I hate Gradle)
Odin (only used this in the last month or so, I thought I wouldn't like it but I find it quite enjoyable!)
I jumped around a bit here, and have a few gripes, but Zen is here to stay!
Arc Browser (used the Windows beta, but it kept getting on my nerves with all the bugs - now they've abandoned it)
Vivaldi (used for a bit when I switched to linux as it had 90% of the features I wanted)
Zen Browser (Arc but Firefox and open-source and not abandoned - switched to it immediately)
I have a bit more to say about Zen here. While it's been mostly good, as it's been in alpha (now in beta at the time of writing), there have been quite a few bugs and large changes that have been very painful. There was one regarding the pinned tabs a while back where occasionally.. they would just change to about:blank pins and you would lose your pinned tabs. Not fun.
An ongoing bug I have has to do with WebGL, performance is just not there, and I had to set webgl.force-enabled to true in my about:config page. This is not great for the end user, and even after force enabling it, it still heavily underperforms stock Firefox and other Firefox forks. When I reported this issue, they basically said "works on my machine" and closed it.
Another problem is Zen doesn't have a Widevine license, so on Windows and MacOS, you cannot play DRM-protected content, such as Netflix or Disney+ shows. You can see their (valid) reasoning here. Just thought I should mention this.