My daily driver is a Framework 13; it’s one of the most rewarding hardware purchases I’ve ever made.
Framework makes modular laptops that are spectacularly well-designed and user-serviceable with a single screwdriver. Want stiffer hinges for your screen? Blank keycaps to flex on your coworkers? A new mainboard with a faster CPU? There are detailed guides for every conceivable operation you might attempt, and you can do it all at home, cheaply. No more genius bars; no more seasonal e-waste; no more indenture to pretty blackboxes that are made to break.
I use Arch Linux (btw), and have been doing so almost exclusively since 2020-ish. This brings great joy, and occasional torment.
On rare occasions when I need to use more fastidious software (like the Adobe creative suite), it’s straightforward to fire up a Windows VM.
My window manager is Sway, which is Wayland-based and i3-like. It’s simple, well-maintained, and a pleasure to customize.
People tell me that there are principled reasons why Wayland is, or soon will be, far superior to the X11 window system. I don’t really understand any of them, but they’re probably right.
I use Rofi as my app launcher, Waybar for my menu bar, Thunar for file management, and Alacritty as my terminal emulator.
My login shell is zsh, made lovelier by Oh My Zsh.
My text editor of choice is vim, and my preferred terminal multiplexer is tmux.
I wasn’t really tmux-pilled until I watched this video; now it’s hard to work remotely without it.
Almost everything is themed with color palettes like those from Catppuccin.
I use Obsidian for linked notes. I like that it’s free and yet all my files are stored locally in Markdown.
For managing scientific papers and citations, it can only be Zotero, which is possibly the greatest piece of free and open source software ever.
If you’re a student, your institution may already have an unlimited cloud storage subscription as well; try registering with your .edu address.
I listen to music for the greater portion of my waking hours. Typically this is via the usual streaming services, but I also like to carry my lovingly-hacked iPod classic for more intentional listening.
At home, I have a rather beefy desktop — also Arch, btw — which I built in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and primarily use for file storage and gaming.
Contrary to popular belief, gaming on Linux is a remarkably pleasant experience these days, thanks largely to Proton (Valve’s compatibility layer for Steam games) and excellent community efforts like ProtonDB. Caveat lector: this is still guaranteed to be comparatively more fraught than gaming on Windows, at least so long as only ~1% of Steam users are running Linux (i.e. until the heat death of the universe). Your mileage will vary a lot depending on your willingness to tinker, and your specific taste in games.