software

This is a list of programs I use in my daily life. My computing is quite modest, but I customized it in such a way that it is really a joy to spend time with it. In general, I respect the Unix philosophy of making software. However, I prefer software with more basic features than those that achieve a minimal and optimized standard. That’s why I find it more pleasant to work with Sway rather than dwm and Alacrity rather than St.

Operating System

OS: GNU/Linux (Debian 12): I tried Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch (by the way) in the past. All of them were nice distributions, but Debian is the one that I enjoy the most while still doing the stuff I need to do. I also use it for my personal server.

Terminal

Alacritty: Simple and effective terminal written in Rust, I have never had any problem with this terminal, also I used in the past st from Suckless with a couple of patches, also works fine, but I prefer the convenience of Alacritty.

Shell

Zsh: I discovered it very late in my time tinkering with computers, but It has several niceties that you can add to Bash, so I can’t recommend it enough.

Windows Manager / Desktop Environment

Gnome/Sway: I tried KDE, dwm, and XFCE before. While I prefer Windows managers, I decided to install GNOME that is more Normie-friendly in case I or someone else needs to do something that requires a more intuitive interface.

Web browser

LibreWolf: The Hardened fork of Firefox. For better privacy against the bloated web.

Text Editor

Vim: I learned about vim few years ago, when a famous chilean youtuber and software engineer mention it in one of his videos, when I saw his way of editing text, I was surprised for his skills and the speed. So I started using it and never look back.

Terminal Multiplexer

Tmux: This beautiful piece of software has been crucial for supporting data science projects and managing several sessions without opening several terminals, so it is helpful in my daily life.

File Manager

LF: While I use raw command lines to deal with files, I have sometimes used this FM written in GO to navigate more comfortably.

Audio Player

mpd + ncmpcpp: Great and lightweight terminal application to play good music

RSS reader

Newsboat: is my way of connecting with the rest of the internet and news without using social media.

Document Reader

mupdf and Zathura: I use these software to read my books. I self-host my library with Calibre (we don’t need Kindle in this place) and read some epub books there. When I need to read PDFs, I choose Zathura.

Office

Libre Office: no need for more explanation.

Mail Clients

Neomutt: While I tend to use a lot webmail clients, sometimes I use Neomutt to “stay in the terminal”

Programming

Julia/Python/R: I do data analysis as a hobby and work, so a mix of this software I use in my daily life, The one I enjoy the most is Julia (I make this website with this language), but I tried to choose the language according to the requirements of the project, If you want to learn more about the differences of these languages, you can read this article