___________________________
STUFF I USE, 2024 EDITION
Nicolas Herry
___________________________
2024/11/10
1 Stuff I use, 2024 edition
===========================
It's been two years since the last edition of [Stuff I use], and
as I'm at long last resuming my activities around here, what
better topic than a good old review of all the stuff I use? So,
without further ado, let's go through the usual list!
[Stuff I use] <file:stuffiuse2022.org>
1.1 Operating System
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As always, [FreeBSD] is my daily driver both on my laptop and on
my servers. Since last time, I've also picked up gaming again,
and have rebuilt my Windows laptop where I now have all gathered
all my games. I'm elaborating a little on this in the section on
gaming in this yearly[1] exercise, as it's now really part of my
routine again.
At work, I have now switched to the blandest of the blandest
Windows PC, for the sake of remaining compatible with all the
usual joys of the corporate world: ERP applications that look
like they might still die of a sudden Y2K existential crisis any
minute, dodgy HR systems put together by generations of misguided
summer interns and the still inescapable Office royal
flush[2]. That being said, I can't say I really like Macs any
longer, and haven't for quite some time. The last time I truly
saw value in the products Apple was putting out was maybe with
the last G4 iBook in 2003...
At work, we still run our application side in [Google Cloud] with
[Docker], [Kubernetes] and [Istio], with [Alpine Linux] still
serving as the base here. In addition to this stack, we also run
all the ingestion part of our data pipelines in [Microsoft
Azure], relying on triggers, Service Bus and function apps
written in C# for most of the event-driven aspects and blobs for
batch-oriented workloads. Everything is then decanted in Google
Cloud and exposed there to all consumers.
[FreeBSD] <https://www.freebsd.org>
[Google Cloud] <https://cloud.google.com/>
[Docker] <https://www.docker.com>
[Kubernetes] <https://kubernetes.io>
[Istio] <https://istio.io/>
[Alpine Linux] <https://www.alpinelinux.org>
[Microsoft Azure] <https://portal.azure.com>
1.2 Window Manager
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I am back to using [StumpWM]. After a small period using [i3wm],
I could find the time to clean up my mess and reset my [sbcl] and
[Quicklisp] dependencies landscape, and could return to my
beloved StumpWM. There really is something unique in the way this
Window Manager combines straightforwardness, extensibility and
complexity that sets it apart from the crowd and have me call it
home. Precisely what the original goal was: the emacs of Window
Management.
[StumpWM] <https://stumpwm.github.io/>
[i3wm] <https://i3wm.org>
[sbcl] <http://www.sbcl.org>
[Quicklisp] <https://www.quicklisp.org>
1.3 Email
~~~~~~~~~
[Gnus] remains my mail client and as time goes by, I really
cannot see how any other client can ever take over from it.
As [I don't run my own mail server anymore], I have put my email
in the hands of my registrar, [Gandi], with a redirector and
spyware pruning filter provided by [DuckDuckGo Email]. My GMail
address is, at long last, slowly taking a back seat as I migrate
gradually my accounts over to this email address.
[Gnus] <https://www.gnus.org>
[I don't run my own mail server anymore] <file:nomailserver.org>
[Gandi] <https://www.gandi.net>
[DuckDuckGo Email] <https://duckduckgo.com/email>
1.4 Web browser and Gopher browser
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I keep getting wowed by the [Emacs Web Wowser] and how it can
handle most of the Web, including fairly complex pages. It's not
always a perfect experience, and some websites like GitHub, for
example, remain a little cumbersome to browse through. But as I
was saying [last time], being able to selectively activate and
deactivate all parts of the display, from fonts to images and
colours really reminds of the days the Web was young and leaves
you in control of your experience visiting Web sites.
For trickier websites, I turn to [Firefox]. I use [Improve
YouTube!], which allows to reorganise the layout of the pages of
the streaming website, blocks ads[3] and generally allows to
remodel the experience the way you like. I also rely on a few
other add-ons to try and keep browsing the modern Web tolerable,
such as [Clear URLs], wich rids URLs of trackers and such, and
[Cookie AutoDelete], which allows to use all the websites that
refuse to work unless they can force their cookies down your
throat, and cleans them up right after you close their tab.
I do not use [OverbiteFF] any longer, nor have I updated to its
successor, [OverbiteNX]. The reason is not that I have turned my
back on Gopher; on the contrary, I tend to use it more and more,
and as a result, I simply use [elpher] in emacs. Just like eww
helps make Web browsing seamless in emacs, elpher offers an ideal
interface to visit gophers.
The only search engine I use remains [DuckDuckGo], even though I
understood recently that it relies on Bing for a good chuck of
its results, which is a disappointment. That putting together a
fully independent search engine that can compete with the likes
of Google, Bing and such is an awfully hard task to pull out is
certain, but it's fair to imagine that partnering up with
Microsoft must come with some [unfortunate compromises].
[Emacs Web Wowser]
<https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/eww.html>
[last time] <file:stuffiuse2022.org>
[Firefox] <https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/>
[Improve YouTube!]
<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-addon/>
[Clear URLs] <https://docs.clearurls.xyz/1.26.1/>
[Cookie AutoDelete]
<https://github.com/Cookie-AutoDelete/Cookie-AutoDelete>
[OverbiteFF] <https://gopher.floodgap.com/overbite/d?ff38>
[OverbiteNX] <https://github.com/classilla/overbitenx>
[elpher] <https://thelambdalab.xyz/elpher/>
[DuckDuckGo] <https://www.duckduckgo.com>
[unfortunate compromises]
<https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/duckduckgo-is-more-than-just-a-search-engine-now/ar-AA1qcK1Y>
1.5 Editing
~~~~~~~~~~~
No change here: I use [emacs] as my editor, and for basically
everything else.
[emacs] <https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/>
1.6 Website
~~~~~~~~~~~
I use [org-mode] to generate the website and the gopher, as well
as for managing my todo lists[4]. Some bits of elisp help get the
job done, but it remains a very rough job, especially for the
gopher, which is a shame. That's typically something I will need
to work on.
The website is still served by [nginx], and my gopher is now
delivered by [marmotte], my own server. In addition to covering
all the traditional gopher functionalities, marmotte also offers
dynamic pages, error pages, dynamic transformers and more. I
intend to resume my work on it (I can't believe it's been two
years since I last touched it...) and add Gopher+, as well as
various new experiments and extensions around the protocol.
[org-mode] <https://orgmode.org/>
[nginx] <https://www.nginx.org>
[marmotte] <file:marmotte.org>
1.7 Terminal emulator
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I almost exclusively use [eshell], and I have of course binded my
`C-t c' to this shell. I only resort to using an xterm when
starting ncurses applications, which remains pretty rare.
[eshell]
<https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/eshell.html>
1.8 Music
~~~~~~~~~
Two years ago, I started more and more to rely on streaming
applications to play music, but I have now all but abandoned this
approach. I am back to using [EMMS], as well as [eradio]. If the
former needs no introduction, you might not be familiar with the
latter. eradio is a radio streaming client, that, like EMMS,
makes use of the media player installed on the computer. It works
flawlessly out-of-the-box, and I also got to discover [soma fm],
a set of excellent radios recommended by eradio's author.
[EMMS] <https://www.gnu.org/software/emms/>
[eradio] <https://github.com/olavfosse/eradio>
[soma fm] <https://somafm.com/>
1.9 Video
~~~~~~~~~
Nothing has changed here, so I will simply quote myself from last
time: I still rely on good old [mplayer] to play my videos, but I
now interface with it via emacs and EMMS. As I mostly play videos
on the laptop when I'm coding, I never have to leave the comfort
of emacs to load videos during my coding sessions.
[mplayer] <https://mplayerhq.hu>
1.10 Shell
~~~~~~~~~~
[tcsh] remains my favourite shell when I'm not using the Emacs
shell, eshell. Simple, straightforward and yet powerful: tcsh
really is the best standalone shell I have ever used.
[tcsh] <https://www.tcsh.org/>
1.11 Filesystem
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I use [ZFS] everywhere I can. A recent misadventure with a
consumer-grade NAS by Synology, configured with btrfs, and that
led to the loss of half of my photos helped me realise once and
for all that I needed to stop giving in to peer pressure and
simply trust my intuition and experience.
[ZFS] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS>
1.12 Lisp
~~~~~~~~~
[sbcl] remains the only Lisp implementation that I use. The
project is quite remarquable as it manages to remain very stable
whilst at the same time keeps evolving, improving and adding
features. Very impressive.
[sbcl] <https://www.sbcl.org>
1.13 Database
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I do not use databases as much as before, but when I do need to
use one, I turn to [PostgreSQL] almost systematically. The engine
has come such a long way this past decade, when most people were
still skeptical about it. Now, PostgreSQL support is taken from
granted in any major cloud offering, and most guides online don't
even bother introducing any other RDBMS.
I also use [sqlite] when I'm writing non-Lisp code and need a
simple way to persist and retrieve data via a relational
interface. Having such a pocket RDBMS, with no deployment, no
configuration really feels like a priviledge.
In Lisp, I tend to use [bknr.datastore]. Its description on the
GitHub page, /"An in-memory CLOS-based data store"/, doesn't do
it justice: the library offers a file-backed, very fast ACID
object database you can introduce at any stage of your
development without any redesign of your code[5]. This makes it
such a perfect fit for the kind of cycle Lisp projects thrive on:
do not plan extensively, but grow organically. The one limit in
the design is that in any given process, there can only be one
instance of the datastore.
A [fork of bknr.datastore] exists that brings notably LispWorks
compatibility, and cluster-readiness, and does come with a
[highly-available, replicating clustering system]. I haven't
tried it yet (as I don't use LispWorks today), but might give it
a go in the future.
[PostgreSQL] <https://www.postgreql.org>
[sqlite] <https://www.sqlite.org>
[bknr.datastore] <https://github.com/bknr-datastore/bknr-datastore>
[fork of bknr.datastore] <https://github.com/tdrhq/bknr-datastore>
[highly-available, replicating clustering system]
<https://github.com/tdrhq/bknr.cluster>
1.14 C and C++
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
C++ is back at the heart of some of my projects, and I am quite
impressed with the continual progress made by the language and
its environment. The language designers are addressing most of
the long-standing pain points programmers have had with the C++,
evolving its syntax from constituting the limiting factor in the
equation to being a gradually more natural way to express its
power. All of its facets now benefit from the effort, from memory
management to type-safety, from generic programming (via template
meta-programming) to networking and asynchronous design. Yes, C++
remains C++ with all its bagage, but it seems that after so many
years spent chasing trends and gimmicks, it has finally found its
identity as an efficient, safe and reliable programming
environment.
This is also why I have mixed feelings when I see Cppfront being
pushed so much these days. I have nothing but admiration for Herb
Sutter, the intelligent, witty and charismatic figure C++ has
thrived on for a few years now, and his work in keeping the
language relevant both at large and inside his own company
certainly contributed greatly to C++ still seeing updates
today. However, I am not certain I am interested in getting C++
to a point where it feels like a soft, mild scripting language. I
know the frontend is presented as a "personal experimentation"
with C++, but the fact is that this personal experimentation has
a place of choice in more and more keynotes and sessions in C++
conferences. I guess we'll see where this goes, but the times are
indeed interesting with [Rust] gaining some mindshare over the
past few years, and the Javascript crowd having such a strong
influence over general expectations in the programming
field. This last part is something I will most likely come back
to in another article soon.
[Rust] <https://www.rust-lang.org>
1.15 Go
~~~~~~~
I keep using [Go], but only for my gopher server, marmotte. As I
was writing previously, the language is well designed and very
consistent, and the tooling has very quickly reached a level of
maturity that makes using it a very productive pleasure. I am
simply more interested in working with Lisp, but Go has been a
very nice surprise.
I still rely on the same modes for Go in emacs: [go-mode],
[lsp-mode], [go-pls] and [flycheck].
[Go] <https://go.dev>
[go-mode] <https://github.com/dominikh/go-mode.el>
[lsp-mode] <https://github.com/emacs-lsp/lsp-mode>
[go-pls]
<https://github.com/golang/tools/blob/master/gopls/README.md>
[flycheck] <https://github.com/flycheck/flycheck>
1.16 Other languages
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Not really a programming language per se (depending on how you
look at it), but I use LaTeX a great deal these days, especially
as I rely on it for my various publishing endeavours[6]. Of
course, I still do most of my work in [Common Lisp], write some
[Emacs Lisp] now and again to get things done with Emacs
and... that's about it nowadays. Of course, I dabble a bit with
other languages from time to time, such as [Zig], but without any
other goal than satisfying my curiosity (and learning a thing or
two along the way).
[Common Lisp] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Lisp>
[Emacs Lisp] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs_Lisp>
[Zig] <https://www.zigland.org>
1.17 Various utilities
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As nothing has changed in this department since 2017, I am going
to be lazy and simply quote myself:
I download stuff with [fetch], I grep using, well,
[grep] (even though I've heard of [ack] and [ag]), I
still use [etags] (even though I've heard of
[global], again), I use [ido], [company], [ess],
[paredit], [slime], [auctex], [beacon], and
[sqlup-mode] (which I contributed some code to),
among other things.
[fetch]
<https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query%3Dfetch&apropos%3D0&sektion%3D0&manpath%3DFreeBSD%2B11.0-RELEASE%2Band%2BPorts&arch%3Ddefault&format%3Dhtml>
[grep]
<https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query%3Dgrep&apropos%3D0&sektion%3D0&manpath%3DFreeBSD%2B11.0-RELEASE%2Band%2BPorts&arch%3Ddefault&format%3Dhtml>
[ack]
<https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query%3Dack&apropos%3D0&sektion%3D0&manpath%3DFreeBSD%2B11.0-RELEASE%2Band%2BPorts&arch%3Ddefault&format%3Dhtml>
[ag]
<https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query%3Dag&apropos%3D0&sektion%3D0&manpath%3DFreeBSD%2B11.0-RELEASE%2Band%2BPorts&arch%3Ddefault&format%3Dhtml>
[etags]
<https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query%3Detags&apropos%3D0&sektion%3D0&manpath%3DFreeBSD%2B11.0-RELEASE%2Band%2BPorts&arch%3Ddefault&format%3Dhtml>
[global]
<https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query%3Dglobal&apropos%3D0&sektion%3D0&manpath%3DFreeBSD%2B11.0-RELEASE%2Band%2BPorts&arch%3Ddefault&format%3Dhtml>
[ido] <https://masteringemacs.org/article/introduction-to-ido-mode>
[company] <https://company-mode.github.io/>
[ess] <http://ess.r-project.org/>
[paredit] <http://emacsrocks.com/e14.html>
[slime] <https://common-lisp.net/project/slime/>
[auctex] <https://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/>
[beacon] <https://github.com/Malabarba/beacon>
[sqlup-mode] <https://github.com/Trevoke/sqlup-mode.el>
1.18 Hardware
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My main laptop is a Dell Latitude 5330 i7, with 32GB of RAM and
521 GB of SSD storage. I ended up selling my Lenovo Carbon X1 in
an effort to simplify my life, reduce the number of things I own
and feel lighter. I would then run FreeBSD in a VM on a Windows
host. In the end, I ended up grabbing the Dell my former employer
had sent me for work and never claimed back, and installed
FreeBSD on it. I guess you can't change one's true nature! The
experience was also quite telling: just as the Synology NAS never
sat right with me, trying to bottle up my usual computing life in
a virtual machine only led a rather bland experience. Computing
washed of all its colours. Powering a laptop, unlocking my ZFS
root partition, being greeted by the Red Horny Ball and watching
as the boot process unfolds before my eyes... This really feels
like home. This *is* my computing home, a first-class constituent
of my identity. However, I can't say I care too much for Dell
computers, and they compare less than favourably to Lenovo
computers to me: the keyboard feels wrong, with too much space
between the keys, and the trackpad gives the impression it's just
been drawn on the body of the laptop. Clicking on that thing
feels like trying to squeeze the hard disk or whatever happens to
live underneath. To top it all, it tends to overheat
significantly. Trying not to spend too much unwisely, I'm
refraining from ordering a better companion, but I might just do
so soon enough, to be honest.
I still run the same server, or rather, the same level of server,
still at [Cloud Sigma]. The resources have migrated from Sweden
to Germany, but this is the only change. Running a VPS really
strikes the right balance for me, between the freedom to do as I
please on the server, and just enough sysadmin tasks to keep me
happy without spoiling the fun.
My gaming laptop I purchased in 2020 is still with me, and given
that most games that I play fall in the range of 1980-2000, I
don't suspect it will prove too weak for my needs any time
soon. On the menu these days are fighting games, from Guilty Gear
Xrd Rev2, Fatal Fury (the whole series), Super Street Fighter II
X/Turbo and Street Fighter Zero/Alpha 3. Many of these I play on
Fightcade, a project I contribute to financially and offers to
play arcade games online, using a network layer that, if not
perfect, is extremely convincing. Given how the arcades have been
dying all around the world for the past 25 years, it can be said
that Fightcade contributes to keeping the old style Fighting Game
Community alive and thriving. I also still play many other arcade
games as well as old-school dungeon crawlers, RPGs and adventure
games. I must say that I seem to have access to so many more
games, and in a better fashion than I used to when I was curating
my own collection of arcade PCBs, MVS cartridges and imported
consoles. I sold all this in 2017, and apart from some very
specific titles (PC Engine, Virtual Boy), I have managed to find
everything back and more. I also don't have to put up with
converters and adapters to navigate my equipment through
generations and generations of technological evolution.
At last, I have purchased a [Fairphone 5] and run it under
[\/e\/os]. The phone itself is very impressive, and the operating
system is equally an excellent piece of technology. I will soon
dedicate an article or two to detailing my experience with both;
this has all been *very* positive and I highly recommend the
switch to anyone conscious about confidentiality and the
socio-economical impact of technology.
[Cloud Sigma] <https://www.cloudsigma.com>
[Fairphone 5] <https://www.fairphone.com/>
[\/e\/os] <https://e.foundation/e-os/>
Footnotes
_________
[1] I'm sure on some celestial bodies, a year can last five of
our earthly years. Or two. Or however long it takes me next time
to update this article.
[2] Outlook, Excel, Sharepoint, Powerpoint, Mine Sweeper.
[3] At least, most of them, as YouTube is once again trying to
work around ad blockers these days.
[4] To be more precise: my GTD system, rather than plain todo
lists.
[5] Simply introduce a bit of metadata in the form of slots in
your classes and bknr.datastore takes care of the rest.
[6] I will come back to my interest in publishing and typesetting
very soon.