# How I do my computing

In this blog post i will describe how i use computers X3. What distro what software do i use. How i use internet and other productivity tasks and software.

## GNU/Linux distro

As i have described in my about me section i am using Linux mint. Some people asked me why this why not something more customizable. So i decided to write a small blog post about that.

I am using Linux since 2015 i switched to it when Microsoft released windows 10 and people were very unhappy with the new changes hardware requirements and other junk. I used it as my main operating system for web browsing, coding, experiments etc. I still kept windows laptop for gaming. 

In those days 2015-2016 i have used different Ubuntu flavors i was hopping between classic Ubuntu with Unity desktop (that was a good desktop none of this Gnome stuff :3) and Xfce flavor called Xubuntu. I liked them they worked were easy to use and the desktop environment was not getting in my way while i was doing things. In those days my computer was mostly used to watch youtube videos occasionally doing some homework in high school and stuff like that, not a huge computing need at all.

From 2016 until 2018 roughly i was in the phase of using custom Arch Linux installs and Gentoo. I do not remember much from those days, my mindset about computing has changed so much that i hardly even remember how to compile a program for Gentoo. But i remember one thing that liked very much from those days, i have used for some time a customized Xubuntu install where instead of default window manager used in Xubuntu i replaced it with i3, but everything else was left untouched so i had this Frankenstein of a desktop where everything was like in xfce but windows were tiled by default instead of stacked. I liked this setup.

Since 2018 there is proton so i didn't needed that windows laptop for gaming anymore. So i switched fully into linux (yeah i had a short break to try win11 but it went pretty badly). First distro that i used after making the full "switch" was MXlinux i used it for roughly 2-3 years, and back in those days MXlinux didn't have anything like dist-upgrade so it was mandatory to backup your files copy list of installed packages and re do it after re install. I hated that, another issue i had was that MXlinux had problems with supporting sleep and lock screen on my dell laptop. So after getting fed up with all of it i thought okay let's return to the roots, my first thought was let's use Xubuntu, but i just didn't felt like it and i wanted to try something new. Finally i decided to install Linux Mint. After whole 10 year journey into the linux world i have returned back to a simple just works distro. After using it for 3 years roughly, I am happy i don't need anything else from it, lack of customization is kinda good for me, nothing to customize nothing to break :3

## My computer

As of 2026 I mainly use two computers, one as my workstation at home, and other one as a mobile device. Both of them are running Linux Mint. 

### Mobile device

[Dell Vostro 5590](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-Vostro-15-5590-i5-10210U.450559.0.html)

Upgraded it to 16 GB of ram and i added second SSD for synchronizing my commonly used directories with files. Throughout it's life i replaced battery once. 

Not a huge fan of the build quality of this laptop if you are looking for a laptop yourself i do not recommend this one. Some of those laptops had a factory problem with hinges where after two years of usage they just break completely and are unable to keep the lid open.

### Home workstation

As my home workstation I wanted something on a budget, something small yet powerful enough. So I decided to buy one of those mini pc. I wanted 32GB of RAM, 1TB SSD and if possible a decent CPU that can handle some casual gaming with a gamepad on a couch :3. 

 [T-Bao Mini PC MN58U](https://www.techradar.com/pro/t-bao-mini-pc-mn58u-review)

Yeah Chinese, isn't like everything manufactured there anyway. I bought for a good price in 2022. I love the form factor, small you can easily throw it into your backpack, then connect it to a TV in the hotel room and enjoy some couch gaming. Selection of ports is decent, it can handle two monitors easily. 

### Other computers

I own other computers that are for some special occasions, or are doing some specialized tasks. Maybe that would be a good topic for the next blog post.

## What i do on my computer

Mostly boring stuff, but if you are really interested here is a short description of what I do. 

### Everyday stuffs

I mostly use graphical user environment, mainly because i am lazy and i find GUI works better for me. It doesn't mean that i don't use terminal, but my terminal is mostly connected to some linux server doing admin work. Most of the documents i edit on my computer are in some formatting language either Markdown, LaTeX or HTML. I hate all of the WYSIWYG editors like Microsoft Word or Libre Office. I am not a power user when it comes to LaTeX i use pretty much all of the basic functions, maybe i will draw a simple graph here and there with pgfplot.

### Office type tasks

I work a lot with emails and calendar appointments, so i use Thunderbird a lot. I have OpenPGP configured in it, and i synchronize my calendar to my selfhosted CalDAV server. For note taking, documentation and other personal geeky stuff i use my selfhosted DokuWiki instance. I also use DB browser with SQLite if need to handle a little bigger amount of structured data, I hardly ever use excel and similar programs. Nothing interesting here. 

### Coding

When it comes to coding most of the coding I do is either Python, PHP or some shell scripting. I do not use any fancy IDE with any of those fancy color schemes. For Python I use pure IDLE, and for others Xed which is a built in Linux Mint text editor works fine. Please note that i am not a full time programmer and coding is mostly done by me in my free time or sometimes for work but coding is like max 10% of my time at work. 

### Internet

Internet is where i spend most of my time on computer. Either engaging in online communities, doing some research for work, chatting with friends, experimenting with some selfhosting or writing and managing my webpages. I spend a lot of time fine tuning my hosting setup, writing tutorials or documenting what i have recently found on the web :3.

#### How I use internet

So, when i connect from somewhere where i do not know ... what devices are between me and the Internet, I will use VPN to direct all of my traffic back home, and then i go out into the internet there. I do not run javascript on websites i do not know, or i haven't checked what kind of java script is there, for some websites i use TOR only. Web browser that i use is firefox. For chatting use mostly XMPP, most people i know either already used it, or were tech savvy enough to transfer them over to it. I send emails with PGP encryption. I do not use any of the google services  nor microsoft services. I run my own proxy search engine, i run my own file sync software and i run my own calendar and i use OVH as mail hosting provider. 

Extensions in Firefox that i use are:

- FoxyProxy
  - awesome extension if you need to switch beetween multiple different proxies.
- Privacy badger
  - stops trackers and is recommended and developed by EEF
- No script
  - I am the one in charge, and i decide what code i wanna run on my computer :3
- Ghostery
  - privacy repecting adblock that is mostly on permissive free software licenses, i think i found it though EFF website

I buy media online whenever i can, i try to buy them without a DRM, there are still a lot of artist that sell MP3 online for you to legally buy. When it comes to movies i mostly rip them from disks, or i just borrow from friends. 

### How this site is maintained 

I just map my VPS as network drive in linux mint, and i open HTML and Markdown files with text editor in Linux Mint and edit them with my bare hands. Yeah that simple ... you can tell that i am a minimalist when it comes to that :3