Tools of the Trade
Last updated 24 Apr 2026
I've been wanting to write a post on this for awhile, inspired both by my friend Gersande's post on the subject, as well as one that inspired them. So here's my attempt, of whatsoever quality it may be (qualiscumque sit). I'll probably add to this over time!
Devices/Hardware
- Laptop: I have had a Lenovo Legion Y545 PG0 laptop for the last 4 years or so (since about 2020 when I bought it). It has 4Gb of video RAM (a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 card), 16Gb of RAM, I think a quad-core 2.4GHz Intel i5-9300H CPU (I had to look it up just now with
lshw), and a 1Tb HDD with a ~250Gb SSD. It's served me very well for the past few years and I hope to keep it for awhile longer. - Tablet: I currently have a Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite (Wi-Fi) (model gta4xlwifi). I don't get out much, so I don't use my tablet a ton, but I enjoy having it, and it's nice for reading e-books and browsing when I'm away from my laptop. I often will take it on trips, as I don't usually want to take my laptop.
- Phone: I have a Google Pixel 8 Pro currently. I just upgraded from my Pixel 5a, which served me very well for awhile. My friend kindly offered to sell me her 8 Pro, and I took her up on the offer, and it's lovely. I'm not a huge fan of Google software, but there are ways around that (see below).
Operating Systems
- Laptop: I run Debian 12 ("bookworm") on my laptop, and use Xfce for my desktop environment. I've used a number of Linux variants over the years. My first experience with Linux was Slackware back in the late '90s, and I used Windows for years until, finally, in 2007, I got tired of cracking WinXP and wanted a change. At that point, I switched to Ubuntu Linux, eventually switched to Xubuntu, briefly switched to SparkyLinux, then moved to pure Debian, where I've been for the last couple of years.
- Tablet: On the tablet, I run LineageOS, which is a de-Googled variant of Android focusing on free software and privacy. I vastly prefer it to Samsung's variant of Android, and it just works much better in general. If you have an old Android tablet, you can likely get some more life out of it with LineageOS!
- Phone: I run GrapheneOS on my Pixel. AFAIK, GrapheneOS is only developed for Pixel phones; if you have a different phone, you may want to try LineageOS for it (see above). GrapheneOS is a de-Googled, security-hardened fork of Android, and it works wonderfully. I first used it on my Pixel 5a and honestly haven't looked back. Before I installed it on my new Pixel, I was astounded at all the cruft and AI junk installed by default with the Pixel OS variant of Android. It was nice to say goodbye to all of that, stat.
General Software
- Shell: If you use Linux, or UNIX, or other variants, you're likely familiar with the shell, aka the "command line." For years I used bash, which is the default on a lot of OS's, but a few years ago I found out about fish, the friendly interactive shell, which is a fun alternative! It has nice syntax highlighting, command completion, and cool color schemes. I highly recommend it if you'd like a change from bash, and they even have a guide for people switching over from bash!
- Terminal emulator: Speaking of shells, you'll often use a terminal emulator to access the shell. Most people use the standard xterm program, but I have found that byobu-terminal is a really nice overlay for the terminal, allowing multiple "tabs" for the shell (F2 to create a new "tab", F3 to cycle through tabs, &c.), and even giving you a nice HUD (heads-up display) for the terminal! I find it really fun.
- File manager: I like the default file manager in Xfce, Thunar. It's simple, elegant, and gets the job done.
Productivity Software
- Text editor: I got bitten by the Emacs bug awhile back, inspired to use it by numerous friends. It's not only a super powerful text editor, intended to be used with keyboard shortcuts alone (of which there are myriads!), but some people spend all their time in Emacs; it can serve as an OS, in many ways. I'm not that hardcore into it, but I do have an Emacs window open at all times with various textfiles open, and I'm trying to do more plaintext in general.
- If you want something simpler that gets the job done, though, Mousepad, the default Xfce text editor, is great. pico/nano on the command-line is also quite nice.
- Word processor: If you would rather not use Microsoft Word, I think LibreOffice is a really nice replacement for it that has been developed for years and years at this point. It started as a fork of OpenOffice, and honestly has supplanted it IMHO. I used OpenOffice for years, wrote my master's thesis in it, and then switched to LibreOffice at some point after it came out, and wrote most of my PhD essays, and even most of my dissertation in it.
- Drawing/paint program: I previously would have recommended GNU Image Manipulation Program (I refuse to use the awful acronym for it), but these days I think Krita is really nice. I don't do much with drawing or image editing, but when I do, it's a solid program. Also available on Android tablets via F-Droid!
Multimedia Software
- MP3 player: I really enjoy Strawberry Music Player, available mostly on Linux, but also cross-platform. It is a fork of Clementine Music Player, which itself is based on an early version of the legendary KDE music player Amarok. There are plenty of other players out there, but Strawberry is my favorite these days.
- Video/general media player: You can't go wrong with VLC Media Player, which will pretty much play anything you throw at it, and is super cross-platform. I use it for mostly videos these days, and I found that it will even cast to a Chromecast, if desired!
- Music tagging: I really like Ex Falso, the tagger included with the Quod Libet music player (which I don't use). I use Ex Falso for tagging all my music and it's simple and just works!
- Music compression: I used to use LAME MP3 encoder, but now I rarely encode to MP3, and besides, the name sucks. I vastly prefer encoding to FLAC, as it is lossless and much better quality, despite being larger filesizes.
Web/Email
- Web Browser: I really, really like LibreWolf, a privacy-focused, hardened fork of Firefox. It's not for everyone, and sometimes its settings are too sensitive and break webpages, and I need to use something like Chromium as a backup, but I do 90% of my browsing in LibreWolf.
- Mobile Web Browser: Fennec is a nice mobile version of Firefox with telemetry/tracking removed. I don't have a better alternative on Android really.
- Email: I used Thunderbird for years and years, and it's cross-platform and a great option for most people. However, these days, I'm using GNOME's Evolution, an email client which also focuses on contacts, tasks, and other productivity. I used it years ago and didn't love it back then, but I'm enjoying the switch from Thunderbird these days. AFAIK Evolution is only available on Linux/Unix variants.
- Torrenting: I really like qBittorrent for torrents. It's cross-platform and very friendly overall!
- RSS Reader: I don't have a good option on desktop/laptop really. I seem to remember QuiteRSS being good. Honestly, I do most of my RSS reading via NextCloud News app, and its corresponding Android app. It basically lets me read whatever, whenever, and sync it up. The NextCloud app has been acting up, though, lately, so again, I mostly just use my phone.
- Password Manager: I absolutely love Bitwarden and self-host a fork called Vaultwarden on my server. Using a password manager has really changed my life for the better, and made my accounts more secure!
Emulation
I spend a lot of time playing games, and emulation is a big part of that.
- NES emulator: I really, really enjoy puNES. It's an accurate, polished NES emulator and works wonderfully, and it's actively developed!
- SNES emulator: bsnes, by the legendary Near (formerly byuu), is the gold standard for SNES emulation. bsnes also lives on as a core in the ares multi-system emulator.
- Game Boy emulator: SameBoy is a really great Game Boy/Game Boy Color emulator. I first found out about it since bsnes used SameBoy to power its Super Game Boy emulation, and found that it's a separate emulator. I think it's great!
- Game Boy Advance emulator: I love mGBA for GBA emulation.
- DOS emulator: DOSBox is still the gold standard for emulating all your favorite old DOS games!
- PlayStation emulator: RetroArch's Beetle PSX HW core is a really great way to emulate PlayStation (1) games. Highly recommend.
- PlayStation 2 emulator: PCSX2 is one of the only PS2 emulators out there that I know of, and it's nice, although it's only 32-bit (x86), not 64-bit (x64). I believe it also has a RetroArch core.
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