The software I use - 2025

2025-08-02

Today is Febuary 8th 2025, I will probably continue to update this particular blog post over the next few days.

This is my first blog of my yearly series that will cover the software that I use on a daily basis to get a sense of what softwares prevail over the years compared to others and to see how it changes for myself. Its all about survival of the fittest software. The goal is to gain insight in which direction the tech landscape is shifting, and using this knowledge I can approximate how viable a software idea is for the future.

Operating System: NixOS, MacOS

NixOS. So. How do I put this. Theres a lot right with it, but I don't know, I mean, do you think the piece is working? It is a love hate relationship that I have with NixOS. It has many problems fundementally, but also it is fundementally a better operating system. I am still undecided on it. I really love it, but I also really really hate it. I also use Windows when I have to, or when NixOS is giving me trouble. Windows 11 is much nicer compared to 10. So I hate Windows less these days but I'd still much rather prefer to use Linux, even if just for its FOSS spirit. If your wondering, I would use MacOS if I had a Macbook, but I am poor. :( (Update - I am still poor but I have a MacBook now and hate winows even more, NixOS still gives me trouble but I like it more now.)

If your interested in how I configure NixOS you can check out my dotfiles.

Window Manager: Hyprland

Hyprland is pretty cool, the first time I tried it I was blown away. I love the declaritive nature of it. I can edit a conf file and configure exactly how I want my window manager to look and feel, normally I am against the whole thing about constantly configuring your system. I prefer simplicity, and those people who know me to be that way would probably be confused to hear that I use NixOS and Hyprland, and here is why, most desktop enviornements are more than I need. Most of them contain lots of bloat (I'm looking at you KDE) or are just too slow (GNOME), So being able to micromanage every part of my desktop enviornment is pretty nice and allows me to strip away all the bloat, and use only what I need/want. I use the same reasoning for why I chose NixOS as my main operating system. It allows me to make my enviorment as simple as possible with zero bloat. Although it should be mentioned that Hyprland is not without its issues and the anime girls are a little weird.

Browser: Brave

I use brave because firefox sucks balls. Brave is well regarded for their focus on privacy and security, if you are still using regular chrome this day and age you mine as well just sell your soul at this point. But Seriously the geckodriver sucks balls. The chromium web driver is way faster and it has basically won in the browser race at this point. Now you can argue that it is important to have many different players in the browser driver market, and I agree to an extent, but also, you can just fork chromium, and modify it to your will. Why force the entire world to adopt your weird webdriver? Other projects exist that are making new browser drivers, such as ladybird, which is a neat project that you should check out.

Code Editor: Zed, Helix

I love Zed and Helix. They make a great combination. While technically I only need one, I like to switch back and forth between these two, because sometimes Helix doesnt have the features that I need or, to do it on Helix is a bit harder. But Helix has its advantages, for one thing I am writing this blog article in Helix right now because its a quick and easy way to edit your files. I spend most of my time in the terminal so switching back and forth between terminal window to code editor window can be a pain. Thats why Helix is amazing. A lot of people don't understand the phylosophy behind Helix. I believe its the best code editor for the terminal because its already configured with everything you already need, and its super fast. You will never need to configure Helix, because it already has pretty much everything that you need. For the most part. Btw, helix my balls.

Terminal: Kitty

I like kitty because its fast, it has the features I need and you can expect it to be the same on every distro. It just works, and it has good defaults. Not that it matters but I also like the way it looks by default, compared to alacritty which has a bit more of a dark gray theme.

Note taking app: Notesnook

Notsnook is great, out of every piece of software on this list I use Notesnook the most. Their free tier is pretty good, although lately they have been stripping features from their free tier which is understandable. But other than that, it is private, it has all the features I would need in a note taking app, and most importantly it syncs with all my devices super fast, which is my primary usecase for it. I like to be able to write things down or take mental notes, and be able to access that information anywhere on any of my numerous devices.

Email Client: ProtonMail

Proton is the best solution for people who are looking to get out of the google / microsoft ecosystem. It's pretty solid. It's private. Simple as that. Thats why I use it. Proton has its own ecosystem which is why I chose it over tutanota, I like the Proton Drive and the Calendar. Although I don't use them as much. I hope they add more to their ecosystem in the future.