Time for the easy blog post that I make every year.
The software I use hasn’t changed much since last year, so allow me to be lazy and list it all.

Starting with the OS, you might already know that Fedora is my go-to Linux distribution nowadays. It’s easy to install and update, and now ships two different desktops (GNOME and KDE) depending on what you prefer to use. In short, what I would consider a good distribution, easy to use, user-friendly. VR also works perfectly fine with my setup (WiVRn + Quest Pro). Of course, Resonite is my privileged online VR platform for obvious reasons.

Special mention of macOS Tahoe which I use at work (with 99% of the cloud stuff disabled) which is very pleasant to use as well.

Code editors remains the same as last year:

  • JetBrains Rider: given I write a lot of modern .NET code, Rider does an excellent job. It’s the only purpose-specific editor I use currently.
  • Sublime Text: great for general-purpose, costs a bit, but I’m always ready to drop some money on good software.
  • Sublime Merge: graphical Git client, same as Sublime Text, works great. Nothing much else to add.

When trying to work on some APIs (notably for a FreePBX add-on), I noticed Insomnia became more and more annoying with their sign-in requests and such. I discovered Yaak to replace it. Not only the interface looks decent, but it has some cool goodies like integrated Git support to sync workspaces and WebSocket support that doesn’t crashes the whole app. Seems it receives updates quite frequently, so grabbed a license for it to support the development.

Now for the most controversial subject: instant messaging apps. As you may have noticed, I’ve decided to leave the past in the past, and nowadays, my only recommendation to contact me is Signal. I may use other apps from time to time to stay in touch with others (Matrix) or to interact with some communities (Discord), but my only recommendation is Signal. I don’t need recommendations either, I don’t have time to fight you over what is the “best” chat app.

Of course, as the whole modern world still relies on it, I still have a bunch of email addresses which I use through Thunderbird. But honestly, I’d rather communicate solely through Signal at this point. Given the headache of email delivery and losing access to various domains or email addresses, I now use Iki‘s “forever email” alias (service aimed at Finnish users or people permanently residing in Finland). With this, my mailbox is basically only storage and I send and receive emails through Iki’s service (as well as making me look more oldskool than I really am).

Don’t ask me either for my GPG key, I don’t have one anymore. If I’m gonna sign Git commits, it’s gonna be through my SSH keys. If I need to encrypt files, it’s gonna be through age. Any GPG key I’ve ever generated and distributed can essentially be considered as compromised nowadays (not because they actually are, but out of caution). Generally, you can find my up-to-date SSH public keys on my GitHub user.

For my personal projects, I’ve also started looking more into Podman out of pure curiosity. Given it works with standard OCI containers, I might switch to it completely (Docker being currently in use). But that’ll be for future me to decide, tho the quadlet files looks like a cool concept. Expect a blog post on this later if it comes to fruition!

Some other software that doesn’t even need an introduction includes: LibreOffice, Borg Backup, Nextcloud, Blender and Vaultwarden.

One last thing: if right now you’re typing an angry comment saying something along the lines of “you're TOTALLY wrong for using <thing>“, stop now. I get it, my workflow might not work for you, and that’s OK. You’re not contractually forced to use any of the software listed here, I’m just another purple creature posting the software she uses on her personal blog. What is said here isn’t that important, I’ll even be impressed if more than ten other creatures see it.

And if it’s that hard to resist, do it anyways. Just know it’ll take me about 10 seconds to read your comment and decide to click on the “delete” button instead of approving the comment.

This is what works for me, thanks for listening to my ramblings.