People of Tildes, what apps and programs do you use regularly on your PC?
I'm interested in what applications people use, maybe I can discover some better alternatives.
Music: Spotify for streaming, Dopamine for local music.
Cloud: OneDrive. As a student, I get 1 TB of space for free.
Email: Mailspring, though I'm eyeing eM Client as an alternative right now.
Text Processors: Mostly VS Code with LaTeX, but I do sometimes use good old MS Office.
Code: VS Code again, and also IntelliJ IDEA and CLion for the respective languages. VS Code for anything that isn't C or Java related. I'm also watching the development of Oni Vim 2.
PDF: On my laptop with a touch display, I use Drawboard. On my PC at home I use Nitro PDF.
Browser: Firefox, ever since the quantum update it's nice and snappy. Though maybe I'd switch to Vivaldi when they add Sync at some point.
++ for protonmail, protonvpn and bitwarden :) what do you think of protonvpn? gets the job done? I have a different vpn that I bought for a year on the cheap but I'm considering moving to protonvpn once that is up. I like protonmail a lot and would love to support them while also getting a service I highly value.
Ayy! That's the fourth time I see someone use it!
(Also, it's Inter now, without the "UI" part.)
Junicode has runes and Gothic. That's goddamn excellent. I might do that "game where the UI is in Old Norse" thing eventually.
I feel the same way about serifs. They make story text look nice, which I why I went through the trouble of looking for one. Yet I'm such a sans nerd that I don't even remember the serif's name. I have maybe a hundred sans fonts in my collection, and maybe five serifs.
OS: Linux (I use Arch, btw)
Browser: firefox
Files: ranger
Torrents: rtorrent
Guitar tabs: Guitar Pro 6
Text editing & coding: vim
Music: Turns out I don't listen to music on my laptop much, so I don't use anything
Videos: mplayer2
Edit to add:
Launcher: rofi
Password manager: pass, with rofi-pass
What de/wm do you use?
I use bspwm. I clocked a gif of someone using it over on /r/unixporn ages back, and was very impressed. Wanted to give it a go, and I love it. I used to distro-hop all the time, but I'm in love with how keyboard driven bspwm is, so I've not changed it in years.
Why mplayer2 and not mpv?
Good question, and I can't remember my reasoning now - I installed it ages ago. I might look at changing over to mpv. Are the keybindings the same, do you know? The bindings in mplayer2 are pretty esoteric, but I have the hang of them pretty well.
I dunno, never used mplayer2. But, 9-0 to change volume, j to change subtitles, f-fullscreen, m-mute, space-pause. These are the ones I use.
mpv lets you change what every single key does (and I mean that literally) so even if they're not the same you can easily fix it to match your preferences. I know I changed all of my mpv's keybinds to match those of mpc and have never looked back.
Win10 LTSC. Of interest:
Music: AIMP. Small, quick, and full of auxiliary features, like a tag editor and an audio converter. Free, moddable with plugins and themes.
Notes: Indigrid. Minimalist outliner with an unusual structure. Even if you don't like the app, the supporting essay on thinking is worth a read.
Markdown editing: Caret. Haven't found an .MD editor better. It has inline style preview, which I find very appealing. Beta versions are free.
Video: PotPlayer. A powerful video and audio player with a wide range of customization, including via plugins. An excellent replacement for the MPC I was using before.
Plain text: Notepad3. A fork of the previous Notepad2, which is in itself a replacement for the native Windows Notepad with a number of features like line numbering, code highlighting, RegEx replacement etc. Can work separately or as a replacement for Notepad.
Browser: Cent Browser. A Chromium fork with a whole lot of small, useful features.
Audio editing: ocenaudio. Perfect for a low-end laptop like my own, works like a charm if you need something simple, like editing the silence from the beginning of a song.
Video editing: Shotcut. Similar in effectiveness to ocenaudio, and works well on a low-end system.
PDF: SumatraPDF. Plain, simple, and quick to use, with only a handful of features in exchange for an uncluttered UI and responsive action.
Image viewing: JPEGView (a new one, not the macOS one). Works like a charm and almost without a UI. I also use nomacs when I need some quick editing, like cropping and retouching.
I also use MacType to change the way the font renders of Windows (it can also serve as a plain font replacer, though it replaces every single instance of the font used, even hardcoded in-app ones), CyberDuck for FTP, Everything (that's the name) for rapid system-wide file search, Downline for downloading YouTube videos (works better than YouTube DLG), and E-Mage for automatic image optimization without perceivable loss in quality.
EDITed a couple of apps in.
Wow. Georgeous app. Quite nice to use too. I think this could be a daily program for me. Thanks for suggesting it!
No problem.
Of note is the fact that if you copy a handful of nodes in Indigrid, you can paste it as indented text, and you can past any tab-indented text into Indigrid and it will recognize it as hierarchical notes.
I've just used it to set up a small presentation I need to hold in a little bit, it works really nicely. It's just annoying it's not perfect: need an external app to save it(text editor), can't easily expand every item, can't easily select all (I know shift-select works but still).
Still, pretty neat app and I think I'll use this more often.
Mark, the creator, and I are working on something.
Out of curiosity: how did you make the presentation in Indigrid? How did you structure it? If you can share a screenshot, that would me awesome. (If you'd already deleted the material, you can
Ctrl+Z
it all the way to when you had it finished, andCtrl+Y
it all the way back to the present moment if you'd made changes since writing it.)You can. Select the top point you want to expand from and press
Ctrl+Down
for as many levels as you want to expand to. So, if you select Root (the topmost heading) and pressCtrl+Down
once, you expand all the subheadings one level. Works as many levels down as you need.The app is built around swift navigation with hotkeys. You may achieve the same results with the menu panel, which lists far more actions available (like moving the selected column to the left or the right). Hotkeys are just quicker.
Again, you can: press
Ctrl+A
once to select every item on the same level, and twice to select all items in the open column.The fact that those things aren't entirely obvious is worth addressing. Keep in mind that the app is young and, though perfectly usable, is in development by a one-man team. This kind of feedback is important, because no single person can get through all the nuances, so thanks for sharing that; I'll pass it along.
It's in a different language and it's under NDA, so I can't share it. I'll whip up a template of it later though, just to illustrate how I used it.
Also, one thing I really miss other than export/import is a dark theme. I'll try using it some more though.
That would be great.
I'll pass it along. Any particular themes you find preferable – maybe the theme you use in a text editor, or something like the night mode in macOS?..
Currently using solarized dark on Tildes which seems pretty nice.
Looks nice, I'll give this one a shot. So far: Short TOS, that's a big plus.
That said, anybody know a good alternative to Notes on the iPad Pro? I'd like an app where I can take notes but also add little sketches or drawngs with the Pencil as I go.
os: linux (arch / void)
password management: pass which I use with browserpass.
browser: firefox
editor: kakoune
Upvote for kakoune. I'm really loving it.
Only thing i find ugly is the line numbering.
Yeah, it's not great (the line numbering), everything else is pretty amazing though!
I like the way kakoune can handle alignment of text in a few keystrokes.
Preach!
Operating System
I have been using Linux exclusively since June-July 2015. My laptop is currently running OpenSUSE, but the only reason I have not replaced it with Debian is because my files are strewn around and I need to back them up.
SUSE is not actually that bad, but - I don't use most of its features (e.g. snapper, yast), and I keep on struggling with packages. I can compile them from scratch well enough, but the instructions often have either Debian or Ubuntu in mind, and finding/compiling/installing the equivalent libraries can be a struggle.
Desktop Environment
I actually don't use a DE, having ditched it (Cinnamon) more than a year ago for i3wm with a mostly stock configuration. I use dunst as my notification daemon, and NetworkManager with nm-applet take care of the network on my laptop (but not on my netbook, where I'm just using wpa_supplicant).
The first five i3 workspaces are named -
1:web
,2:im
,3:edit
,4:term
,5:misc
.Web
I used to use Firefox for my daily browsing. Since Quantum rolled in, though, my workflow has been disrupted thanks to both the old extensions being dropped, and to Firefox itself using up much more resources when a lot of tabs are open (despite the opposite being claimed).
It's still hanging around my HDD, and I use it from time to time when dealing with a difficult website, but I do most of my browsing with Palemoon. I use Pentadactyl, Tree Style Tabs, uBlock Origin and NoScript with it.
Browsing on the netbook
My old 2011 netbook is still hanging around, and I use it from time to time (especially when I have to go out and/or don't feel like carrying a couple of kilos of effectively-desktop-bound-laptop around). It's actually not that slow for most things I want to do with it, except, of course, web browsing.
With only 1 GB of RAM (to be shared with the rest of the system), most browsers are right out - except for very niche ones, like Dillo and NetSurf. They do not support JS, nor actually most CSS (NetSurf is the best one out of the two), but they are extremely lightweight and can handle dozens of tabs with a footprint which barely goes over 100 MB.
Browsing on the command line
This is related to the previous (sub-)section, but separate from it - I do a lot of my browsing/information retrieval right in the terminal.
dict
gives me access to dictionary servers, and translate-shell is very handy. I wrote (hacked up) my own script for doing quick searches,ddg.sh
, and I often use reddit viartv
(the Reddit Terminal Viewer).Instant messaging
I mostly use Telegram to keep in touch with friends and relatives (I don't know what god I have to thank for this, but basically all of my family is on it).
I have been starting to use Discord recently, but I just use the web version unless I'm on my phone. I have a Matrix account, and I suppose that Riot should still be on my disk, but I don't really use it.
Text editing
I went from Notepad++ (early 2015) to Sublime Text (late 2015) to Emacs (2017), and I fell in love with the latter. I do most of my editing in it, and a few (many) more things besides.
I do my journaling with it, and manage a personal, private wiki with org-mode.
Document production
I used to use Libre Office, but I gradually stopped, and nowadays I write most of my documents in either Markdown (if I think I might have to copy-paste them often) or Org-mode, going through LaTeX via either
ox-latex
or pandoc when I want a PDF.Terminal
I use urxvt as my terminal emulator, and tmux as my terminal multiplexer.
Other
Password management
I use KeePassX to manage my passwords.
Document/reference management
I use Zotero standalone to capture and organize web pages or papers I might want to refer to. Other material just sits under
~/Library
, organized as per the universal decimal classification, with some slight tweaks: e.g., my computer science/programming books live under~/Library/0.Science_and_Knowledge/04.Computer_science
, and they all follow the same naming pattern ([First author's last name.][Year[-Month[-Day]].]Title.ext
).File sync
I use Syncthing to keep my files in sync across my laptop, netbook and phone. It works well enough, but it crashes and/or stops syncing often enough (once every few days) to be a bit of an hassle. I don't think I have lost any data so far, though.
Other - other
Too many other tools to count, often built ad-hoc with Python or hacked together with shell and awk, but this comment is already long enough without going in detail about them.
In the spirit of this thread, does anyone have any specific suggestions for note-taking or organization apps (that aren't Evernote)?
I currently use Google Keep for small things and checklists and it works fine for that purpose. But I feel like I'd like something that's a bit more geared towards longer notes or even diary entry style notes, maybe something with an activity history for work.
I switched to Notion -- I'm honestly floored; it's the only service that I've felt really good about spending money on. There's a bit of a learning curve, but it's super customizable.
Yikes. Not FLOSS, no linux support, no native app (the desktop apps are electron crap). No thank you.
Fair points -- for me, the ease of use for something that was designed for folks without a technical background is a welcome change, compared with trying to wrangle something like org-mode and having it look/feel terrible. I'm totally with you on the lack of linux support and electron crap, for me those are mostly annoyances that bug me in the back of my mind but don't infringe on my overall experience, so I'm content to keep using.
I loved Notion. I started using it as my main note taking app instead of OneNote and then I hit a wall hard when I hit the data cap, which is quite low. I'm not one to pay for a note taking software when there are so many free ones out there, so this was quite a bummer for me. I quietly packed up my notes and went back to OneNote.
If they ever increase the data cap and instead add features to a premium version to collect revenue, then I'm back in.
Fair. They've got a whole bunch of ways to earn credit -- I think I ended up with something like $23 for my first year after all that. Broadly though, I like it, they're not selling everything I put up there, I'm willing to pay for it.
How does a folder in Dropbox full of ambiguously named txt files strike your fancy?
That doesn't sound appealing?
What about a whole BUNCH of ambiguously named folders in Dropbox full of ambiguously named txt files?
Fuck I hate my notetaking system...
I use Joplin. It's like Evernote, but a lot better and has more useful features. There's a terminal, Mac, Linux, Windows, iOS and Android client. It let's you use your own backup method, which is really useful, because you're not tied to any one service. I use it with Nextcloud, but if you don't want to worry about it, just use a Dropbox account.
Check out Notable It keeps all your notes in plain markdown docs so they are easily transportable.
Take a look at Indigrid. It's unusual. Might be your kinda thing.
If you're in the Apple ecosystem, I've been using & have become a big fan of Bear over these last few months. It syncs using iCloud across Mac, iPad, iPhone, etc., and has amazing hotkey support.
org-mode works great for me. However, you'll have to use emacs.
It allows me to tag notes, have deadlines for notes, link them to other files/notes. Quickly see an agenda of notes with deadlines in a time span, and a lot more really nifty features. It is extremely powerful (and living within the domain of emacs, very customizable as well :)
I have heard a lot of people talking about Ingrid. I'm going to be checking that out eventually. Right now I use Bear. I don't really have a great reason. My company uses macs and so I was looking for an app that would let me take notes on a mac easily, and for me most of my notes are either written by hand (I don't remember anything if I don't write it down by hand) or I'm writing stream-of-thought documentation for work that I'll clean up once my task is done and get moved into confluence. So the big things for me are (1) runs on mac, (2) supports markdown language. A coworker suggested bear to me and it met those criteria. Other editors have more features and I'm sure they're great. I know personally, I am not likely to ever need them, so I don't weigh them highly.
I'm currently using VNote, primarily because it's like org-mode (in that it does inline previews of images and LaTeX math) except you don't have to learn Emacs.
Honestly, I've tried half of the note taking apps here and I'm surprised one note isn't mentioned. Super powerful:
The list goes on. It's very robust and I keep coming back to it every time I try a new note taking app that falls short of it's capabilities.
Onenote is fantastic for sure, my only issue with it is lack of linux support. I still use it on my surface (which is almost an exclusive onenote device these days, and it's fantastic) but my main work machine runs linux so until it exists there I can't switch entirely (I'm also starting to like Zim better, but we'll see if that holds). Hopfully, though, given MS's recent official linux offerings (VS Code got an official linux release a little bit ago) it might be possible Onenote on linux could be a reality
I'm a big fan of Standard Notes ... free, simple to use, end-to-end encrypted, extremely cross-platform, and I really like the dev's philosophy.
I have an older version of Microsoft office that includes OneNote. It's not perfect, but it's worked for me for many years. I use it across Apple and the Windows platforms.
OneNote is now available as a free, stand-alone app.
I like keeping notes in text files, and I found Typora to be the best thing ever for that so far. The only Electron app I can tolerate.
OS: Arch Linux
Browser: Chromium (work/productivity), Firefox (personal and work testing), and Brave (personal)
Music: Pianobar (pandora CLI), ncmpc (mpd CLI for local music), youtube
Text: Gedit, google docs
Notes: Gedit, zim, gmail, google keep, or a physical notebook. I've been trying to convince myself to give Wolfram Notebooks a try, but since I don't know the language well it's been hard to jump into it.
Scripting: python, jupyter notebooks
Code: vim
File browser: Nautilus
Backup: borg (laptop) -> freeNAS server (local) -> CrashPlan PRO (cloud)
PDF: evince (reading), xournal (editing/markup)
Terminal: urxvt
Videos: mplayer, ranger (for browsing media files). Plex browser client for watching from media server
Password vault: Lastpass (work), KeepassX (personal)
Graphics editing: inkscape (vector), gimp (raster)
Video editing: lightworks (quick stuff I know I'll only work on), Adobe Premeire and After Effects (stuff I know I'm going to need other people to work on as well - I run these on a remote desktop with powerful graphics)
Circuit boards: KiCAD (CAD - schematic capture, board layout), LT Spice (simulation), TopoR (autorouter)
I'm just here to upvote the Arch users.
I agree with your choices of firefox and CLion. Those are best-in-class imo. I'm wondering if I'm missing something, though, about email clients. I've always just used the web interfaces like mail.google.com for gmail, and others back when there were good alternatives to gmail (last decade). What benefit do you see using a desktop email client?
I use thunderbird for my work email and mutt for personal email.
The primary motive for me to use a desktop mail client is so that I can have a local copy of all my emails. (especially work emails).
I also like the ability to customize my local client to my needs, having my custom keys and routines and mboxes. You may be able to achieve the same using a web client, for most of the web mail clients I have used, you have to use the shortcuts and command that have already been setup by the provider and have very little customizability (I could be wrong, it's been awhile since I tried using web clients)
I use the webclient of fastmail, which is pretty damn good. However, neo(mutt) seems quite interesting. How do you deal with contacts sync? And calendar?
There are a few different ways you can handle contacts with mutt, some mentioned here.
I personally use khard.
You should give mutt (or a similar mail clients) a try, once you get the hang of it, I don't think any web based client will be able to compete :)
Edit: forgot about calendar. I do not get any calendar invites on my personal email (.ics), however, I often times will want to add to-dos or reminders based off of emails. I have a mutt macro which add such reminders and todo's to an org-file I use (synced across multiple devices). org-mode is an emacs major mode which I use for most of my notes and managing my appointments etc!
Also, mutt is extremely customizable, so there are a lot of ways you can choose to handle your contacts and calendars. for example this blog post describes a method to parse exchange calendar invites, etc
Thanks for the links!
Have you tried aerc? It's still early days, but it's already on its way to being leagues better than mutt. I highly recommend checking it out!
Since my above comment, I have actually moved to mu and with mu4e the integration with emacs is a lot better and am liking it quite well, also one less reason for me to leave emacs which is always a win. (Also the ability to type out emails in org mode and have it converted to html on the outgoing mail is really nice :)
I did see the announcement post for aerc on tildes a few days back. I see it is being developed by sircmpwn of the sway fame. I will have to give it a shot, thanks for the recommendation
I use astroid in conjunction with notmuch because like @pvik I value having a local copy of my mail to search and manage myself. I get mail from a postfix / dovecot mail service I run myself but you can hook up to just about anyone. I am currently eyeing up the dev version of cyrusimap because I am interested in ditching my fetchmail setup for jmap.
The other reason I find a native mail client invaluable is for using encryption in mail and extracting patches for dev work. It also makes it significantly easier to avoid top posting in places where it will get you murdered.
Desktop notifications. It's also faster in my opinion, and I like a local app more than the gmail interface. Also if you ever change providers, the interface stays the same.
I'll throw my hat in the ring here since I haven't seen anyone else saying they use an iPad as their main computer.
OS: iOS, obviously
Browser: A mix of Safari and Firefox
Music: Marvis/Stock Music.app
Contacts: Cardhop
Calendar: Fantastical
Mail: The boring old stock Mail.app
Pasword manager: 1Password
Photos: A mix of Google Photos, iCloud Photo Library and Dropbox for multiple backups
Video: VLC has never given me an "I can't play this file" error
I use all the iWork apps for basic productivity stuff, like Pages for word processing and Numbers for spreadsheets (on the rare occasion that I need to edit one).
When I need to do something on a Mac, I have an old 2010 Mac mini in the closet that I can connect to via Luna Display.
OS: MacOS
Terminal: iTerm 2 + zsh
Package manager: Homebrew + Cask
Window Manager: Chunkwm + skhd
Text editor: Emacs, VSCode
Mail: Spark
Video: MPV
Music: iTunes
Browser: Safari, Firefox
Graphics: Sketch, Photoshop
Photos: Lightroom, Photoshop
Notes: Bear, Notes
Text Processing / Sheets etc: MS Office as default, GoogleDocs for cloud, Latex for important stuff
Cloud / Sync: Used to use dropbox a lot, but switched to iCloud
Calendar: Fantastical
Password vault: 1Password
emacs is probably my favourite code editor. I'm learning C# and currently looking into VSCode as a result, but I'm kind of struggling without my regular shortcuts and "smart" plugins. Still, I've yet to really trick it out, so I'll refrain from passing judgement - I like them both so far, I am just more used to emacs.
nthing Sublime Text, though. Great general editor.
For misc stuff, on Windows I'm a big fan of Everything (from Voidtools), an indexed system search that's fast as heck. I also like Launchy (a keystroke launcher) and I still prefer Greenshot to the Windows tool.
On Ubuntu, Peek is a great little app for taking small screen captures and videos. Incredibly simple to use.
I'll also throw in the services I use in addition to the application, would be great to get some alternatives as well
I'm on a Mac.
Is self hosted version of BitWarden free? Why BitWarden, any key features? Looking to move on from LastPass
Yes it is, also there's a way lighter implementation available with bitwarden_rs which I've been running for months now and it works just fine and is actively being updated.
Any key features? No, I guess it actually has less than 1password and probably LastPass but I don't know for sure. For me: free, self-hosted.
I just need auto-fill in my browser, face id/touch id unlock on my phone, secure notes to store just random text and my logins. BitWarden checks all the boxes.
OS: Windows 10 Pro.
Window manager addon thing: DisplayFusion. Gives me an easy way to pretend I'm using a tiled WM, plus has some really slick wallpaper management functionality.
Web browser: Vivaldi. It's not perfect, but it's the only browser that doesn't seem keen on simplifying the UI down to nothing.
Messages: Telegram, Discord. Don't love either at this point though -- they both feel like they're trying to do too much more than just messaging.
Text editor: Notepad++. I don't like how heavy VS Code or Atom feel, but I'm also too lazy to learn vim or emacs.
File sync: Resilio Sync. Set it up years ago, been working perfectly since. Lets me keep everything on my NAS until I need it.
Gaming: Steam, Battle.net. Most of the games I end up playing are on one of those two platforms. I've also got Origin and Uplay accounts, but I pretty much never play EA or Ubisoft games, so they go unused most of the time.
Music: dBpoweramp (to rip CDs), foobar2000 (to edit individual tags and rename files), MP3tag (to batch edit tags), MediaMonkey (to organize and sync to my DAP).
Notes: OneNote. Sensible interface, stylus support, good device support. Was using Evernote until they added the device limit on the free tier when it felt like it hadn't been improved in years.
Most other stuff (email, podcasts, etc) I do either in a browser or exclusively on my phone.
Paprika looks really cool, but seems a bit pricy, particularly with "Note: each version of Paprika is sold separately". Do you think the cost is worth it?
Another +1 for Paprika here. I have both the iPhone & macOS apps and find both of them worth it, iPhone for consumption, and macOS for editing existing or creating new recipes. Depending on how much you enjoy cooking, the iPhone app may suffice for you.
Developing good software isn't cheap, and I'm happy to support a developer who does so while producing something meaningful.
Since when does Trillian cost money? I remember using it for free about... oh boy, 10 years ago. Things changed, huh?
You could try using the typographic keyboard layout. I used BeefText for a while before discovering it, and I need the app no longer. (I was mostly typing en-dashes
–
, and degree symbols°
, and stuff like that.ß
is justAltGr+B
.) Takes a little to get used to, but now it's like typing letters.Ah. Nevermind.
It is. Maybe not indicated properly, but I can type a dozen eszets by hand right now using but the mentioned keystroke.
Fair enough. It's made my typing easier, 'cause I no longer need a text replacement to make the work for me (which can often get confusing: I used to use
--
to type out the en-dash, but all CSS variables start with the--
prefix –--color-text
– so I had to change the BeefText replacer). If it doesn't work for you, maybe you'll be able to find a better-suited one later.OS: Windows 10 - Most certainly not my first choice of OS, but I still do a fair bit of gaming and don't want to deal with dual booting
Browser: Chrome
Messaging: Discord
Text editor: VS Code
Document editor: VS Code or Google Drive - roughly about 80% of my documents are written in Markdown using VS Code and then ran through pandoc to generate a PDF, with the remaining portion being written with Google Drive's built in editors
Music: Spotify
Terminal: Hyper
Shell: Xonsh
OS: MacOS
Browser: ungoogled chromium (wish i could use firefox, but the performance on my laptop is way worse than chromium)
Music: Swinsian + Spotify
Filesync: Resilio Sync
Backup: rclone into the cloud
Text: Sublime Text and vim
Passwords: gopass + git
Terminal: iTerm2
For a Chromium-based browser, I could advise Cent Browser. It's a Chromium with a whole bunch of useful features, many of which aren't listed on the website.
For example, you could enable alt+click to save the image – which, given that I save a lot of them, is quite useful. The bookmarks dropdown is scrollable if you have more than three full-height columns of bookmarks (the scrolling is left-to-right, and not top-to-bottom as I initially assumed).
I separate work and personal bookmarks and history with profiles. Safari doesn't have this functionality.
I use gopass for password management and Safari doesn't have an extension to work with it.
My work uses Google Docs heavily and unsurprisingly they work best in Chromium based browsers.
I think I eventually will have to transition from Apple environment anyway, so might as well not lock myself into their browser.
Music: cmus
Browser: firefox
Text/code: kakoune
Torrent: rtorrent
Backup to cloud: rsync
Pdf: apvlv
Videos: mpv
File browser: lf
Which (if any) cloud backup service do you use? I need to get a regular backup of my laptop going! I've been looking at B2 Backblaze, as I've heard the Backblaze ads on podcasts and whatnot, but I'm not particularly au fait with what services are out there.
I'm using woelkli. My backup needs are small, just my dotfiles and pictures.
I have syncopoli running on my Android phone syncing one folder to my computer. When i add new pictures to that folder, it sends to my computer as soon as i connect on my wifi at home and i have a cronjob to sync everything to the cloud every monday.
I have B2 setup with rsync. I have rsync do the encryption and then put the files up, and for my ~25 gigabytes it costs only a few cents a month.
Nice, B2 it is then!
Music: airsonic+spotify
Browser: firefox
Shell: Xfce Terminal + zsh
Torrent: rtorrent (for seeding)+deluge (for leeching)
Backup: restic
Test: VSCode or nano
Videos: Baka (mpv with extras)
Filebrowser: Thunar (the only filebrowser that has thumbnail previews & is simple to use)
Passwords & SSH: KeepassXC
Text Processor: LaTeX (via Overleaf, mainly)
E-Mail: Protonmail's MUA
Why do you have two different torrent programs? I use Qbittorrent and it works very well.
Deluge works better with my other tooling (Plex+Friends) and is more aggressive as leecher (though I do leave torrents until ratio=2), however, it does not deal well with lots of concurrent torrents.
For that task I have rtorrent, which is slower and less versatile, but can handle a few hundred torrents seeding in the background.
OS: Windows 10 and Manjaro (mostly Windows)
Cloud: iCloud. I like that they offer a 50GB storage tier for $1 instead of making me pay $10 for a lot more storage that I won't use. I also trust Apple on privacy more than their competitors.
Steam: I play lots of games
Password: KeePass 2.x
Development: Visual Studio (I'm a .NET developer by trade)
Text Editor: Sublime
Music: foobar2000. I haven't hopped on the streaming bandwagon yet. I'm perfectly happy directly supporting artists I like on Bandcamp. I also don't care much for the Spotify/Tidal/Apple Music desktop apps. They're hot garbage compared to foobar and Winamp. I like fb2k so much that I run it under Wine when in Linux.
Browser: Firefox
Desktop environment (Manjaro): KDE Plasma 5. I still miss the good old days of KDE 3.5, but KDE 5 has largely helped me get over my butthurt over how bad KDE 4 was.
OS: macOS and Ubuntu MATE 18.04. MATE has quickly become my favorite Linux DE because I like the traditional metaphors and customization. Screw everything being a solid color box, I want my gradients!
Passwords: 1Password. They sadly don't have a Linux app but they do have a Linux command line version and their web version works fine.
Browser: Firefox. Google is attacking the openness of the web by inventing new features, putting them in Chrome, submitting an RFC, and then saying they have the "latest support for web standards" as an excuse to shut out non-Chrome users. I don't support that.
Torrents: Transmission
Text editing: VS Code and BBEdit, and occasionally Vim when I'm on SSH but I can never remember the keyboard shortcuts.
Messaging: iMessage for talking to family, Discord for friends. I hate the Discord app because it's Electron (disgusting) but their service is pretty good.
Shell: zsh with the Powerlevel9k theme.
Video: IINA on Mac, VLC and sometimes MPV on Ubuntu
Cloud: iCloud for my stuff, MEGA free account for public files
Mail: Boring old Mail.app, it works
On my main PC (laptop) I run Bedrock Linux for college/work nowadays, with stratum from Arch (originally Manjaro), Ubuntu and Fedora, which makes compatibility with stuff built for other distros (games, mainly) super easy, as well as being able to grab stuff from their repos that aren't in the Arch ones (I'll usually look through Arch -> Fedora -> Ubuntu -> AUR), and I haven't yet run into any software I couldn't find, which is nice. I've also got a desktop with Windows 10 for games & proprietary stuff, recently reinstalled after my old install decided to stop accepting my license - it works fine now, and is relatively clean of anything I don't need because it's only been around a few weeks. The stuff I use daily is mostly the same on both though:
OS: Arch on my laptop and home server, Debian Sid on my desktop, both with GNOME
Browser: Firefox, switched back when Quantum launched.
Music: Google Play Music Desktop Player, Gradio (to stream a local radio station) and Pithos for Pandora (it's ad-free for playback even with a non-premium account, there's a similar app called Elpis for Windows)
Torrents: I have a container on the home server running headless Transmission, with Transmission Remote on my computers for access.
Text editing/notes: Nano or gedit for general text editing, Standard Notes for note taking
Terminal: Tilix + fish
Podcasts: Vocal
Messaging: Telegram, Discord, GSconnect for SMS
Gaming: Steam and Lutris
Cloud: Dropbox, working on setting up Nextcloud on the home server
Calendar: Gnome Calendar linked to my Google account.
OS: Fedora (Win10 for gaming PC)
Browser: Firefox
Email: Was using inbox on phone, and web clients on PC...haven't found a good replacement for inbox
Password management: Lastpass - though not too happy with mobile support
Code Editor: VSCode (for bigger apps),
nano
(for one-off scripts, config editing, and remote work), and occasionally notepad++ (if I need a quick script on my gaming PC)Office suite: Google docs
Messaging/Voice: Discord
Movies: VLC
Cloud: Dropbox (have lots of free space from referrals) + Google Drive
Terminal: Terminator
OS: macOS 10.14.4 (Mojave)
Browser: Safari for general browsing (why? because content blockers, battery life, privacy, and its connectedness with the OS -- (handoff, hot links for calendars, phone numbers, etc). Firefox for compatibility with websites, and for doing things that don't work well in safari. I absolutely despise chrome.
Text editors: iA Writer for markup, Pages for formatting (it has amazing layout tools). Scrivener 3 for longform research/writing... TeXmaker for LaTex, when I'm doing a final-format, and nothing else works.
Spreadsheets/Data: Numbers for making charts and graphics. The graphs look great. Excel for most other stuff, especially more complex formulae. Mathematica for hardcore numbercrunching.
Presentations: Keynote. Hands down the greatest slide editor and slideshow app.
Productivity/Task Manger: OmniFocus - the most powerful suite for checklists and long term management of stuff.
Audio Editor: Logic Pro X
Video Editor: Final Cut Pro X / Motion X
What kind of work are you using Scrivener for? Is it writing-related, or is it something else?
What advantages does Scrivener give you for technical writing or journalism/articles over any other text processor? Is it the storytelling feature? How does it help you write better?
I ask because, frankly, I'm still blurry on how to use the thing. It has a lot of features that I feel like I want to dive in but can't quite grasp. I'm asking so that the outside perspective could possibly help be get it better.
For me, it's about style, organization, and storytelling (in a loose sense). All writing is really about telling a story, or presenting an argument or logical progression. When I write, I generally start by having a question in mind, and then assemble pieces of evidence together which I need to answer that question.
For this part, the research tools in Scrivener where I can carefully collect and highlight sources is extremely handy.
Then, once I have a vague idea of the answer, I need to rearrange the piece, showing a logical progression from asking the question to finding the answer... for an article it's about telling the story of discovery / investigation. For scientific papers, its about presenting all findings and evidence in the most logical progression. This makes it easy for a reader to follow along, and justifies my thought process.
For a review, it's about presenting the various aspects of a product. For something like an informational article, or a piece where I'm forecasting the future of a particular technology, I'm talking about the history of it, presenting data on how its progressed thus far, and explaining my extrapolations, and justifying them.
This also lends itself very well to building a conference Keynote off the paper I'm writing. A good story is inherently clear, and allows the reader to follow along very logically. Papers and even Keynotes written this way allow people to get a much clearer idea. You want to tell the story, not get caught in details, and make it as clear and as concise as possible.
when I use Scrivener, I think about "How am I going to arrange and present this logical progression. What supporting and detracting pieces of evidence influence this progression, and where do they fit in the story? What evidence outside of this body of work influenced the direction it took? Is there anything which validates or invalidates any findings? Why? All these are pertinent and relevant questions, and the best way to use Scrivener is to start with the notecards, story board, and sources. Arrange them into something logical, and then begin expanding each piece.
Scrivener is really best when writing truly longform stuff... anything smaller than 10,000 words, I wouldn't bother using Scrivener.
I asked you about Scrivener, and you made a good point about what makes storytelling what it is. I do appreciate that.
Off-topic: why did you capitalize "Keynote"? I got used to thinking that it's just a manner of one's public speech, and not any sort of a specific public event or a brand name.
Keynote is an Apple app that takes its name from keynotes. my phone autocapitalizes it as the name of an app.
So we can blame autocorrect for that :) Glad you enjoyed my breakdown.
OS: Windows 10 (idk what build, i've done a lot of weird registry hacks to turn off windows update)
Browser: Chrome - I know about privacy and whatever, but I haven't been able to find a browser I like more than Chrome currently.
Cloud: G Suite - Google provides unlimited storage space for $12/mo (you need a domain) so you can't really go wrong there. It's not encrypted, however
Text Editors: Unironically Notepad for quick edits, Brackets for webdesign, Atom or VSCode for everything else.
Office Suite: MS Office 2016 - I got it for free from college and it never expired, but I'm not complaining
Image Editor: Paint for really easy stuff, PicPick for less easy stuff, Photoshop for everything else
Gaming: Steam - I also have a switch for Smash Bros
Passwords: KeePass - I don't like some company having a list of all my passwords. I know its encrypted but it puts me off.
Music: Google Play Music Desktop Player - I have some Rainmeter plugins to control it and I really like how customizable it is
Messaging: Discord - I switched from Teamspeak and Skype and I do not regret it. add me! stormy#0001
Editing: For audio I use Audacity, for video I used HitFilm 4
Other cool stuff: I have a program called Wox which basically is an enhanced Spotlight Search from macOS. Pretty neat. It integrates with Everything (the search program) which I also highly recommend
OS: Win10.
Music: Tidal for that juicy HQ audio that drains network bandwidth like mad.
Browser: Chrome.
Backup/cloud: Gdrive.
PDF: SumatraPDF: fast and yellow.
Text editor: Atom. Slow as hell but it has a full dark theme as opposed to Notepad++ which doesn't have a dark theme for it's window borders. Tiny difference but it hurts like hell at night.
Also Word but I hate that program and only use it if I really have to.
Imagery: PS and Illustrator CS6, also a bit of MSPain for copy/pasting screenshots.
Sometimes http://photopea.com/ which is fast and free but a little more limited. Also questionable legality.
Every task that involves renaming files / etc:
Bulk Rename Utility. It's UI is a monstrosity and a war crime but it's so darn useful sometimes.
Photos: IrfanView. Versatile and fast.
Some others:
HideVolumeOSD: Hides that ugly and huge popup you get in Win10 when you pause music or change volume. Which also sticks around if you hover your mouse near it. Hate that damn thing.
Program mentioned just removes it.
IrfanView is amazing, I use it as well. It blows the standard Win 10 photo app out of the water. Why not use VS Code instead of Atom? It's basically the same but more efficient.
I tried looking for something nice and just basically went for whatever I found first. Atom's nice and dark but I really miss the "instant start notepad" that Notepad++ was.
Notepad++ still has a firm place on my hard drive for exactly this reason. It's the VLC for text files.
I switched over the VS Code after seeing that it was basically the same as Atom but much, much, much faster.
If you're looking for a Notepad-ish code editor, check out Notepad3. No tabs, but code highlighting, folding, customizable schemes for different languages, and instant like the native Windows Notepad.
I've been using Visual Studio Code as mentioned by someone else and I like it so far. Mostly because I can pile at least 5 columns in a single screen for multi document editing.
I should note I use Notepad and similar apps mostly for plain text- quick notes or uni reports. It goes into Word when the text is done (because fuck Word).
Yo: you can rename files in bulk on Windows if it's a simple task.
Which one does it hide? That thing?
Nice, I didn't know that.
And yes, it hides that thing but mostly This annoying huge thing.
Win10 has the option to control how long it shows, but the minimum option is 5 seconds. So I chose to remove it altogether since it blocks a fairly big portion of my screen and I can't access anything behind it because it stays when you mouse over it. Incredibly annoying.
I'd do the same if it were the case for me.
On one hand, it's cool that it has that sort of an integration. On the other – yeah, the could've done better with the sizing and placement. Move it into tray, maybe, to the left of the clock.
OS: Chrome OS (I have a cheap chromebook laptop) and Debian (on my server)
Music: Funkwhale (running on my server), and SMLoadr (to download music)
Email: Gmail
Text Editing:
nano
andmicro
command line editors.Browser: Chrome (since I have to, since I have a chromebook)
Can you only use Chrome on Chromebooks? Yikes.
Chrome is basically the whole OS - recently (some? all?) ChromeOS machines gained the ability to install .deb packages (from debian & derivaties) and I think some can do android apps as well, but for the most part it's just the Chrome browser, a simple file browser, and chrome extensions.
As I write this, I realize that probably given the recent ability to install debs, it's probably possible to install a firefox .deb, but performance probably wouldn't be great as I think linux stuff goes through some container stuff & whatever display server Google uses (ChromeOS doesn't use X) to work & most Chromebooks aren't too powerful to begin with (Take that last with a grain of salt though, I haven't read much about it since I passed my chromebook on to family a while ago)
That's interesting. For me, it would be awful to not be able to use Firefox. It would really suck to be stuck with just Chrome.
It does suck, yeah - When I used it though, I used a program called crouton which let me run a regular linux environment in a tty (in my case xfce and firefox) which made it pretty useful, but it was an ARM machine so I was stuck without some other sutff I'd have liked to have.
I have a Firefox .deb installed (I use crouton) but performance isn't great.
OS: Ubuntu
Browser: Firefox Developer Edition/Chromium
Editor: vscodium
Other than that, I stick to default apps, because my laptop is pretty slow.