Stuff I Own, Use and Behold

Stuff I Own (My Computers)

HP Victus 16-e0xxx - AirboundLiberation

Operating System: Arch Linux ← Debian 13 ← Debian 12 ← Bazzite ← Arch Linux ← Fedora Workstation 40 ← Linux Mint 21 ← Windows 11 Home (manufacturer-installed)

Stats: 256 GB NVMe SSD, AMD Ryzen 5 5600H, 8 GB (4 GB × 2) DDR4 RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Mobile

My daily driver, development rig, creative and academic writing studio and on-the-go drawing hub, originally bought for university. It's getting pretty old, and the 8 GB RAM is an annoying bottleneck, but it works for what it is.

It went through several different Linux distros simply because I wasn't happy with Microsoft's forced AI integration into their products and services.

And of course, Secure Boot locked out any chances of a Mint or Arch dual-boot, and by the time I decided on Fedora, I was already sick of Windows.

Nowadays, I try to steer clear of Microsoft where possible.

Steam Deck OLED 1 TB - DeckStation-Azure

Operating System: Bazzite GNOME (from Fedora Silverblue, again, yes really) ← Bazzite (from Fedora Kinoite, again) ← CachyOS Handheld Edition ← Bazzite (from Fedora Kinoite) ← Arch Linux w/ linux-bazzite-bin ← Bazzite (from Fedora Silverblue) ← SteamOS 3.0 (manufacturer-installed)

Used for gaming and other portable PC stuff, such as serving as a handheld web browser.

Its brief stint as a portable Arch Linux system was fun but borderline unmaintainable — it was too much of a hassle to keep up with SteamOS updates, and I didn't want to have to deal with being my own distro maintainer.

I went back to Bazzite, based on Fedora Kinoite (which in turn is based on Fedora Silverblue), which is developed by an entire community who isn't just me hacking my own solution together.

Then when I wanted to experiment with GNOME, but found that I can't switch the desktop on Fedora Atomic, I decided to switch to CachyOS after hearing that it was basically Arch with some stuff that made it run better on the Deck; essentially my original "Arch on Deck" setup, reborn.

After a while of enjoying CachyOS, my Steam chord button shortcuts suddenly stopped working. Steam + R1 to take a screenshot, Steam + L1 to zoom in, Steam + X to bring up the keyboard, all didn't work. For some reason, what DID happen is that Steam + L1 and Steam + R1 moved up and down in the Big Picture UI. Because that makes ALL the sense!

So I went back to Bazzite with my tail between my legs. Better to be safe and stable than to be a tinkerer who breaks everything all the time. I have my laptop and a frick ton of virtual machines for that last thing anyway.

The name "DeckStation-Azure" is a play on "PlayStation Vita", my favourite handheld prior to getting the Deck. Now the Vita is my second favourite.

Stuff I Use (Software)

My go-to text editor right now is VSCodium, because it does things good and it's pretty much what I want out of a text editor without being that tied to Microsoft.

My primary programming languages are Rust and Lua; the former for most things and the latter for quick prototyping and scripting and things you'd normally use Python for.

For game development, I use Godot Engine with GDScript. In an alternate timeline, maybe I'd have been using Unity and C#, but that's definitely the dark timeline.

For creative writing, I use whatever format is most convenient at any given time, but it's usually a lightweight markup language like Markdown or a proper typesetting format like LaTeX, or sometimes even just straight up HTML.

Stuff I Behold (Philosophy & Opinions)

DRM & Proprietary Software

I'm vehemently anti-DRM and pro-consumer, and I'll always opt for free/libre and open-source software over proprietary garbage.

I believe DRM to be a scourge on the wider gaming community, and I'm genuinely sick that the practice of paying for games and only owning the equivalent of a piece of paper that says "yes, user can play game".

That's why I fully support Ross Scott's Stop Killing Games movement - I strongly believe simply ending support for a game people pay money for as a good is an unjustifable act of greed and publishers who do so will not see the light of heaven.

I also heavily support GOG.com, who make up just one part of a larger effort to keep game ownership and preservation alive in the modern day. Buy a game, you own it forever, and you don't need a special client to download it. Even Steam games that are indeed DRM-free require

English

English is very silly. How it became such a popularised language in the West is astounding to me.

I'm not a linguist, but I watch Tom Scott's Language Files a lot. That's basically the same thing, right?

I know why English is silly, of course; who doesn't? It's what happened when German, Latin, French and Anglo-Saxon got into a fight and went into it so hard they woke up hundreds of years later as a single almost-harmonious language with a bunch of their vowels shifted all over the place.

But, you know, if it wasn't for English, maybe I wouldn't be here writing this website. Or maybe I'd be doing it in German instead. I dunno, I didn't do history in high school.

Web Design

The World Wide Web is a very fun, very creative, very expressive, but also very confusing and very exploitable mode of content creation that dates back a long time.

Back when I was a kid, I was obsessed with making my web pages resemble some fancy web app or work of art rather than document that exists to be read.

Nowadays, I prefer making simple web pages that are to the point and are full of text for you to read, rather than massive borders and padding for you to awe at.

I also hate website builders with a burning passion. Not only are they Absolutely Proprietary™ and full of crap you don't need, they instil harmful ideas about what a web page "should" look like.

There is no "right" or "wrong" way to make a website. It's the "open web" for a reason.