This post is a public draft, which may or may not be completed. As new thoughts come to mind, I may improve this article over time.
PC
Monitor setup
I’ve been everywhere. From a single tiny 15" laptop to 4 screens + TV. But currently I’m at two monitor setup and even seriously considering one 32" 4K monitor setup. The thing about the multi-monitor setup is that it is misleading feeling about boosted productivity, because you “control” more things at once. In reality, you get more distracted from your current particular task. But most users doesn’t recognize that. I figured that out when suddenly one of my screens went into dark and I was lazy enough not to deal with that. Instead I just worked on a single screen for several weeks or even months. And you know… i liked it! At any single given time i have only one task in front of me. And the key for this comfort was customized key binds on my home row for quick workspace switch. I can navigate all my workspaces in a split second. Back and forward. I am huge proponent of mastering your keyboard and tailoring your navigation around the OS. Everything should be in the right place for no-effort execution. If navigation is pain for you, you will look for the things like 4 to 6 monitor setups which is just awful.
Keyboard
Mouse
Nothing fancy there. Just some regular Logitech Mx something something. The only note i can say about this - NEVER buy white mouse! No matter how often you wash your hands, that mouse will get dark and yellowish because of your hand sweat. My worst decision EVER!
PC Accessories
Nothing fancy there as well. Just few mainstream web cameras which I rarely use, YubiKey, external drive, flash drives. Basically that’s it. Oh… i have some massive 5.1 sound system, which i basically never use. Most of the time I’m in my Jabra headphones. But lately I’m noticing, that most of the time I sit with the headphones on me but in the total silence.
Linux
For quite some years I now use Linux as my daily driver.
When you install Windows, by default you get about 40-50 GB of “only God knows what” bloatware. You can’t even turn off that OneDrive malware just with a single click. And I don’t care about Windows average target audience and requirements to support every single language pack or what not. Where I am, my OS needs to have only one set of localization. And every bloatware, I care about, I should be able to install on my own. And yes, I care about those 50 GB. Other thing is when you get deeper into some cross-compilation stuff, Windows there are in some weird state with some crazy registry manipulations, some shady workaround installations, CygWin, MinGW, etc. just to get things going. Not a skill-issue, but … it’s just trashy experience. And last time I checked, WSL still was an garbage, but good enough garbage to do some light front-end development. Nothing more. Even most of the Ansible modules doesn’t care about Windows and you can’t automate it effortlessly. All the time some hacking around to get simple things going. I am not an Windows hater. Windows is great OS for it’s target audience. But for my requirements, it became a garbage which I’m glad I threw out. Forever.
So, the summer of 2018 was my complete switch to The Linux. Cold turkey way.
When you install Linux server edition, you get about 600 MB of pure OS with no any garbage on it.
CLI centric workflow
KeePassXC & YubiKey
Tiling Window Manager
Tmux
- Sessions
- Resurrect
- Continuum
- Vim-tmux-navigator
- Sensible
- Yank
- Power
Must have settings: Other keybinds/Sway.