Information
Some of you out there keep calling me an Arch & KDE Plasma shill. To which I would like to reespond with, what’s wrong with that ? I mean, why do you find it so strange for one to use what one likes if it works for them and stick with it ? I like what I like, never had any strange and deal breaking issues that affected my day to day.
That’s not to say that issues do not exist, oh they do. But, in my case, for my specific usage, none of them were severe enough to cause me to move away. Annoying, yes, but not deal breaking. I did try many other DEs, like Gnome, XFCE, Cinnamon, even Hyprland, none of which worked for me. I found myself having to force myself to adapt to them, while with KDE Plasma not so much, it reflects my personality.
I also tried many other Distros, like Fedora and many of its spins, Debian Sid, OpenSuse, uBlue Aurora, all with Plasma, none of which I could adapt to. Arch just works for me, it’s super easy to fix when issues do happen.
Oh, I forgot to mention that I am not much of a gamer, so there’s that too. If I do play games I have never experienced 120fps or higher, am used 60fps, so am fine with that. My current hardware cannot do any better anyway…
Just wanted to cover these facts before moving on with the Hardware & Software I use…
The Software
- Linux Distro :
I love working with ArchLinux in all its forms. It’s the most flexible Distro I have ever had the pleasure to work with. Allowing me to build things from the ground up without it being too complex, or getting in my way. That’s why all my systems run it or one of its spins.
To summarize, I use Vanilla Arch on main rig, XeroLinux on HomeLab and Manjaro on HTPC. As you can see Arch is at the core of every OS I use.
- Desktop Environment :
As for the Desktop Environment I love working with, it’s none other than KDE Plasma, simply because it’s so damn beautiful, and easy to work with. And since I am more of a visual old geezer, it fits my needs so well it ain’t a joke. That’s why I don’t see myself using anything else for a long time to come.
Note :
I do dabble with other Non-Arch Distros and other DEs from time to time to keep my knowledge fresh, and to post about them on this here site.
The Hardware
I do own many, 3 Desktops and 1 Laptop. Main, Home-Lab & HTPC. Laptop is unimportant just runs my shop.
The Beast :
Main rig, the one I do all my Development, Gaming and other things on, which I label as StationXero.
I know the GTX 1080 is an aging GPU, trust me I am trying to raise money to replace it with at least an RTX 3080/3090. I could use better Wayland support. Am not really a gamer though, so that part I do not perticularly care about.
Home-Lab :
Another desktop I call XeroLab, as the name implies, is my Home-Lab PC, it runs all my Docker Containers. It has 32GB RAM with a Core i7 6800K and an old P.O.S GT-710 GPU that I will be replacing as soon as I can raise the money for one.
That thing has survived many failed nvidia-470xx driver updates, but I finally decided with how old GPU is to stick with nouveau open source drivers.
The HTPC :
Finally there’s my HTPC, which has the same CPU as XeroLab, with a few differences, being the GPU which is a GTX 650 Ti-Boost OC, and the 16GB RAM. Now whith it being my HTPC, it has 14 Drives of various sizes totalling ~68TB of storage.
The only app installed on that thing is Plex Server as a Snap.
Since I need Hardware Acceleration so I am able to encode & decode the movies & TV-Shows I watch, I have no choice but to use the Distro provided nVidia-470xx proprietary ones. So far so good, no issues.
That’s it folks. Now you have a better idea of what equipment I use on a daily basis to bring you everything I do. I did not list all the softwares I use coz it’s a long list that varies a lot. Thanks for reading.