Blog
2024-01-27
Fast-forward a year and a half and I find myself using the Plasma Desktop edition of Manjaro on my main Linux computer at home. I don't use a tiling window manager any longer. Not at home and not at work either.
Speaking of my main Linux computer at home, late 2022 I was on a short misson to find a good laptop for my new Linux computer. I ended up with a shortlist of a couple of brands. My decision was to go for a laptop from Tuxedo, TUXEDO Pulse 15 - Gen2. Tuxedo has since discontinued the 15" Pulse series it seems. I don't know the reasons, but I am a happy user of the laptop at least.
More recent stuff. Lately I've started to use Logseq for collecting my knowledge and thoughts. This has been especially important at work. It has already helped me a lot. With my knowledge and thoughts instantly searchable and linked in a graph database I don't have to struggle as much to find the information I need. The daily journal in Logseq is great for me. In the daily journal I keep my meeting notes and ideas. This way the notes are automatically logged with a date as well. I'm really stoked about using Logseq going forward.
2022-05-29
For the most time I'm using tiling window managers on my Linux installations. It lets me use the screen real estate in a very efficient way and I also don't have to use the mouse that much. Ever since the meltdowns of Gnome 3 and KDE 4 I've been wandering around trying different desktop environments. KDE 4 was even more horrific than Gnome 3. So for a very long time KDE wasn't even an option for me. This weekend I tested out KDE 5. It was a lovely experience! It was far from the nightmare I remembered from KDE 4. In a way it felt like this is the way Linux desktop environments were supposed to go. It is very customizable, it ships with great applications and tools and it is a very pretty desktop environment. I tried out the Plasma Desktop edition of Manjaro. I normally enjoy the Manjaro themes and the Breath theme was no exception.
From now, whenever I feel like using a desktop environment, I think my desktop environment of choice will be KDE. I didn't see that one coming...
2022-04-18
My never ending search for the perfect GIT GUI client has continued since GitAhead stopped being developed. What I now use both for work and personal projects on all platforms is Sublime Merge (licensed to me of course). Currently it can do all I need. It works well with Gerrit after adding some custom actions to the command palette. Sublime Merge even has a built-in merge conflict tool that works great.
2021-12-11
I recently learned that GitAhead is no longer under active development. That is very sad news for me as I really enjoy using it. The team behind GitAhead will release bug fixes so I will keep using it as long as it works for me though. But I suppose I have to revisit this topic in the future unfortunately.
2021-01-27
Just a short update on my GIT GUI client quest... I ended up ditching Fork completely in favour of GitAhead (and Ungit) both for work and for personal use. It works great for my purposes.
Otherwise I've been looking into how to replace my Arlo cameras at home. I would really like to get rid of the monthly fee. I could use the free tier, but that would mean only one week of cloud storage and no AI object detection (persons, animals, packages). One week cloud storage would work just fine. But I would really miss the object detection.
Issues with the Arlo camera system:
- Cloud dependency (even for storing videos on the base station USB stick)
- Monthly fee
- Max number of cameras
- Yet another wi-fi network
- Constant battery recharging
- Lots of compression artefacts
The solution for me is to use PoE IP cameras, local handling of video streams and local object detection. Everything connected to an UPS to protect against power failures. The only bullet I can't completely get rid of is the first one, about cloud dependency. I of course need a service outside my home network to get push notifications on my mobile devices. With this solution I am free to use cloud storage if I want to. Since I already use SpiderOak for my personal backups I have the possibility to store videos there as well.
2020-05-04
My search for GIT GUI clients have continued for a couple of days. My last blog post sparked my curiosity once again and I have again checked what's available on the market.
For my private stuff I have more or less decided to go with SmartGit. I like the client and I can use it on both Windows and Linux. I am also interested in Ungit. It's quirky but fun.
The thing is that I need a client for my work stuff as well. I can't use SmartGit for that unfortunately. So I have tried GitEye, Aurees and GitAhead.
I couldn't stand GitEye. It literally looked like an old Java application. I think it's feature rich, though. Aurees has a strange GUI and a weird license. GitAhead really surprised me. It has a MIT license and a clean and nice GUI. It has enough features for me at the moment. It works well on both Windows and Linux. GitAhead does not have a built-in merge conflict tool like SmartGit does. So I have to resort to using external tools like meld or p4merge. I would of course prefer a built-in tool, but it's not too bad.
The conclusion this time is that GitAhead will be my go-to GIT GUI client at work.
2020-05-01
I like GIT GUI clients. It's not that I don't understand the GIT CLI commands. I do and it's important to know what's happening behind the scenes. It's just that I enjoy using a good GIT GUI much more than using the CLI. I don't avoid using the CLI, sometimes it's more convenient. But most of the time I tend to do most tasks in a GIT GUI. It usually also gives me a good overview of the repos I'm working with.
So which are my favorite GUI clients? For a long time it was GitKraken. I even bought a t-shirt! But then they went bad. They would no longer allow usage of their product free of charge for non-public repositories. That is in itself fine but they have a subscription based licensing model. I do not tolerate that at all (looking at you Adobe). So GitKraken had to go.
For a while I tried using Atlassian Sourcetree. If I remember correctly I had extreme difficulties connecting it to GitLab. As a workoaround I used Bitbucket. But GitLab was, and still are, my preferred GIT hosting service. So I had my eyes open for alternatives.
Along came Fork. I noticed it sometime in 2019. It's a client for Windows and Mac. It is feature rich, pretty and free. Well, it was free. Now they want you to pay for the client. It's a one-time payment, no subscription, so I'm all for it. Since it's only $49 it's well worth the money. The problem is, they don't support Linux and they don't plan to in the foreseeable future.
So what do we have on Linux? To be fair, not too much when it comes to GIT GUI clients. But there is a shining star (except GitKraken), SmartGit. Their license permits usage free of charge by Open Source developers, teachers and their students, or for hobby, non-paid usage. Otherwise they too have a subscription model.
So for now I use Fork on Windows and SmartGit on Linux. I would like to use Fork also on Linux but that might never be. So I will probably end up ditching Fork in favour of SmartGit on Windows/Mac as well. SmartGit supports both Linux, Mac and Windows.
2020-04-16
Instead of having to bother with guest additions and similar packages to be able to use full screen, copy-paste and shared folders, I'm trying out remote desktop solutions. I am fairly happy with X2Go. It only needs an SSH connection (with X forwarding enabled because of reasons). Just install the x2goserver package and some distros have a service that must be started after that. Then it mostly just works.
2020-04-04
My current go-to environment for development is the Manjaro Linux distro with the i3 tiling window manager and the fish shell. Other than that I tend to use the Windows Subsystem for Linux quite a lot. Especially since I am stuck with Windows at work and partly at home (I'm a gamer). It is quite easy to start a WSL session and get things done. I don't have to bother with a virtual machine in that case. WSL2 is just around the corner. That's good news since it will finally be using a real Linux kernel.
Speaking of virtual machines, when I do use a virtual machine I prefer VMWare Workstation over VirtualBox. VMWare Workstation has proved to be more stable than VirtualBox for me.