My Setup

Last update: 12 May 2024

My Laptop

My laptop's specifications
Model Dell Precision 7510
CPU Intel Xeon E3-1505 v5
RAM 32 GB
GPU Nvidia Quadro M1000M
Hard Drive 1 TB WD Blue SSD
512 GB Toshiba NVMe SSD

If you've seen this page in the past, the above may look different. Unfortunately, I finally ran the wheels off the old M4800. The discrete GPU gave up the ghost. Shame. So, I did what any sensible person would and bought another old Precision laptop. I mean, 10 years is a pretty good lifespan for a laptop. With any luck, this new machine will last at least three years. (It's three years younger than my old one). Perhaps, depending on how much use it saw before, it may last longer than that. At any rate, it'll hopefully last long enough for me to get my nursing degree and a job as a nurse and, well, the salary that comes with that. And, well, with that kind of money, I could afford a brand new Precision, assuming they're actually still any good. Or, you know, I can get one a few years newer than this and call it a day. Oh! Or maybe a proper desktop! (Maybe that Talos II...?) Yeah. That's probably a good idea. Proper desktop.

An aside: Have you considered old Precision laptops? They're pretty good. I mean, they don't do coreboot or whatever, if that's something you care about, but otherwise? Powerful hardware, lots of ports, very repairable. They're pretty good. I mean, look at that hardware. I mean, sure it isn't as good as the current year equivalent, but I can run Genshin on pretty high settings at a consistent 60 FPS, so it's certainly not bad. Back when these were still new, I remember Dell even advertising them as VR capable machines, and while it's not perfect, it does do VR with a Vive mostly fine. It's got a lot of ports. I mean, for fuck's sake, this thing has 4 USB ports undocked. With the dock, I've got, like, 9 or 10 USB ports at my disposal. It's got a Thunderbolt/USB-C port, so I could actually get a second dock for it, alongside the one that uses the docking connector on the bottom. It's got HDMI, mini DP, an SD card slot, ethernet. Hell, it's even got a smart card slot! (No optical drive, but I removed that from my old Precision anyways, so, meh.) And, of course, with the dock, I've got the additional 5-ish USB ports, along with dual DP/DVI, VGA, and even a serial port, parallel port and not one but two PS/2 ports! Legacy! And, well, I've not fully explored the repairability of this new one, but the old one was very easy to get into fully enough to replace thermal paste, and to get to this one's fans so I could clean them took only removing the battery and two screws. Plus, they provide a full service manual on how to disassemble it, just like they did for the old M4800. So, yeah. If you need a good computer, consider an old Precision. They're really good, you can get one for, like, less than 300 USD, and they last, like, forever. (Hell, if you've got a few thousand USD for a new computer, maybe consider a new one. I don't know how good or bad they are. Maybe they're also pretty good. Fuck if I know.)

Anyways, In terms of other primary hardware at my desk, I've got a generic mechanical keyboard. It's one of the ones without a numpad, but full layout otherwise. It fits on my desk quite nicely, though it could maybe be a little smaller. I've finally gotten myself a wireless mouse. It's a Logitech MX Master 3, and, well, as a mouse, it's quite nice. I like the horizontal scroll wheel. The main wheel and it's magnetic whatever is fairly nice, though it's especially nice as a fidget toy. (Listen, I once spend a solid 50 minutes just spinning a fidget spinner. I like spinny things, okay?) The nicest bit is that it's wireless. I was reluctant to go wireless, given my experience with wireless mice in the past, but it's amazing what a difference a quality rechargable mouse makes. It works wonderfully and I never really need to worry about batteries. It's nice. Finally, there's my second monitor. It's an older Dell panel running at 1440 by 900. It's okay, but I would like to move up to a bigger 1080p monitor at some point.

I suppose I can also mention other hardware I've got, in case you're curious. I've got a Razer Kraken headset. It's alright. Not audiophile grade, but I find it decent. (And, incidentally, as long as you aren't the gold plated TOSLINK/$5000 power cable sort of audiophile, you'd probably also find it decent. At any rate, if I remember correctly, Dankpods found it decent enough. I dunno. I'm not any sort of audiophile.) I recently bought a used HTC Vive (the original one). It's pretty nifty! I've got a generic USB webcam. My laptop has one built in, but I like having this one to stick on my external monitor which I use as my main screen. It's alright. I've got a pair of Wacom tablets, the Intuos Pro S and Intuos Pen and Touch S. Both work well enough. I've got, like, eight billion controllers. … Okay, I have two and two adapters. My main controller is an old Xbox 360 controller that I bought back in, like, 2012. It's still working great. Highly recommend. (Truth be told, it may not actually be that one. It may or may not have gotten swapped with a friend's by accident. Either way, the one I have still works great.) I have a Steam Controller. I really liked it on Linux because I could use it as a normal Xbox controller and, well, it was pretty alright. Certainly wouldn't tell you to run out and buy one, but it worked alright. Unfortunately, it's a pain to use on Windows, so I don't use it anymore. I have some sort of generic Gamecube to PC/Wii U/Switch adapter. It's good for using my old Gamecube controller (from 2004!) with Dolphin, though for some reason the controller ports are backwards from how I'd expect them to be. (What I'd think is port 4 is actually port 1.) In case you're curious, yes, it did also work well with the Switch. And, finally, I have a Mayflash USB sensor bar. It's really nice for using a Wiimote in Dolphin. Would recommend. (Before you ask, no, I'm not using my original Wiimote too. My brother has those.)

An aside 2: God damn, it's incredible how long some things last (or, at least, used to last) without maintenance. I've had my original Gamecube and its controller since, like, 2004 and both still work incredibly. My PS2 and its two controllers, I've had since 2007, and all three work great, as does the original memory card. (The Gamecube didn't have a memory card until, like, 2018, and it was some cheap new one off Amazon, in case you were wondering.) My Xbox controller from 2012 still works great (with the asterisk noted above, though for all I know, his was actually older). My external monitor is from 2009 and still works great. Like, it really is incredible. I wonder if I'll be able to say that about anything similar from this year. Would a monitor bought this year still work great in 2039? Would a PS5 still work great in 2041 (server issues notwithstanding)? What about a Switch? Would it still work great in 2044? Would an Xbox Series X controller still work well in 2036? The sad thing is that my gut tells me "no". Alas. Thanks, capitalism.

Anyways, back to the actual subject of this page. My laptop is currently running Windows 10. Specifically, it's running Windows 10 LTSC version 21H2. I was running Server 2016, but, while Microsoft still supports it, software makers have decided they don't want to, and I quite like being able to use, say, Dolphin or what not. I'm not running any fancy modifications, so there's not really anything exciting to say about it.

I used to have my laptop running Arch Linux. Unfortunately, the SSD it was on bit the dust way too quickly and I never bothered to warranty it (though I still could) or move Arch back to the WD SSD. This part is just here in case you were curious what I was running. (Though, perhaps I'll install it on the NVMe drive in my new laptop.) Here's a screenshot:

My old i3 desktop. LXTerminal is showing screenfetch results.

I was running i3wm. I would've run Sway, but Wacom tablets were still broken the last time I checked. I used bumblebee-status for the status bar with the following modules:

Up in the tray, I had Discord (ugh), a feed reader, KeePassXC, Blueman redshift-gtk, Steam, Transmission, nm-applet, and the ibus daemon. I used Network Manager, rather than netctl just for ease of use, both in configuration and in working with VPNs. In ibus, I primarily used the US International keyboard set up, so I could type special characters, including accented characters. I also had a Japanese IME, a Greek keyboard, and a custom runic keyboard.

Theming wise, I used the Arc theme (specifically Arc Dark) with the Papirus icon set and El Capitaine cursors. My default font was set to Atkinson Hyperlegible, with i3bar using Noto Sans Mono and my terminal using Fira Mono.

Anyways, OS aside, I use Firefox. I've got the following addons:

I also use the Rainbow Blur theme an old acquaintance of mine made. My search engines, as usual, cover a wide range of things, like DuckDuckGo, Wikipedia, shopping sites, Arch Linux related searches, YouTube, some game wikis, and, of course, RationalWiki, who continue to be awesome.

Creative Work and the Like

I draw on my laptop. For that I have a Wacom Intuos Pro S. One of these days, I'm hoping to get myself a Cintiq. I'd switch to some other brand, but I'm not aware of any other brands that have pens that don't need batteries, and I really, really love that about Wacom tablets. It's also something I like about the stylus on my first gen Surface Pro, compared to later generations, and the stylus on my Thinkpad X41 Tablet. On the software front, I use Krita. I used to use Photoshop CS 5, then, while running Elementary OS a few years back, I discovered Krita and just never went back. I recently played around with newer versions of Photoshop, but, just, Krita is so much better. So, yeah. If you think free software drawing programs aren't any good because you've only used a certain piece of FOSS drawing software with an ableist name (*cough* GNU Image Manipulation Program *cough*), give Krita a try. I think you'll like it.

I also do some music production. For that, I use LMMS mostly. I own a copy of Ableton Live Lite, but I have no clue how to use it. I used to work on scores in Musescore, but I never bothered to ever figure out what happened with that whole fiasco with the Muse Group a while back. (Is it took much later to still be saying "a while back"?) I do use Audacity for audio editing, though, so, uh…

Finally, when it comes to coding, I use Visual Studio Code. I like the interface. I like the theme I use. I like the integrated terminal. I like the WSL integration. And, I like the Git repository management tools built-in to the sidebar. I still use emacs keybinds, since I'm still used to them. And, for compiling stuff, it's all C compiled on the command line with GCC, just through WSL.

My Phone

Finally, unrelated to my computer, my phone is a white Pixel 3a running LineageOS 19, I think? It's running whichever version of Lineage corresponds to AOSP 12. I liked my old Nexus 5X, but, unfortunately, it finally died for good. I'm still using Nova Launcher. And I'm still with Ting. Like, I've said before, they're pretty cheap if you go light on data. My bill's only about 18 USD a month. So, you know.