Software I use

Added: July 17 2025, at 04:36pm
Modified: March 14 2026, at 03:46am
Tags: #tech

I use the same config of NixOS on every machine I can, be that desktop, Steam Deck, servers, cloud machines, or whatever laptop or drawing tablet I can get my hands on. There are a lot of moving parts to this setup, and many configs and variables I've had to set up to allow all these machines to run smoothly under one config.

This is a selection of the software I use across everything, and how I get them to sync and run as smoothly as possible.

Browser

Zen Browser is my go-to. I use almost every feature from folders to direct feeds and workspaces. I do not typically sync my tabs - instead, I log into everything using Bitwarden and treat every machine separately. I've been fine with this, but it may change in the future.

Music

I always use MPD with the NCMPCPP frontend, in addition to MPDScribble for "scrobbling" my listening activity to Last.fm, MPD-Mpris for controlling MPD using hotkeys, and MPD-Discord-RPC for sharing that to Discord. All music is loaded in from an NFS server on my NAS.

Equalizer

EasyEffects has been a blessing for a former VoiceMeeter user. It's able to run as a service, has highly configurable settings, and can be made to autoload my profile right from the my HomeManager config.

Gaming

Steam is my obvious default choice, with GOG as a close second, and whatever free scraps Epic Games gives me through the Heroic Games Launcher. Heroic now allows for server syncing of GOG saves, which has been a lifesaver.

File management

I heavily use both PCManFM and Ranger for my GUI and terminal file managers, respectfully. I find it much more comfortable to use Ranger for visualizing files in a broader scope, utilizing all the vim keys and shortcuts which make it very quick to use, and PCManFM when I am working with media, like images, PDFs, or simply dragging a file into another program like Discord, Krita, or Kdenlive.

Communication

On the desktop, I primarily use both Element and Vesktop, but with the progress being made to Cinny as of late, that may become my primary chat client. I have my key stored on my own Matrix server, so syncing is as easy as verifying my login.

Shell

I just recently discovered Atuin, which lets me sync my ZSH history across all of my machines using a self hosted server. No more forgetting commands!

Text editor

To wrap this up, I'd like to do a fourth wall break: I edit all these blogs either right here in Neovim, or my own Hedgedoc instance.

Now that I've got all that software set up, I should get back to writing more!