Stuff I use

A detailed overview of all techy things I use on a day to day basis.

Inspired by uses.tech!

Hardware

I’ve been building my own desktop computer for more than 10 years now. As such, my desktop is always a mix of older and newer components, depending on what survived the last rebuild. Everything is inside a Jonsbo W2 case with 3 detachable panels: the front and both sides.

Current components:

• MSI Z170A Tomahawk AC motherboard
• Intel® Core™ i7-6700K processor
• 16GB memory
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 graphics card
• Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD (linux)
• Samsung 850 EVO 1TB SSD (windows, for gaming)

Desk setup

• 200x80cm Pronto 2 desk. Drilled a few holes for cable management and installed an electrical outlet for easy access when I want to charge a laptop or a phone.
• Roccat Kone mouse and Cooler Master MasterKeys Pro L keyboard with Cherry MX Red switches. I also have a Lenovo Thinkpad keyboard with built-in mouse that I take with me when I need to connect to servers.
• Two iiyama Black Hawk 1080p (full hd) LCD screens. This was a mistake: it should have been a slightly higher resolution with more vertical space. But I have these now so they’ll have to do.
• RØDE NT-USB microphone mounted on PSA1 with SM6. My Audio-Technica ATH-M50x headphones are connected directly to the microphone as that allows me to hear myself when I speak.
• Logitech Brio webcam for meetings. Bought this as I’ve been working from home full time since the corona pandemic started. It’s nice to see everyone during meetings, so I want to return that favor.

Laptop (work)

Dell XPS 13 9300 provided by Combell, mainly used for my system engineering work. As I don’t have a personal laptop I sometimes use it at home when I’m too lazy to get out of the couch.

• Intel® Core™ i7-1065G7 processor
• 16GB memory
• 512GB vMME disk

When working from home, I connect the laptop to a Dell WD19 docking station and use the same peripherals as my desktop. I’m using a little USB switch hidden behind my desktop to switch between the two devices.

Software

My daily driver is Arch linux, although I use Windows 10 when gaming.

• Gnome desktop environment
• Firefox web browser
• Neovim text editor
• Alacritty terminal emulator
• Inkscape and Gimp
• KeepassXC password manager

Backups

My backup strategy is as follows:

• Important documents are synchronized to one of my servers using Syncthing, where Restic writes a snapshot to Backblaze B2 every hour.
• Once a week — usually on friday — I create a snapshot of my entire desktop and laptop to a portable hard drive using Restic. I should probably copy this to a second (offsite) drive, but I don’t do that yet.