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Software Reviews and Recommendations

Tags: review tech


In this blog post I aim to review some of the software that I have used on many platforms.

Now allow me to add some unnecessary words into this introduction so that the tables below don't get rendered in the section. Are they gone yet? It looks very ugly and I don't want to fix this right now as it would mean I would have to put some toggle or logic on how many characters to render. Please go away, almost there, just more two words. There.

Desktop Environnements and Window Managers


DE / WM Platforms1 Rating / Review
image Cinnamon Artix Linux 8/10: It is really nice to use it for a beginner, I personally started using it on Artix Linux on the desktop which made the experience a little bit worse, I guess the best experience would be in Linux Mint.
image Suckless DWM Arch Linux 9/10: with flexipatch, I would wish there was a “more official” port of dwm to Wayland for the far future. The only downside is the fact that you need to recompile all the time, but I feel like I might come back to it.
image KDE Plasma Arch Linux, Debian 7/10: I had a less than ideal experience with this DE, so much that I ditched it for Hyprland. This DE is not bad but it literally crashes all the time and the amount of problems I had with dragging and dropping fucking up the caret, so some times VSCodium and FF would think I still wanted to paste something and it would drag around the cursor was really annoying. My friends and I are hopeful for the next major release. Currently I am using it as the DE of my HTPC, which is a ThinkPad almost hanging on top of my NAS (so it can be higher and I can access it with my arms) behind my TV. I like the KDEConnect app thing, which is not ideal but it’s good enough. I can’t say too many bad things about KDE.
image Hyprland Arch Linux Too early for an opinion…

Password Managers


Application Platforms1 Rating / Review
image KeePassXC Windows, Linux 9.8/10: This is probably one of the best open source applications I have ever used, it is both normie friendly and I also like it as an “advanced user”. The browser integration is very nice, what I also like about it, even though I don’t use it is that it is a Qt application that actually comes with 2 themes, dark mode and light mode which, even tho I prefer my custom GTK/Qt themes, it is nice to have on other platforms like Windows, and it looks nice. The only reason I am taking away some points is because there is no --minimized option to start the application minimized or to the systray on Linux and that my current theme doesn’t look good enough on the application, well I don’t think this is the fault of KeePassXC but yeah it’s kinda annoying.
image KeePassium iOS 5/10: I think it’s proprietary, but it does the job, but having multiple databases is locked behind a paywall, it is enough for me though and it looks nice.

Terminal Emulators


Terminal Rating / Review
image Suckless ST 10/10: It literally just works after you configure it, which you can do easily with flexipatch and uh yeah it just works, you really don’t need more for a terminal.
image Kitty 8/10: I don’t have a lot to say about this terminal, it annoyed me a bit in the past because it likes doing things its way, like, it messed with the sudo’s alias for some reason, I don’t even use sudo, I have it aliased to doas, so it was fucking it up, other than that I guess a lot of features I don’t use and bloat but being a featureful terminal is the point. The reason I use this instead of allacrity for example is that ncmpcpp’s visualizer works better on kitty (yes that’s the entire reason lol).

Shells


Shell Rating / Review
image Bourne-Again Shell 6/10: “Sane default”, it does the job, I am too lazy to change my shell sometimes all the time on my servers so I just use bash because it just works I guess.
image Z Shell 10/10 for now: I like using this with zsh-syntax-highlighting, zsh-autosuggestions, and a zsh-git-prompt, until now it just worked. Also if you are going to use this, don’t use the oh-my-zsh plugin manager whatever, the name already makes my cringe and when I look at their merch on their website boosts my morale because at the least I don’t look like that. I don’t think you need a plugin manager. I like this shell, nothing really bad to say.
image Fish Shell Trash||Meme/10: Avoid this, it’s retarded2 why would you use a thing that isn’t POSIX, not that bash or zsh are POSIX but come on.

Browsers! I hate web browsers!


Browser Platforms1 Rating / Review
image Firefox Windows, Linux, Mac3 3/10: Global homogenization, “pocket”, Google dick-sucking, shitty defaults. You really had to ruin it Mozilla. I only ever use this browser when I have to. Just like Windows, you have to use scripts and other stuff to debloat and this garbage. The way that profiles are saved also fucking suck, which also means that other browser forks have it’s shitty profile/configuration files too.
image Librewolf Windows, Linux 7/10: It is Firefox but without the garbage, a bit too schizo so you must configure it before using which is a bit annoying, it is downstream of Firefox which means that you will be a little bit behind upstream but it is worth it. Librewolf inherits the shitty config profile whatever from Firefox which is extremely annoying.
image Google Chrome Windows 0/10: Google, centralization, manifest v3, web integrity api, +60% market share… Do not use chromium, every since I became a schizo in 2018, chrome was the first thing that I ditched, and I urge you to dump it too, at the least for un-googled chromium, which is fair enough in my opinion, or better than nothing, I would only use it for testing however.
image Suckless Surf
image QuteBrowser
image Luakit		 Linux TRASH/10: When you think chrome is the worst browser imaginable, some open source devs come up with a browser that makes an user be less respectable than someone using google chrome, and luke smith and kenny falls for them hahahaha. The browsers that I grouped here are “““minimal””” and “vim-like”:
  1. They aren’t minimal because of their engine lmao
  2. Made for vim Ö LARPers. The web was not designed for keyboard navigation
  3. Little to no support for extensions, yeah have fun with no uBlock Origin lol
Just don’t bother using them, they’re garbage, just like terminal file managers are. Just use Librewolf.

BitTorrent Clients


Client Platforms1 Rating / Review
image qBittorrent Windows, Linux, Mac3, Docker/NAS/Headless4 10/10: Just like KeePassXC this is a gold standard of an application. Maaaybe a bit on the bloated side, if you use this as a client on your PC. But I really almost always used this on the server, with Docker, and it literally just works, and the webui is more than enough.
image Transmission Linux, Docker/NAS4 N/A: I don’t have a lot of experience with this, other than using it a little bit on the desktop and Docker. This client must be really good because a lot of people use it however because I like having my own 24/7 torrenting server and using BitTorrent clients as webuis I can’t really recommend Transmission for this, last time I tried it the webui is very bad, at the least from the image that I took on docker.

  1. Platforms that I have personally used this software on. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. If you feel offended by this, you can go fuck yourself. Woah so edg-ACK! ↩︎

  3. I never owned a Mac; I have installed this on a friend’s Mac. ↩︎ ↩︎

  4. I mean as a service, on a server or NAS, separate from my computer. ↩︎ ↩︎


Wednesday, November 8, 2023
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