¬ just serendipity 🍀 (not just serendipity)

I’ve just completed my objective with this blog. Should I start a new one? After looping through a BSD distro and dozens of Linux distributions, I’ve finally decided to settle down and stay away from new test drives. This time should be definitive—I really do not intend to replace my system anymore. The point is now I have a stable configuration and a few preferences that I would like to share with you.

The Setup #

I don’t intend this to take too long, so I’ll be brief:

• Filesystem: btrfs instead of ext4. Snapshots are awesome, and I also can benefit from its SSD and compression performance.
• Partition scheme: split your root (/) and home (/home) partitions. Always. Unless you’re in a hurry, or unless you do not intend to create a non-root user. Since I’m using btrfs, I also split my 300-500MB ext4 /boot partition. My preferred size for root is (30 ± 15)GB. /home takes up the rest. No LVM.
• UEFI: I don’t use it now, but I would probably do that the next time I buy a new computer. Just take care of your ESP partition and disable secure boot.
• Bootloader: syslinux! GRUB2 is way too automatic. Syslinux is simpler and faster. If you’re in a hurry, stick to GRUB2.
• Linux Distro: Arch Linux. Period. If you’re in a hurry, use a derivative of Arch. If you’re even more in a hurry, use a derivative of Debian or Ubuntu. Linux Mint is my preferred choice, but Xubuntu or Lubuntu are good lightweight options.
• BSD Distro: FreeBSD. I love its documentation and traditional Unix feeling. But it was the only BSD distro I’ve tested up to today.
• Tiling window manager: i3. KISS, KISS, KISS. And elegant. With i3blocks, please.
• Stacked window manager: Cinnamon.
• Full-featured file manager: dolphin (or nemo, but only if you are using Cinnamon).
• Lightweight file manager: thunar.
• Terminal/text editor: vim.
• GUI text editor: emacs.
• Shell: zsh. With grml configurations, auto-completion and syntax highlighting. It’s perfect. Oh-my-zsh is a common alternative.
• Terminal emulator: urxvt (rxvt-unicode). With tabs.
• Monospaced bitmap font: terminus.
• Monospaced scalable font: Source Code Pro (from Adobe).
• System font: either Bitter, Cantarell, Ubuntu or Droid Sans.
• Plug-in manager for emacs: el-get.
• Plug-in manager for vim: pathogen.
• Display manager: lightdm.

Conclusion #

This is the best Linux/BSD setup I’ve ever dreamed of, and I’m really happy. The original purpose of this blog has been achieved. Through 2 years, what I most posted here were concerns about Linux. The purpose was to share my own ignorance and growing maturity towards this awesome subject area.

Now my focus turns to Programming languages. Today I feel the same insecurity towards programming languages that I used to feel two years ago about Linux. I want to be very good at a few programming languages, and at least know a couple of them (maybe 5-10). I want to be part of a programming language community and evangelize programming.

This blog will still exist. I will probably keep posting here with the same rate I post nowadays, but I will probably talk less about Linux and more about other things. However, when I get into programming deeply, I might create a new space for that purpose.

If you are still reading here, thank you. I really appreciate the support of the people that express interest in this blog. I also hope that others could learn something during all this time.