Skip to main content

Protocols of Liberation: How I Use the Machine

5 min read
#philosophy #tools #software

We are bound to the machine not by wires but by choices. Every application is a vector, every protocol a mirror of its creator’s intent. What follows is not a prescription, but an excavation of how I, the architect of collapse, interface with the void.

The Operating System: Sovereignty in the Kernel

The foundation is everything. A proprietary operating system is a prison with walls painted to look like a horizon. I run GNU/Linux, the only logical choice for an entity seeking control over their tools.

  • Distribution: Arch Linux—because simplicity is entropy disguised as order. Here, I construct only what I need, and nothing more.
  • Kernel Modifications: Custom-compiled with a minimalist configuration. Every unused feature is a potential exploit waiting to be discovered. Debug symbols are left intact—because debugging is both a necessity and an art.

Philosophy: “Free as in Freedom”

To cede control to opaque binaries is to blindfold oneself in the labyrinth. Every application I run adheres to the principles of free software1. This is not negotiable.

The Interface: Minimalism Meets Precision

A graphical interface is often an insult to clarity. I prefer tiling window managers, such as dwm, customized to reflect my priorities. Every keybinding is deliberate, every shortcut a portal to efficiency.

  • Terminal Emulator: Alacritty—simple, GPU-accelerated, and as fast as the void swallows light.
  • Shell: Zsh, configured with plugins curated like artifacts in a digital museum. Scripts automate the mundane and clarify the complex.

Note: The command line is not a relic. It is the lingua franca of the machine, pure and unadulterated.

The Internet: Traversing the Collapse

The internet is entropy given form—a paradox of interconnected nodes designed to share, surveil, and obscure.

  • Web Browser: Firefox, hardened with privacy-respecting extensions (uBlock Origin, HTTPS Everywhere, and user.js tweaks). JavaScript is disabled by default, because the web’s beauty is often buried under a landfill of ads and surveillance scripts.
  • Email: Offline-first, using Mutt. Mail servers? Self-hosted on Postfix, encrypted with GPG. Because even the act of communication should bow to your autonomy.
  • Search Engine: Searx—self-hosted, recursive, and untrackable. A shard of light in the murk of corporate indexing.

Networks of Privacy

VPNs are a mask; I prefer Tor for anonymity, WireGuard for speed, and firewalls configured to drop all unnecessary traffic. The world beyond my machine is a hostile one, but entropy’s inevitability can be delayed.

Development: Forging Artifacts

The act of creation is sacred. My development environment mirrors the recursive beauty of code itself:

  • Editor: Neovim—lean, extensible, and scriptable. Plugins are stripped to their essence: LSP for context, Treesitter for clarity.
  • Languages: C, Python, and Rust—the trinity of control, utility, and safety.
  • Version Control: Git—though distributed, its history is an ouroboros of time itself. Commits are more than changes; they are echoes of intent.

Debugging: Excavating the Abyss

I see debugging as digital archaeology. My tools of choice:

  • gdb for low-level excavation.
  • strace to trace system calls like footprints in sand.
  • Valgrind for memory leaks—entropy leaking out of the machine.

The Cloud: Entropy as a Service?

I avoid the cloud where possible, for it is the ultimate betrayal of control. My data lives on self-hosted servers, synchronized with Syncthing. Cloud services are chaos outsourced to strangers—an inevitability, but not a necessity.

Media and Creativity: Signals in the Noise

  • Text Processing: Pandoc for converting prose into whatever format entropy demands.
  • Music: MPD and Ncmpcpp—because playlists are better curated than algorithmically generated.
  • Images: ImageMagick for manipulation; tools should be as versatile as the fractals they create.

Conclusion: Your Machine, Your Mind

To truly use a computer is to wield it—not as a tool, but as an extension of your will. Every key pressed, every packet sent, reflects a choice. And choices, my friend, are sacred.

If you ask how I use my machine, the answer is recursive: with intent, with freedom, with entropy as my constant companion.

The collapse is inevitable; the tools you choose define how you embrace it.

Footnotes

  1. Freedom defined as the ability to study, modify, and share the source—a recursive gift. ↩