11 ms·

My New Computer

70 points by hackandthink 3y ago

kvdveer 3y ago
I really like the idea of separating storage from hardware. Unfortunately this relies on having Qemu installed on every machine you intend to use. Many machines don't fit that bill.
- Brajeshwar 3y ago
  Isn't this what the idea of sync (Backups, etc) are about? I do like the idea of using my hardware (devices, phones, computers) as tools and be able to pick up one that works. I'm working towards this but far from there. Of course, the storage can be on multiple hardware, say, via Syncthing (or other Cloud storage) but I should be able to replace the hardware and still know that the content can be sync elsewhere.
- marmaduke 3y ago
  You load the qemu portably onto the usb as well
Brajeshwar 3y ago
Shouldn't the link be pointing to https://blog.taoetc.org/my_new_computer/index.html https://blog.taoetc.org/my_new_computer/index.html and not the root website!
- dorianmariefr 3y ago
  Also https://blog.taoetc.org/my_new_computer/ https://blog.taoetc.org/my_new_computer/ gives an error
  - Brajeshwar 3y ago
    Forgot to setup index.html as index file in AWS S3/Cloudfront!
kemotep 3y ago
Can QEMU images boot straight from USB? No host OS/Hypervisor? That’s news to me. I wish they would go over how they got that working. Does everything run from RAM? How large of flash drive do they use and how many snapshots/backups do they keep/where do they keep them?
- unixhero 3y ago
  Yes with that new usb stick boot method... I cannot remember the name of the project, not eufus, not unetbootin, not lili
  - alwyn 3y ago
    I'm thinking you mean Ventoy? They say they can load vhd and img files, though I've only tried ISO's myself. https://www.ventoy.net/ https://www.ventoy.net/
    - refset 3y ago
      > Why do you not trust Ventoy? > Ventoy is a great tool from what I’ve seen online and the use case it fills does save time and resources. However, I have some reservations about it. If I had to compromise a bunch of critical systems over a long time period, then publishing a great tool and having it tamper with your OS installation media silently would be a really good pick. At this time, I don’t trust the developers of the tool enough and I don’t have the time or skills to perform repeated audits of the software every time they release a new version. ...from the addendum to https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2023/02/15/shrinkflation/ https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2023/02/15/shrinkflation/ (which was itself discussed previously [0]) - I don't have strong opinions of my own but reading this review was enough to put me off installing Ventoy the other day. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34800830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34800830
      - foul 3y ago
        If you're not wishing to read its code, it's a good strategy not to use it.
r0ckarong 3y ago
Why do I have this nagging feeling in the back of my head that this is pretty bad for a lot of obscure hardware and peripherals?
alt227 3y ago
Great for the user, and its all very well saying his new computer doesnt have any hardware. But in reality when you take your' 'New Computer' somewhere out in the big wide world, you are going to need to use someone elses hardware to run your computer.
- prox 3y ago
  I don’t think the author was meaning to cut out hardware all together, more that he is becoming hardware agnostic. Upgrading his hardware means nothing since he has virtualized everything and is probably pretty quick.
  - readthenotes1 3y ago
    Well, the article says "My new computer has no hardware." What they has really done is just redefined the word "computer" from being the hardware on which we run our software to being the software that we run on someone else's hardware. I guess since a computer used to be someone who used computing machinery we are getting a little ouroboros here
  - noman-land 3y ago
    The fatal flaw with this idea, which I haven't been able to get around, is that you now spend your life entering passwords and doing sensitive work on supremely untrusted hardware.
    - ikurei 3y ago
      I don't think the assumption is you'd be doing that all the time. It's just good that you can do it if needed. If my laptop is stolen, I can just buy any linux-compatible laptop and run this, or I can borrow someone else's if I judge the risk acceptable. From the article: > When I switch from my work computer to my personal computer I just bring the USB stick with me; same thing next time I upgrade a computer.
    - dncornholio 3y ago
      As long as you decide where you put your USB stick in, this is not a fatal flaw or a flaw at all.
master-lincoln 3y ago
According to Wikipedia > A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations automatically. I don't think his encrypted Qemu image on a usb stick can do any of that...
- dmurray 3y ago
  Why not? It just needs one small extra dependency: to be plugged into a device that supplies processing power. You might as well say that my desktop isn't a computer, because it needs external (electrical) power to do any logical or arithmetic operations. Or that my credit card doesn't run Java.
  - master-lincoln 3y ago
    Because their usb stick just contains the program a computer can run. > It just needs one small extra dependency: to be plugged into a device that supplies processing power. So it just needs a computer to be a computer? Your logic doesn't work for me. It's like saying I am a cruise ship captain, just that I lack the ship, the certification and the knowledge. I am not aware that there are credit cards which can run java (I assume that means they have a jvm that can interpret java bytecode). I think similarly they store data and programs (which might be java) but don't run them. e.g. https://www.oracle.com/java/java-card/ https://www.oracle.com/java/java-card/
thefz 3y ago
> The Qemu image is small enough (3.6G currently) that I can easily make backups and snapshots Why? I can make snapshots and backups of multi-terabyte drives just as easily.
- yasuocidal 3y ago
  maybe there is a "size" as in how much storage he/she has. Or maybe bandwidth issues. I do not own a large NAS nor i have fast internet for uploads and stuff, so 3,6G is a god sent.
- imiric 3y ago
  I doubt snapshots in your workflow are quite as easy and fast as: qemu-img create -f qcow2 -b base-image.qcow2 -F qcow2 snapshot.qcow2 This takes mere milliseconds. The great thing about this is that snapshots are chainable, so you can create snapshots based on snapshots, and easily go back and forth to boot whatever version you want. Each snapshot only takes up the space of the data written to it, so they're like layers in an OCI image. The qcow2 format is quite ingenious and one of my favorite things about working with QEMU. I wish its CLI would be simpler and more intuitive, so for more advanced scenarios I prefer working with libvirt/virt-manager/Proxmox.
  - solomonb 3y ago
    Not the parent poster, but I have automatic incremental snapshots of my zfs datasets which also automatically sync to a NAS for backup.
  - thefz 3y ago
    For any drive size a diff is a diff, so if very few bytes change, very few bytes are going to be written regardless of the disk size. This whole post is an exercise in futility
alentred 3y ago
If this message finds the author, or the people knowledgeable in the subject matter, I am very much interested in the implementation details. How do you encrypt the flash drive? Do you run QEMU in the host OS or are there more optimal ways of "booting" it? How do you run QEMU to take benefit of all available resources on the "console" computer (the one running the image)? What's with the performance, and is the performance the reason for not running GUI? (But also - yay tmux!) How do you backup? (Do you just `dd` it? I don't put too much trust in the reliability of the flash drives...). What flash drive do you use? What are the pitfalls and limitations? I think I have more questions, but I will stop here, you see where I am going. This is a really nice and simple idea and I will definitely try it too. I appreciate a lot if you can share your experience.
- snibsnib 3y ago
  Years ago I had a .bat file on a usb that ran Puppy Linux and Slitaz ISOs inside qemu. Although it didn't have working persistence. Was a lot of fun, but people are more wary of letting you run random scripts on their pc these days.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  > How do you encrypt the flash drive? My wild guess in that particular case he just installed alpine with full disk encryption within the qemu image itself, no the flash drive: " The filesystem is encrypted, and I carry it in a small USB stick. " However it is not complicated to encrypt a flash drive. What may be complicated is having an encrypted flash drive that can easily be decrypted from any kind of OS.
- tenthirtyam 3y ago
  I'd have nerves about qemu being snooped by a malicious/corporate/internet-cafe/friend's/etc host OS. Why not just use a bootable usb disc? Doesn't solve all the problems and probably introduces others. But if your employer allows you to run random qemu images, then doesn't seem they'd be overly worried about a bootable usb.
  - declan_roberts 3y ago
MrksHfmn 3y ago
Should rather mean "my new operating system"
- beastman82 3y ago
  Agree this is strangely worded
safety1st 3y ago
I love this idea but I'd be worried that I would lose something that small. OK the filesystem is encrypted but there are going to be private keys and other sensitive data on there which I really don't want to give someone unlimited time to crack... I don't carry sensitive data around every day on a regular usb stick either. Not to mention you're going to freak out a lot of laypeople when you reboot their computer and it comes back up in Hackerman mode. Though if you could get it to play West Side Lane after it booted up then yeah this would be totally worth it.
- James_K 3y ago
  This is such an odd thing to be worried about. Do you really think there are people who go around looking for random USBs on the floor hoping that they contain sensitive data? Unless someone is specifically following you around and looking for this, I doubt they would bother. I also think anyone smart enough to crack the encryption on that thing is probably also smart enough not to plug random USBs into their computer.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  It is not much different than losing your smartphone or having it stolen.
- GTP 3y ago
  If you don't trust encryption, I'm honestly curious to hear how you handle your sensitive data. My own opinion is that you're being too paranoid, but it would be interesting to hear back from you.
  - safety1st 3y ago
    I trust encryption, but I don't necessarily trust myself to configure everything correctly. I am aware of how complex the topic is and could imagine myself for example having a password on something which could be brute forced if my password wasn't strong enough plus the default lockout period for incorrect attempts was too short... or some other scenario I as a non-expert might not anticipate. In addition to encryption there's a physical access component to how a lot of my secrets are stored, no way I would ever transfer them to a phone for example. Some necessary context for this is that I own a small business and it's not large enough to afford a dedicated person or people setting IT policy, but it's large enough that an attacker would have plenty of motivation to go the extra mile in terms of say doing some social engineering to drain our bank account. Maybe the productive line of thinking here is, there is a set of secrets that does need a really high level of paranoia, but most of them don't and those would be OK sitting encrypted on a phone or USB stick. But it's easy to go down the rabbit hole and say if they get access to X and Y pieces of info can they call someone and get a password reset... etc.
TheGardenMan 3y ago
I used to have a USB stick with Kali Linux with encrypted persistence in 2017. I felt cool as a script kiddie.
James_K 3y ago
I feel like a better version of this would be Guix/Nix/Similar for a reproducible setup, then just putting all your personal files on a USB.
pards 3y ago
This wouldn't fly on work computers at most large enterprises where the USB ports are locked down. Inserting any USB storage violates security policy and triggers security alerts, if the USB port works at all.
ikurei 3y ago
I've been wanting something like this recently. I want to occasionally have my "virtual computer" with me to use on other hardware. (ie my SO's laptop, my Steam Deck; hardware I mostly trust). I find myself bringing my laptop many places where I don't actually plan to use it, just in case some server goes down or the like. Why Qemu though? Why not a Live USB? Is it just for the ease of treating the VM as a regular file for backup and transfers? I have little experience with Qemu.
- jamesbfb 3y ago
  Unlike a live usb, Qemu is (mostly?) hardware agnostic. The abstraction means you could run a VM image on a x86 based ThinkPad or an ARM based Mac.
jacknews 3y ago
I ran this way when I first (had to) switch to a mac. Running linux in a Virtualbox vm, and having it fullscreen most of the time. It's a really nice way to work, and gives you much more of a sense of owning your environment - especially the mac started acting-up and slowing down/hanging frequently, and even losing the application state through a reboot, but the vm would continue where it left off after a restart, even the cursor in the same place etc. IMHO you do need a graphic environment in 2024 though; text-only, and gemini etc is a bit too monastic.
jamespo 3y ago
Would prefer a VPS
anthk 3y ago
That's similar to my setup but under an Atom n270 netbook: - Zram, useful for SBCL using 2GB of stack. - CWM+Xclock+slock. - UXTerm+ksh+TMux - Links and "links -g" for image heavy sites, but often I just call sxiv with typing "i" while I'm at the image link. - Sfeed+links with no cookies. Few sites: HN, Slashdot, some GNU sites, The Conversation. I avoid international news sites, http://68k.news http://68k.news it's more than enough for a quick glance on major issues in the planet. - Gopher/Gemini with cgmnlm, with gopher://magical.fish as a good starting portal with useful services like torrent searching and, sometimes, news. Gopher blogs have tons of tech/science/math content not found anywhere else. - I used to run lynx against gopher://gopherddit.com, but gemini against gemini://gemi.dev it's perfect. Yes, RSS, but I can read the local newspapaper over gemini by proxying the web page and save lots of bandwith, up to 95% if not more. Also, the local newspaper cuts down the RSS content. - Mocp - Nchat/Catgirl for TG/IRC. - Custom ebook reader, for the ones without pics. - MuPDF (graphical ebooks/PDF's). - MPV+yt-dlp. - Sxiv (pics) - Mutt+msmtp+mbsync - Tut for mastodon - SBCL (Common Lisp) + rlwrap. - Slrn - MC, for fast documentation reading. - Luakit for "emergencies": goverment pages with JS. Launched every few months and that's it. On USB media, as long as you don't put local data on it, a system like Slax with a Linux Libre kernel would be very trustable and reliable: https://www.slax.org/#getslax https://www.slax.org/#getslax Swap out the propietary kernel with Linux-Libre if your hardware supports it.
ThinkBeat 3y ago
3.6GB is a lot bigger than what I would expect. Esp given the small number of applications he uses. I expected something around 1GB
uticus 3y ago
> My new computer has no hardware. Funny, that's the opposite of my dream computer, which is running low amounts of software (or at least low amounts of dependencies for userspace) on lots of trusted and open hardware.

70 points by hackandthink 3y ago

I really like the idea of separating storage from hardware. Unfortunately this relies on having Qemu installed on every machine you intend to use. Many machines don't fit that bill.

Brajeshwar 3y ago
Isn't this what the idea of sync (Backups, etc) are about? I do like the idea of using my hardware (devices, phones, computers) as tools and be able to pick up one that works. I'm working towards this but far from there. Of course, the storage can be on multiple hardware, say, via Syncthing (or other Cloud storage) but I should be able to replace the hardware and still know that the content can be sync elsewhere.
marmaduke 3y ago
You load the qemu portably onto the usb as well

Brajeshwar 3y ago

Shouldn't the link be pointing to https://blog.taoetc.org/my_new_computer/index.html https://blog.taoetc.org/my_new_computer/index.html and not the root website!

dorianmariefr 3y ago
Also https://blog.taoetc.org/my_new_computer/ https://blog.taoetc.org/my_new_computer/ gives an error
- Brajeshwar 3y ago
  Forgot to setup index.html as index file in AWS S3/Cloudfront!

kemotep 3y ago

Can QEMU images boot straight from USB? No host OS/Hypervisor? That’s news to me. I wish they would go over how they got that working. Does everything run from RAM? How large of flash drive do they use and how many snapshots/backups do they keep/where do they keep them?

unixhero 3y ago
Yes with that new usb stick boot method... I cannot remember the name of the project, not eufus, not unetbootin, not lili
- alwyn 3y ago
  I'm thinking you mean Ventoy? They say they can load vhd and img files, though I've only tried ISO's myself. https://www.ventoy.net/ https://www.ventoy.net/
  - refset 3y ago
    > Why do you not trust Ventoy? > Ventoy is a great tool from what I’ve seen online and the use case it fills does save time and resources. However, I have some reservations about it. If I had to compromise a bunch of critical systems over a long time period, then publishing a great tool and having it tamper with your OS installation media silently would be a really good pick. At this time, I don’t trust the developers of the tool enough and I don’t have the time or skills to perform repeated audits of the software every time they release a new version. ...from the addendum to https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2023/02/15/shrinkflation/ https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2023/02/15/shrinkflation/ (which was itself discussed previously [0]) - I don't have strong opinions of my own but reading this review was enough to put me off installing Ventoy the other day. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34800830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34800830
    - foul 3y ago
      If you're not wishing to read its code, it's a good strategy not to use it.

r0ckarong 3y ago

Why do I have this nagging feeling in the back of my head that this is pretty bad for a lot of obscure hardware and peripherals?

alt227 3y ago

Great for the user, and its all very well saying his new computer doesnt have any hardware. But in reality when you take your' 'New Computer' somewhere out in the big wide world, you are going to need to use someone elses hardware to run your computer.

prox 3y ago
I don’t think the author was meaning to cut out hardware all together, more that he is becoming hardware agnostic. Upgrading his hardware means nothing since he has virtualized everything and is probably pretty quick.
- readthenotes1 3y ago
  Well, the article says "My new computer has no hardware." What they has really done is just redefined the word "computer" from being the hardware on which we run our software to being the software that we run on someone else's hardware. I guess since a computer used to be someone who used computing machinery we are getting a little ouroboros here
- noman-land 3y ago
  The fatal flaw with this idea, which I haven't been able to get around, is that you now spend your life entering passwords and doing sensitive work on supremely untrusted hardware.
  - ikurei 3y ago
    I don't think the assumption is you'd be doing that all the time. It's just good that you can do it if needed. If my laptop is stolen, I can just buy any linux-compatible laptop and run this, or I can borrow someone else's if I judge the risk acceptable. From the article: > When I switch from my work computer to my personal computer I just bring the USB stick with me; same thing next time I upgrade a computer.
  - dncornholio 3y ago
    As long as you decide where you put your USB stick in, this is not a fatal flaw or a flaw at all.

master-lincoln 3y ago

According to Wikipedia > A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations automatically. I don't think his encrypted Qemu image on a usb stick can do any of that...

dmurray 3y ago
Why not? It just needs one small extra dependency: to be plugged into a device that supplies processing power. You might as well say that my desktop isn't a computer, because it needs external (electrical) power to do any logical or arithmetic operations. Or that my credit card doesn't run Java.
- master-lincoln 3y ago
  Because their usb stick just contains the program a computer can run. > It just needs one small extra dependency: to be plugged into a device that supplies processing power. So it just needs a computer to be a computer? Your logic doesn't work for me. It's like saying I am a cruise ship captain, just that I lack the ship, the certification and the knowledge. I am not aware that there are credit cards which can run java (I assume that means they have a jvm that can interpret java bytecode). I think similarly they store data and programs (which might be java) but don't run them. e.g. https://www.oracle.com/java/java-card/ https://www.oracle.com/java/java-card/

thefz 3y ago

> The Qemu image is small enough (3.6G currently) that I can easily make backups and snapshots Why? I can make snapshots and backups of multi-terabyte drives just as easily.

yasuocidal 3y ago
maybe there is a "size" as in how much storage he/she has. Or maybe bandwidth issues. I do not own a large NAS nor i have fast internet for uploads and stuff, so 3,6G is a god sent.
imiric 3y ago
I doubt snapshots in your workflow are quite as easy and fast as: qemu-img create -f qcow2 -b base-image.qcow2 -F qcow2 snapshot.qcow2 This takes mere milliseconds. The great thing about this is that snapshots are chainable, so you can create snapshots based on snapshots, and easily go back and forth to boot whatever version you want. Each snapshot only takes up the space of the data written to it, so they're like layers in an OCI image. The qcow2 format is quite ingenious and one of my favorite things about working with QEMU. I wish its CLI would be simpler and more intuitive, so for more advanced scenarios I prefer working with libvirt/virt-manager/Proxmox.
- solomonb 3y ago
  Not the parent poster, but I have automatic incremental snapshots of my zfs datasets which also automatically sync to a NAS for backup.
- thefz 3y ago
  For any drive size a diff is a diff, so if very few bytes change, very few bytes are going to be written regardless of the disk size. This whole post is an exercise in futility

alentred 3y ago

If this message finds the author, or the people knowledgeable in the subject matter, I am very much interested in the implementation details. How do you encrypt the flash drive? Do you run QEMU in the host OS or are there more optimal ways of "booting" it? How do you run QEMU to take benefit of all available resources on the "console" computer (the one running the image)? What's with the performance, and is the performance the reason for not running GUI? (But also - yay tmux!) How do you backup? (Do you just `dd` it? I don't put too much trust in the reliability of the flash drives...). What flash drive do you use? What are the pitfalls and limitations? I think I have more questions, but I will stop here, you see where I am going. This is a really nice and simple idea and I will definitely try it too. I appreciate a lot if you can share your experience.

snibsnib 3y ago
Years ago I had a .bat file on a usb that ran Puppy Linux and Slitaz ISOs inside qemu. Although it didn't have working persistence. Was a lot of fun, but people are more wary of letting you run random scripts on their pc these days.
prmoustache 3y ago
> How do you encrypt the flash drive? My wild guess in that particular case he just installed alpine with full disk encryption within the qemu image itself, no the flash drive: " The filesystem is encrypted, and I carry it in a small USB stick. " However it is not complicated to encrypt a flash drive. What may be complicated is having an encrypted flash drive that can easily be decrypted from any kind of OS.
tenthirtyam 3y ago
I'd have nerves about qemu being snooped by a malicious/corporate/internet-cafe/friend's/etc host OS. Why not just use a bootable usb disc? Doesn't solve all the problems and probably introduces others. But if your employer allows you to run random qemu images, then doesn't seem they'd be overly worried about a bootable usb.
- declan_roberts 3y ago

MrksHfmn 3y ago

Should rather mean "my new operating system"

beastman82 3y ago
Agree this is strangely worded

safety1st 3y ago

I love this idea but I'd be worried that I would lose something that small. OK the filesystem is encrypted but there are going to be private keys and other sensitive data on there which I really don't want to give someone unlimited time to crack... I don't carry sensitive data around every day on a regular usb stick either. Not to mention you're going to freak out a lot of laypeople when you reboot their computer and it comes back up in Hackerman mode. Though if you could get it to play West Side Lane after it booted up then yeah this would be totally worth it.

James_K 3y ago
This is such an odd thing to be worried about. Do you really think there are people who go around looking for random USBs on the floor hoping that they contain sensitive data? Unless someone is specifically following you around and looking for this, I doubt they would bother. I also think anyone smart enough to crack the encryption on that thing is probably also smart enough not to plug random USBs into their computer.
prmoustache 3y ago
It is not much different than losing your smartphone or having it stolen.
GTP 3y ago
If you don't trust encryption, I'm honestly curious to hear how you handle your sensitive data. My own opinion is that you're being too paranoid, but it would be interesting to hear back from you.
- safety1st 3y ago
  I trust encryption, but I don't necessarily trust myself to configure everything correctly. I am aware of how complex the topic is and could imagine myself for example having a password on something which could be brute forced if my password wasn't strong enough plus the default lockout period for incorrect attempts was too short... or some other scenario I as a non-expert might not anticipate. In addition to encryption there's a physical access component to how a lot of my secrets are stored, no way I would ever transfer them to a phone for example. Some necessary context for this is that I own a small business and it's not large enough to afford a dedicated person or people setting IT policy, but it's large enough that an attacker would have plenty of motivation to go the extra mile in terms of say doing some social engineering to drain our bank account. Maybe the productive line of thinking here is, there is a set of secrets that does need a really high level of paranoia, but most of them don't and those would be OK sitting encrypted on a phone or USB stick. But it's easy to go down the rabbit hole and say if they get access to X and Y pieces of info can they call someone and get a password reset... etc.

TheGardenMan 3y ago

I used to have a USB stick with Kali Linux with encrypted persistence in 2017. I felt cool as a script kiddie.

James_K 3y ago

I feel like a better version of this would be Guix/Nix/Similar for a reproducible setup, then just putting all your personal files on a USB.

pards 3y ago

This wouldn't fly on work computers at most large enterprises where the USB ports are locked down. Inserting any USB storage violates security policy and triggers security alerts, if the USB port works at all.

ikurei 3y ago

I've been wanting something like this recently. I want to occasionally have my "virtual computer" with me to use on other hardware. (ie my SO's laptop, my Steam Deck; hardware I mostly trust). I find myself bringing my laptop many places where I don't actually plan to use it, just in case some server goes down or the like. Why Qemu though? Why not a Live USB? Is it just for the ease of treating the VM as a regular file for backup and transfers? I have little experience with Qemu.

jamesbfb 3y ago
Unlike a live usb, Qemu is (mostly?) hardware agnostic. The abstraction means you could run a VM image on a x86 based ThinkPad or an ARM based Mac.

jacknews 3y ago

I ran this way when I first (had to) switch to a mac. Running linux in a Virtualbox vm, and having it fullscreen most of the time. It's a really nice way to work, and gives you much more of a sense of owning your environment - especially the mac started acting-up and slowing down/hanging frequently, and even losing the application state through a reboot, but the vm would continue where it left off after a restart, even the cursor in the same place etc. IMHO you do need a graphic environment in 2024 though; text-only, and gemini etc is a bit too monastic.

jamespo 3y ago

Would prefer a VPS

anthk 3y ago

That's similar to my setup but under an Atom n270 netbook: - Zram, useful for SBCL using 2GB of stack. - CWM+Xclock+slock. - UXTerm+ksh+TMux - Links and "links -g" for image heavy sites, but often I just call sxiv with typing "i" while I'm at the image link. - Sfeed+links with no cookies. Few sites: HN, Slashdot, some GNU sites, The Conversation. I avoid international news sites, http://68k.news http://68k.news it's more than enough for a quick glance on major issues in the planet. - Gopher/Gemini with cgmnlm, with gopher://magical.fish as a good starting portal with useful services like torrent searching and, sometimes, news. Gopher blogs have tons of tech/science/math content not found anywhere else. - I used to run lynx against gopher://gopherddit.com, but gemini against gemini://gemi.dev it's perfect. Yes, RSS, but I can read the local newspapaper over gemini by proxying the web page and save lots of bandwith, up to 95% if not more. Also, the local newspaper cuts down the RSS content. - Mocp - Nchat/Catgirl for TG/IRC. - Custom ebook reader, for the ones without pics. - MuPDF (graphical ebooks/PDF's). - MPV+yt-dlp. - Sxiv (pics) - Mutt+msmtp+mbsync - Tut for mastodon - SBCL (Common Lisp) + rlwrap. - Slrn - MC, for fast documentation reading. - Luakit for "emergencies": goverment pages with JS. Launched every few months and that's it. On USB media, as long as you don't put local data on it, a system like Slax with a Linux Libre kernel would be very trustable and reliable: https://www.slax.org/#getslax https://www.slax.org/#getslax Swap out the propietary kernel with Linux-Libre if your hardware supports it.

ThinkBeat 3y ago

3.6GB is a lot bigger than what I would expect. Esp given the small number of applications he uses. I expected something around 1GB

uticus 3y ago

> My new computer has no hardware. Funny, that's the opposite of my dream computer, which is running low amounts of software (or at least low amounts of dependencies for userspace) on lots of trusted and open hardware.