Tools of the Trade, 2026

I want my tools to disappear. Fast, repeatable, and quiet. NixOS does that for me.

My ~/nixos-config is the source of truth. It defines my packages, services, shell, and even the desktop feel. I can rebuild a machine from scratch and be productive in minutes. No manual setup. No drift.

Why NixOS

NixOS gives me three things I will not give up:

Reproducibility. The same setup on every machine.
Rollbacks. Break something, go back.
Clarity. All the knobs are written down.

This is why I do not treat my machine as a pet anymore. It is cattle. The config is the pet.

The daily desktop

I run a lightweight X11 stack: LightDM login, bspwm for tiling, picom for visuals. It is fast and stays out of my way. Caps Lock is Ctrl. Small tweaks, big compounding wins.

The apps I touch all day

This is the short list that actually matters:

Terminal and shell: zsh, zellij
Editor: neovim
Search: fzf, fd, ripgrep, ast-grep
Git: gh, lazygit, delta, difftastic, git-absorb
Data: jq, yq, sqlite
Perf: btop, htop, iftop, bandwhich
Cleanup: ncdu, dust, procs
Languages: nodejs, go, uv, ruff, ty

I also keep AI CLIs in the same system config. They live beside everything else, so they are consistent and easy to update.

Services I rely on

I keep just the essentials on:

openssh for remote work
syncthing for sync
docker for local containers

The persuasion pitch

NixOS is not about novelty. It is about leverage. If you value your attention, you want a system that you can rebuild, verify, and trust. That is what NixOS gives you. Boring, sharp tools. Zero surprises.