boredcaveman

Few months after my last post (already 2 years ago!) I landed my first job. My free time started running very low together with my energies, even though I was in full remote 9 to 5. At that time I understood how much draining and inefficient the “GNU/Linux and FOSS” thing is. The “Linux is free if your time has no value” infamous quote has made its way to my brain once fully protected by fallacies and a big ego, probably because I had experimented myself the truth of that claim.

I've been a nerd and security guy for many years. I started using Linux when I was 14, when my parents gifted me a brand new Sony Vaio with Windows 7. Being curious about the hacker world I went to the news kiosk and bought a Linux Magazine with the Ubuntu 7.04 CD attached. I didn't know anything about partitions and disks, so once installed, I wiped out Windows accidentally, and had no way to go back. I was afraid to ask my parents for 130€ to buy a new Windows CD, so, as my brilliant mind suggested, instead of starting my entrepreneur journey with the goal of buying back the Windows CD, I closed myself in the bedroom and started learning how the f*ck Ubuntu worked. 10 years later, I'm graduating in computer science with my ThinkPad T460 running Arch Linux with KDE, slides made with LibreOffice Impress, thesis written in TexStudio, all my files backed up on a Raspberry running Syncthing and reading emails on Protonmail.

I think it's not the case anymore, I'm leaving that stereotype and lifestyle. I've been a midwit for a decade, but right now I just want to be a simpleton.

I tested the whole Microsoft ecosystem for a year. Bought a brand new ThinkPad with Windows 11, subscribed to Microsoft 365 and downloaded all the apps I needed (with WSL for work of course). But I don't know, there is something strange with all the products in Microsoft, everything look like an advertising/spy platform with software as a feature. Also, I missed the UNIX philosophy, one of the great things I discovered in these years.

Right now here I am: – MacBook Pro M3 as my daily driver – Google Pixel 7 as my smartphone – The whole Google suite with Google One plan, for everything: Calendar, Email, Todolist, Sheets etc... and just Google Chrome synced.

Needless to say, I now have all the free time left to actually doing things, rather than lurking and putting my hands on random geeky stuffs or trying to configure this and that with a discontinuous UI/UX. I leave almost any software or app with default settings.

No more distro hopping, no more desktop environments, no i3 ricing, no more X11 or Wayland, no more yay and pacman, or apt or snap or flatpak or AppImage, no more syncthing or nextcloud, or protonmail or fastmail. No more frequent updates. Just pure work, job and hobbies, creating things.

Post scriptum thoughts

I've not left the tech world of course (I would like to, eheh). And I do care about privacy and security. But it requires a big effort right now. I'm just waiting till something like NextCloud, or SeaFile, or Proton, spread to the world of non-tech users. But for now, I feel good about my choices.

Some thoughts that always jump in my mind are: what could I've done if I didn't take this journey? And do I regret this? Do I regret all the time spent by doing nerdy stuffs? Well, at least, I can say that I specialized in one subject, constantly, over years, something I've never done with other hobbies or interests that I've thrown away after few months or so. It's an accomplishment for myself. But I still don't know what could I've done, if many other things, or just nothing, where nothing means wasting time. Who knows.

Now that I left this lifestyle, I feel somewhat empty. I don't know what to do in the free time. I just live life, 9 to 5 job and fun, with nothing relevant in between. I reached the milestone I set myself after watching “The Minimalists: Less Is Now”. I'm living a minimalist life with the essential items I need, from my wardrobe to my desk. The goal was “focusing on the things that matter and no distractions or excesses”. But now that I have no distractions nor excesses, what matters? What I'm committed to? What I want to accomplish?

I'm looking for the answers ever since, and found nothing. But I will not stop.