I like reading about the hardware and software various people use so here’s my version.
Introduction
I work for Oracle as a technical consultant based in the UK (fully remote). I’m old and evolved from a Unix/C developer to PL/SQL, Oracle DBA and now work on database migrations and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
Hardware
Lenovo ThinkCentre M900.
- Intel i7-6700
- Memory 48GB (upgraded from 16GB)
- Disk 1TB
Samsung Galaxy S24
Expensive phone kindly provided by my employer. I don’t use many apps (Gmail, WhatsApp, BBC Sport, Tusky).
MacBook Pro
Expensive laptop kindly provided by my employer. I use it on the rare occasions I need to attend an office or customer site.
Huawei Android tablet
I don’t have a personal laptop so I use this for idly wasting time.
Synology
Years ago, I acquired a FreeNAS unit after almost losing an essay (and my marriage) my wife had written for a Masters course. I subsequently replaced the FreeNAS with a Synology DS420+ which works fine (file backups, Jellyfin music server). The NAS has saved my bacon on more than one occasion and now I can’t imagine being without it.
Software
Arch Linux
Former serial distro hopper. Now happy with Arch and Gnome desktop. Arch just works, has great documentation and provides a brilliant development environment (comprehensive range of latest packages).
GNU Emacs
I have used GNU Emacs for many years but am still learning about its power daily. I try to use core packages and keep my configuration minimal although I build the latest bleeding edge version (30.x).
- Theme - Used ‘monokai’ for ages and now adopted Prot’s excellent ‘modus-vivendi-tinted’.
- Orgmode
- Org Roam
- Vertico, Consult, Maginalia, Orderless
- Magit
- Jinx (spell checker)
- Dashboard
- Undo Tree
- Pass
Thunderbird
My employer uses Outlook but we can run any email client so I run a local Dovecot IMAP server and Thunderbird.
I use Thunderbird to automatically fetch messages from Outlook and filters in a vain attempt to try to reduce the size of INBOX.
VirtualBox
I use VirtualBox a lot for demo environments, testing new Oracle features and experimenting.
I’ve also used Docker/Podman but struggle to fully embrace it as I prefer full control (and don’t really understand Docker compose files).
Corporate
Standard list of tedious corporate applications I have to use. Most of these work on Arch.
- Zoom
- Teams
- Slack
- Confluence
- Jira
- VS-Code/SQL Developer (Oracle database client).