+++
title = "Recommended software"
+++

* [Arch Linux](https://www.archlinux.org/),
  the no-nonsense Linux distribution. It's not perfect,
  but it has the best reward-to-effort ratio for me.
  Mainly its spectacular wealth of available packages
  (11000 main + 53000 AUR!) make it the king.
* [Alpine Linux](https://alpinelinux.org/),
  the featherlight distribution powering this server.
* [Void Linux](https://voidlinux.org/),
  another nice lightweight distribution. It has
  a great package management system with good 
  support for both binary packages and 
  [Gentoo](https://gentoo.org/)-style
  customizable source builds.
* [i3](https://i3wm.org/), a mature, lightweight,
  responsive tiling window manager without all the fuss.
  I'll move to its successor-in-progress
  [Sway](https://swaywm.org/) as soon as I find it mature enough.
* [Neovim](https://neovim.io/), which I use instead of its
  venerable ancestor [Vim](https://www.vim.org/) because
  it's faster, cleaner, and more future-facing
  ([source](https://geoff.greer.fm/2015/01/15/why-neovim-is-better-than-vim/)).
  With plugins, of course:
	+ [vim-plug](https://github.com/junegunn/vim-plug)
	  for simple and effective plugin management.
	+ [terminus](https://github.com/wincent/terminus)
	  to noticeably improve integration with the window manager.
	+ [onedark.vim](https://github.com/joshdick/onedark.vim),
	  because it looks great and is easy on the eyes.
	+ [lightline.vim](https://github.com/itchyny/lightline.vim)
	  for no real reason. Just eye candy I guess.
	+ [vim-polyglot](https://github.com/sheerun/vim-polyglot),
	  because its syntax definitions are much better.
	+ [vim-sneak](https://github.com/justinmk/vim-sneak)
	  to make movement less of a hassle.
* [Alacritty](https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty) as terminal emulator,
  for its speed, minimalism, ease to configure, and native Wayland support.
  I used to use [st](https://st.suckless.org/),
  but it was too annoying to reconfigure.
* [imv](https://github.com/eXeC64/imv),
  a command-line image viewer that I've found to be
  much simpler and snappier than its more popular cousin
  [feh](https://feh.finalrewind.org/).
* [zathura](https://git.pwmt.org/pwmt/zathura),
  a fantastic modular viewer for PDFs and similar formats.
  It remembers your position in a document after closing or reloading,
  which is great when using LaTeX, and the main reason
  I prefer it over [MuPDF](https://mupdf.com/).
* [mpv](https://mpv.io/), a great terminal-friendly media player.
  If you have [youtube-dl](https://youtube-dl.org/) installed
  you can watch videos you would otherwise need a web browser for.
* [nginx](https://nginx.org/),
  the most popular HTTP server in the world.
  And for good reason: it's lightweight, fast, secure,
  flexible and straightforward to configure.
* [Zola](https://www.getzola.org/) to generate static webpages,
  including the one you're reading right now.
* [QEMU](https://www.qemu.org/),
  the Swiss army knife of emulation, and a damn fast one at that,
  albeit with absolutely terrible documentation.
  My old Windows launch script is [here](../winvm.sh).
* The [musl](https://www.musl-libc.org/) C standard library,
  the only one that remembers it's supposed to stick to the
  official specification rather than pursuing every crazy idea.
* [BusyBox](https://busybox.net/) bundles the
  most important Unix tools into one portable ELF.
* [s6](https://skarnet.org/software/s6/),
  a nice Unix service manager and init system.
  I used it in my now long-abandoned
  [LFS](http://linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/index.html) installation.
* [doas](https://man.openbsd.org/doas),
  sudo for the 21st century, this time actually configurable.