rewriting my nvim config for fun and no profit
mine is ancient and has accumulated much cruft
rewrite underway in fennel :3
making it fun, understanding how it all works, and keeping it easy to extend are some of my desires
making the editor feel good and work well again
lifting a couple neat ux's from lazy, cutting back heavily on supported languages (goodbye python mess 😌)
https://git.sealight.xyz/aynish/helm/src/branch/nvim-rewrite/home/profiles/nvim/
I finished rewriting, more or less. There's a couple of regressions, but I can use it again.
But it broke me, fedi. This is the most I've ever felt like I should just give in to it all. I don't want to have to baby my computers so they keep functioning (I know, rewriting my nvim config was entirely self inflicted). I'm wondering if I would be happier if I just stopped. Pay for SaaS software, use a MacBook, subscribe to spotify and netflix. Use obsidian for notes, and Quartz to publish.
Just be normal computer user that has stuff work.
Maybe then I'd feel more productive, and like I could do the things I wanted to do, either on the computer or off. Give up on all configuration, and just run defaults. Give up on Nix, on the idea of home automation, of having to maintain a calibre instance so I can fucking read the books I want to. Or go monthns without being able to log into my wallabag instance
If I just pay for everything, I'll have little reason to build niche weird tools
I worry that I'd be bored, but I feel like there's still things that I could contribute to if I wanted. I could possibly help other people, instead of just helping myself with my own self hosting. I could get rid of my own burden, and just choose to pay, I can certainly afford to.
maybe contribute to some actually meaningful software programs? Mapeo comes to mind, I'm sure there are a few others that I may be useful for.
Or I could do other things. Get into climbing more seriously, or music
*sigh*
i don't know, fedi.
so much of my identity is wrapped up with weird computer esoterica that i cant even really imagine what my life would be like. i'd give up all my computers and just start again. that's really scary to me. that it will still take me a long time to get productive again, with whatever new tools i choose. and then i'd also have to give up on any semblance of privacy, mostly give up on FOSS, and be beholden to mega corps i despise
if you're a computer weirdo, i'd love to hear your stories about the maintaince burden of supporting a life on open source. how much time do you spend configuring tools and services, vs paying for SaaS and other software. do you still ROM your phone? Jailbreak your kindles/kobos? Are you happy with your balance? how do you decide what to adopt or what to pay for?
@aynish I never really update anything, except once and a while. Just install debian once and leave it until I get a new computer. Works great. You can see the log here. (my docker-based equivalent of a nixos config) https://git.sequentialread.com/forest/sequentialread-caddy-config/commits/branch/master
To make it easier to parse, here's the log of how many days I've worked on that project in the past 4 years. Repeated Ws mean consecutive days working on it, and the numbers represent # of days I did not work on it.
WW 10 W 7 WWWWWWW 45 W 25 W 7 W 7 W 5 W 27 W 27 WWW 13 WW 12 W 28 W 20 WW 2 W 27 W 9 W 60 W 16 W 30 W 45 W 7 W 10 W 81 W 110 W 11 W 308 W 35 W 133 W
There's only one time I was working on it for a whole week, and the amount of time its gone without being touched has only increased over time, peaking at 308 days without a commit (!!!)
Sure, I've worked on other things, but this represents most of what I build myself for myself to depend on.
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I mostly self-host because I wanted to self-publish, so to me, it feels wholly justified that I have to maintain my server.
I also feel like doing this stuff at home has made it easier for me to aquire money by working for corporations, and easier for me to also quit and have some level of confidence I can re-enter the job market when I want to.
I think laziness (and inertia) is really a virtue when it comes to this stuff, like, I mentioned I never updated my debian. I never set up proper backups. I just put my docker-compose file, secrets, and all of the persistent docker volumes in one single folder and `tar` it to a hard drive periodically.
My phone is kinda the same way, its not the best setup by any means, no play store, no bank app, no bootloader lock, etc. Backing up my phone was a major pain when my last one's display died, and I almost lost my signal account, which would have really stung.
I've been carrying around a phone with a badly cracked screen for months now because I've been too busy to back it up again so I can feel confident taking it in for repair. Eventually all the glass shards that are going to come out will come out. The display will either start dying or it wont. In this case, it seems to live on. So here I am, and I'm content with that.
@aynish I almost always use defaults and never configure anything, I figure that way if I ever have to do a demo, the thing I show to other people will be as relate-able as possible.
The things I do configure are usually big ticket items that I can't do without. For example, I remap my keys on my computers so that ctrl c and ctrl v are always in the same place no matter what OS I use.
And on Docker, I turned on the UID namespace remapping feature, which allows me to run everything as root inside containers, which seems to be the default for a lot of docker containers, without them being root on the host.
And I made a security gateway for the docker API so I could mount the docker socket.
Those two things alone get rid of 99+% of docker related critical vulnerabilities afaik. Yes it means I have to type deranged things like `chown -R 231072:231072 .` to set up the file permissions correctly on that One Folder To Rule Them All that I mentioned earlier. But I think thats a low price to pay for simple, secure management of my server.
