Technology

Software I use in 2025

Because I like lists!

A note, to start: My Mac Studio has largely sat idle or even powered off for most of 2025. I’m not sure why, exactly, but at some point I just found I didn’t enjoy using macOS anymore. It could be as simple as I’m much more used to the things that annoy me on Windows. Whatever the case, I will not be including Mac software below.

I will also not be listing any phone apps.

What I will be listing:

  • Software I use in Windows 11
  • Software I use in Linux Mint
  • Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) I use in both (or even the Mac, should I turn it back on)

Windows 11

  • Browser: Firefox. Backup: Vivaldi.
  • Diary/Journal: Diarium
  • Tasks: TickTick
  • Email: Fastmail (I use the web-based version)
  • Blogging: WordPress (I have tried many alternatives, none have stuck so far)
  • Text Editor: This is complicated. I can’t make up my mind, so I’m dabbling with all of these to varying degrees:
    • Obsidian
    • Notepad (built-in Windows app)
    • Notepad++
    • Zed
  • Messaging: Signal
  • Group chat: Discord
  • Social media: I am only on Mastodon now, I use the Phanpy web app as the client.
  • Music: The built-in Windows Media Player
  • Word Processor: I don’t use one much these days, but when I do, it’s LibreOffice Writer.
  • Fiction writing, with the caveat that I haven’t done much for the past few years:
    • Scrivener
    • novelWriter
  • Photo editing:
    • Affinity Photo
    • Photos (the built-in app)
    • Luminar Neo
  • Drawing: I do this on a tablet now, so nothing here
  • Audio editing: Audacity (I rarely do audio editing, though)
  • Video editing: DaVinci Resolve (I rarely do video editing)
  • RSS reader: Good question! I keep flipping through a bunch.
  • Read later: Folio (browser extension for Firefox)

The apps listed above that are paid:

  • Diarium (one-time purchase through the Microsoft Store)
  • TickTick (optional yearly subscription to open more features)
  • Affinity Photo (one-time purchase. This was before Affinity Studio launched, which is completely free but gates AI features behind a Canva subscription)
  • Luminar Neo (one-time purchase)
  • Scrivener (one-time purchase)

Linux Mint

  • Browser: Firefox. Backup: Vivaldi.
  • Diary/Journal: Zed
  • Tasks: TickTick (web version, as no native Linux version exists)
  • Email: Fastmail (I use the web-based version)
  • Blogging: WordPress
  • Text Editor: This is complicated. I can’t make up my mind, so I’m dabbling with all of these to varying degrees:
    • Obsidian
    • Sublime Text
    • Zed
  • Messaging: Signal
  • Group chat: Discord
  • Social media: I am only on Mastodon now, I use the Phanpy web app as the client.
  • Music: Rhythmbox (included with Mint). Backup: VLC Player.
  • Word Processor: LibreOffice Writer (included with Mint)
  • Fiction writing, with the caveat that I haven’t done much for the past few years:
    • Scrivener (I have the Windows version running through Lutris)
    • novelWriter
  • Photo editing:
    • Pix (included with Mint)
  • Drawing: I do this on a tablet now, so nothing here
  • Audio editing: Audacity (I rarely do audio editing, though)
  • Video editing: I have not done this on Mint.
  • RSS reader: Newsflash
  • Read later: Folio (browser extension for Firefox)

As you can see, there is a lot of overlap with Windows, which shows how much Linux software has matured in recent years. The one place I feel it lags is in photo/graphics editing (no, I will not use Gimp, the interface just repels me, for some reason1Also, they really should just change the name.).

Paid programs in Linux Mint are the same as Windows.

I think I covered all major categories, but if I’ve forgotten something, I’ll edit it in later.

The promise of computing, the reality

The first two paragraphs of the Mastodon post below resonate with me–my first computer was an Atari 400, but my second and “real” computer (the 400 was basically a gaming machine) was a Commodore 64. And I had an Amiga, too. The C64 and Atari 400 were completely offline, my Amiga and Atari ST connected to BBSes via 33.6 baud modem. It wasn’t until I had my first PC that I ventured out onto the internet at large, but even then, circa 1996 or so, the whole world of computers, rapidly evolving in performance and capabilities, still held such tremendous promise. I had absolutely no conception of how it might all be turned against us and exploited by capitalist companies more interested in earning ever-expanding profits, no matter the cost to the world, or the individual. I just enjoyed it in the moment, whether it was doodling with a Koalapad on my C64, writing short stories using ProWrite on my Amiga, or discovering weird blogs on my Windows 98 PC. Or starting my own weird blog (this one, to be specific).

datarama on Mastodon:

@Tattie I think one of the reasons I never really got into retrocomputing – despite nerding out with a C64 or an Amiga sure did feel a lot more fun than computing in the current day – is that what made it feel so great back then was that it felt like I could just make out the contours of the future, and it looked like it would be amazing. So much creativity waiting to be unlocked! We’d make kinds of art not even conceived yet! We’d be making wonderful discoveries!

Now I live in that future, and it fucking sucks. The fruit of all those great discoveries have turned out to be mostly figuring out new ways to spy on people and manipulate them – and now, to declare all-out war against even the concept of human creativity. My C64 still runs (I no longer have a working Amiga), but playing around with it won’t bring back that feeling of a promised future of wonders – all I see is that it turned out to become a present full of horrors instead.

I’m sure part of all this – from a purely personal perspective – is just that I’ve hit the point where I’m supposed to be having my regularly-scheduled midlife crisis. “Did I waste my entire life?” sure does feel to fit the stereotype. I’ve thought about trying to retrain to do something else, but I honestly have no idea what that could even be. I’m disabled, I’m getting old, and there’s not a whole lot I can do that anyone would want to pay me for that isn’t related to software development. (I’m currently an embedded dev; prior to that I taught CS at a community college for ten years.)— datarama (@datarama@hachyderm.io)

I still dabble in retrocomputing and gaming, not because I have any illusions about things being better back then. They were simpler, and that had its own charm, but mostly it’s just straight-up nostalgia for being younger, and for the technology I geeked out on so much growing and improving year after year, with the possibilities of that growth suggesting so many great things to come–even if that fantastic tomorrow ultimately never arrived. Instead, we got Facebook and AI slop. 😛 This isn’t to downplay all the technological advances in computing since the 1980s and 90s, of course. I love great graphics as much as the next person, it’s just a shame so much of it is done now in service of garbage.

But you know what? It’s also not just nostalgia, it’s about looking back on a time when people wanted to make money off computer hardware and software, of course, but many also cared about providing a quality experience, whether it was through improvements to a word processor, a great sequel to a favourite game or better specs on the hardware that made everything run a little bit smoother. And as I noted in my recent reminisce on software stores, we used to have what now seems like a crazy number of not just operating systems, but dedicated hardware for each OS, and many companies–that today wouldn’t think of doing more than developing an app only for iOS (with IAP, ads, or both)–would release a game or program on five different platforms, because none of them were truly dominant (the PC won out in the end, of course).

Some still carry on that spirit of just wanting to make good things (and sometimes make money from it) from the early days of computing–indies, mainly–so it’s not completely gone. We just need to choose what and who we support, to keep the things we valued back in the early days from disappearing.

37 app updates (more to come, presumably)

The urge to update apps on my phone has pretty much vanished. I’ll only update now if something breaks.

There was a spike in the last day or so. I’m guessing a lot of apps have received updates recently to deal with various iOS 26 shenanigans (I am still on iOS 18). I’ll probably at least look at the updates soon, because it’s a good way to remind myself of apps I may not even use anymore and can uninstall.

A good description of Mastodon

Which I found, of course, on Mastodon, in the form of a linked article.

The article in question is here: A Mastodon Migration From Bluesky Would Be Different

And the quote from that article, made by a user named Pallenberg:

I’m going back to the Fediverse. Back to Mastodon. To the nerds, the hobbyists, the idealists. The people who don’t talk about reach, but about relevance. To those who understand that decentralization isn’t nostalgic, it’s the future. That digital sovereignty isn’t a gimmick, it’s a survival strategy.

Yes, the Fediverse is sometimes clunky, nerdy, uncomfortable. But it belongs to us. It’s not over-regulated, not driven by capital, not buggered up by algorithms. It’s what social media once aspired to be: A network of people, not brands.

My nonsense is now even more convenient

I’ve finally added an RSS link on the sidebar of the site. It should work in your favourite (or even most-hated) RSS reader, making it easier than ever to keep up with whatever rolls around in my noggin and ends up on this site. It’s like the Year 2000 all over again!

RSS link

This coincides with me trying to find another RSS reader myself and maybe stick to it. It could happen!

Also, this seems like a good random post to update on how I was looking into other options for my blog after all the WordPress drama of the past year or so. It turns out that trying to break out of a 20-year habit is hard (I started this blog on WordPress in 2005). And I always found something I didn’t like in the alternatives. But I am still looking in a casual kind of way, part of it being driven by the curiosity of what else is out there now for blogging.

Do I miss software stores? Kind of!

A floppy disk. Kids, ask your parents! I graduated from 5.25″ floppies to DVDs over the years.

In the weird old days when you wanted software for your computer (because software for a portable phone was not a thing yet), you had to go to a physical store, buy a box with a disc in it, take it home, install the software, then hope (especially if it was a game) that the copy protection didn’t screw things up. If you didn’t want to insert the disc every time you ran a game like some kind of savage, you’d have to go to some skeevy-looking website and grab a no-CD fix.

Sometimes the no-CD fix worked flawlessly, sometimes it required the tech equivalent of arcane magic to work, sometimes it did nothing (or put malware on your PC).

I don’t look back fondly on any of the stuff I just described…except for the actual experience of looking for new software/games in stores. Back in the timeframe I’m describing, roughly the mid-1980s to the early 2000s, I would learn about new games through magazines like Computer Gaming World or PC Gamer. Or sometimes I would learn about them by actually finding the new games sitting on the shelves of a software store. It seems absolutely quaint now that this was how you could discover a game, but it’s true!

Some random memories:

  • Convincing a store clerk to sell me the Not For Sale version of the Commodore 64 game The Castles of Dr. Creep, circa 1984. A friend and I played it co-op in the store and I had to have it. I can’t recall what store I bought it from, other than somewhere just outside of Victoria.
  • Going to the Eaton’s store in Duncan and buying some generically-packaged versions of old Infocom games for cheap, back around 1985 (think Zork and a few others). To this day, I have no idea if these were legit copies. They were about $20 each, which was very cheap back then.
  • Buying OS/2 4.0 on floppy disk at Egghead Software. I don’t remember how many disks it came on, but more than a few! It was also surprisingly cheap, around $50 or $60 because IBM was trying to undercut Windows upgrade pricing. I never made much headway with it, and IBM abandoned OS/2 not too long after.
  • I want to say I bought my Windows 95 upgrade (on CD ROM!) at Computer City, where I worked during the launch of Windows 95 (at the Coquitlam store), but I’m not 100% sure. It seems like the logical place to have picked it up, and I know I grabbed it right away. I worked at Computer City for six weeks before quitting. The chain collapsed and vanished the following year.
  • Going to Super Software in Richmond and splurging one day by buying two games at the same time, each costing $50. I picked up Populous and SimCity, both for my Amiga 500. Probably the best 1-2 gaming purchase I ever made on physical media. Super software was also relatively gigantic and catered to every major platform back in the day: Apple II, IBM, Commodore 64 and Amiga, Atari ST, Atari 8-bit (and probably others I’m leaving out). It seems nutty how many different systems existed back then. There’s actually a 1989 commercial for Super Software on YouTube.
  • Buying the last copy of Age of Empires II (1999) at a Future Shop location on the day of release. It came in a gigantic box and had a relatively thick manual.
  • A few years later, I bought Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (2002), one of the first games to come in a mini box, with little to no documentation. Steam was only two years from launching and the end of physical media was nigh, though you’d be able to buy games on disc for some years after.

Yet more Linux hijinks (is it a sign? An omen?)

Last night, when I should have been getting ready for bed, I instead decided to fix my grub bootloader, which was displaying Linux Mint as Ubuntu. Easy to do in Linux Mint itself, as I already had previously installed a grub customizer.

I rebooted from Windows 11 and the grub menu came up, showing Ubuntu, as expected. I selected it and Mint loaded…but something was wrong. My second monitor stayed off and when the desktop loaded, it was locked to a resolution of 1920×1080 instead of the native 2560×1440.

Before diving into troubleshooting, I opted to just restart again first. This time, the grub menu correctly listed Linux Mint 22.2, which I was not expecting. But the one monitor issue persisted. The second monitor had just been working in Windows 11, so I didn’t think this was a hardware issue.

Again, I avoided troubleshooting (it was late, as mentioned, and I didn’t want to start going down rabbit holes), and instead went into the Driver Manager and did a very Windows thing in these types of situations–I updated the drivers, specifically the Nvidia drivers for my RTX 2070, sticking with the newer (and recommended) set. I rebooted again. The grub menu still said Linux Mint 22.2 and the monitors worked correctly when the desktop loaded. I had to tweak a few settings, like refresh rate, but everything was otherwise back to normal.

Then I went to bed, forgot about technology, and had a good sleep.

This morning, everything is still working as expected.

Hopefully this is the last of my PC drama for a while. I’m going to start speccing out a new system again. This one is closing in on seven years old, and I think it’s trying to tell me something, the computer equivalent of “duct tape can’t fix everything” or something like that.

I fixed the grub (again)

Penguin time again!

This has nothing to do with food preparation. If only it did.

As mentioned a few days back, I was playing around with a few Linux distros. Most of the well-established ones allow you to install them alongside other operating systems (usually Windows, but could be another Linux distro). One of the ones I tinkered with was Pop!_OS, which is Ubuntu-based, and I forgot it does not do this.

What it does is it declares itself the One True OS and the only way to access anything else is to mash the F8 key when booting up and choosing a boot partition, like some kind of caveman.

I’d had this happen once before (probably the last time I messed around with Pop!_OS) but couldn’t remember the details on how to fix it, so off I went to the interweb. I’m recording the process now for the inevitable time I do this yet again.

First, grub is actually GRUB and is an acronym for GRand Unified Bootloader and the version I’m using is GRUB 2. You can read a little more about it here.

By not supporting grub and doing its own thing, Pop!_OS would just boot automatically, never giving me the usual menu and 10-second (default) time to choose which OS to run after a reboot.

To get my grub working again, I had to repair the grub using these steps:

  1. Boot using a Linux Mint live CD (in this case, actually an ISO file living on a USB stick).
  2. Open the Terminal and install a program called Boot-Repair.
    • Command: sudo apt install boot-repair
  3. Update Boot-Repair, then run it.
  4. Important: Choose Advanced Options and make sure I select the right partitions that Mint is on (in this case, it has its own internal SSD) and copy and paste the necessary commands into the Terminal when prompted.
  5. Remove the USB stick and reboot.
NOTE: Since I still had a working Mint install, I could have mashed F8, booted into Mint and installed Boot-Repair and run it from my actual copy of the OS, rather than from the USB stick, but I only figured this out later, because my brain likes me doing things the hard way, at least the first time. More here.

It worked and I have my boot menu back. It was even nice enough to keep Pop!_OS listed after it was acting like a punk and trying to take over. The only hiccup is Boot-Repair sees Linux Mint as Ubuntu, as it is an Ubuntu derivative. Unless I actually install Ubuntu itself again, this isn’t an issue, though I can use a graphical grub editor to tweak the name if it really bothers me (it will probably eventually other me).

In the end, it was a hassle, but now I’m both better prepared and (hopefully) smarter about this for the future.

I’m still toying with making my next PC Linux-only, which would mean no need for grub at all. I feel I’m pretty close to that now, as I find working in Mint pleasant and Windows 11 regularly annoys me (to be fair, it has a bunch of stuff I really like, but it’s akin to a plate of yummy food where you have to keep picking out little rocks before you can enjoy it1Or whatever analogy you prefer. All analogies kind of suck.).

Pricing out larger tablets in 2025: Yikes.

If you want a “pro” tablet with a display above 11 inches, you are going to pay dearly, especially if you’re using Canadian currency.

The reason I’m checking is that my current iPad, a 12.9″ Pro model from 2020, is now five and a half years old and will eventually stop getting support from Apple. Apart from the battery not lasting as long, the iPad actually still works perfectly fine, so I’m not in a rush to replace it, I’m just preparing for the eventual possibility.

And here are the prices:

Apple 13″ iPad Pro with M5: $1,800 (this doesn’t include the pen(cil), which adds another $170. This is LOL pricing and is over $500 more than what I paid for the 2020 equivalent. Someone’s got to pay for the gaudy gold trinkets Tim Cook is using to curry favour with wannabe dictator Trump. This is also a good reason to never buy Apple again.

Wacom MovinkPad Pro 14: $1,260. This is actually pretty reasonable compared to Apple and even to Wacom itself. Also, it comes with a larger screen, and expandable storage, but no cameras. And you also get Wacom’s industry-best stylus. It runs full Android.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra 14.6″: $1,750. Only $50 less than Apple, but Samsung gives you a larger display, expandable storage and includes the S Pen.

If you go with the low-end tablets, like the base iPad or Galaxy S10 Lite, you get a smaller display around 11″ but only pay around $500. I moved to the larger iPad Pro specifically because I wanted the larger canvas, so these wouldn’t really appeal to me.

Weirdly, this means Wacom is likely to have the eventual replacement for my iPad Pro. By the time I’m in the market it will probably be $1,800.

Engadget: At least we’re not using AI (are we?)

A story in Engadget:

A new retro console! An Intellivision console, just like I had as a surly teen! It’s called the Intellivision Spirit.

But wait, there’s a YouTube link in the same article…

This seems to suggest the name is Sprint, not Spirit. And yes, it is the Intellivision Sprint, not Spirit1Bonus: How does a carpet get “cigarette-soaked”, exactly? And were the kids playing Intellivision back in 1982 chain smokers or something?.

The story was posted two days ago (as of this post I’m writing) and this curiously obvious gaffe has not been corrected. The first (of two) comments also points out the error.

But hey, it’s just a sloppily rewritten press release, rather than AI slop, so I guess we should be thankful for that.

Linux distro madness: Fedora, Ubuntu, Pop_OS and Bazzite

I have an external 2 TB Samsung SSD and wasn’t using it for anything in particular, so I loaded up some of the better-known or regarded Linux distros and tried each in turn to see how they fared.

Bazzite: Billed as the distro for gamers, this took a very long time to install and when it finally did, I kept getting odd error messages and quirky behaviour. I tried installing again and it booted to a blank desktop, with only the mouse pointer visible. Could be my system, but whatever it was, my experiment with Bazzite ended here.

Pop_OS: I installed the beta, which is using the also-beta Cosmic desktop environment (DE). It seemed fine, but I decided I didn’t want to mess around with a beta after all. I’ll try it again once it’s a regular release.

Fedora: The KDE version. The default wallpaper is weirdly unattractive, but it otherwise it was perfectly fine. No issues stood out, but overall it felt a bit bland. Not a bad choice, though.

Ubuntu: I have played around with Ubuntu before and the setup was fast and polished. I am unconvinced that Gnome is better than KDE for the desktop, it’s more just different. However, I got further with Ubuntu than all the others, so it was doing something right. I missed the desklets from Mint, but other than that, everything else seemed to work well.

I’ll keep Ubuntu for now and tinker with it some more, but none of these have convinced me to move on from Linux Mint just yet, partly because of the time I’ve invested in customizing Mint, and also in part because none of them do anything better enough to woo me away, even though there are bits and pieces I like about each distro (except Bazzite).

One plus: All distros now use the grub loader to make it easy to dual (or triple) boot between Windows and one or more Linux versions, so it’s relatively painless to try them out.