When I made the move from Windows to Linux, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I knew I was moving into a whole new ecosystem, and I had an idea as to what I wanted to test out, but other than that, I had no idea what I was getting into. So, I just sort of jumped in and gave Linux a try.

Self-hosted open-source tools have replaced a bunch of cloud-based platforms for my productivity needs. Take Microsoft 365, for example. I’d rather not spend extra bucks every month just to edit documents when there’s a battalion of tools available in the FOSS ecosystem. Like most tinkerers, I’d initially chosen a local LibreOffice instance as my Microsoft 365 replacement. But as the devices in my tinkering arsenal increased, I switched to a Docker-based LibreOffice Online instance to access my spreadsheets, presentation slides, and text documents.

For a long time, I treated my Raspberry Pi setup like the ideal home lab foundation. One board handled DNS, another ran a few Docker containers, and a third picked up whatever task I didn’t want to disturb elsewhere. I devoted a fourth to Jellyfin media streaming. It felt tidy in theory, and there was definitely some charm in seeing several tiny machines humming along together. But after living with that setup for a while, I started noticing that the cluster was giving me more overhead than payoff.

For the longest time, Windows users never really had a lot of choices when it came to their file manager. Sure, there have been a couple of niche file managers that programmers and power users have sworn by for a couple of decades now, but today, every kind of user is spoilt for choice.

When we talk about how far Linux has come with PC gaming, we often cover the performance and compatibility aspects. After all, it's easy to get excited when CachyOS begins taking wins versus Windows 11 on some big titles. However, there are still issues with getting mods to work with your games on Linux, especially if they require DLLs.

When I grabbed the first-generation Amazon Echo Plus for $180, I planned to make it my smart home hub. It handled my first-generation Philips Hue smart bulbs perfectly for a year. Then it just stopped. No automation worked. Routines quit mid-cycle. Online forums suggested looking into the “connectivity issues” and simply pointed to buying the latest model.

When most people talk about smart TVs, the bulk of the attention is given to screen sizes, panel tech, variable refresh rates, and user interfaces, and not without reason. If you have a large-screen OLED TV with a variable 144Hz refresh rate and fast software, you're almost all the way there. That said, some features fly under the radar. Most people either don't know about them or think they're not worth their time. The connectivity options, HDMI ports, and automated gaming features of your smart TV are also essential to creating a seamless and satisfying experience. It's high time you stopped ignoring these features and made full use of them to get the most out of your smart TV.

For me, one of the most interesting ways of exploring retro tech is imagining if the sequence of inventions was different than what we experienced in real life. For instance, what if we managed to figure out how to get LLMs like Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini up and running before we went through the Y2K bug scare?

When I’m deep in research, I usually have twenty tabs open. After a while, the favicons disappear and Chrome leaves me with a row of anonymous gray slivers. This was my daily frustration with Chrome for years. Whether I was working on a 32-inch Windows desktop or trying to stay productive on a 14-inch MacBook Pro, the horizontal tab bar remained the ultimate bottleneck.

The usefulness of most AI tools is questionable, but some of this emerging tech actually comes in handy. Claude Code is one of those. I have been using it for months, and it still surprises me with how it pulls off certain tasks. The problem is that it runs out of credits far too quickly, which means you end up waiting more than you’d like. And since it’s closed source, you can’t really trust what’s going on underneath (although the recent source code leak did reveal a few interesting things).

Over the years, I’ve built (and disassembled) dozens of projects with my Raspberry Pi, but a retro gaming machine has got to be one of my favorites. Sure, this tiny single-board computer may not have enough processing capabilities to emulate PlayStation 2 and newer consoles, but it’s great at handling games designed for ancient gaming machines and slightly modern-ish systems.

Let’s be honest, we’ve all been here. You had that one laptop that could run every task comfortably and just cruise through anything you threw at it. After a while, you open a few tabs, maybe Spotify in the background, maybe Discord, maybe a lightweight game you know, and suddenly the fans sound like they’re trying to take off. The laptop still works, but it doesn’t feel capable anymore. Just tired.