Logs

Mostly microblogging

I bought the Google Pixel 9 Pro

My initial impression with the Pixel 9 Pro

Jun 7, 2025

#pixel

So, I've been eyeing a new phone for a while now, and the Google Pixel line particularly caught my eye. I like the pure Android experience they offer, which I used to try when flashing custom ROMs on my old phone. And the new Android 16 beta design is noticeably slicker than the old version. They have a very great camera, which is excellent, as I'm somewhat into photography (though my photography is the worst, and I rarely take photos as of now). And the best part is their design; I really love it. The phone feels premium in hand. Though, I'm scared of damaging it, so I slapped a case on it, which makes it less of a beauty.

The downside is that the software does have less customization. Not being able to hide the gesture hint is a minor annoyance, but I do find it acceptable. One thing unexpected to me was the notch; I didn't know the front camera was that big, so the notch looked large and hideous at first. Inferior performance compared to other flagships was expected when I considered buying it. In my usage, games like CODM with high graphics have no noticeable lag. But boy, I do miss fast charge. The battery usage is okay; the stats point out that mostly the mobile internet connection is eating all the battery. I did hear that Pixels have bad reception, but I don't have any issues regarding this. Oh, another thing: this phone heats quite warm during gaming, but the other day, I was doing a video call with mobile internet. After ending and grabbing my phone, it was much hotter than after playing a game. I knew that camera usage plus mobile internet would consume battery, but little did I know they're also that resource intensive.

Initially, when I bought this phone, my intention was to install GrapheneOS on it. However, I found out that Google Pay wouldn't work properly in that environment. And the banking compatibility list on PrivSec didn't mention my main banking app, so I was afraid it wouldn't work at all. So yeah, for the time being, I'll be using the built-in software. Maybe in the future, when I buy a smartwatch with Google Pay support, I'll consider making the switch.

In the end, this was a really expensive purchase that I wouldn't normally do. But I was on a spur and had some lucky side gigs that allowed me to afford it on my own, so I just went for it. I didn't regret it though.

My Current Setup

NixOS, KDE and text editor

Jan 7, 2025

#nixos

#Aren't You Back to Void Linux?

Yeah, I was. However, one of my professors decided to make us take online tests using Safe Exam Browser. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support Linux or even running in a VM. So, I had to dual-boot Windows.

In the process of setting that up, I accidentally messed up my Void partition. Since it was the final term, I didn’t want to go through the hassle of setting everything up again. Luckily, I still had my NixOS configuration.

I booted up a NixOS live image, cloned my config, and—bam!—I had a fully working setup again. It was the first time I experienced the magic of NixOS's reproducibility. It felt like a miracle and solidified my appreciation for NixOS.

#Okay, NixOS... What Else?

At the time, my config was using Hyprland. It worked fine, except for a few quirks here and there. Then, I came across Niri, a scrollable-tiling compositor. I used it for a couple of weeks and honestly preferred its scrollable approach over traditional tiling.

However, being a window manager, it still had its occasional quirks. I realized I still had a soft spot for KDE.

So, I switched back to KDE, using the Karousel script. While it’s not quite comparable to a native tiling experience, it’s good enough for my needs. KDE also comes with many integrations that window managers either lack or are difficult to configure otherwise.

The only downside is that I currently manage my KDE configuration manually. There’s experimental support for configuring KDE with Home Manager, but it’s not mature enough, and I haven’t had the time to dive into it yet.

#What About the Rest?

Most of my old configuration remains unchanged, except for my code editor.

I still use and prefer Helix. However, I’ve been looking for an AI-powered coding assistant, which Helix doesn’t support. This led me down a rabbit hole, spending considerable time tinkering with Neovim and Emacs. Unfortunately, neither worked out for me.

This afternoon, I decided to give Zed editor another shot. It has Vim emulation and now includes free access to the Claude 3.5 Sonnet model. Its other features seem solid as well. That said, I still prefer Helix’s selection approach over Vim’s.

I guess I’ll need to use Zed for a while to see how it pans out.

Back to Void Linux

My journey back to Void Linux

Nov 20, 2024

A while ago, I decided to take the plunge and try NixOS. Everyone warned me about the “steep learning curve,” but honestly, the installation and setup weren’t that bad. Switching to NixOS meant writing configs manually, which inspired me to try tiling window managers and experiment with custom setups. After some time, I had a setup I really liked. For the first time, I thought, Hey, maybe I’ll stop distro-hopping! NixOS had everything I loved.

#The Mysterious Case of Missing Storage

Fast forward a few months, I got into a couple of private trackers (shhh), and before I knew it, I’d downloaded a ton of movies and games. Then came the dreaded “low disk space” notification. My laptop has 500GB of storage, and I knew I’d downloaded over 100GB of stuff, but where did the rest go?

I fired up Filelight to investigate, and there it was—the Nix store, sitting smugly, taking over 100GB. Just to rub it in, it was hoarding multiple versions of JetBrains IDEs, each eating up about 5GB. I already had auto garbage collection set up, but it clearly wasn’t doing enough. I manually ran garbage collection, which freed up a whopping… 10GB. Great, but still not enough. Even after deleting all the old generations, there were still two or three versions of the IDEs hanging around like uninvited guests.

Look, I get it. This is how Nix works—it’s by design. But at that moment, all I could think was, Why does it have to eat so much space?! And here’s the thing: I’m not planning to upgrade my SSD anytime soon. Storage is tight, and I needed a distro that didn’t treat disk space like it’s infinite.

#Falling for OpenBSD (and Failing)

One fine day, while scrolling through Reddit, I came across a post on r/unixporn featuring an OpenBSD rice. It was beautiful—minimal, clean, and just perfect. The user was running cwm, OpenBSD’s default window manager. I thought, If I just add a few effects, I can probably make my setup look like this. But then another thought hit me: Why not try OpenBSD?

Now, I’d heard about BSD’s issues with laptop support, but I was feeling adventurous (or reckless, depending on how you see it). Without checking compatibility, I went ahead and installed OpenBSD. What could possibly go wrong? After all, Linux had always worked fine for me.

Well, lesson learned: OpenBSD isn’t Linux. During installation, I found out my laptop didn’t have a working Wi-Fi driver. No problem, I thought—I’ll just use USB tethering. Even that required some tinkering, but I got through it. The tethering speed was painfully slow, but I held on to the hope that everything would magically work after the base system was installed. Spoiler: It didn’t.

After spending hours setting up the system and installing basic software, I finally looked into the Wi-Fi driver issue. That’s when reality hit me—there was no driver for my laptop. None. Nada. At midnight, exhausted and defeated, I called it quits.

#Crawling Back to Linux

Back to Linux it was. I initially planned to stick with NixOS, but the whole storage situation left a bad taste in my mouth. Between its space-hungry nature and the fact that I wasn’t planning to upgrade my SSD anytime soon, I decided to go with Void Linux instead. I’d used Void before—it was stable and didn’t cause me any trouble.

The first thing I wanted was Hyprland, but surprise! It wasn’t in Void’s official repos. Turns out, it’s a philosophical thing. I’d heard about the Hyprland drama and all the criticisms of its lead developer, but honestly, I didn’t care. What I did care about was trying something that was in the repos.

I gave i3, awesome, and bspwm a shot, but configuring them to match my old setup turned out to be way harder than expected. Eventually, I gave up and added a third-party repo to install Hyprland. I copied over my old configs, but things didn’t quite work as before—fonts were missing, cursors weren’t behaving, and I was just too tired to troubleshoot.

#Settling with KDE

At that point, I decided to stop fighting and just install KDE. I’ve used KDE in the past, and it’s a solid choice—beautiful, feature-packed, and super customizable. But after using tiling window managers for so long, the lack of tiling felt weird.

That’s when I discovered Krohnkite, a KWin script that adds tiling support to KDE. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough. So here I am, back on Void Linux, running KDE with Krohnkite. It’s not exactly what I had before, but it works, and honestly, I’m just happy to have a functional setup again.

For now, I’m staying put—probably. Let’s see how long this lasts!