My last list is from January 2021. Back then I was on Gentoo with bspwm, Polybar and Alacritty, and wrote most code in JetBrains IDEs. A lot changed since then, so here is the 2026 version.
Same rules as last time: it is an incomplete list, Open Source where possible, but in the end the tool that does the job best wins. And yes, a whole new category made it in this time: AI.
All configs are in my dotfiles. I recently cleaned them up and switched to a bare git repo for managing them, the old ones are still in dotfiles-old.
Linux Distributions
NixOS
My main distro in 2026. Once you have your whole machine in a flake, it is really hard to go back. Rollbacks, the same setup on every machine and no more "what did I change in /etc three months ago". The learning curve is steep and the Nix language is... special, but imho worth it. My config is in nixos-config.
Gentoo
My (secondary) main distro for ages, and I still love it. If I want full control over every USE flag and compile option, nothing beats Gentoo. Portage and kernel configs are in gentoo-config.
CachyOS / Arch Linux
Arch with optimized packages and good defaults. Runs on some older notebooks and on my podman / kubernetes / docker hosts.
Bluefin
My secondary distro in 2025, with sway and some secureblue tweaks. Bluefin pushes VS Code, I use Neovim, but I really like the spirit of an immutable, image based desktop.
Proxmox VE
The base of my homelab. VMs and LXC containers with a proper web UI, ZFS, snapshots and backups built in. Most of my test machines, the occasional Windows VM and whatever service I want to try out run there. Boring in the best way: I set it up once and it just runs.
Other servers
FreeBSD for some home servers, Arch on my Hetzner box, Debian / Alpine as base images for containers.
Window Manager
sway(fx)
My main WM in 2026. After a year of mostly Hyprland I went back to manual tiling, I just missed the straightforward i3 way of doing things. SwayFX adds some eye candy like rounded corners and blur on top of sway. I usually start it straight from a tty, no display manager.
Hyprland
Was my main WM for most of 2025. Looks amazing, but I missed simple tiling sometimes. Maybe I go back at some point.
niri
The one I am playing with right now. A scrollable tiling compositor: windows sit in columns on an endless strip and you scroll through them. Sounds weird, works surprisingly well on a big monitor.
The X11 veterans
xmonad is still my favorite X11 tiling WM, I used it for years. qtile I love in so many ways but never fully switched to it. bspwm and i3-gaps came before that. Configs for all of them are still in the dotfiles.
DankMaterialShell
Bar, launcher, notifications and lock screen in one shell. On niri and Hyprland it replaces my old waybar / mako / swaylock mix. On sway I still like bumblebee-status for its simplicity, and dunst is still my favorite notification daemon.
Terminal and Shell
kitty
My default terminal, followed by alacritty, urxvt and st (yes, still in that order). I am also trying Ghostty at the moment, fast and with sane defaults.
zsh
I moved back to zsh in 2026 after using fish for the last years. The new setup:
- sheldon as plugin manager (fast, one TOML file)
- starship as prompt
- atuin for shell history, searchable and synced
- fzf with fzf-tab, zsh-autosuggestions and fast-syntax-highlighting
- zoxide replacing
cd - fnm for Node versions, switching automatically per project
Small helpers
eza instead of ls, bat instead of cat, ripgrep, btop, yazi as terminal file manager, tmux on servers, duf, bandwhich and glances when something is slow and I want to know why.
Editors and IDEs
Neovim
My daily driver since 2022. Way fewer plugins than in my old vim days, LSP does most of the heavy lifting now.
Zed
Playing around with it in 2026. Really fast and it has a native vim mode, so it does not feel like switching editors.
JetBrains IDEs
PyCharm, IntelliJ IDEA, PhpStorm, WebStorm. For certain projects and languages I still prefer them, the code intelligence is just better.
And the rest
VS Code I have not started in a long time. Doom Emacs was my main IDE back in the 2010s, the alias is still in my zshrc.
AI and LLMs
The biggest change in the last years. I work with LLMs every day, for code, infrastructure and content.
opencode
My go-to client. An Open Source coding agent for the terminal that works with basically every model, local or cloud.
llama.cpp and LM Studio
For local LLMs on my AMD GPU with ROCm. llama.cpp for scripting and serving, LM Studio to quickly try new models. Not as good as the big ones, but great for private data and for playing around.
Claude Code and Codex
When I use proprietary solutions, mostly Claude. For agentic coding and server work it is really good, this blog was migrated from Grav to a static site with it (see my hosting.de API post). Codex is way cheaper, and good enough for a lot of tasks.
Tried, not convinced (yet)
Antigravity is not there yet. Cursor... mhm, so slow.
Development
- Docker and podman, LXC and QEMU / virt-manager for VMs
- Node.js with pnpm and bun, Go, Rust and Flutter (via fvm)
- Astro for websites (this blog runs on it), Vue and Fastify for apps
- MongoDB is still my default database, Compass as GUI, MariaDB where needed
- Playwright for end-to-end tests and screenshots
- Ansible for the servers that do not run Nix
Browser
Firefox, Chromium and Vivaldi, in that order. Chromium still wins when I have way too many tabs open for days.
Other stuff
- grim + slurp for screenshots on Wayland, maim on X11
- wayland-ocr, a small helper script to OCR whatever I select on screen
- rofi / wofi as launcher outside of DankMaterialShell
- CopyQ as clipboard manager
- OBS Studio for recordings
- QMK for my keyboard firmware
- Bambu Studio for my 3D printer
- Fonts: Hack Nerd Font, DejaVu Sans Mono and Font Awesome, nothing changed there
Conclusion
Looking back at the 2021 list, the base is still the same: Linux, a tiling window manager, zsh and a fast terminal. Some things will probably never change.
The AI section is the one that would have looked like science fiction in 2021. I use these tools every day and they are impressive. But honestly, I also miss the times when it was just me, vim and a problem to solve, and I knew every line because I wrote it myself. Mixed feelings, let's see where this goes.
If you think I am missing a great tool, let me know.