Foster Hangdaan

I use Arch for personal and gaming, Debian for self hosting and hacking, Alpine for containerized cloud deployments.

Pretty much the same for me: bleeding-edge Arch for my workstation, rock-stable Debian for my server.

I maintain a rule that all files above the repo must be inside a folder, with one exception: a README file. Including the code folder, this typically results in no more than 5 folders; the project folder itself is kept organized and uncluttered.

They are the project’s subfolders (outside of the Git repo):

• code contains the source code; version-controlled with Git.
• wiki contains documentation and also version-controlled.
• designs contains GIMP, Inkscape or Krita save files.

This structure works for me since software projects involve more things than just the code, and you can add more subfolders according to your liking such as notes, pkgbuild (for Arch Linux), or releases.

I tend to follow this structure:

Projects
├── personal
│   └── project-name
│       ├── code
│       ├── designs
│       └── wiki
└── work
    └── project-name
        ├── code
        ├── designs
        └── wiki

I recommend Peer Calls as an alternative. Peer Calls uses peer-to-peer communication similar to Jami. You can check out Peer Calls on Github for more info.

So, in short, the things I really like about it:

• Simple to selfhost - Only one Docker container with no dependencies (database, storage, etc.) and you only need to forward HTTP/S traffic.
• Lightweight - You get voice and text chat; screen and file sharing. All of it directly P2P.
• Private - Selfhosting the signaling server will grant you control over the only step which requires a central server during the WebRTC connection process.
• No accounts - Just start using, no accounts are involved.

If you want a similar editor on Linux, then I suggest Kate. If Vim and Emacs didn’t exist, I’d be using Kate.

Notepad++ is a fabulous software program that had no complete alternatives on Linux. I used it for scripting, text manipulation, note taking, dumping and editing thoughts. Scintilla-based equivalents Geany, SciTE exist, but do not come close.

Really? No alternatives on Linux? Have you tried Emacs? I think Emacs with Org mode blows Notepad++ out of the water in all the uses you just mentioned.

Probably or probably not. The only way to find out is to try. I’ve installed RetroPie on a number of old laptops; the oldest one being a 2002 Toshiba laptop. I got to play GBA games just fine with it.

You can try turning it into a retro gaming station by installing RetroPie. Some have got it working on as little as a Pi Zero. Of course, that laptop won’t be able to run the more demanding emulators.