Uses

I really enjoy reading about what other people use, whether it's technology-related or not. It gives me ideas and helps me discover new things. With that in mind, I've decided to write about the things that I use. Maybe it'll be useful to someone. Check more /uses pages at https://uses.tech/.

The hardware

🖥️ Desktop
⌨️ Peripherals
💻 Laptop
☎️ Smartphone
📖 Tablet
📚 E-Reader
⌚ Smartwatch
🎧 Headphones
🎮 Gaming
🖨️ 3D Printer
🏠 Home Automation
☁️ Servers

🖥️ Desktop

I still use a custom-made desktop that I've built. It has an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X with 32GB of RAM Kingston HyperX Fury RGB 32GB DDR4 3200Mhz PC-25600, and a PowerColor Red Devil AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT 12GB GDDR6, which finally retired the MSI GTX 970 4GB that carried me through the years when a GPU cost scalper prices. Storage is 4 Kingston 480GB A400 SSDs and 1 SSD M.2 2280 Kingston A2000 500GB 3D TLC NVMe. All inside a beautiful black Fractal Design Define R5. I'm still using the amazing AOC CU34G2X/BK 34" curved gaming monitor with 144 Hz, which was a great upgrade. The computer feels as snappy as ever.

⌨️ Peripherals

I'm using a Keychron V3 Max wireless mechanical keyboard. It has one advantage over my previous Keychron K2, which is the 2.4 GHz wireless connection, and one disadvantage, the south-facing LEDs. Also, a new mouse! A Logitech G502 X Plus Lightspeed Wireless. It's still by far the best mouse I've ever used. I was looking for a wireless mouse that resembled my old favorite, the Logitech G500, and this is it, without the wires! My music and gaming audio comes through the HyperX Cloud Flight headset. It's fantastic. Impressive sound, good price. The microphone is a bit worse than my previous HyperX Cloud Core, but that doesn't mean that it's bad. Just different.

Logitech G502 X Plus Lightspeed Wireless

HyperX Cloud Flight (with custom earpads)

💻 Laptop

I still don't have a personal laptop. For work I use a Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 6 AMD, running Fedora 44.

☎️ Smartphone

My mobile computer. After years on the OnePlus 5T I finally replaced it with a Google Pixel 9. The 5T was one of the best phones I've ever bought and I recommended it long past the point where that was reasonable, but the battery eventually made the decision for me.

📖 Tablet

I use an iPad 9.7″ from 2018 which I bought at a very good price, but it was an impulse buy. These days it does exactly one job: coloring games with the Apple Pencil 1st Generation, which was another impulse buy. Not what I had in mind for either of them, but the battery still lasts forever and it's good at it.

I also have a TCL NXTPAPER 11, which I use as my Home Assistant interface. The matte screen makes it easy on the eyes for something that's on display all day.

📚 E-Reader

I also have a basic Kindle. No colour screen, no stylus, no apps worth speaking of. It holds books and the battery lasts weeks, which is all I ask of it. Mostly technical books, and it gets the most use during the holidays.

⌚ Smartwatch

I use a Samsung Galaxy Watch 7, which replaced my Xiaomi Amazfit Bip. It does all the basics — heartbeat, step counter, calories, the time and the weather — and quite a lot more that I probably don't need.

🎧 Headphones

I only use in-ear headphones when I'm in the gym. My choice lies with the Soundcore Space A40, which replaced the Xiaomi Redmi Airdots. Lightweight, no wires, good battery, good sound, and active noise cancelling that's well beyond what I paid for.

🎮 Gaming

Away from the desktop, I have a Steam Deck (the 64GB model) for handheld gaming and a Meta Quest 3S for VR.

On the Quest I mostly play Beat Saber, which is a very fun game and a decent workout, Half-Life: Alyx, the best VR game ever made, and Batman: Arkham Shadow. The Steam Deck is my Balatro machine, and gets used for RPGs the rest of the time.

🖨️ 3D Printer

I have a Sovol SV06, an open source printer with a direct drive extruder and automatic bed levelling. It's mostly there to play around with, but it earns its keep printing small things for the home automation setup and for keeping the house organized.

🏠 Home Automation

I'm using two Google Minis, a Google Home and a Nest Hub. I just use them to add things to my shopping list, listen to music, and ask about my day (calendar, traffic). Another impulse buy.
The Google TV Streamer has taken over from the Chromecast with Google TV, which had already replaced my TV STB and both my remotes. It can control the TV as well as unify all my streaming services on one device, and I'm loving it.

The rest runs on Home Assistant, with a good number of sensors spread around the house — temperature, humidity, vibration, door contacts and a few others. I'm not going to list them all here, because they deserve a post of their own, someday™.

☁️ Servers

I have five machines across three physical locations, and every one of them runs Proxmox.

At home there's a three-node Proxmox cluster: two GMKtec NucBox G3 Plus (Intel N150) and one Firebat T8 Pro Plus (Intel N100). They replaced the Optiplex 3040 SFF that did the job on its own for years. The cluster runs Home Assistant, Pi-hole, this very website, and a good number of other containers with the services I actually use day to day. I'll detail those on a separate page, someday™.

At a second location is an HP ProLiant DL180 G6, which replaced my old Dell Poweredge C6100. It runs Proxmox with a single VM dedicated to BackupPC, handling my file-level backups.

At a third location is an HP Microserver G7 N54L running Proxmox Backup Server for full VM backups.

Two GMKtec NucBox G3 Plus and one Firebat T8 Pro Plus

The software

📇 Operating Systems
💾 Software
🌐 Online Presence

📇 Operating Systems

I'm now using Linux 90% of the time and Windows 10%. My distro of choice for desktop usage is Fedora, currently 44. On my personal desktop, I also dual boot Windows 11 on its own dedicated hard drive because I like to play some games every now and then. On my virtual machines or other servers I run Debian 13. Rock-solid.

💾 Software

I prefer using FOSS when possible, but sometimes proprietary software is the right tool for the job. I use:

With this toolset, I can do 99% of my job. I'll write a bit more about each one, someday™.

🌐 Online Presence

I finally left Netflix. I'm keeping Spotify though. It's awesome to have all the music I can think of on all my devices. I'm always listening to music. I get almost all my games on Steam and keep myself organized with Google Calendar and Google Keep. My end goal is to replace them all with self-hosted services.

Do you have any questions or suggestions? Send me an email at diogo [at] diogoferreira [dot] pt or X!

This page is a constant work in progress.
It was last updated on 07/08/2026.