My current main desktop is a Dell Optiplex 9020. It has an Intel Core i5-4590, 16GB of DDR3 RAM @ 1600MHz, 256GB SATA SSD, and an RX 470 GPU with 4GB of GDDR5 VRAM. I put in a slightly better power supply so I could power the GPU. I have three hard drives in my main computer, 2x 2TB and 1x 1TB. I hope to upgrade my computer once I have extra money to play around with (including getting more HDDs). For now, it does everything I need it to do. I run whatever the latest version of Linux Mint is on my main PC.
My secondary desktop is strictly for gaming. It has an Intel Core i5-4690K, 16GB of DDR3 RAM @ 1600MHz, 1TB SATA SSD, and a GTX 980 GPU with 4GB of GDDR5 VRAM. The case is some cheap mATX case my mom got for a project. I repurposed it for my secondary PC. I built this PC for around $200 USD. It runs Windows 10 which is why I use it ONLY for gaming and nothing else. I do not like the fact that it runs Windows 10 but there are some games that just don't work on Linux that I sometimes play. I hate Windows 11 so I'll stick with Windows 10 (I also hate Windows 10 but it's less bad than 11).
I have a couple other desktop computers that I rarely use. One of them is an old Dell Dimension that I found in a trash pile on my relatives farm. I call it the "Trash Pile Dell". It has a Pentium D and 1GB of DDR2 RAM. It somehow works but it has no hard drive in it right now so it gets no use. I also have a Windows XP PC that I built for around $120 USD. I don't use it too often but it's fun to boot up and mess around with sometimes. I have some old games and programs installed.
The main laptop I use is a ThinkPad X280. I got it used on eBay for $100. It has a 7th gen i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, a 512GB NVMe SSD, USB-C charging, decent port selection, and good enough battery life. The screen is 1366x768, which isn't a deal breaker for me, but something worth noting. There's basically zero upgradability with this laptop. It lacks an ethernet port which is annoying. The X280 is pretty snappy thanks to the fairly modern processor and it can handle all the things I do on a laptop. I'd recommend getting the T480 instead of the X280 because it has a higher screen resolution, replaceable battery, and an ethernet port. This laptop is quiet most of the time. The fan only spins up if you have too much stuff open at once (several tabs in a couple different browsers + a couple other programs open). For the price, I'm happy with the ThinkPad X280. I have Linux Mint installed on my laptop.
I currently have a Google Pixel 7. I would not own this phone if I didn't get it for free. It's alright. I cannot flash my own custom rom on it due to the phone being OEM locked, which is annoying. It also doesn't have a headphone jack. I don't really use my phone enough to care about the cons. That said, I'd get some cheap android phone that I can put a custom rom onto if I didn't get this phone for free. If you're going to buy a Google Pixel, buy one that is OEM unlocked and buy the "a" series of Google Pixel phones. They are much cheaper without sacrificing anything.
Ashley Jones suggested I talk about my VCRs so I suppose I'll do that. My main VCR is a Funai VCR which was considered the cheapo brand in the 90s/2000s. Fun fact: Funai was responsible for releasing the last VCR ever in 2016. Anyway, the Funai VCR that I have does the job fine. I got it on eBay for around $30. I paid too much for it but it works perfectly at the very least. I use it to digitize VHS tapes (which, now that I think about it, I may write an article about). You can find a VCR at a thrift store for very cheap so avoid buying one on eBay if you can. I found a Panasonic VCR from 1993 at a local thrift store for just $5.99. It works great. I found a Sanyo VCR at the same time which was half the price of the Panasonic. It currently has a minor issue with it (thanks to Ashley Jones for informing me of what the issue is) which I'll get around to fixing one of these days. You can find a picture of my VCRs here.
I have a few memories of using VCRs when I was younger but it wasn't a huge part of my childhood. There are a few reasons why I like VHS over other formats. Movies released during the VHS era were actually good for the most part. Nowadays everything sucks. VHS is quite durable as well. Sure the quality degrades each decade but you don't have to worry about a little scratch like you do with DVD. Even if the tape is physically damaged it may still play fine. I was digitizing some old family videos and one tape was quite damaged. It still played fine despite the physical damage to it. VHS is very cheap because nobody cares about it anymore. Almost every tape I own was purchased for less than a dollar at various different thrift stores. I'm not one to care about quality too deeply so that's not much of an issue for me.
Typically I try to use FOSS software as much as possible. The software I use might not be perfect but it works for me.
For school I use the Brave browser. It's basically Google Chrome, just without all the Google spyware. I don't really have any issues with it as of now. For everything else I use Librewolf. I don't really have any major issues with it either but I wouldn't recommend it to normies. It's great for privacy-oriented people. Most web browsers suck but I've found that Librewolf and Brave are the most tolerable.
I've used several Linux distibutions the past few years. I've settled on Linux Mint. It "just works" for me right out of the box. I don't have to do any major customization after re-installing my OS. I started using Ubuntu in 2022, and Mint later that year. I did try out a few other distro's but kept coming back to Mint. Really any Linux distro is fine, just find one you like.
qBittorrent. I tried using Transmission. It sucks. qBittorrent is great.
I recently started using Mullvad VPN. It only costs ~$5 USD/mo. You can pay using cryptocurrency which is very nice (You even get a 10% discount for paying with crypto). You don't have to give them your email or anything, you're just given an account number when you create an account. If someone somehow finds your account number, you're in trouble. Mullvad is great but do your own research when choosing a VPN. I route pretty much all of my Internet traffic through a VPN. I trust some random VPN company more than an American ISP.
I just use VLC for almost everything. It does the job. Rhythmbox comes pre-installed with Linux Mint so I use that as my music player. It's pretty good.
HandBrake - Great piece of software that allows you to compress video files.
K3b - FOSS CD/DVD burning software. I have nothing else to say about K3b. It works great for burning stuff to optical media if you need to do that on Linux. Nuff' said.
Steam - Popular digital video game distribution service. Most games work great on Linux nowadays, although I'd avoid using Steam if possible. It is the best out of any other video game distribution service though.
OBS Studio - A FOSS way to record or stream. You've probably heard of OBS before so I'm not going to shill it too hard. It gets more and more bloated with each new update which is very annoying.
YT-DLP - A great tool primarily used to download YouTube videos, although a lot of other websites work with YT-DLP. One of the best pieces of software out there.
Stacher7 - A frontend GUI for YT-DLP. Easily allows you to choose which quality you want to download a video in, if you'd like to use cookies from your browser, etc. If the command line scares you, Stacher7 is fantastic.
Tor browser - Good for privacy schizos. Bad for seething feds.
LibreOffice - The FOSS alternative to Microsoft office.
Minetest - An open-source version of Minecraft. If you're a complete autist and you want to play Minecraft but you refuse to use software that isn't FOSS, this is a decent enough alternative.
Monero GUI Wallet - Monero (XMR) is truly a privacy-oriented cryptocurrency. The Monero GUI Wallet has plenty of features and even allows you to mine XMR directly from the wallet if you enable advanced features. You can also use the Monero GUI Wallet to send me Monero haha. That would be funny I think haha. You can find my Monero address here haha.
