Recommendations you can check.
Software engineer and engineering leader at Canonical, working on Ubuntu; writes about his homelab and tooling at jnsgr.uk.
13 things
TailscaleService Tailscale
In 2021 I started using Tailscale in place of my hand-rolled Wireguard setup, and I haven’t looked back. It has to be one of my favourite pieces of technology ever.
His /uses page, covering hardware, homelab and the software he runs day to day.
2026-08-27·jnsgr.uk ↗
YubiKeyHardware Yubico
One of my favourite things about the Yubikey is their ability to store TOTP codes.
His /uses page, covering hardware, homelab and the software he runs day to day.
2026-08-27·jnsgr.uk ↗
CatppuccinSoftware Catppuccin
Absolutely everything is themed with Catppuccin Macchiato. Not only do I love the theme, but I love how pervasive it is across all the apps/tools I use
His /uses page, covering hardware, homelab and the software he runs day to day.
2026-08-27·jnsgr.uk ↗
GhosttySoftware Mitchell Hashimoto
I moved from Alacritty to Ghostty, which has been absolutely excellent. It’s wicked fast, it has my favourite colour scheme built in, and I just love the way @mitchellh has set the project up for success in the long term. It also fits in nicely with my minimally configured applications, with excellent defaults out of the box.
A long post on moving his daily driver from NixOS back to Ubuntu, listing the tools he settled on.
2025-06-24·jnsgr.uk ↗
HelixSoftware
I’ve been really impressed - Helix is fast, the default features are great and I don’t anticipate returning to vim.
A long post on moving his daily driver from NixOS back to Ubuntu, listing the tools he settled on.
2025-06-24·jnsgr.uk ↗
TactileSoftware
I took inspiration from Omakub, which is where I discovered Tactile - a GNOME extension for tiling windows to a custom on-screen grid using the keyboard. I’ve found this to be invaluable, and easily the best window management experience for GNOME.
A long post on moving his daily driver from NixOS back to Ubuntu, listing the tools he settled on.
2025-06-24·jnsgr.uk ↗
RoastguideSoftware
Finally, I’d like to thank the authors of Roastguide for the amazing work they’ve done on their app, the attention they pay to their community on Discord
A write-up of Brewlog, the coffee-logging app he built with coding agents.
2026-03-10·jnsgr.uk ↗
ZellijSoftware
Finally: tmux, which I had been happily using for many years, but slowly collecting configuration for. I decided to give Zellij a try, and haven’t looked back.
A long post on moving his daily driver from NixOS back to Ubuntu, listing the tools he settled on.
2025-06-24·jnsgr.uk ↗
Space BarSoftware
I’ve grown to like Space Bar - it provides desktop workspaces akin to those in Sway/Hyprland which enabled me to use the muscle memory I’d developed over years.
A long post on moving his daily driver from NixOS back to Ubuntu, listing the tools he settled on.
2025-06-24·jnsgr.uk ↗
LXDSoftware Canonical
Canonical’s LXD works out-of-the-box on Ubuntu, and is a great way to sandbox an agent into a disposable environment where the blast radius is limited should the agent make a mistake.
A guide to sandboxing AI coding agents on Ubuntu. He works at Canonical, which makes LXD.
2026-01-20·jnsgr.uk ↗
SyncthingSoftware Syncthing
I switched to using Syncthing to avoid the overhead of running a server instance, which works particularly well when combined with Tailscale.
His /uses page, covering hardware, homelab and the software he runs day to day.
2026-08-27·jnsgr.uk ↗
StarshipSoftware
I switched to zsh around 2013 and have used it every day since: starting with the infamous Oh My Zsh, powerlevel9k, and subsequently powerlevel10k, and finally settling on Starship with a couple of zsh plugins such as zsh-autosuggestions and zsh-syntax-highlighting.
A long post on moving his daily driver from NixOS back to Ubuntu, listing the tools he settled on.
2025-06-24·jnsgr.uk ↗
NextcloudSoftware Nextcloud
After having run a Nextcloud server for several years on a Droplet (using docker-compose), I ultimately realised that I was only using the file syncing capability, and wasn’t moving much data even then.
His /uses page, covering hardware, homelab and the software he runs day to day.
2026-08-27·jnsgr.uk ↗
Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.
The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
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