A desktop made for one
19 points by isene
19 points by isene
You appear to be using this site exclusively for self-promotion. 100% of your posts are things you’ve authored, and (from what I can see) 100% of your comments are on self-authored posts. From the “About” page:
Self-promotion: It's great to have authors participate in the community, but not to exploit it as a write-only tool for product announcements or driving traffic to their work. As a rule of thumb, self-promo should be less than a quarter of one's stories and comments.
As I said in my blog post, this is not about promoting my software. I truly hope no one will use it as I really don't want any users asking for any features or push any PRs. This is just about inspirations for others that can now follow their own paths - and for mustering discussions about what era we have entered when it comes to the original OSS/FS promise of more personal control. I have been an advocate of OSS/FS since 1999, Have started and run several companies just to advocate for that philosophy. I was on the board of FSF's sister organization in Norway (EFN) for 10 years. And I drummed up the only nerd protest march in Norway against the OOXML standard. For me this has always been about greater agency and to inspire people to gain more of it. SO, I hope this inspires and I hope nobody uses my software or give me any credit in this matter.
Self-promo in lobste.rs context just means boosting your own content, it doesn’t matter what the content is about.
I think you’re missing the point: you’re only posting about your stuff / to your site. It’s still self promotion. If it’s interesting enough, someone else will probably post it.
How would someone randomly come across their site if they don’t share it though…? I write three sites that I think are all very interesting in their respective fields but they’re never shared, lol. I also don’t link them.
That's why the self-promo rule isn't "No self-promo". Posting your own site is fine, once in a while. Posting and commenting only on your materials is not. If any Lobster has read any of the posts and found it desirable, then the blog is likely in a feed reader and will get posted by others.
The site has been shared, now it is time to move on and share other content.
I'm all for the rule, though it can be a bit of a catch 22: if I use lobste.rs as my main way of discovering interesting programming content, then I rarely have content to post outside my own.
(Note: I'm quite new to this community, so I don't yet understand very well its non-written rules and etiquette.)
There's no catch 22. It's not about posting other content. It's about engaging with other content, commenting, sharing a related piece of knowledge you have about some other content. Asking questions. If this is the only place you use to discover new content then all of these things should be feasible as you engage with new ideas
Yeah, as per my reply to the sibling comment, I misunderstood the policy. This definitely makes sense, and yes, then there's no catch 22.
If you read the about page carefully:
As a rule of thumb, self-promo should be less than a quarter of one's stories and comments.
it means that your comments on other people's posts count as "not self-promo" also. So quality participation in discussions about posts you didn't author counts, even if the top level links you post are more likely to be your own writings.
Ah, I remember reading this, but I think I interpreted it as "max 1/4 of your stories self-promo, max 1/4 of your comments on self-promo stories". But your interpretation definitely makes more sense.
How would someone randomly come across their site if they don’t share it though…?
These things seem to just randomly happen. Years ago someone somehow found my projects and posted them on HN and even on lobsters. No idea how that happened.
How is this OSS/FS promise if you have just hard locked yourself into using an insanely big subscription-based closed source software (claude)? You sure that it's liberating?
I can’t tell if you’re doing the “I’m not touching you”-style rules-lawyering on purpose, and I’m not sure why your OSS bonafides are relevant. I don’t think I’m going to engage further.
I find it ironic how you are preaching about OSS/FS promise while being subscribed to a closed code software that is so expensive that very few companies on Earth can create on that scale.
What I am seeing is that you have created a liability for yourself, and the only thing you have liberated yourself from is community:
It’s not an invitation to use my software. Honestly, please don’t
Well make sure that claude is always around, cheap enough and its owners always allow you to use it.
Well, before I was relying on specific people (sometimes a small community, sometimes large) for them to maintain the software I use. And it happened more than a few times that the project died off, the author(s) abandoned it, etc. While in theory I could learn Haskell and pick up the gauntlet. But in practice, nope. It's not that different. I still have the source and I can still learn Rust, or I could have another AI solution pick up where Claude left off, etc. I'm very pragmatic on this specific point. Then again, I am thrilled with my new desktop :)
Regardless of tooling, making software for a userbase of one can be a lifelong pleasure.
I think your approach to making your own tools is fun. This is why I like taking my notes either in a simple markdown file in micro or hand written. I can control and continuously update the formatting based one my needs or vibes.
It’s been a crazy few weeks guiding Claude Code inbetween all the other stuff I’m doing in life. I direct CC, it works while I do other stuff. I get a second or few in between tasks, and I respond. Then off it goes adding features or hunting bugs.
I really don’t like this mindset. I don’t agree that being so “busy” that you vibe code in the background to make your own tools is a good thing and this mindset takes the fun out of coding and making your own tools. Also, being busy while feeling the need to vibe code in the background seems like LinkedIn level of “grind-set.”
I enjoyed the read. I wonder if we are about to also see personal Linux distros coming along where people just start of Linux From Scratch and just end up their own flavor of linux distro.
I do have to wonder what are your thoughts about the security stance of the whole thing? Clearly your stack is now custom enough and too much of a hassle for anyone to target specifically - which is good. But what about the thought of "maybe Claude did some terrible choice here"? Is it nagging you?
Also..why assembly?
It's a desktop on 26.04 with proper security allaround. What I run as a desktop on X doesn't matter that much security wise.
A for Why asm: Originally because I wanted to see if it was possible. Then the benefits; no libc, pure syscalls, minimum memory footprint and no wasted CPU cycles (cold paths all around) - and thence the whole thing fits snuggly into the CC context window, making the CC work quite smooth.
Nice to see that someone finds a use for these tools. Does it give you good improvements on resource usage as well? I wonder why don't the makers of these tools do this instead of wasting trillions in bullshit. The chinese showed that there was space to improve already
So far my laptop is down from an average of 9W drain to around 5-6W, giving me some 3.5h extra battery time. And it's snappier than anything I've ever used.
What were you running to get that 9W drain?
Some Ruby and Python scripts to furnish my conky, very customized i3, customized kitty w/kittens, extended mutt with scripts, RTFM, and more. Now I have all that extended functionality that I have tweaked for 20+years all in asm and Rust.
This was a great read, thanks so much for sharing! Extremely Personal Software, as someone called it, might be the next phase of self-hosting. Very exciting. I've built my own email client, fully Markdown-compatible (sending and reading) and composed in neovim, with the workflow (screener, GTD) I like. It's such a joy to use.
I did a follow-up with real numbers to address some of the questions here (and on the HN thread): https://isene.org/2026/05/Audience-of-One-Numbers.html
I will answer the most relevant critique (on the FS/OSS point) in a separate blog post later.