The perfect equipment set

2026-07-28 19:30

People often ask me what I actually use, day to day, to do the things I write about here. The honest answer is: not much. Four devices, a couple of cables, and a strong opinion about each one. This is that list, and why each item earns its place.

I am not interested in the "latest and greatest". I am interested in a set that fits together, lasts, and does not quietly send my life to three different data brokers. So here it is, my perfect equipment set.

A small, efficient laptop

This is the centre of everything. A 13 or 14 inch laptop, full HD, matte screen. 16 GB of RAM, because less becomes painful the day you open one tab too many. 256 GB SSD, because I do not store my life on a laptop, that is what the server is for. A fast enough CPU, nothing fancy, just one that does not make the fan scream when I open a terminal. And a basic Linux distribution, Debian or Arch, something I understand end to end.

Why this and not a bigger, more powerful machine? Because the point of a laptop is to move with you. A 13/14" fits in a small bag, on a café table, on the lap in a train. The matte screen matters more than people think: glare is a tax you pay every time you open the lid. 16 GB is the sweet spot where the machine stops being the bottleneck and you start being it. 256 GB forces honesty, you keep what you need and you let go of the rest.

And Linux, of course. Not for the ideology first, though the ideology is real. For the control. I know what runs on my machine. I can strip it down, I can keep it for years, I can fix it when it breaks. A basic Debian or a clean Arch install is a small, knowable system. That is the whole pitch.

An ungooglized Android tablet

A tablet, running LineageOS or a similar de-Googled build. No Google account, no Play Services phoning home, no app store that tracks what I read and when.

What is it for? Reading, mostly. Long articles, Gemini capsules, a bit of video when I am tired. The couch device, the train device, the "I do not want to sit at the desk anymore" device. A tablet is the right shape for that, and the wrong shape for almost anything else, which is exactly why I like it.

De-Googling it is the non-negotiable part. A tablet with Google services on it is a sensor platform that happens to have a screen. LineageOS, or any build that lets me run my own app sources, turns it back into a quiet, honest slab of glass. It does one thing, it does it offline, and it does not report back.

An iPhone, yes

This one always raises an eyebrow. I am a smolweb advocate, I run Linux, I de-Google my tablets, and then I carry an iPhone. Let me explain, because it is not a contradiction.

There are apps I cannot avoid. My bank, for one. Some tools required for my professional activity, for another. These services only ship official, signed apps for iOS and the Play-Managed Android, and I am not going to sideload a sketchy APK to log into my bank. So I need a device from one of the two walled gardens.

Given that choice, I trust Apple a bit more than Google. Not because Apple is a charity, but because their business model is selling me hardware, not selling my behaviour. Google's incentive is to watch me, Apple's incentive is to upsell me. I prefer the latter.

And the camera. The photos are better. I take pictures of my life, my trips, the people around me, and I want them to look good without carrying a separate camera. The iPhone does that well, consistently, and that matters to me.

So yes, an iPhone. One closed device, for the closed corners of life I cannot open. Everything else stays open.

A small home server

The fourth piece, and the one that ties it together. A small machine, a NUC or similar, sitting quietly at home, running the services I would otherwise rent from someone else.

On it: my mailboxes, because mail is the backbone of a self-hosted life and I have written about it before. A web server, for pollux.casa services including smolfedi and smolweb.org. A Gemini server, because the small web deserves more than HTTP. And a Nextcloud instance, for the files I do want to sync, the calendar, the contacts, the bits and pieces that make a phone and a laptop feel like they belong to the same person.

It could have been a Raspberry Pi, and for a lot of people it should be. But some of these services, mail especially, are not light, and I want headroom. A small Intel box sips power, makes almost no noise, and outlives several generations of phones. It is the opposite of disposable tech.

This is the part that does the most work and asks for the least attention. Set it up, secure it, back it up, and then forget it. It just runs.

About the backups: everything on the server gets encrypted locally and pushed to OVH S3-compatible object storage. My data leaves the house, but it leaves as ciphertext, and the keys never do. If the server catches fire, I lose hardware, not years of mail and photos. Cheap, boring, and exactly what a backup should be. When the laptop sleeps and the phone is in a pocket, the server is still there, answering.

Two servers in a French data centre

To provide some smol services, I use one server for pages.casa and social.pollux.casa, and one for message.casa. Both are hosted by OVH. But, this is not really for personal use.

This set, and not another

The point is not the individual devices. It is that they fit. The laptop is where I make things. The tablet is where I read. The phone is where the unavoidable closed world reaches me, and where I take photos. The server is where my data actually lives.

Four devices, each with a job, none of them trying to be all of them. No single machine that does everything badly. No subscription I cannot cancel. No data I cannot pick up and move.

That, to me, is the perfect equipment set. Not the most powerful, not the most expensive. The most honest.

Discuss it on the Fediverse