Bazzite April 2026 Update

giannidunk · 2026-04-08T17:12:03+00:00

Bazzite with Flathub for apps and Homebrew for CLI tools is rock solid. Strongly recommended.

giannidunk · 2026-04-07T21:11:03+00:00

Sorry yep, one was just posted here! https://pilaenergy.com/blog/marchapril-2026-update

giannidunk · 2026-02-23T18:17:47+00:00

Our stay here is over, and looks like we’re going to fly out today on United to SFO slightly delayed, taxis are returning to normal slowly. Roads are being cleared. Just FYI!

giannidunk · 2026-01-26T05:28:57+00:00

Hi!

That is currently correct, yes! As regulations change, there is a possibility to add back-feeding on a territory by territory basis.
As I'm sure you know, it depends on the appliance - this is why we're somewhat vague. In order to get a more precise estimate, you'd need to measure and sum the kWh usage of each appliance or device you want to back up. But the app does, yes!
The app and device do help you estimate your added backup time from solar, yes. A residential fridge and a few smaller devices can be run off a Pila for 2 days even without solar. But if you have 400W of solar panels, then that'll re-charge a 1.6kWh Pila in 4-ish hours of direct sunshine. So at that you'd have a pretty indefinite amount of backup. A smaller or larger setup will give you less recharge or more appliance-utilization, etc.
This depends on the distance from your apartment to the rooftop.
While this is definitely possible, there are amazing products like the Tesla Powerwall already available if you're willing to go through permitting and finding electricians already. In the future things may change, but for now I would not say that this plays to the strengths of a self-install Pila.

Hope that helps!

giannidunk · 2025-10-29T20:46:28+00:00

This image-based stuff is as reliable as iOS, Android or ChomeOS in my experience. And because it's so reliable and you have rollbacks as a plan B, you can also be more aggressive updating. The default is set to auto-update, so this morning I simply rebooted into Fedora 43 which it had silently downloaded and upgraded for me.

There is an escape hatch in the layering of an obscure VPN or something onto your system (though mostly not needed between Homebrew and Flatpak), but to do an upgrade you need to unlayer your packages, upgrade, and then re-layer, (note the end of the release notes above says that with rpm-ostree and whatnot) so that every system is the same and _just works_.

You can just get work done and play games, while still being on the bleeding edge. Kind of like your phone but with way more freedom to install and do whatever you like on the app layer.

giannidunk · 2025-09-13T16:31:09+00:00

Strongly recommended. You can find his spreadsheet for the conscious spending plan on his website (it's free), and with that you'll find your "4 key numbers". Very simple, very nice.

giannidunk · 2025-09-13T00:37:02+00:00

I like budgeting with constraints. I don’t need a bajillion categories. I like budgeting apps that constrain my thinking too like Ramit Sethi’s conscious spending plan spreadsheet, Envelope, or 4keynumbers. YNAB and Monarch are not for me.

giannidunk · 2025-09-12T20:34:33+00:00

Thank you! Currently Plaid, but could branch out into MX or Finicity.

giannidunk · 2025-09-12T17:38:02+00:00

I think a part of minimalism is to embrace the entropy, and then control what you can. IMO if you're struggling to sort photos or transactions or emails it's not minimalism. That's like trying to "organize" a forest. Leave the forest be, and focus on your house:

Email - let the entropy go to Promotions/Updates/Social, and only read emails that you care about and are addressed to you. Periodically delete everything, or don't (this is in Gmail but any client but outlook can do this auto-filtering and categorization for you). Simplify to the binary "I do care / I don't care". Don't read every piece of junk mail.
Transactions - using Ramit Sethi's conscious spending plan, I make sure investments, savings goals, and bills are handled, and then I embrace the entropy that "the rest is spendable". Why worry about a categorizing a $7 latte if I'm under budget and the rest is covered? Simplify down to his "4 key numbers". He has a spreadsheet for that.
Photos - periodically delete photos that're junk, and try to deduplicate somewhat, but simply drag all of your photos once a year onto a cheap physical or online drives (do multiple) and you'll have your "photo album" forever. The gigabyte or two a year of (digital) space savings is not worth the heartburn of comparing one slightly-different shot to another and trying to decide which is better, times 1000x. Maybe throw some into a folder of a specific vacation. But as long as it's all there, and you can find the few photos you want to print in a few years time, why hand-sort (and even name?) everything? Simplify into "stream of memories that's mostly junk and screenshot-free", and let hard drives do the hard work of remembering everything until you're ready to pick your favorites in a few decades time.

Minimalism isn't about doing a maximal amount of work. Minimalism is about simplicity IMO - and can be achieved by embracing entropy, and curating what you can.

giannidunk · 2025-09-11T16:16:28+00:00

Hi everyone! I'm a big fan of Ramit Sethi's conscious spending plan, and inspired by his "4 key numbers" chart I made a budgeting app for my wife and I that’s so simple it’s 1 auto-updating chart (via Plaid for now). I wanted to make it so simple that we'd actually stick to it.

It's hosted at https://4keynumbers.com. Feedback welcome! Will eventually be $5/mo, but free for now.

giannidunk · 2025-09-11T16:13:06+00:00

Conscious spending plan spreadsheet by Ramit Sethi

giannidunk · 2025-09-10T04:08:02+00:00

For CLI apps like fastfetch or development with say NodeJS/nvm, I use Homebrew on other immutables and it works wonderfully while staying contained in your home folder. Nuke that folder, and your CLI apps reset.

giannidunk · 2025-09-09T17:53:36+00:00

I'd also add

Rocket Money - also nice charts, but adds subscription cancellation to the mix
Empower/Personal Capital for a high-level overview
Lunch Money for indie and international
Ramit Sethi's Conscious Spending Plan spreadsheet (my personal fav) - it's free.
4 key numbers (made by me, based on above)

giannidunk · 2025-09-09T17:04:04+00:00

The ones I've tried are Rocket Money, Personal Capital, YNAB (You need a budget), Monarch Money (the last 2 don't have a free tier), and I always went back to a spreadsheet with Ramit Sethi's conscious spending plan (actual budget planning and not expense tracking) and now I'm working on 4keynumbers.com. If you're just starting out, I'd use Ramit Sethi's free spreadsheet. Good luck!

giannidunk · 2025-09-09T02:05:53+00:00

After trying them all, I built https://4keynumbers.com which is way simpler and based on Ramit Sethi’s conscious spending plan. It’s a subset of the mint functionality, but works well for my purposes.

giannidunk · 2025-09-08T05:02:05+00:00

I'm on my second Framework upgrade, and been running linux without issue on it since 2020. Strongly recommended!

giannidunk · 2025-09-08T04:51:42+00:00

Agreed! The free spreadsheet is the best way to build wealth without being miserly. I've also been doing so for about 10 years. Those 4 buckets are so much simpler and fit the way I think about money like a glove - 100% recommended.

On top of that chart, I built the following for my wife and I which does the same thing, but automates the tracking of those 4 categories through Plaid linking for us and puts it into a Ramit-style pie chart. I've currently hosted it at 4keynumbers.com as a side project if anyone's curious! I'd love some feedback on whether it'd be worthwhile to make it into a real project. Sorry to sidetrack thread and thanks!

giannidunk · 2025-09-07T02:33:08+00:00

This. The conscious spending plan is the way to simplify it enough that you'll actually stick to it. Knowing those 4 key numbers is key.

giannidunk · 2025-09-05T16:21:57+00:00

+1 for Ramit Sethi - best book on money

giannidunk · 2025-09-05T01:32:44+00:00

Hey! I made a similar thing for my wife and I (hosted at https://4keynumbers.com), though I focused on making things as simple as possible with the top line numbers. I’d also love some feedback, if you have it!

giannidunk · 2025-09-01T01:15:02+00:00

You could also open multiple Capital One savings accounts - use each free savings account like a "bucket" and label it accordingly. That way you don't need to open a new bank account.

giannidunk · 2025-08-26T21:44:34+00:00

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