My current work computer configuration

Two days and two blog posts. Doing well so far on my goal to write / blog a lot more. Now, I just need to use more emojis to keep up with the folks at work. 🎉

I wish I had done this each time I had changed computers so I could see the progression (or regression - my last desktop was far less powerful than the 2nd to last desktop). 

On my desk is my personal machine, a System76 Mini Meerkat from 2024 running Ubuntu 2024. I don't use it all that often, but it works great and it's small.

I currently have this as my primary human interface for work:

  Model Name:	MacBook Pro
  Model Identifier:	Mac15,7
  Model Number:	MRW23LL/A
  Chip:	Apple M3 Pro
  Total Number of Cores:	12 (6 performance and 6 efficiency)
  Memory:	36 GB
  System Firmware Version:	mBoot-18000.120.36
  OS Loader Version:	11881.140.96.701.1

  Drive: APPLE SSD AP0512Z

  uname -a
  Darwin schwehr-mac 24.6.0 Darwin Kernel Version 24.6.0: Tue Apr 21 20:16:56 PDT 2026; root:xnu-11417.140.69.710.16~1/RELEASE_ARM64_T6030 arm64

My primary workstation is a Debian based linux cloud VM:

tail -25 /proc/cpu

processor	: 127
vendor_id	: AuthenticAMD
cpu family	: 25
model		: 1
model name	: AMD EPYC 7B13
stepping	: 0
microcode	: 0xffffffff
cpu MHz		: 2449.998
cache size	: 512 KB
physical id	: 1
siblings	: 64
core id		: 31
cpu cores	: 32
apicid		: 127
initial apicid	: 127
fpu		: yes
fpu_exception	: yes
cpuid level	: 13
wp		: yes
TLB size	: 2560 4K pages
clflush size	: 64
cache_alignment	: 64
address sizes	: 48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual

head -1 /proc/meminfo 
MemTotal:       247571292 kB

That seems like a lot, but the VM is likely sharing that with a lot of other VMs. And I'm using Linux 6.18.14 kernel.

I spend most of my time ssh'ed into Linux running work's setup which is mostly Bazel builds with Google's version of Perforce called piper/g4. I frequently use copybara to migrate open source code to the local monorepo. I often use the command line version of Antigravity. But I also spend a fair bit of time using git and emacs for open source work. On the graphical side, it's all in Chrome with Googles internal version of VC Code, Google's code review tool Critique, Google's Buganizer, and a lot of Google Docs. Not very exciting. Occasionally, I get to try out jj (which is fun) and sometimes I'm forced into mercial/hg (which I haven't liked since I tried to teach it in a class back in 2011). 

I used to keep documents that I used for each machine I had on how to configure them. Work locked me out of a lot of software on the Mac and with my cloud vm, I don't to machine updates any more. I regret not trying to do that. That's especially true now that one of my kids just got a Windows 11 HP laptop. I last worked on configuring a Windows machine somewhere in the 2009-2011 time frame. I know nothing first hand anymore about Windows configuration except to disable MacAfee's trial antivirus and make sure Windows Defender is running.