Top all-time · #706
Michael Stapelberg
Personal blog · michael.stapelberg.ch/postssystemshardwareprogramming
Michael Stapelberg's personal blog at michael.stapelberg.ch covers systems, hardware and programming. Since 2019, 90 different Hacker News readers have linked it 192 times, most often “Winding down my Debian involvement”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-06, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 3 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link his technical posts on Linux package management, Debian, keyboards and home networking. Commenters call some of them interesting or a great read.
- Recommended for · 3 comments
- a great read on leaving Debian; interesting posts on keyboard latency; listed as a great engineering blog
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Michael Stapelberg’s private website, containing articles about computers and programming, mostly focused on Linux.
Most-linked posts?
- Winding down my Debian involvement13 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2019-03-10
- The kinT kinesis keyboard controller (2020)7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2020-10-11
- Show HN: distri: a Linux distribution to research fast package management6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2019-08-17
- Linux package managers are slow6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-08-27
- My minimal, memory-safe Go rsync steers clear of vulnerabilities5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2026-05-24
- Distri: 20x faster initramfs (initrd) from scratch5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-01-21
- Adding a fiber link to my home network4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-08-09
- Coding Agent VMs on NixOS with Microvm.nix4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2026-02-01
- /posts/2013-03-21-kinesis_custom_controller/4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-08-11
- 25 Gigabit Linux internet router PC build4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-07-10
What Hacker News says?
For #3, the creator of the i3 window manager is using the 8k monitor mentioned in the article I am pretty sure this is possible. https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2017-12-11-dell-up3218k/
Comment linking /posts/2017-12-11-dell-up3218k/
on “Time to Upgrade Your Monitor”Submitted My upgrade to 25 Gbit/s Fiber To The Home as a story · 753 points
HN discussionThere is a open source controller for the advantage that makes it fully programable and fixes some problems that the advantage 1 had with some ghost presses and stuck modifiers. I've modified two advantages to use it, it requires a bit of soldering and some willingness to compile your own firmware from qmk. https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2013-03-21-kinesis_custo... https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/BwWRYP5c h…
Comment linking /posts/2013-03-21-kinesis_custom_controller/
on “What Does a Coder Do If They Can't Type?”Submitted Self-hosting my photos with Immich as a story · 662 points
HN discussiontl;dr: Debian's work is very important here, but NixOS' reproducibility aims are more general than Debian's and began more than 8 years earlier Despite the fact that Debian (as a project) has shouldered far more of the work with upstream projects to make bit-identical reproducibility possible at build time, Debian (as a distro) doesn't have a design that makes this kind of reproducibility as feasible, practical, or…
Comment linking /posts/2019-03-10-debian-winding-down/
on “Nixos-unstable’s ISO_minimal.x86_64-Linux is 100% reproducible”Submitted 25 Gigabit Linux internet router PC build as a story · 489 points
HN discussionI think FUSE performance has significantly improved since 2010, the year in which ZFS-On-Linux became available I believe. This is just one of many examples: https://www.phoronix.com/news/MTI1MzM In contrary, in some cases FUSE is even faster than doing a regular kernel mount(). There is an experimental research distribution called distri that is exclusively relying on fuse mounting and figured out that FUSE was fas…
Comment linking /posts/tags/distri/
on “LiteFS”Submitted Winding down my Debian involvement as a story · 469 points
HN discussionI've used pretty much this type of setup: https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2026-02-01-coding-agent-... If you want something not NixOS-related, smolmachines.com (I haven't tried this yet) gets mentioned here a lot.
Comment linking /posts/2026-02-01-coding-agent-microvm-nix/
on “Codex CLI installs a persistent, self-updating background daemon by default”Submitted I am giving up on Intel and have bought an AMD Ryzen 9950X3D as a story · 345 points
HN discussion> Not necessarily, there are a lot of ways to go about discovering which applications need updates and where to get them. Off the top of my head: [manifest file with a simple registry] I generally like the centralization and vetting associated with Linux distro repos, but this would be a decent approach for desktop applications that at the very least wouldn't be annoying to use or deal with. > part of the problem he…
Comment linking /posts/2019-08-17-introducing-distri/
on “Bottles: GUI front end to run Windows software on Linux”Submitted How does rsync work? as a story · 319 points
HN discussionI also installed fiber a while ago after being told "this isn't hard" by Michael Stapelberg's post [1]. Luckily I managed to get by with patch cables; a 30m cables really goes a long way! I even managed to get a duplex LC through a 16mm conduit with a pretty tight 90° bend, but just with lube, quite some force and luck. I can just recommend going for it if you're curious. Cables and tranceivers really aren't expensi…
Comment linking /posts/2020-08-09-fiber-link-home-network/
on “Wiring my home with fiber”Submitted Adding a fiber link to my home network as a story · 263 points
HN discussionIf you’re into custom-made keyboards and keyboard parts, check out my Kinesis advantage replacement controller project: https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2018-04-17-kinx/ (only 0.2ms of input latency!)
Comment linking /posts/2018-04-17-kinx/
on “Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch”Submitted My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4 as a story · 252 points
HN discussionReminds me of Michael Stapelberg's 8k Monitor Setup: https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2017-12-11-dell-up3218k https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2020-05-23-desk-setup
Comment linking /posts/2020-05-23-desk-setup
on “Using an 8K TV as a Monitor”Submitted Distri: 20x faster initramfs (initrd) from scratch as a story · 215 points
HN discussionThere’s a project to replace the board in the Kinesis with a QMK-driven one. One day I’ll get around to it. https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2020-07-09-kint-kinesis-...
Comment linking /posts/2020-07-09-kint-kinesis-keyboard-controller/
on “Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?”Submitted Winding down my Debian involvement (2019) as a story · 181 points
HN discussionFirst of all, if you are happy with the curvature of the Kinesis, the rest of it is pretty hackable. There are various projects around it, one of the more well known is a custom controller and custom software from Michael Stapelberg (of i3 window manager fame)[1]. He gave a Google Tech Talk about the project about a year ago[2]. Now, if you are not happy with the curvature things get more complicated and I'm not awa…
Comment linking /posts/2013-03-21-kinesis_custom_controller/
on “If You Can't Buy the Keyboard You Want, Build It Instead”Submitted My 2020 desk setup as a story · 170 points
HN discussion> After my previous disappointment with the MikroTik CCR2004, I decided to try a custom PC build. The article's author considered that exact router and rejected it. He goes into greater detail here: https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2021-05-28-configured-an...
Comment linking /posts/2021-05-28-configured-and-returned-mikrotik-ccr2004-for-fiber7/
on “25 Gigabit Linux internet router PC build”Submitted DIY out-of-band management: remote power button as a story · 165 points
HN discussionI describe the relevant UEFI option in https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2021-07-10-linux-25gbit-... :)
Comment linking /posts/2021-07-10-linux-25gbit-internet-router-pc-build/
on “25 Gigabit Linux internet router PC build”Submitted How I like to install NixOS (declaratively) as a story · 164 points
HN discussion“The poster” (hey!) has put fiber around their house :) https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2020-08-09-fiber-link-ho... https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2021-05-16-home-network-...
Comment linking /posts/2021-05-16-home-network-fiber-10-gbits-upgrade/
on “25 Gigabit Linux internet router PC build”Submitted Systemd: Enable indefinite service restarts as a story · 126 points
HN discussionJust FYI you are describing a ports system, of which there are many. From macports, to alpine packages, to nixpkgs... Tons of research and automation in this area already. Would encourage looking at Nix and distri in particular. Many Nix packages can be built on/for macOS! https://nixos.org/manual/nixpkgs/stable/#preface https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/tags/distri/
Comment linking /posts/tags/distri/
on “Sapphire: Rust based package manager for macOS”Submitted Minimal Linux Bootloader debugging story as a story · 101 points
HN discussion
