Desktop environments: I've used Windows, macOS, GNOME1, GNOME2, GNOME3, multiple versions of KDE, twm, wmaker, and a half-dozen others. I really enjoy GNOME3 and the degree to which it simply isn't a point of concern and Just Works. It needs a little bit of non-default configuration, but so does everything, and I do that bit of configuration via my git homedir.
Laptops: I've used Sony, Dell, and IBM-then-Lenovo ThinkPads; ThinkPad every time. Very eager to try Framework the moment it has a touchpad with real physical mouse buttons, though!
Browsers: I've used Firefox, Chromium, and GNOME Web, and it's no contest: Firefox, every time, for both features and needing meaningful competition in browsers/engines. With uBlock Origin, of course.
Ad blockers: I used, sequentially, Adblock, Adblock Plus, and uBlock Origin. Adblock Plus and uBlock Origin are both good, and uBlock Origin seems subjectively faster and doesn't have the "acceptable ads" contradiction-in-terms garbage.
Search engines: I've used Google, DDG, and a dozen others over the years, and stuck with DDG. Very happy with bangs, no ads, and generally the feeling of less invasive results.
Email servers: I've used various ISPs over the years, I've used Gandi, I've run my own, and I now use Fastmail. Highly recommend Fastmail.
Mail clients: I've used Thunderbird, Evolution, mutt, K-9, and a couple of webmail clients, and I prefer the combination of mutt and K-9 to deal with the sheer volume of mail I deal with.
Editors: I used Emacs extensively for years, then switched to Vim, and have also tried various IDEs over the years. Stuck with Vim. My argument: optimizing basic text operations provides a substantial win, everything else (and there's plenty of "everything" to be had) is gravy on top.
Version control systems: I used, in order, CVS, SVN, tla/baz, Mercurial, and git. I found git both more usable and more powerful. The staging area is a great feature, `rebase -i` is a superpower, and having a clear idea of the underlying data model feels much better than having it be opaque.
Build systems: I've used a huge number of these over the years, including Make (and many variations), autotools, non-autotools configure scripts, CMake, Meson, Ninja, Scons, ./build.sh and many variations on bespoke shell scripts or Python scripts, several language-specific package managers including setuptools, pip, cabal, npm, Cargo, Debian packaging infrastructure, and a couple dozen others. My general conclusions are to avoid CMake, to use your language's package manager for building if it's remotely possible to integrate with Linux distro packaging, that opinionated tools are generally nice if you like the opinions and terrible if you don't, and if your language is C or C++, try to use the simplest thing that could possibly work and handle dependencies, including raw Make.
DDG does have ads, though? Perhaps they're less common and less intrusive than on Google, and only appear for searches that can meaningfully have ads related to them (e.g. if I search for "thinkpad" I get one). But they exist.
Unless your ad blocker is blocking them. But, to be honest, I personally rather let DDG show the ads. I want them to have their income.
I also generally use DDG first, although Google is better for me at local results or non-English searches, so I sometimes do those on Google. It has also sometimes seemed like more complex searches with OR clauses or something similar work better in Google search.
Also, while Google isn't particularly good at returning exactly what I search for nowadays (it used to be better, nowadays it seems to guess too much or return what Google wants you to want), I don't feel like DDG is better at that either, and sometimes I seem to need to run e.g. searches for error messages on Google instead of DDG because of that.
Laptops: I've used Sony, Dell, and IBM-then-Lenovo ThinkPads; ThinkPad every time. Very eager to try Framework the moment it has a touchpad with real physical mouse buttons, though!
Browsers: I've used Firefox, Chromium, and GNOME Web, and it's no contest: Firefox, every time, for both features and needing meaningful competition in browsers/engines. With uBlock Origin, of course.
Ad blockers: I used, sequentially, Adblock, Adblock Plus, and uBlock Origin. Adblock Plus and uBlock Origin are both good, and uBlock Origin seems subjectively faster and doesn't have the "acceptable ads" contradiction-in-terms garbage.
Search engines: I've used Google, DDG, and a dozen others over the years, and stuck with DDG. Very happy with bangs, no ads, and generally the feeling of less invasive results.
Email servers: I've used various ISPs over the years, I've used Gandi, I've run my own, and I now use Fastmail. Highly recommend Fastmail.
Mail clients: I've used Thunderbird, Evolution, mutt, K-9, and a couple of webmail clients, and I prefer the combination of mutt and K-9 to deal with the sheer volume of mail I deal with.
Editors: I used Emacs extensively for years, then switched to Vim, and have also tried various IDEs over the years. Stuck with Vim. My argument: optimizing basic text operations provides a substantial win, everything else (and there's plenty of "everything" to be had) is gravy on top.
Version control systems: I used, in order, CVS, SVN, tla/baz, Mercurial, and git. I found git both more usable and more powerful. The staging area is a great feature, `rebase -i` is a superpower, and having a clear idea of the underlying data model feels much better than having it be opaque.
Build systems: I've used a huge number of these over the years, including Make (and many variations), autotools, non-autotools configure scripts, CMake, Meson, Ninja, Scons, ./build.sh and many variations on bespoke shell scripts or Python scripts, several language-specific package managers including setuptools, pip, cabal, npm, Cargo, Debian packaging infrastructure, and a couple dozen others. My general conclusions are to avoid CMake, to use your language's package manager for building if it's remotely possible to integrate with Linux distro packaging, that opinionated tools are generally nice if you like the opinions and terrible if you don't, and if your language is C or C++, try to use the simplest thing that could possibly work and handle dependencies, including raw Make.