An honest piece of software is like an honest politician: when it’s bought, it stays bought.

Consumer software is stampeding toward the subscription model. It’s not surprising – why sell something once when you can sell it multiple times to the same customer?

Adobe is in the news for exploring new frontiers in software-as-a-service, extending their subscription model to claim access to its customers’ creative output.

The villains are many. I’m here to sing about the heroes.

I’ve been consistently pleased with Scrivener, a one (payment)-and-done tool for longform writing with one of the most consumer-friendly trial periods I’ve seen: a 30-day trial that only counts days on which you boot the software. Nice.

I’m still loving Obsidian, a local-first markdown pkm tool that only charges personal users to sync and publish content. ¹ Huzzah!

And for markdown aficionados who want a stylish and streamlined editor, rather than an IDE, Typora makes drafting a pleasure.

I’m considering switching back to booting Linux when support for Windows 10 ends in October 2025. The only reason I switched to Windows in the first place – the only reason I’ve ever used Windows – is to play computer games. Or rather, to have the option of playing certain computer games. Apparently the mere contemplation of my Steam library² is pleasure enough.

The open-source and local-first software landscapes have grown to the point where it is now possible to have a first-class computing experience running free-range software … as long as you’re not a hardcore or multiplayer gamer, and you have something of a fetish for troubleshooting driver issues.

As someone who likes her computer games free of other human intelligences and thrills to typing sudo apt install linux-headers-$(uname -r), everything’s turning up Milhouse.