My Setups Over the Years | Aryan Randeriya

I wrote about my current setup recently, but the thing I actually wanted to write about is everything that came before it. The machines I grew up on, the ones that taught me most of what I know. So here’s the start of that, going all the way back.

My first ever laptop was a hand-me-down Dell. It used to be my dad’s office laptop, and at some point he just handed it to me and let me keep it. It was a mid-tier i5 with 8 gigs of RAM, and it came with Kali Linux already installed because of his work. I still have it, and honestly it held so many fucking memories. It lasted me through college, partially at least, and I learnt so much on it. I messed around endlessly with Linux on that thing.

The Dell laptop running a heavily customised Linux desktop with a nebula wallpaper and a macOS-style dock. — The Dell, ricing my Linux desktop into the early hours.

I cycled through so many operating systems on it. Windows, then Ubuntu, then Kali Linux, and then I started trying out all sorts of stuff like Lubuntu and Tails (off a pendrive, obviously). It was my playground for figuring out how computers actually worked.

I also designed a ton of stuff on it. I used software like Pixlr and later Photopea, because Photoshop just didn’t work on Linux. The pirated Wine versions never ran well either, so the browser-based editors became my whole design toolkit.

Eventually we ended up repairing it and spending something like 10k INR upgrading it. We bumped up the RAM, fixed the display, fixed the keyboard, and swapped the slow-as-fuck HDD out for an SSD. After that it ran reasonably fine, but it was still noticeably slow.

By then it had collected a whole personality of stickers too. The back was covered in them: Python, my GitHub, VS Code, Notion, Todoist, the Linux penguin, Java, a “sudo rm -rf” one, and my favourite, the “I are programmer, I make computer beep boop” cat.

The Dell laptop with an aurora wallpaper, next to a Monster energy can and a flask. — The Dell era: Monster fuel, a git cheat sheet on the wall, and the sticker collection that gave it its whole personality.

The Dell on a desk with a flip clock, a git cheat sheet taped to the wall, a phone stand and a mug. — The Dell era: Monster fuel, a git cheat sheet on the wall, and the sticker collection that gave it its whole personality.

Even after all the upgrades it was slow enough to be annoying, so when there was a random PC lying around at home, my dad gave that to me and it became my primary machine. I hooked it up to a monitor, and I had this software where I could control both the PC and the laptop with the same mouse over the network, just by connecting my mouse to the PC and sliding across screens. It was genuinely cool, though I can’t remember the name of the tool to save my life.

The dual-machine era: a ThinkStation tower and monitor next to the Dell laptop, with a whiteboard full of plans and sticky notes on the wall. — The dual-machine era: the ThinkStation tower and monitor running alongside the Dell, whiteboard and sticky notes included.

Here’s that same setup in night mode, which is honestly how I spent most of my time on it anyway.

The monitor and Dell laptop at night with an RGB lamp glowing teal and a 'Wednesday' wallpaper. — Night mode, my natural habitat.

Then summer vacation came and I got absolutely fucked. I spilled water on my laptop, and just like that I didn’t have one anymore. So I had to manage without a laptop through my university classes and do all my work exclusively on the CPU. Around this same time we moved out of the hostel and into a flat with roommates.

The flat had its own pain. There were a solid two weeks where I had to sit on the floor because we didn’t have a table yet. We’d ordered one but it took something like two weeks to actually arrive. My roommate had a laptop so he could just sit on the bed, but me with my big tower and monitor, I was stuck on the floor. It fucked my back so bad.

The ThinkStation tower and Dell monitor set up on the floor in a corner of the new flat, no table yet. — Two weeks on the floor while we waited for a table to show up.

At one point it got desperate enough that I temporarily lugged the monitor onto the bed just so I could sit somewhere comfortable for a bit, lmao.

A monitor, keyboard and mouse set up directly on a floral-sheeted bed next to a window at night. — Working from bed, monitor and all. Don’t judge me.

Once the table finally came, the setup started looking like an actual setup again.

The Dell monitor on the new table with a Porsche 911 wallpaper, a Keychron keyboard, headphones, and a whiteboard full of GAIA roadmap notes behind it. — Finally a table. A Porsche wallpaper and a whiteboard already filling up with GAIA ideas.

From there I kept building it out. I decorated the wall a lot more, and ended up bringing two extra monitors back from home. Getting them there was its own saga. We had this massive suitcase lying around from travelling abroad, so I managed to fit my entire CPU and two fucking monitors into it, wrapped up in a blanket so they wouldn’t get wrecked, and lugged the whole thing along on a train from my hometown to Ahmedabad, something like a 4 to 6 hour journey. I flipped one of the monitors vertical, and gave the other to my flatmate to use because there just wasn’t any space left on my own table, lol.

That second screen is where a lot of the early days happened. The code you can see across these monitors is some of the first ever editions of GAIA, back when it was just an idea taking shape across a messy desk.

A dual-monitor night setup with a green-backlit keyboard, a Stream Deck, and code open across both screens. — Two monitors going at night, with some of the first ever editions of GAIA open across them.

A dual-monitor setup with matching aurora wallpapers, the second screen flipped vertical, a Stream Deck and a green keyboard. — The vertical monitor era: aurora wallpapers across both screens, and a wall full of posters and whiteboard plans, with dinner at the desk as usual.

A busy desk with a vertical second monitor, Netflix playing on the main screen, a bowl of pasta, and a wall full of motivational posters and whiteboard notes. — The vertical monitor era: aurora wallpapers across both screens, and a wall full of posters and whiteboard plans, with dinner at the desk as usual.

Around this time my dad bought me a new MacBook, because I genuinely needed a new laptop. Here’s my first day with it. I was so fucking excited, I’d wanted one for ages, and macOS, the hardware, the software support, all of it was just chef’s kiss. Especially after feeling completely handicapped on Linux for so long.

First day with the MacBook. Pure joy after years on Linux.

Plenty of late nights happened here, grinding on GAIA in the dark with every screen lit up.

A dark room with a multi-monitor desk all lit up with code and a Porsche 911 chair cover, working late into the night. — Heads down on GAIA, every screen glowing.

Then we shifted places once again, this time from the flat to a PG with four roommates, one of them being my co-founder Dhruv. And I finally had a proper separate table again.

The whole GAIA team working from a PG room at night, spread across desks and beds with laptops, before a Product Hunt launch. — The whole team grinding on GAIA in the PG, right before a Product Hunt launch.

Then came another shift, because we got jobs. This time we moved from Gandhinagar to Ahmedabad, now away from university. It was me, Dev and Dhruv, crammed into a really shitty, cheap, depressing tiny fucking room. Honestly the most depressing stretch for us. We were sleep deprived, the place was shit, hot water was a constant struggle, the cooler was broken, just all of it. And once again, no table, so we were back to going backwards. Here are all of our laptops, plus one company laptop, lol, lined up on Dhruv’s bed.

Four laptops glowing with code in a dark room, all lined up on a bed, during the depressing tiny-room job phase. — All our laptops on Dhruv's bed. No table, back to square one.

Then after I left my job we shifted to a new place. Here’s me setting up the monitor my dad gave me, dialling in the display in broad daylight for once. That monitor actually came from my sister’s husband originally, since neither of them were using it anymore, and my dad had bought himself a new one that was better suited to his needs.

Setting up the curved MSI ultrawide monitor in daylight, with the MacBook showing system info and a BetterDisplay HDPI chat. — Setting up the monitor my dad gave me.

And this is my current setup. The desk itself is actually my old one from the flat. My roommate had been keeping it at his home since he lives only about an hour away, so he just couriered it over to me.

The current setup: a curved ultrawide monitor with three panes of work, a MacBook below it, a Keychron keyboard and a notebook. — The current setup. A proper desk, finally.

We also set up a proper home server around this time. It’s my dad’s old machine, the one he used to use for trading and didn’t need anymore, now sitting in the corner glowing away and running a bunch of stuff self-hosted over Tailscale, analytics, Langfuse for LLM tracing, a Jellyfin media server, and a handful of other things. It’s honestly just really fun to tinker around with.

The home server, an RGB PC tower glowing with three lit fans and a blue-lit AIO cooler inside. — Our home server, my dad's old trading machine, glowing away in the corner.

And that catches us up to where I am now. There’s still a lot more to come, and I’ll keep adding to it.

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