That's pretty weak defense of rebase. It almost seems like an attempt to promote the opposite. To "squash my disordered commits into a neat little one" is like the only bad and questionable practice involving the word "rebase" which people can rightfully object to. And rejecting that they will usually (unjustly) reject a dozen of other practices involving "rebase". "rebase" does not equal "squash". Using "squash" checkbox in Gitlab is not synonymous to "rebasing".
If you actually care about organizing you disordered commits, you can do it in a sane way and use git rebase -i master. That's basically how I work all the time, I don't even try to write meaningful commits first, I even commit stuff I know I must drop later and I commit every little incremental change file-by-file (to make re-ordering commits easier). Then I'll rebase them interactively to review what I did and make several (most of the time) clean atomic commits.
Then, rebase is simply superior to making merge commits all over the place, because it... well, "does nothing" as opposed to "makes your commit tree into a complete mess". There can be reasons why you would rather not bother rebasing on a particular project, but if you don't have them (i.e. you just don't have a strong justifiable opinion on that matter), just set [pull] rebase = true, and use git merge --ff whenever possible. Most of the time it doesn't even feel any different and just works.
Each their own, that's mine. Note that this is not a tech user or developper list, but the list of what I install on any new windows pc, including those at work etc ...
7zip (open any archive)
VLC (open any audio/video file)
IrfanView (+ the "all plugins" installer on the same page, open any picture file)
SumatraPDF (read PDFs)
Libreoffice (to open any office files)
NAPS2 (easy scan, and split/merge/... PDFs)
Ditto (give your clipboard a memory)
Everything (an instant file search that works)
TeraCopy (replace windows copy with queue, queues, add files to the queue instead of starting a second parallel copy, pause that works, ...)
Powertoys (so many to list ... mass rename file easily, screen ruler, text extractor ...)
If it's appropriate : Qbittorent (clean torrent client)
Nvidia graphic card ? NVCleaninstall, so you can install just the clean driver you need
Windows 10 or 11 ? O&O Shut Up (to disable all the telemetry and onedrive in one click, there are plenty alternatives but I sort of like this one)
Windows 11 ? ExplorerPatcher to remove suggestions in the start menu and the new and terrible castrated contextual menu
And of course your browser of choice and extensions
In ten minutes you have a computer that feels much more smart and usable. There are plenty of great software out there, but I feel like many what to install lists are very topical or include software you won't use in many cases or once every 6 months, so this is my short list of what you will use essentially every time you use the computer.
If you are interested in this, take a look at NaiveSystems Analyze [0] which is a free and open source static analyzer for checking MISRA compliance etc.
Disclaimer: I'm the founder.
It has been battle tested with real customers in automotive, medical devices, and semiconductors. AFAIK this is the first FOSS tool that achieves commercial use standards (extensive ruleset coverage, low false positives based symbolic execution (which Coverity relies heavily on) and SMT solver, ...)
https://nakashimawoodworkers.com (new commissions around $7K-$15K for a coffee table, $20K-40K for dining table, plus shipping; older Nakashima pieces are highly valued in the art world and sell anywhere between $15K-$300K)
Edit: Also, to echo what someone mentioned below, if you're interested in solid wood furniture you should find a local woodworker.
Another edit and thought: I used to own a lot of IKEA furniture and as I've gotten older, have slowly replaced those pieces with items from Knoll, with custom pieces from local woodworkers, with a few pieces from the studios listed above. A lot of people are commenting on the cost, and yes they're expensive and could be considered luxury goods.
But if you like art and design and you care about quality, you save for what you want to buy. I wanted to be surrounded by great craftsmanship, so instead of buying "stuff" and instead of spending money on lots of subscriptions and services, or constantly upgrading phones and computers, I buy one piece of nice furniture every year. I believe the more you appreciate the things around you, the more they begin to influence your own work, and your sense of place.
I regularly see a lot of IKEA furniture on the side of the road and in dumpsters. I think this is the difference between buying "things" and having "possessions" but that's a discussion for another day.
For kicks, I'm going to throw out a possibly odd analogy.
The length of a string determines how quickly it vibrates (assuming tension is the same). Shorter strings vibrate faster than long strings. If you're in a noisy environment and you want to make sense of all of the chaotic sounds around you, one way to do it would be to take a bunch of strings of different lengths (say a piano) and see which ones resonate more than others. The gentle ringing of those piano strings, some louder than others, tells you which frequencies are more dominant in the surrounding acoustic environment, because they cause their matching strings to resonate more.
As I get older (I'm in my forties), I feel like a lengthening string. When I was a twenty-something programmer, I could tell you how things had changed over a year or two, but trends or cycles on longer timescales than that were hidden to me. Now I know what a decade or two feels like and can see and intuitively sense cycles of that scale. At the same time, shorter trends are harder for me to pick up on now. It feels like noise or beneath my notice.
Having people of different ages in your organization is incredibly value because they all resonate at different time scales like this and help you pick up chronological patterns at frequencies you'd otherwise miss.
If you actually care about organizing you disordered commits, you can do it in a sane way and use git rebase -i master. That's basically how I work all the time, I don't even try to write meaningful commits first, I even commit stuff I know I must drop later and I commit every little incremental change file-by-file (to make re-ordering commits easier). Then I'll rebase them interactively to review what I did and make several (most of the time) clean atomic commits.
Then, rebase is simply superior to making merge commits all over the place, because it... well, "does nothing" as opposed to "makes your commit tree into a complete mess". There can be reasons why you would rather not bother rebasing on a particular project, but if you don't have them (i.e. you just don't have a strong justifiable opinion on that matter), just set [pull] rebase = true, and use git merge --ff whenever possible. Most of the time it doesn't even feel any different and just works.