May 2013
6 posts
4 tags
Dogfooding the Ubuntu Phone: My (Early) Experience... →
It seems like Ubuntu is working very hard to build what sounds like an Android phone. I’m still not sure what they’re trying to bring to the table.
9 tags
The Linux Setup - Scott Caie, Funtoo Developer
It’s always reassuring to see a developer who uses his own product. Scott’s all over Funtoo, using it for everything from laptops (lots of laptops) to servers. His setup is optimized for speed, since his work requires a lot of processing power. I think it’s very interesting that he uses Firefox for his browser only when Chromium is unavailable due to a build. That’s a very...
8 tags
The Linux Setup - Tríona O'Connell, Academic
Tríona’s setup is cool, in that a lot of academics, across platforms, use the same tools — things like R and Mendeley and LaTeX. What’s nice about Linux, though, is that these tools are always easily available in a central repository. This gives you a sense of freedom, in that you don’t feel trapped in a distribution or OS when you know the same tools you depend upon are just a...
3 tags
Writers' desktops | Books | The Guardian →
No Linux users (yet!) but it’s still interesting to read about people’s computer desktops in a very personal, detailed way. This is a very cool feature.
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The Linux Setup - Gary Newell,...
I take what some might call a perverse pleasure in interviewing distro hoppers, because they tend to be much more clinical about their setups. These questions can seem kind of strange if you’re using a new distribution every week. It was interesting to see how Gary makes a distinction between quick-booting distros, like Arch and CrunchBang, versus something bigger like Linux Mint, which Gary...
4 tags
Calvin Trillin Predicted Yelp Almost 30 Years Ago
This isn’t strictly Linux-related, but it’s pretty amazing. I’m reading Calvin Trillin’s The Tummy Trilogy, a great food book, and in the first part he has this incredible quote. Keep in mind the book was published in 1974:
“…I learned that one of the other guests, an investment banker named Anthony Lamport, could summon data on four hundred [restaurants]...
April 2013
10 posts
7 tags
The Linux Setup - John Browning, Engadget
I’m always pleasantly surprised when any of the big tech blogs have a Linux guy. John’s done some interesting Linux work for Engadget, which is why I thought he’d make a good interview subject (his Engadget colleague, Terrence O’Brien, was great, too). For the record, John’s another Fuduntu user (Katherine Noyes, was last week), but if you check the date, you’ll...
5 tags
“Isn’t that what you’re looking for in a mainstream product?”...”
– It just works: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition Linux Ultrabook review | Ars Technica
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The Linux Setup - Katherine Noyes, Journalist
Katherine is involved in a lot of great Linux initiatives. I strongly recommend her Twitter feed, which usually has a few interesting links per day. Katherine is also another subject who says her setup is close to ideal, which is always nice, and impressive, to hear. Also, despite the fact that I might seem obsessed with Fuduntu, it’s just a coincidence that Katherine uses it.
You can find...
4 tags
The Future of Fuduntu
I was pretty sad when I heard Fuduntu was going end-of-life. It seemed like a very promising distro was being mothballed just as it seemed to be gaining attention within the Linux community. I reached out to Lee Ward, who handles communication for Fuduntu, about the future of the distro, and he had some interesting details to reveal, including the idea that the future distro could be a rolling,...
5 tags
» Fuduntu's Shutting Down →
This is a real bummer. I just installed it last week and it’s a very nice distro, although it seems sticking with GNOME 2 ultimately doomed the project. They say a lot of the same team is going to work on a new distro. Given the attention Fuduntu’s had the past few months, I’m sure they’ll be a ready audience for it.
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The Linux Setup - Meg Ford, GNOME Developer
Meg’s setup reminds me a lot of Dave Neary’s: simple and taking advantage of stock tools, rather than reinventing the desktop experience. Of course, given Meg’s GNOME work, she actually gets to reinvent the desktop experience professionally, so it’s probably a less compelling need for her when she’s not developing. Also, Meg mentions Documents in her interview. I...
8 tags
Newsblur Reminds Us That Choice Breaks Ruts
Like pretty much the entire Internet, I was pretty bummed/blind-sided when Google announced they were shutting down Google Reader. I’m a fairly simple Reader user. I have a ton of feeds that I use daily, but I don’t do anything with them other than reading them. I don’t star or tag. If I see a link I want to use, I either bookmark it, mark it to be read later, email it to myself,...
7 tags
The Linux Setup - Dave Neary, Red Hat
Dave’s setup is pretty standard, but it makes sense when you read how he described his ideal Linux setup: “The less time I spend thinking about what my desktop is running, and the more time I spend doing stuff, the better.” That wonderfully summarizes how I think about Linux. I turned to it because it was customizable, which allowed me to make it run more effectively for me, but...
6 tags
I'm Cory Doctorow, and This Is How I Work →
I’ve wanted to interview Doctorow for The Linux Setup for a while, but I’ve never had any success getting him to respond. Luckily, this Lifehacker interview captures some interesting Linux stuff, like his loves of Ubuntu, gedit, and Banshee. Also, his love of ThinkPads, which are really great machines.
4 tags
My divorce from Google - One year later | ITworld →
With the impending death of Google Reader, I think a lot of people are suddenly realizing it’s not actually that hard to leave the Google ecosystem. Tom Henderson was one of many who are ahead of that curve, though.
March 2013
6 posts
6 tags
The Linux Setup - Mark Anderson, Teacher
I owe this interview to my wife, who spotted Mark at a meeting and immediately picked up that he was using Linux. She put me in touch with him and here we are with a great interview. Mark uses a lot of interesting software in a very smart way. For instance, you’ll see he uses a variety of feed readers, which is even more impressive, given that the interview took place before Google announced...
6 tags
Notes from Stefano Zacchiroli's Talk to the New...
Last night I went to see Debian Project Leader Stefano Zacchiroli speak to the New York Linux Users Group. The slides are available here and the video is available, so I’m not going to recap in-depth. But a few things were very interesting:
Stefano’s laptop crashed during the talk, which was pretty funny. He was a good sport and handled it calmly. I’m sure he was glad to be...
6 tags
The Linux Setup - Dolores Portalatin,...
Dolores has an interesting setup, especially her window manager, but I’m really most impressed by the amount of outreach she does in the Linux and Free and Open Source communities. I found Dolores through Arch Linux Women, as I was trying to diversify the kind of people I interview here. Linux is an amazing concept that speaks to lots of different people, but the public face can be a bit...
7 tags
The Linux Setup - James Nelson, Musician
I continue to be impressed by people who can create music using Linux, which is why I was happy to have James here. He’s doing a lot using Ubuntu, probably aided by the fact that he doesn’t record much, and doesn’t need to worry about kernel latency. It’s an interesting setup for an interesting genre.
You can find more of The Linux Setup here.
You can follow us on...
4 tags
How I ended up with Mac - Miguel de Icaza →
Interesting post from the founder of GNOME on why he left Linux for Mac. His points are interesting, but I wonder if he’s reacting more to the politics of Linux and open source development, rather than the platform itself. Because I haven’t run into the issues he mentions.
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The Linux Setup - Mary Gardiner, Ada Initiative
Mary does a great job going through her workflow. Her feelings on not having the time and/or energy for upgrades really resonated with me, though. Linux is at an interesting point in time. Individual releases work fantastically, but moving between releases can still sometimes be tricky. There seems to be a real market for a rolling release that’s tightly managed, so breakage is minimized yet...
5 tags
Let's Discuss Interim Releases (and a Rolling... →
Very interesting post on making Ubuntu more of a rolling(ish) release. Rick makes some very strong points.
February 2013
6 posts
6 tags
The Linux Setup - Dan Gillmor, Journalist
I’m a huge fan of Dan Gillmor. As a reporter at the San Jose Mercury News, he was on top of a lot of great tech stories. His book, We the Media, was an incredibly accurate prediction of where American journalism was heading in the early part of this century. And he’s been very public about his move to Linux. So I’m pretty psyched to have his participation here.
You can find...
7 tags
The Linux Setup - Ron Guerin, Entrepreneur
I know Ron’s name from when he used to organize the New York Linux Users Group (NYLUG). He’s got a no-frills setup with a lot of solid software choices (what’s better than gPodder?). Like many Linux users, Ron is a ThinkPad guy, of which I wholeheartedly approve. They’re great computers in general, and the ones I’ve had have always handled a wide variety of distros...
4 tags
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The Linux Setup - Aditya Patawari, Systems...
Aditya is a technical guy with a simple setup. I think by now we know most people use their computers for typing and web-browsing. Aditya is no different, but Linux gives him access to more specialized tools that make his work easier. Of course, these tools exist for other operating systems, but it’s nice to think how easily all Linux users can access the same tools. Which is how and why...
7 tags
The Linux Setup - Chris Knadle, Engineer/System...
I found Chris through a post on the Linux New York (LUNY) listserv. His description here of his tools and how he chooses them is great, as is his distro evaluation table. The interview is long, but there’s a lot of really interesting stuff stuff here, from the mechanical (how he uses KDE) to the conceptual (the social challenges of collaborative package maintenance).
You can find more of...
January 2013
5 posts
8 tags
The Linux Setup - Zack Lofgren, Developer/Student
Zack has a cool setup. I love that he’s using Lubuntu, because it’s such an underrated Ubuntu flavor (although maybe not for long). There’s also a real logic and cohesion to Zack’s tools that allows him to work between a few devices, including a Rasberry Pi.
Zack felt he wasn’t a big enough name in the Linux world to be interviewed, so he was a little gun-shy. But...
4 tags
Steven Rosenberg : Fedora 18 with Xfce: My first... →
I played with Fedora 18 with GNOME and it was shockingly buggy. Fedora installs beautifully, but once it’s installed, it seems like I always run into complications.
7 tags
How to Defeat the Amazon Cloud Player
So I logged into my Amazon Cloud Player for some reason and noticed that they had AutoRipped a bunch of my previous CD purchases.
I wasn’t horribly psyched about the AutoRip program when I heard about it because I had already ripped most of the things I had bought from Amazon over the years, but I noticed a Motown box set in my account that I had bought for my mom a while back. Since it...
5 tags
The Linux Setup - Lydia Pintscher,...
I love Lydia’s setup because it’s so elegantly simple. She has four core programs she needs, and she works around those. She’s a KDE user who doesn’t seem to let the environment dictate what she does and how she does it.
You can find more of The Linux Setup here.
You can follow us on Google+ here.
Who are you, and what do you do?
I am Lydia Pintscher and I help...
7 tags
The Linux Setup - Miriam Ruiz, Debian...
Another Debian developer! Miriam has a low-drama setup. She simply uses Debian to do what she needs to do. I find it interesting that she desktop hops a bit (she’s now working with GNOME), but at the same time, it’s very cool that she’s open to trying new desktop environments. In general, her setup seems to be evolving over time, which is inspiring to those of us who are a bit...
December 2012
3 posts
7 tags
The Linux Setup - Paul Tagliamonte, Software...
Paul’s got a great Debian setup across a lot of interesting hardware. I appreciated this interview, though, because Paul makes the argument that although software should be free (as in freedom), there are often technical limitations/complications with that free software that create a barrier-to-entry for less sophisticated users. Unfortunately, with Linux, the price of freedom is often...
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The Linux Setup - Margarita Manterola, Google...
My process for these interviews is to find interesting Linux users and email them. Sometimes I have a sense of the Linux philosophy of the person I’m contacting, but most of the time I don’t. So the fact that Margarita is another user of a fairly stock setup isn’t a matter of me seeking out those kinds of users. It just seems to be where Linux is right now.
Which isn’t to...
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The Linux Setup - Jeremy Jongepier, Musician/Admin
I wrote about the viability of music production on Linux a while back. I’ve gravitated away from it myself, though, because I’m just not comfortable with the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) concept, in general (I came up on cassette-based four-tracks). So now, I just use a separate digital recorder and multi-effect pedal, which somehow makes more sense to me. I sought out Jeremy,...
November 2012
4 posts
5 tags
The Linux Setup - Max Bernstein, Programmer
I discovered Max’s blog on Reddit’s DistroHopping. Max’s interview references this post, which is a great, in-depth look at what he’s looking for in a distro.
You can find more of The Linux Setup here.
You can follow us on Google+ here.
Who are you, and what do you do?
I’m Max Bernstein, a full-time student and freelance programmer. I also just code things...
4 tags
Why Linus Torvalds would rather code than make... →
Fantastic interview, with a lot of great desktop Linux theorizing.
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The Linux Setup - Brian Proffitt, Writer
I love Brian Proffitt’s setup for two reasons. First of all, it’s OpenSUSE, my current distro of choice, and I always love to see that represented here. But also, Brian’s setup is shockingly stock. And in more and more of these interviews, we’re seeing people who are able to get an impressive amount of work done without a lot of configuring or manipulating. It makes me...
4 tags
My Twitter list of all things Linux →
I keep meaning to post a link to my Twitter list of Linux people.
October 2012
4 posts
6 tags
The Linux Setup - Vince Bardsley, Author
Vince Bardsley says he’s a hobbyist, but his hardware is no joke. I definitely recommend checking out his clean machine, which is a physical setup more of us should probably try and emulate.
You can find more of The Linux Setup here.
You can follow us on Google+ here.
Who are you, and what do you do?
My name is Vince Bardsley. I am, in order of decreasing importance, a Christian,...
4 tags
[DebianSupporters] Is Debian declining? Can... →
Interesting post from Raphael Hertzog’s Debian email newsletter. It’s not a sky-is-falling post, so much as it’s an analysis of how Debian has less direct users. Debian is still very popular, but it’s more of a mother sauce rather than a secondary one.
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The Linux Setup - Nick Schermer, Xfce Developer
After showing a fair amount of KDE love recently, it’s nice to spread the gospel of Xfce. And who better to help with that than Nick Schermer, who’s part of the Xfce team? Nick’s interview conveys the sense that he’s not a huge desktop tinkerer. It sounds like he’s just looking for an environment that lets him get to his work easily. And that, obviously, is the...
8 tags
The Linux Setup - Terry Hancock,...
I came across Terry through a Linux.com feature that mentioned him as a Linux hero. I was also familiar with his work for Free Software Magazine, so he seemed like a great subject.
Terry is another power KDE user who makes great use of the virtual desktops. You’ll also probably be very impressed by the amount of video production Terry does using Debian Testing (although Terry points out...
September 2012
8 posts
4 tags
“What would you say is the uniqueness of Xfce right now, and were do you see it...”
– Interview with XFCE’s Nick Schermer | Unixmen
The Linux Setup - Emmanuel Revah, Systems...
I actually found Emmanuel while researching Stella for last week’s interview. Manu got a nice shout-out on the Stella page and I was curious to learn more. Manu’s setup is Debian-based and seems carefully refined. Be sure to check out the ideal Linux setup section, which has a very interesting take on the concept of personal servers.
You can find more of The Linux Setup here.
You...
3 tags
Yield Thought: iPad + Linode, 1 Year Later →
Not especially Linux-related, but a very interesting project. An his hope for Windows 8 is especially intriguing.
yieldthought:
A year ago I said goodbye to my trusty MacBook Pro and started working exclusively on an iPad + Linode 512. It was an experiment at first - one that I never thought would last.
Twelve months later and I find I’m still working like this. A combination of Vim and GNU...
8 tags
The Linux Setup - NuxRo, Stella GNU/Linux
NuxRo is behind Stella, a distro that keeps coming across my radar. NuxRo’s answers are brief, which makes sense given his terminal-driven setup. In a lot of ways, it’s an interesting advertisement for the power and simplicity of Stella.
You can find more of The Linux Setup here.
You can follow us on Google+ here.
Who are you, and what do you do?
I’m a full-time...
4 tags
GNOME 3 — Just the beginning, maybe - corenominal →
I’m glad to read this, mostly because I feel like I’m one of the few GNOME 3 fans, and the GNOME 3 backlash has made me wonder if there’s something wrong with me. So yeah. External validation is nice.
3 tags
Linux on the (consumer) Desktop - Stuff Michael... →
Very interesting post from Michael Meeks. FYI, here is his The Linux Setup interview.
