Notes from Stefano Zacchiroli’s Talk to the New York Linux Users Group
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 in front of a Linux-friendly crowd.
- He said Wheezy should be ready March or April 2013. If you look at the slides from his January talk, you’ll see that was pushed from February/March 2013. Which is very Debian.
- He divided Debian into three components: the product/operating system; the project; and the community. It was a very cool way to consider the distribution.
- He said 78% of Ubuntu comes directly from Debian, with another 12% of Ubuntu representing patched Debian packages. The rest of Ubuntu comes directly from Ubuntu.
- Stefano called bug reporting a moral obligation for anyone using free software. I’m going to try and be better about fulfilling that obligation.
- Someone asked Stefano about guided Debian membership paths for non-technical people. He said it’s something Debian wants to work on. Given the rigorous structures and mentoring Debian has for technical members looking to join the project, they’re well-positioned to come up with something interesting.
The Linux Setup - Chris Knadle, Engineer/System Administrator
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).
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Who are you, and what do you do?
Short version: engineer/system admin/power user/gamer/amateur radio operator.
I’m mainly an RF and electrical engineer, and a Linux system administrator (primarily on Debian these days). I’m also a programmer (C, C++, Qt, Bash, Assembly, on rare occasion Perl or Python, or various Macro languages in documents) but on a day-to-day basis I consider myself more of a “power user.” I’ve also active on 2m FM ham radio, gaming (mostly 3D FPS and RTS games) and I occasionally do woodworking, auto repair, embedded system programming, hardware design, and fly RC model aircraft. [In case anyone is over-impressed by this list, I’ll just mention that “I’m just a regular guy” — I’m friendly and I don’t have a big ego.]
I’ve recently started to delve into Debian package development (mostly out of necessity, the mother of invention) and just recently set up my own private signed repository via the reprepro package, along with a custom keyring package, although I’m currently re-working some of the details.
A couple of months ago I ended up having to do an NMU on the Mumble VoIP package after the maintainer broke the package (due to lack of upstream support for the required base assumption codec, CELT 0.7.1), then acted quite unkindly, leading to a conflict and a two-month heated discussion with the Debian Technical Committee, then forcing someone to do an NMU since the maintainer refused to help or communicate at all after the decision. Debian has it’s share of social problems — and unfortunately they don’t have a code-of-conduct like Ubuntu has. This social brokenness is the exception rather than the rule, but it’s an ongoing unhandled problem which Debian is well known for. And although Ubuntu has a social contract, that doesn’t really solve the problem because Ubuntu wants packages to go through Debian first. Same goes for Mint.
However as part of the Mumble NMU work, I got in contact with a very pleasant Austrian Debian developer (Gregor Herrmann) who I briefly met in person during DebConf10 in NYC, and I’ve been slowly gaining a bit of helpful mentoring from him as part of our continuing discussions. I haven’t yet uploaded a Debian package of my own through debian-mentors so I’m not officially a maintainer of a package yet, but I likely will sometime during 2013. Maybe I’ll eventually apply for Debian’s New Maintainer process… we’ll see. I have plenty of interests that will still keep me busy if I don’t. ;-)
What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?
I run Debian Sid for my own desktops and laptops, along with a few packages from Debian Experimental as needed. For servers and other non-power users, I stick with Debian Stable.
I started experimenting with Linux in late 1994 with Slackware, and finally started using it on the desktop in 1997 with the release of Window Maker, and it became my main desktop in 1998 after the release of KDE v1. I’ve mainly been using KDE ever since.
Slackware was wonderful but too really troublesome to keep up-to-date (the procedure was “just reinstall” at the time — then download and recompile all the locally-compiled programs…). I did learn to configure and compile the Linux kernel during this time, which is something I still do today.
I made the (somewhat painful) switch to Debian in August 1999, which was the Slink release. Back then Debian was painful to install because there was no kernel driver auto-detection — the installer would literally ask during the install for each kernel module that was needed. As I learned more about it I started to experiment with running Testing and Unstable, and I’ve been running Debian Unstable as my main desktop distribution since 2002 — I mainly started running it because it was what gets the most support from Debian developers. That it also happens to be the platform that all new Debian packages need to target is just a side bonus. ;-)
What software do you depend upon with this distribution?
Debian-packaged external kernel modules: virtualbox-source, tp-smapi-source, nvidia-kernel-source (proprietary Nvidia driver :-( for 3D support as well as TwinView for projectors/presentations)
Kernel: custom-compiled (currently 3.5.7) to a Debian package from “vanilla” upstream source using the “linux-stable” upstream git repo
Browser: Iceweasel (from Debian Experimental)
CAD: LibreCAD, FreeCAD, and a commercial OpenGL CAD package (VariCAD) in a VM
Desktop Environment: KDE4
File Browser: Krusader
Editor: Nano
Image Editor: GIMP
IRC Client: Irssi, Konversation
Mail client: KMail
Movie Viewer: SMPlayer (for DVDs), SMPlayer2, VLC
Music Player: Qmmp
Office Suite: LibreOffice
PDF viewer: Okular
Terminal: Konsole
Torrent Client: KTorrent
Version Control: Git, git-svn for working with svn repos
Virtualization: VirtualBox, occasionally KVM
VoIP client: MumbleFavorite games on Linux: Amagetron Advanced, FlightGear (via the FGo! program), Freedroid, Freedroid RPG, KMahjongg, KSudoku, Oolite, Prboom, Pynagram, Ur-Quon Masters
What kind of hardware do you run it on?
Laptop: Lenovo T61P-CTO ThinkPad
Desktop: Pentium 4 custom built in 2001; Several other Pentium 4 and Pentium III desktops as well.
My firewalls arerunning Debian too; they’re Alix boxes using the AMD Geode LX800 CPU.
The oldest hardware that runs Debian are some Pentium II’s made by IBM (300XL). These were what I was using to duplicate servers in preparation for testing major Debian upgrades on servers before I started doing that work in VMs.
What is your ideal Linux setup?
The GUI choice of Xfce4, LXDE, and/or KDE4.
Hardware that allows 3D capability (preferably using open source drivers, if possible).
The distribution needs to allow updating to the latest version in perpetuity, rather than needing to reinstall, and run on both new(er), old, and /very/ old hardware. So far Debian seems best suited to these goals. If I had to choose an alternative it would probably be OpenSuSE, Vector, or Fedora.
For laptops I want sleep and hibernation-to-disk, as well as the security of using full-disk LUKS encryption, preferably with LVM on top so that only one LUKS password is required, and XFS or ext4 for filesystem choice. XFS is fast but is prone to corruption on unclean shutdown and is troublesome to fsck/repair (it requires a LiveCD distro with cryptfs and xfs_repair on it). Ext4 is reliable but somewhat slower. I haven’t yet tried Btrfs.
For KDE4 I immediately turn off the “Desktop Search” features of Nepomuk and Strigi Indexing, because these are incredible performance hogs that quickly make a KDE4 desktop sluggish. I leave the desktop settings as “desktop” with no folder plasmoid nor desktop icons, add plasmoids to the desktop for status of CPU, temperatures, and network throughput, and customize the taskbar as well. Lately I’ve added a “quicklaunch” bar on the left-side of the screen with programs I typically use so that I don’t have to go into the “K” menu as often. I also always switch the K menu to “Classic Menu Style” over the “Application Launcher Style.” I use some of the 3D compositing effects like “Cover Switch” for Alt-Tab switching and the “Present Windows” action when the mouse is put into the top-left corner of the screen, but I minimize using these features — so no wobbly-windows or exploding windows on closing, etc. I try to keep it simple and stick to the features that are useful yet non-distracting.
A weird note about my use of KDE4: I don’t use multiple monitors, nor “activities,” and I generally don’t use multiple desktops either. Over the years I’ve simply gotten into the habit of letting the various program windows pile on top of each other and using Alt-Tab or the label in the taskbar to get to the program/window I want to get to at the moment. I don’t really know why I still do this and why this still works for me, because everybody else I talk to wants multiple monitors.
On a related note concerning distributions — in March 2011 Mid Hudson Valley Linux and Open Source Users Group had a “Desktop Shootout” meeting discussing window manager and desktop environment choices which raised my interest in looking at them again. I then started to think about trying several other distributions to have a look at what they’re like now. In August 2011 I tried the top 25 free software distributions in the order that was listed by DistroWatch.com at that time, loading each of them in a VirtualBox VM. Here are some loose notes based on the experience.
* = distribution is Debian-based.
- Unity GUI is confusing… I don’t like it. 3D = runs poorly in a VM. The AppArmor security features are relatively nice, but Ubuntu targets newer hardware, and last I ran it, they didn’t support upgrades-in-place even though Debian (which is what they’re based on) does.
- Fedora 17 was pleasant and worth a look. SELinux by default is good, but it’s too complicated a solution, IMHO.
- OpenSUSE was surprisingly pleasant and snappy — definitely worth a look. Definitely one of my personal “top 5 distros.”
- Arch Linux has SUPERfast package installs. However there’s no graphical installer, I couldn’t get the sound working, and some of the instructions were wrong concerning installing Grub2; the “Beginners Guide” is correct.
- Puppy is very light and quick, but I didn’t find a way of installing the packages I needed.
- PCLinuxOS gave me packaging trouble, and when I looked at the /etc/apt/sources.list file I was horrified to find only “rpm” lines. :-O A Debian packaging tool using RPMs? Sacrilege.
- Ultimate ran terribly; it’s “max 3D” which in a VM means “max slow.”
- Pear was wonderful to see, because the entire GUI emulates an Apple Macintosh, except the Apple is a Pear. Seriously, it’s cool.
- FreeBSD doesn’t install a GUI by default, and doesn’t seem to tell you how to do so, either. It’s not that you can’t, it’s just that I didn’t figure it out even after web searching. Not cool.
- Gentoo. This is where I want to start cursing. The base install and KDE
4.8 was a *three full day compile* on a Core2 duo using both cores and
carefully following the instructions, plus having to figure out emerge
command line options to deal with unexpected dependency issues. After
all that, I couldn’t get X to start so the whole experiment was a big
waste of very hot CPU time. Ultimately frustrating. Gentoo advocates
are quick to point out that the distro is the fastest of them all —
which let’s just say it is — yet it gets there by way of massive
CPU time, such that the result is false economy.
The Gentoo project has a lot of great documentation on the web, and I greatly respect their developers and their choice of OpenRC as an initialization system, but running the Gentoo distribution is not for me. - Vector is Slackware-based, but with package management. This distro was fun and snappy — enough that I gave serious consideration to keeping it loaded and continuing to play with it.
- Knoppix is my personal favorite Debian-based LiveCD distro, so I kept it in the list even though it wasn’t in the top 25 on DistroWatch.
Other notes:
- Many of the Debian-based distributions allow running as a LiveCD and updating/installing packages into memory while still running the LiveCD (i.e. this doesn’t alter the contents of the hard disk at all).
- Distributions that require 3D for the GUI (Ubuntu, Ultimate) are a pain because that causes the GUI to be very slow in a VM.
- Some of the installer/updaters in the distribution were difficult to use or made it difficult to search for a particular package (Fuduntu, SolusOS).
Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?
The 3D CAD drawing is a corner desk I custom designed and built some years ago which is very strong, yet can be disassembled, moved, and reassembled without any damage to the wood whatsoever. It’s built from three sheets of oak 3/4” ply, two pine 2x4’s, and some decorative 3/4” quarter-round, using 1/2” deep screw-in wood insert nuts for locations to bolt to (McMaster Carr calls these “Tapping Hex Drive Insert Nuts with Flange”). I tried to find something reasonably priced before doing this but didn’t find what I needed. Total cost to build was in the range of around $300. I’m using the desk to this day, and I’m still very glad I built it.
Interview conducted 1/9/13
The Linux Setup is a feature where I interview people about their Linux setups. The concept is borrowed, if not outright stolen, from this site. If you’d like to participate, drop me a line.
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The Linux Setup - Miriam Ruiz, Debian Developer/Engineer
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 entrenched in our own workflows.
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Who are you, and what do you do?
That’s probably one of the most difficult questions to answer, I guess. Like mostly everyone I know, I’m a lot of things. I’m a Spanish girl, an engineer, a geek, a feminist, a Free Software activist and, regarding Linux, I’m a Debian Developer.
What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?
I run Debian GNU/Linux on all of my computers. It’s the distribution I’m most familiar with, it’s a good option for most purposes and architectures, it has a good support community in mailing lists and forums, and it already includes most of the software I usually need. And when I need something that isn’t already there, I usually package it myself.
What software do you depend upon with this distribution?
It depends on what I’m using at the moment. The things I use the most are the shell console, a programming environment (an editor and gcc), Mozilla Firefox (with a lot of add-ons), and programs like LibreOffice, GIMP and VLC. I tend to use Python or bash for scripting, and if I have to do some work with data, R or Octave. I tend to use lots of smaller CLI programs that make my life easier, though. Regarding my desktop, I’ve been changing it over time. I’ve already gone through Xfce and KDE, and I’m currently using GNOME.
What kind of hardware do you run it on?
I do most things either from my small netbook or from an old workstation computer, depending on what I need to do. I’ve got some other computers that I use to try things, like a tiny ARM or an old PowerPC. Most of the time I use my netbook, and I connect remotely to my workstation for doing whatever needs intensive use of the CPU, like compiling something, or doing a lot of numerical calculations, for example.
What is your ideal Linux setup?
My ideal configuration would just include Free Software (and thus should only be comprised of hardware that has Free Software drivers, including the graphic card and the WiFi system), would have a comfortable desktop environment (right now I’m a bit biased towards GNOME, but KDE is a good option too), and would have a system that was easy to configure and upgrade, and had most of the software I might use in its repositories (my natural option would, of course, be Debian). For mobile computers I like netbooks a lot, and for workstations, two big monitors is a good idea :)
Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?
It’s not really very impressive. This is from my netbook where the desktop environment I use is GNOME 3. I tend to use multiple desktops a lot, and I usually have many windows open.
Interview conducted November 27, 2012
The Linux Setup is a feature where I interview people about their Linux setups. The concept is borrowed, if not outright stolen, from this site. If you’d like to participate, drop me a line.
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The Linux Setup - Paul Tagliamonte, Software Engineer/Debian Developer
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 technical ease. It’s nice to hear a Debian developer contemplating the issue. It’s not an easy fix, but it is a fixable problem. Especially with developers like Paul on the case.
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Who are you, and what do you do?
I’m Paul Tagliamonte, by day, a Software Engineer with the Sunlight Foundation, and by night, a Debian Developer, an Ubuntu contributor (although, I don’t do as much there these days). I can sometimes be found hacking with the Fluxboxers.
What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?
I use Debian GNU/Linux Unstable/Experimental, on amd64, for my personal laptop. I run Ubuntu on my work laptop (for now), and Debian on everything else (such as my netbook, desktop, etc).
What software do you depend upon with this distribution?
I can’t function without vim, mutt, and irssi. I use all those tools on a daily basis, and I love them. I use irssi on one of my remote servers, in an always-on GNU screen session. I have a devoted user, which auto-attaches to a single screen session. It’s handy to ssh in as my IRC user and just close the window when I’m done.
I’m always open to trying to find a new MUA, text editor or IRC client, but so far, there’s nothing I’d rather use.
I’m also blindly in love with dpkg and apt-get.
As for window manager, I have two setups. These days, I’ve been using awesome window manager, because it’s handling of more then one head is amazing. Tiling window managers are pretty cool. My other setup is Fluxbox + Xfce, which is also super rad. I’ve been using Fluxbox since I first got involved with GNU/Linux, so it’s pretty close to my heart.
I also keep a small amount of software in my personal archive that’s not quite fit for Debian’s. I use some of that, but it’s mostly small stuff (metapackages to auto-install stuff I like, some slightly non-free stuff like node-jslint and security issues, like flake8)
What kind of hardware do you run it on?
- Thinkpad T520i, i3 (leliel; see photo below). I added in some more RAM and an SSD. It’s a great machine. It lasts forever on battery.
- Thinkpad T420s, i5 (chayot). Pretty stock, but an amazing machine; light, portable, and great for hacking.
- HP Mini 110, Atom, low RAM (uriel). It has a double-size battery but that machine practically fits in my back pocket.
- Desktop machine, Core 2 Duo (loki). It has moderate RAM and lots of disk space. It runs a bit hot, but it’s been my stand-by machine since 2008.
In case anyone’s wondering, I name all my machines after things from mythology, and ‘loki’ is always my primary development machine.
My two Linode VPSs are named “metatron” and “lucifer.”
Thinkpad T520i (leliel), in its dock, with its secondary screen, Das Keyboard II (amazing keyboard), and a Wacom Bamboo pad. I also have a few Razer input devices (mamba and nostromo), which seem to do their job fairly well.What is your ideal Linux setup?
My work setup (physically) is about as good as it gets. I have a secondary screen, rotated the long-way (so I can view more of a file at one time), and a solid laptop I can pick up and hack elsewhere.
I love—absolutely love—Debian GNU/Linux Unstable/Experimental (for some newer upstreams during freeze). It’s been my go-to since early 2004 or so.
I would also love a Linux setup that is both free (as in freedom), but also one that I can have my non-technical friends use without problem. Debian is close, but the fact some platforms need non-free software upsets me.
These days I just try to maintain a proper balance of free and non-free software on my system, but as soon as I find proper replacements, I’ll be a happy, happy man.
Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?
awesome window manager
Awesome desktop background
Interview conducted November 24, 2012
The Linux Setup is a feature where I interview people about their Linux setups. The concept is borrowed, if not outright stolen, from this site. If you’d like to participate, drop me a line.
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The Linux Setup - Margarita Manterola, Google Engineer/Debian Developer
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 say that Margarita’s setup is basic. Like a lot of Debian users, she makes liberal use of backports to import more recent versions of certain programs. But as she mentions, for the most part, she’s getting a lot done using a pretty default system.
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Who are you, and what do you do?
My name is Margarita Manterola. I’m a software developer born in Argentina, currently living in Germany.
I work for Google as a Site Reliability Engineer, and in my free time, I participate in Free and Open Source Software. Particularly, I’m a Debian Developer since 2005, I contribute to the Debian Project with packages and bugfixes.
What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?
On my personal desktop and laptop I run Debian Stable (currently codenamed Squeeze, very soon to be Wheezy).
Since it’s currently a two-year-old distribution, I complement it with some cherry-picked backports of some packages, like Firefox.
For my Debian work, I have several different partitions in my hard drive, that can run different distributions, in order to do developing and testing.
What software do you depend upon with this distribution?
I use lots of different pieces of software. I’m a heavy terminal user, I do all my coding in Vim, and generally prefer the command line to the graphical interface programs. However, I also enjoy the use of photo and video programs, like The GIMP, F-Spot, or Kdenlive.
What kind of hardware do you run it on?
I’m on the Intel team. I have a Core 2 Duo as my desktop and a Pentium M as my notebook (soon to be replaced). I dislike closed source graphics drivers, so I take care to buy machines with integrated Intel graphics cards.
Also, I like Dell Latitude notebooks, but they are expensive, so I buy them refurbished. My current notebook is a Dell Latitud X300. I bought it in 2007 and it still works as well as it did the first day, except for the dead battery.
I’m not much of a hardware fan, I don’t go buying the lastest machines with the most power just for the kicks. I think that nowadays even three- or four-year-old machines can perform quite well as a desktop machine. Only when compiling something big do I miss having something more powerful.
What is your ideal Linux setup?
I’m really happy with my setup. An up-to-date Debian Stable installation, with only a handful of backports, for the programs that really need it. I prefer to have a stable setup than a bleeding edge setup.
I’ve been using GNOME as a desktop envirnoment for many many years, and I was really reluctant to move to GNOME 3. However, I have lately discovered Cinnamon, and I really like it, so once I upgrade to Wheezy I’ll be using Cinnamon as the desktop environment.
Also, I care a lot about energy saving, so my ideal Linux setup doesn’t use more energy than needed and can be reliably suspended and woken up as necessary. This is usually related to hardware support, so I always take good care to look at the specs of the hardware I’m buying to check that everything works.
Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?
Interview conducted 11/24/12
The Linux Setup is a feature where I interview people about their Linux setups. The concept is borrowed, if not outright stolen, from this site. If you’d like to participate, drop me a line.
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[DebianSupporters] Is Debian declining? Can donations fund Ubuntu?
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.
The Linux Setup - Terry Hancock, Journalist/Producer
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 that it sometimes requires a bit of work on his part).
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Who are you, and what do you do?
I’m Terry Hancock. I’ve done a lot of different things over the years, but for the last several years I’ve been writing a column for Free Software Magazine about free software and free culture topics.
Since 2009, I’ve been actively working on producing and directing a free-culture science-fiction web video series which will be called “Lunatics.” We’re currently involved in recording voices for the pilot episode, and I hope to be working on animation again before the year is out.
What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?
On my desktop workstation, I run Debian’s main distribution — currently the “testing” version, “Wheezy.” I’ve tried some specialized derivative distributions, but none of them really worked out for me. I wind up customizing things and I want to control which apps are installed, try out new ones, and so on. So it’s easier to just use the main upstream distribution.
This is not without headaches though. I probably have more problems with hardware compatibility because of this choice — especially with multimedia software. I have to work out my own dependency problems to a greater degree (though it’s not nearly as bad as installing from source).
My wife is currently using Ubuntu Studio on her system, and we have a couple of other Debian systems for our kids.
We also maintain a virtual private server for web hosting. That system runs Debian as well — though we stick with the “stable” distribution.
What software do you depend upon with this distribution?
Well, first of all, I’m a KDE4 user, and I’m pretty happy with that, although the sound system is not as easy to manage as I would like.
For my work, I use a lot of different applications, but some of the most important are: Inkscape, Gimp, Blender, Kate (the editor — which I’m using more and more instead of Gvim, which I used to use all the time), Libre Office, Konqueror (for file management), VLC, and Audacity (which I’m doing a lot with this week).
I use both Iceweasel and Chromium browsers. I primarily use Iceweasel for general-purpose browsing, while I use Chromium specifically with social-media websites (Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Identica, and Diaspora). I primarily interact with Identica and Twitter using the Choqok client, though.
Debian’s multimedia packages are not as up-to-date as some, and I wind up using a few pacakges from other sources. I’m currently running a build of Blender with Freestyle integration from http://graphicall.org.
When I program, I use Python pretty much exclusively. A long time ago I wrote software in C, C++, and even Fortran, but these days I stick to high-level stuff, and Python serves well for that.
What kind of hardware do you run it on?
This is a self-built desktop with 64-bit quad-core AMD system with 8GB of RAM. The motherboard and drives are from ASUS. I’m using the on-board graphics and sound systems.
I have an LG Blu-Ray/M-Disc/DVD-RW/CD-RW drive as well, which lets me write just about any optical media I need to. The printer (and scanner) is a low-end HP multifunction machine, and the monitor is a widescreen 21” with 1920x1080 pixels (so it can display full HD video at full-scale — which is important since I’ve got two major projects in that format, both “Lunatics” and “Lib-Ray”).
A lot of the components have been through a few other computers before winding up in this one — there’s always a few parts lying around our place.
We have a LAN and my wife and kids have their own systems. The computers are a bit behind the technology curve, but we’re able to keep them working. Obviously this is something we put a lot of value on.
What is your ideal Linux setup?
I’m pretty happy with what I’ve got. There will always be pressure to increase performance for things like rendering scenes in Blender or editing video with Kdenlive, but it’s not really proving to be a problem yet.
When it does, we’re probably talking about creating a render farm server of some kind (not a new desktop).
Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?
Which one? :-)
I actually use the “virtual desktops” feature extensively. I have 20 desktops organized by task, and I spread out the applications I’m using accordingly. So, for example, I have four named desktops for “Lunatics” project work, one for “Lib-Ray,” two for Morevna Project, one for Free Software Magazine, and so on. This way I can leave windows open and just switch desktops when going from one task to another.
I’ve attached a capture of my “Lunatics 1” desktop with Blender and Audacity both open on project files in progress — these are the “heavy-hitting” applications I’ve been using on production for “Lunatics.”
One thing you might notice here is that I use the pin-up notes to keep track of to-do lists and the like on each project. Maintaining this place-like metaphor on my desktops helps me deal with the mental clutter from several projects that I’m working on simultaneously.
Interview conducted 9/23/12
The Linux Setup is a feature where I interview people about their Linux setups. The concept is borrowed, if not outright stolen, from this site. If you’d like to participate, drop me a line.
You can follow us on Google+ here and subscribe to our feed here.
The Linux Setup - Philip Newborough, CrunchBang Linux
Philip Newborough is the man behind CrunchBang Linux, a solid distro beloved by many for its dedication to minimalism. As you might expect, Newborough doesn’t like a lot of bells and whistles attached to his Linux. Philip is also a loyal Debian man, graciously taking time out of his interview to credit Debian for making CrunchBang possible.
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Who are you, and what do you do?
I am Philip Newborough. I am a web developer and GNU/Linux enthusiast. I produce an unofficial Debian derivative known as CrunchBang. At the moment, I am working full time on CrunchBang, trying to improve its quality and purpose. I love working on the project and I love learning more about the Debian system.
What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?
Debian. Out of respect for Debian and its developers, I always tell people that I am a Debian user. I mean, CrunchBang is effectively Debian, but tweaked. And CrunchBang would simply cease to exist without Debian. Anyhow, I like to keep up-to-date with what is happening, so I maintain a working system of each branch, stable, testing and unstable.
What software do you depend upon with this distribution?
I use and depend on lots of software. I am not sure I could possibly list everything, so here are 3 pieces of software that I use on a daily basis and admire a lot:
- Openbox [http://openbox.org/] - I adore it. It is the most flexible window manager I have ever used. I love how it can be so simple, yet so powerful. It really can be a dream to use.
- Terminator [http://www.tenshu.net/p/terminator.html] - I spend a fair amount of time working in a terminal and Terminator has a few tricks that I find really handy. For example, it will let you broadcast commands to multiple machines via a grid of terminals.
- Geany [http://www.geany.org/] - as GUI text editors go, Geany is pretty nice. It has a bunch of nifty extensions/plugins and does the job.
What kind of hardware do you run it on?
I have a few systems at my disposal, but I prefer to work on my ThinkPad X200s. It is small and compact with a 12 inch display, but it is more than powerful enough to handle most jobs. When I need more room/power, I have a quad core Dell Studio desktop that is hooked up to a 1080p display.
What is your ideal Linux setup?
This question is easy to answer: CrunchBang. No, but seriously, I like to use a minimal, yet fully functional system and CrunchBang comes pretty close to providing this, for me.
Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?
Sure, see the image [below]. I am not sure that the screenshot is very informative, but it is a true representation of the kind of clean/minimalist layout that I prefer to work with.
Interview conducted March 18, 2012
The Linux Setup is a feature where I interview people about their Linux setups. The concept is borrowed, if not outright stolen, from this site. If you’d like to participate, drop me a line.
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