My Linux Rig

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 see the interview was conducted a few months ago, before I become obsessed with Fuduntu. I think it just goes to show how Fuduntu was hitting a critical mass before the announced shutdown, and how a lot of people are probably anxious for the next iteration of the distro.

You can find more of The Linux Setup here.

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1. Who are you, and what do you do?

   John Browning. I’m a systems programmer/engineer for a privately held software company that makes statistical software. I also contribute to Engadget.com in my spare time. At my day job I manage high performance clusters/grids running RedHat Enterprise Linux. I’m responsible for creating a lot of tooling and automation, mostly in Perl. I get to invent cool new ways of doing stuff. I’ve been playing with Conary as of late. I’ve been using Linux since I was a tween.

2. What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?

   Currently running Fuduntu at work and home. Fuduntu is a somewhat Fedora-based distribution with a default GNOME2 desktop environment. Fuduntu is geared for desktop use. I highly recommend folks check it out: http://www.fuduntu.org

3. What software do you depend upon with this distribution?

   I really like GNOME 2 as a desktop environment. Fubuntu is a great distro that utilizes true and updated GNOME 2. It’s a bit more stable than some of the MATE environments I’ve tried. That’s the main selling point of Fuduntu.

   Other software I use (that you can get on just about any distro):
   1. vim
   2. Steam, ya gotta relax sometimes. Fuduntu has great steam support out of the box (yum -y install steam)
   3. VLC
   4. Chromium

4. What kind of hardware do you run it on?

   At work: Core i7, 16GB Memory, Nvidia Tesla GPU. Dell brand.

   At home: A rather old homebuild PC AMD Phenom that’s getting upgraded soon. It has 4GB of memory.

5. What is your ideal Linux setup?

   Core i7 with 8MB Cache, 16GB of DDR3, and latest Nvidia GPU. I have to have dual monitors as well.

6. Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

   A screenshot of my home environment:

Interview conducted February 27, 2013

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 My Linux Rig on Google+ here, follow me on Twitter here, and subscribe to the feed here.

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 didn’t realize it was the default GNOME document manager, which I don’t usually use, but which seems to be a great dashboard which integrates local documents with cloud-hosted ones. It’s something I might explore down the line. It’s kind of funny how, like many Linux users, I have all of this interesting software installed and at my fingertips, yet I haven’t fully explored what’s available to me. It’s a nice problem to have.

You can find more of The Linux Setup here.

You can follow My Linux Rig on Google+ here and follow me on Twitter here.

1. Who are you, and what do you do?

   I am a member of the GNOME foundation and an MS in Computer Science student. I contribute to GNOME’s Documents application, co-organize monthly Linux user group meetups and GNOME hackfests in Chicago, and help out with the Chicago Python Workshop. I’m working as a web developer while I complete my degree.

2. What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?

   I’m running Fedora 18. I use the GNOME desktop environment.

3. What software do you depend upon with this distribution?

   I run the current version of Documents from git master for managing and editing my Google and local docs and for developing and testing the software itself.

   I use Pidgin for communicating on IRC, Tomboy for note taking, and GIMP and Inkscape for svg and picture editing.

   I usually use Firefox (with HTTPS Everywhere, Ghostery, AdBlock, and GNOME 3 extensions) for browsing the web, and Google Chrome when I need smooth integration with Google services.

   When I program for GNOME I use gedit and the terminal. For web development I use Bluefish. In school my primary language is Java, so I use Eclipse and JGrasp. I just started learning C this semester, and I’m going to try using Emacs. There’s a steep learning curve with Emacs, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to invest the time to learn it.

4. What kind of hardware do you run it on?

   I have a Thinkpad T61.

5. What is your ideal Linux setup?

   I think I work on GNOME in order to help create the “ideal” Linux. It’s really exciting to me to try out new features as they are built, and contribute to the vision and development happening in our community.

6. Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

Interview conducted January 25, 2013

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 - 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.

You can find more of The Linux Setup here.

You can follow us on Google+ here.

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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 :)

6. 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.

You can follow us on Google+ here and subscribe to our feed here.

The Linux Setup - Jayson Rowe, Server Administrator

I know Jayson from Google+, which despite its reputation as a ghost town, actually has quite a lot of Linux-centric people and conversations. Jayson is a true explorer, though. Reading through his interview, you can see he’s a KDE person who leans on Xfce when he doesn’t have the specs for KDE. The subtext is ‘anything but GNOME,’ which is a fairly common approach (there are also plenty of ‘anything but KDE’ users, too). But after Jayson submitted his interview, he wrote in to let me know he was giving GNOME a shot, which is pretty cool. It’s very easy to get caught up in your Linux favorites, but part of what makes it so much fun is trying out something different, if only for a few hours.

Jayson reports GNOME is growing on him. But he might just be humoring me.

You can find more of The Linux Setup here.

You can follow us on Google+ here.

1. Who are you, and what do you do?

   My name is Jayson Rowe and I am a Server Administrator that also does some programming. I am also a Fedora Ambassador, a member of the Fedora Infrastructure team and a Fedora packager as well.

2. What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?

   I use Fedora Linux on all of my machines (except one which runs Slackware). I ran Kubuntu/Ubuntu for several years before switching back to Fedora. Fedora simply meets my needs better now.

3. What software do you depend upon with this distribution?

   I use the KDE Desktop on my main machines (Xfce on some other low-powered machines). I am a big fan of Sublime Text 2. I use it for practically everything from quick edits, to writing code to filling out this interview. Although SL2 is my main editor, I do use Kate and Vim (if in a terminal) some as well. I also rely a lot on Chrome, Dropbox and Wine as well as VirtualBox to get things done. I do a *lot* in virtual machines.

4. What kind of hardware do you run it on?

   My setup at home is a system I built with an AMD Phenom II X4 965, 16GB of RAM, 23” and 22” LCD Monitors and a bunch of spinning platter drives. I tried an SSD but it died on me, and I haven’t gotten around to replacing it. I also have a little MiniITX Atom PC that is connected via Synergy that in a lot of ways serves as a third monitor (usually with Twitter up).

   I also have a Nexus 7, an old HTC Incredible (running CM7, of course), a Dell Mini 9 netbook, a Dell Studio 15 laptop (running the Fedora Java Remix with GNOME Shell, as inspired by Jos) and an aging-but-still-useful Thinkpad Z60m (which is my lone Slackware machine).

5. What is your ideal Linux setup?

   Intel i7 6-core
   Decent sized SSD for ‘/’ and ‘/home’
   Two big platter disks in a RAID-1 for ‘/tmp’, ‘/var’, ‘/data’ and swap.
   16+ GB of RAM (would love 32GB).
   

   For a software setup, I’m very happy with Fedora, KDE and Xfce for my needs.

6. Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

   I don’t always see my desktop, but when I do, it’ll be a cool picture. I have quite a collection of images I get from InterfaceLift and I keep them in my Dropbox folder. In KDE I have it set to change the picture on each monitor every 15 minutes. My Xfce machines still have the Fedora Beefy Miracle fireworks.

   Here is my main PC at home running KDE:

   

   Here is my little Xfce PC at home that acts as my third monitor:

   

Interview conducted August 29, 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.

You can follow us on Google+ here and subscribe to our feed here.