My Linux Rig

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 click or command away. I’m also pleased to see an Xfce user checking in here. I still love GNOME, but the development process sometimes seems a bit rigid. Xfce is a great alternative that still doesn’t seem to get the attention it deserves.

You can find more of The Linux Setup here.

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

   I’m a PhD student in Dublin City University. Mostly I look at the sugars on the surface of cells using specialised detection proteins and expensive pieces of equipment. In my spare time I’m involved with my local hackerspace, TOG, where I like to evangelise about crochet and crafting in general. I also keep a cake blog and get involved in telling the public how awesome science is. I’m pretty busy!

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

   On my main laptop I run Linux Mint Debian Edition with Xfce as my preferred desktop manager. LMDE stopped supporting Xfce recently and I’m somewhat disappointed because I love LMDE and haven’t found an alternative to Xfce that I like. On the other laptops and nettops I use, I have Debian installed, as the rolling LMDE is less suitable for something you turn on every other month.

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

   Mendeley and Kile are probably my most used bits of software after my browser and terminal. Mendeley allows me to keep on top of developments in my research area, and Kile is a great environment for writing LaTeX.

   For image analysis I use ImageJ which is a neat piece of software that the National Institutes of Health have released for getting data from microscope pictures. The GIMP is invaluable for labelling images and for making diagrams for describing how my science works. RStudio is a handy environment for doing statistics using R. Sadly, it doesn’t yet do ALL of my stats for me; I have to figure out what to tell R before it can do the calculations!

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

   My main laptop was provided by work; it’s a Dell Lattitude E6510.

5. What is your ideal Linux setup?

   My ideal setup isn’t far off what I have now. Maybe a lighter computer would be nice, as I carry the laptop EVERYWHERE as I’m so attached to everything on it.

6. Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

   That’s our venus flytrap. It was living on a table outdoors last summer when I took the photo. You can tell it’s in good shape because the little mouths are more pink than green.

Interview conducted March 24, 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 - 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 strength and beauty of Xfce.

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?

   I’m Nick Schermer. I’m working for a small company that provides mechanical support on rotating equipment (gas-turbines, pumps, compressors). In my spare time I contribute to the Xfce Desktop Environment, hacking on nearly every part of the [core] desktop.

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

   I’ve been using Arch Linux for as long as I can remember. For testing my desktop runs a number of virtual machines.

   It also have Windows installed which is required for work-related software *sigh*.

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

   Compiler tools, KVM and some desktop applications like Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, GIMP, Geany. Obviously I compile Xfce myself from the Git repositories.

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

   My desktop is an i7-2600, a 22-inch screen with a SSD for ‘/’ and disk for LVM partitions and ‘/home’.

   I also have a netbook, which I carry around sometimes. I don’t use it a lot, but it has the same software as the desktop.

5. What is your ideal Linux setup?

   My current desktop is fast enough. A second monitor would be nice. I’m already looking for one. Maybe some more memory, but I hardly run multiple VMs at once.

   I’m not a laptop user, so upgrading to an ultrabook or new netbook is not worth the money.

   I recently received a Raspberry Pi, but I’ve had hardly any time to test it. It currently runs as a media center, but it should of course run Xfce ;-).

6. Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

   For programming I usually have a bunch of terminals and an editor open while playing music in the background. Otherwise its most likely a full-screen movie player or web browser.

Interview conducted September 25, 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.

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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.

The Linux Setup - Chris, Open Source Developer

Chris’ interview is interesting in that he’s considering the move to Gentoo, which seems to be a natural progression for many users as they get more comfortable with Linux. The thing about Linux is that there’s really not much in the intermediate experience space. Most things are either easy or expert. This very old Ask MetaFilter thread explores that idea a bit. I hope Chris checks in after he moves to Gentoo.

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?

   I’m Chris, a six-year veteran user of the Linux desktop and developer of open source software. I’m a freelance software developer/problem solver with a very free schedule, unfortunately! I live in Sweden with my girlfriend. I enjoy playful cleverness, which is what drives me to hack on software and play intellectually stimulating games like chess. I think that should be enough background by now!

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

   Ubuntu 11.10 with an Xfce4 desktop. I like Ubuntu, but I’m thinking of changing to Gentoo now that I’m experienced enough to handle it. I’ve tried it out in VirtualBox a few times and am fairly confident I could install it on real hardware now. Over the years I’ve tried out: Gentoo, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, Knoppix (my cherry-popper, if anyone’s interested), DSL, Puppy, Mandrake/Mandriva, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Haiku (recently), OpenSUSE, Debian, all the Ubuntu variants (Edubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, and Ubuntu Studio Edition), Arch, Slackware, CentOS, and a few more that have passed out of memory. I’m quite the adventurer! My favourite was probably Gentoo, although I am also partial to Arch. Ubuntu has long been my favourite but has passed somewhat from favour since the launch of the Unity interface.

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

   Web browser: Chrome
   Email: Chrome also (Gmail)
   Terminal emulator: xfce4-terminal
   IRC: irssi
   Text Editor: Kate
   Development tools: make 3.8.1, gcc 4.6.1, gdb 7.3-2011.08, valgrind 3.6.1
   Virtualisation: VirtualBox

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

   An eMachines laptop with 1.7GB of RAM, an AMD V160 which apparently clocks at 0.8GHz (according to /proc/cpuinfo) and a 250GB HDD. It’s a bit of a donkey but it gets the job done and I feel a bit mean when I criticize it because it was a gift from a very caring father to his beloved daughter (my better half).

5. What is your ideal Linux setup?

   Money is no object? This is where I could go a bit crazy, so bear with me!

   Home compilation/rendering server: nVidia Tesla-powered personal supercomputer running Gentoo (not listed as a supported OS but I’d want Gentoo for its speed and development tools).

   Desktop/workstation: Custom built with Intel Xeon 3.0 Quad, 16GB RAM, twin 500GB hard drives (RAID 0) and a 128GB SSD for the OSs and applications, dual-booted with Gentoo and Windows 7, with an even split of the SSD, twin 21” 4:3 displays and a Dell silver-framed keyboard (I don’t know the model name, but they’re the standard issue keyboards with modern Dells and I just love them) and a generic 2-button scroll-wheel mouse, because mice aren’t all that important. Oh, and I’d put an nVidia GTX 520 in the desktop machine for 3D modeling (and gaming, naturally).

6. Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

Interview conducted May 28, 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 - Robin Lyndsay Taylor, Student/Clogger

I first ran into Robin on the Xubuntu mailing list, where he occasionally posted questions. His blog, which was in his signature, seemed pretty interesting, so I invited him to participate here. Robin gladly accepted and gave some great responses. Sadly, when I went to check on his blog prior to posting this, I read that he had died in late October.

As it seemed Robin’s family had taken control of his blog, I wrote back to his email account, requesting permission to post this. Someone wrote back and graciously granted it. I appreciate their generosity in allowing me to post this.

You can find more of The Linux Setup here.

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

   My name is Robin Lyndsay Taylor. I’m a full time university student and part-time choreographer and instructor of a percussive folk dance known as clogging. I’ll turn 18 years old this month, yay!

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

   I’m down to one single computer for the time being, and I run Xubuntu 10.04 because I require the stability of it’s long-term support, and it performs beautifully on my modest, aging hardware. I also like it’s superb simplicity and configurability. I was using Linux Mint Xfce (9th edition) but when they switched the base of the distro to Debian, which for some reason balks on my hardware, I “ran home” to Xubuntu. I didn’t need to, though, since Linux Mint 9 Xfce is built on Xubuntu 10.04 - and without PulseAudio and some other stuff in Xubuntu that has been troublesome.

   That said though, I couldn’t resist trying out SalixOS when I heard about its Slackware base (something completely new, unfamiliar, and challenging for me) and extremely long-term support. Unlike many of the Slackware spin-offs, SalixOS is fully compatible with it’s parent distro (even Ubuntu is incompatible with its Debian parent now). Version 8.1 from 2002 is still getting security updates! That’s like nine YEARS of support! You don’t find that kind of long life in most other distros, and updates do not break Slackware. It just doesn’t happen. At the summer break, I’ll likely switch to SalixOS as my main distro. It runs flawlessly on my hardware, and to my amazement, even the live CD experience was snappier than installed Xubuntu!

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

   I use Audacity to edit music for the dance routines I write; Seamonkey for web browsing and e-mail because I still like to put cutesy little images and formatting in my e-mails to friends. What can I say, some kids never grow up. But I find Seamonkey much less demanding on resources than the more popular Mozilla browser and separate e-mail client. I use Xournal a lot for taking notes at school and annotating pdf files. Abiword and Gnumeric have been sufficient so far in all my schoolwork, but I suspect that college coursework will require a fancier office suite soon, and that will likely be LibreOffice. The Gimp lets me edit photos and images for school and dance projects. During a brief flirtation with LXDE I discovered the PCManFM file manager which I like even better than Thunar for it’s simplicity and speed. Exaile and Gnome Movie Player are more than sufficient for my other multimedia needs. And of course, the Xfce “goodies” are icing on the cake. I know docks are all the rage, but the Xfce panel with goodies does everything a dock does with less fuss and demands on resources.

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

   My only computer is a hand-me-down Dell Dimension B110. With 512 RAM and Celeron processor, it’s been just super for over seven years! And it was used when I got it! I’ve had it since middle school and never needed anything else. But the dance studio has a Toshiba Satellite which I use in my classes (Audacity lets me adjust the tempo of a song without changing its pitch - perfect for learning a new dance) that dual-boots Linux Mint 9 Xfce and Crunchbang Linux; and we keep a reeeeally old Dell desktop at the studio that I saved from the landfill with a minimal Ubuntu/LXDE mixture that amazes everyone who uses it because of its speed on that ancient dinosaur.

5. What is your ideal Linux setup?

   It has to be pretty, it has to be simple (I’m mildly autistic and I share my computer with other “dance kids” - no geeky skills among them), and it has to be fast! Xfce does all of that for me. I find that it is applications that tend to slow things down more than a desktop environment does. So lightweight applications, minimal “eye candy,” a simple, speedy, clean icon-free desktop (I launch everything from the panel or the right-click menu). Openbox does that for me too, but I just love that Xfce panel!

6. Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

   Happy to! Inspired by Ubuntu’s wicked-cool looking Unity desktop which is too much for my hardware, I fixed up my Xfce desktop to look and behave “Unity-like.” I think Ubuntu is onto something really good with Unity (that ought to reduce my popularity with your readers, lol), and in another year or so Unity will be awesome! Here’s my “cheap imitation Unity” desktop (my menu icon is a Hershey’s kiss! I love messing around with little details like that, lol.):

Interview conducted Sept. 10, 2011

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.