My Linux Rig

Alternatives to Macs : WeAreTheMusicMakers

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:00:31 -0400

Alternatives to Macs : WeAreTheMusicMakers:

This is one of those fantastic reddit threads with lots of great information and interesting, respectful perspectives. The thread is about if you need a Mac to make music. It features some solid commentary — both in favor of and against using Linux for music production. I’ve written about my experiences using Linux to make music here. The reddit thread is definitely worth a read.

The Linux Setup - Gregor Herrmann, Debian Developer

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 10:21:36 -0400

You’ll notice something different about this interview. I’ve changed up the questions a bit, just because it seemed like we were just getting to the point where some of the same ground was being covered each week. These questions are a bit more Linux-specific, getting to why people use Linux and what kind of desktop environment they use, but also what that one piece of essential software is. Gregor’s interview shows the value from digging a little deeper. It’s also funny that the first time I specifically ask about desktop environments, I’m asking a guy who only uses the awesome window manager…

You can find more of The Linux Setup here.

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

Who are you, and what do you do?

I am Gregor Herrmann. In my free time I’m a Debian Developer, i.e. I’m one of the many volunteers around the world who try to produce a free operating system.
Why do you use Linux?

I value the freedoms that Free Software gives me; it’s fun to be able to improve one’s software; and it often works better than proprietary alternatives.
What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?

Debian Unstable.
What desktop environment do you use and why do you use it?

I don’t use a desktop environment, and my window manager is “awesome.” It’s quite minimalistic and configurable, doesn’t get in my way and can be used with the keyboard alone.
What one piece of software do you depend upon with this distribution? Why is it so important?

Probably urxvt, because I have many terminals open in parallel, running mostly console applications (mutt, slrn, newsbeuter, irssi, …).
What kind of hardware do you run this setup on?

A Thinkpad X220 with a docking station for a real keyboard and a bigger screen.
Besides that, I currently have two small Linux machines on my desktop running Debian derivatives: a Raspberry Pi (with Raspbian) and a Nokia N900 (with Maemo5).
Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

Not sure screenshots of terminals are so exciting :) Anyway, here are three:
- one with Mutt, slrn, Newsbeuter
- one with irssi and IceWeasel
- and an “empty” one with my wallpaper (which I usually don’t see due to awesome).

Interview conducted May 6, 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.

What Linux Taught Me About Productivity

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 10:00:21 -0400

What Linux Taught Me About Productivity:

I’ve spent the past two years interviewing people about their desktop Linux setups, asking them about the Linux distributions they chose, the desktop environments they use, and the software upon which they rely. Over the past 73 interviews, a number of common lessons have emerged. Most of these apply to anyone who relies on a computer to do their work, Linux user or not. Here are a few of the lessons I’ve learned from these interviews…

My Linux Rig

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 10:00:41 -0400

My Linux Rig:

I got the idea to post up the computer setup I’m using from MyLinuxRig, which is itself a derivative of The Setup which outlines what successful people use to get things done. So without too much f…

Macs No More: After Edward Snowden, Time to Come to the Penguin

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 10:00:31 -0400

Macs No More: After Edward Snowden, Time to Come to the Penguin:

What’s interesting is how different the glitches feel from how they felt on a corporate OS. When the thing crashes, as it might somewhat frequently, it’s less aggravating. One actually starts to get more philosophical about the glitches; we’re not quite there yet as a society, as a species. They’re the people’s glitches — the temporary byproduct of democratic and collaborative processes among autonomous geeks, pursuing their own obsessions and curiosities. You don’t have to yell at the screen because, in a lot of cases, you can just write to the people making the program, and someone with an amazing amount of time on their hands will write back long, detailed replies.

Let's Reinvigorate the water cooler - Jorge's Stompbox

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 10:00:33 -0400

Let's Reinvigorate the water cooler - Jorge's Stompbox:

Why do we plaster things like Ubuntu developers do not usually read the forums everywhere? What does that say about us as a project? We might as well say “Hey man, welcome to the community, half of it is missing, no worries!”. We could probably save the poster some time and just punch him in the face. And yet you’ll find plenty of Ubuntu developers on the subreddit, and you’ll find them on Disqus and Google Plus. It’s pretty much unacceptable to me that there is a rift between what is supposed to be a unified community. So I’m thinking … let’s fix that.

Really great post from Canonical’s Jorge Castro. I’m super psyched I’ll be posting an interview with him this month.

The Linux Setup - Tony Baldwin, Translator

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 08:52:00 -0400

Tony’s take on Linux is great because it comes from a political perspective, but also a practical one. He makes a strong effort to use free and open source software, but at the same time, he uses these free tools to earn his living. So he’s taking a stand, but he’s not compromising anything in terms of his career. It’s all the more impressive given that translating seems to rely on a lot of proprietary software. Also, Tony and I connected through Tumblr, where we follow each other. If you’re running Linux on your desktop, I hope you’ll drop me an email, hit me up here, or get me on Twitter/G+, and allow me to interview you.

You can find more of The Linux Setup here.

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

Who are you, and what do you do?

I am Tony Baldwin! I work as a professional, freelance translator, translating patents, contracts, technical specifications and documentation, localizing websites, and other materials, from French, Portuguese, and Spanish to US English.

In my industry, as so many others, proprietary software is ubiquitous, and it is pretty well assumed that translators work on Windows, using one of a few dominant CAT (Computer Aided Translation) programs, such as Trados (from SDL, the most popular and most used), Wordfast being the most common. Also, of course, the vast majority of documents are sent to me in MSOffice formats.

I have been working in this industry for near eight years now, but I’ve been using 100% Free/Open Source Software for 13 years, so, clearly, it IS possible to work in this job without proprietary software. I have a page listing many of the tools I use here: baldwinlinguas.com/freesoftware.
What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?

I currently use Debian GNU/Linux, Stable, on my main workstation, as well as on my laptop, and all my servers (I also do web development and design on the side, and hosting, and have my own webserver in my office, on which www.baldwinlinguas.com, the site for my translation business, is hosted, as well as www.tonybaldwin.me, and others). I started out using GNU/Linux back in c. 2000 with RedHat 7.0, and stuck with it until it became Fedora, and then used Fedora until FC4, at which point I left Fedora, tried Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, and a few others for while before moving to Debian, at which time Lenny was the Stable release.

I’ve grown to really LOVE Debian. I know I can depend on it. Nothing ever breaks, allowing me to spend my time working, earning from translating stuff, rather than fixing my computer, troubleshooting and resolving errors. In four years of using Debian’s Stable releases, I haven’t had any technological interruptions of my work, period. I’ve played with or tried many distros, and many of them are pretty cool, but I just stick with Debian now. It’s reliable; the Debian project is committed to the principles of the Free Software movement, and I the Debian Way of doing things makes sense to me. Plus, it’s a great community! I got to be part of translating Raphael and Roland’s Debian Administrator’s Handbook last year, even. It feels good to be part of the community.

Ed.note: Here is my interview with Raphael.
What software do you depend upon with this distribution?

The most used applications on my work computer, for my translation work, are OmegaT, a Free/Open Source CAT program, my web browser, Iceweasel, and OpenOffice.

I must say, however, that I use the current “upstream” release of OmegaT, rather than sticking with the Debian packages, which are sometimes as much as two years behind the current OmegaT release. I do stick with Debian packages for most software, however.

There are other programs that I use regularly, and I also have a bunch of bash scripts that I’ve slapped together that help automate some of the menial tasks in managing documents or preparing them for translation, file conversion, and even stuff like tracking financial aspects of the projects I take on.

I also use Vim a lot, for writing my scripts, but also sometimes when cleaning up converted documents. For instance, I’ll get documents in PDF format, convert them to text with pdftotext, and then use Vim and its powerful regex fu to clean the document up (since conversions sometimes place line breaks where I don’t need them, split sentences between pages, etc.).
What kind of hardware do you run it on?

My current work computer is a 4x2.8GHz AMD APU with 16GB RAM and a 2TB HDD. I put it together from parts purchased from tigerdirect.com.
What is your ideal Linux setup?

Well, I’m pretty happy with the machine I have now! Of course, as things progress, I’ll eventually probably want more power, I suppose…the endless search for MORE POWER!!

But, honestly, I use Debian with Openbox, keep my system lean and free from bloat, and with my current system, I have plenty of room for advancements in software without anticipating a need for more hardware.

The other day I started playing with VirtualBox for the first time ever. I had Iceweasel open with like 12 tabs, several terminals (terminator) open, PCMan FM running, htop running in terminal, and I think the GIMP open, while at the same time running Fedora 18, CentOS and Trisquel all in VirtualBoxes, and I wasn’t using 1/3 of my RAM or half the CPU I have. This rig is pretty powerful.
Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

My desktop is pretty simple and clean, really, but here’s a recent shot of me hacking on a script for tracking jobs and payments:

Interview conducted April 26, 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 - David Burke, IT Consultant

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 09:57:00 -0400

This is a great interview. David has a very interesting setup, creatively using KDE, Ubuntu, and ChromeOS together. It’s obvious he’s put a lot of thought into what works and what doesn’t. I also appreciate his efforts to insert Linux into schools. In general, American schools have money for hardware but usually not enough, or anything, for personnel to implement and customize technology. As a result, a lot of stock hardware and software is purchased, with the idea that it’s easy to get up-and-running, even if the tools are imperfect. Linux offers the opportunity to spend less on hardware and software, and instead, spend the money on programmers to create something that works for an individual institution. This is covered much more elegantly in Decoding Liberation, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in the economics of open source software. David is a pioneer in terms of getting educational institutions to rethink how they use technology. I look forward to hearing about more of his projects.

You can find more of The Linux Setup here.

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

Who are you, and what do you do?

I’m David Burke. I run a small IT consulting company, Burke Software and Consulting LLC. We work in schools and non-profits doing everything from our own open source Django-based school information system to setting up a LTSP thin client lab. I started out as a Jesuit Volunteer (think Americorps style year of service) for Cristo Rey New York High School. The school has a unique work-study program which is where I volunteered. As a programmer, I didn’t like seeing paper timesheets so I automated it with Django. That turned into a full school information system and some spin-off tools, all open source on github.
What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?

ChromeOS with Ubuntu 12.04 in a chroot environment using crouton. This is pretty recent. Before that I was using stock Ubuntu.
What software do you depend upon with this distribution?

I’m using KDE because I think it has good ultra high DPI support and touch support. I still think GNOME looks prettier, but that said, I’m glad to have a normal task bar in KDE.

I had an xmonad phase once, too — doesn’t everyone?

Firefox lost me when they introduced that sync system they have where you have to keep track of some huge key. Chrome’s sync implementation is easier to use, and now I’m using ChromeOS some of the time. I’ll stay in ChromeOS if I’m just reading email or watching a movie.

For coding I use Komodo IDE and vim. I’ll usually fire up Komodo if I need debugging or profiling tools. That stuff looks better in a GUI. I use Dropbox for file syncing. I really made an effort to switch to an open source sync program, but I couldn’t find anything as fast and reliable as Dropbox when dealing with the fast edits in programming.

At work I use Crossover, a commercially supported version of Wine, because clients just can’t give up their MS Office. I personally can’t stand Office but I need to make sure it runs smoothly for them.

I do some occasional gaming and am pretty happy Steam for Linux is out. I refuse to purchase Windows-only software to run via Wine. I feel like a vegetarian at an all-vegetarian restaurant suddenly presented with overwhelming choice.
What kind of hardware do you run it on?

The Chromebook Pixel in developer mode. The screen resolution was a big selling point for me. I also have a Samsung Android phone and Nexus 7. I’m excited to try Ubuntu out on one or both once it’s more stable.

Ed. note: Here is David’s review of the Pixel.
What is your ideal Linux setup?

Something that works and annoys me as little as possible. I love ChromeOS auto updates. I can be pretty sure they will just work. Then I just maintain an Ubuntu 12.04 chroot. Not having to worry about drivers is great. Suspend even works!
Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

Interview conducted April 22, 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.

have you ever used Gentoo?

Tue, 28 May 2013 09:22:57 -0400

I haven’t! It’s on my list. I’ve been looking into Funtoo, a Gentoo derivative, which is how I found Scott Caie.

The time to get it up and running is what’s holding me back. Gentoo seems like more of a commitment than I can make right now. But hopefully I’ll get around to it some day. I’ve never heard anything remotely bad about Gentoo.

The Linux Setup - Patrick L. Archibald, Information Systems Manager

Sat, 25 May 2013 09:27:18 -0400

I’m always happy to see an LXDE user here, because it often seems like some Linux users feel trapped between GNOME and KDE. Say what you will about Ubuntu and Unity, but as a whole, Ubuntu’s alternative, non-default desktop environments make it very easy for users to play with different desktops. And while I’m still in love with GNOME, I’m grateful for the experience of other desktops, just in terms of helping me understand what works for me and what doesn’t. So if you feel trapped by your desktop environment, I hope this gives you the inspiration to try something different.

You can find more of The Linux Setup here.

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

Who are you, and what do you do?

Patrick L. Archibald (PLA). I am the IS Manager for Home Telecom in Moncks Corner, South Carolina. When I’m not working, I play Ingress, cycle, run, and hack.
What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?

Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS with an LXDE desktop for work and home.
What software do you depend upon with this distribution?

Eclipse, Netbeans, Java, tn5250j, ssh, Cluster SSH, GIMP, Chrome, GHex, rdesktop, LibreOffice, Wireshark, gedit, nano, Python, MythTV, XBMC, ImageMagick, and Pithos.
What kind of hardware do you run it on?

A Lenovo X1 Carbon laptop; a quad core AMD desktop with an SSD OS drive, four 2TB drives using Btrfs for multimedia storage; and a two Intel i3 with an SSD drive and XBMC frontends. At work I use a SunRay thin client displaying Lubuntu running in a VM farm.
What is your ideal Linux setup?

See number 4. ;-) I’m pretty satisfied with my current setup.
Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

My desktop is pretty boring. I’ve also attached a screenshot of one of my XBMC frontends skinned with Aeon Nox.

Patrick Archibald’s LXDE desktop

Patrick Archibald’s XBMC desktop

Interview conducted April 22, 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.

Steven Ovadia: I wiped Windows and never looked back - Linux notes from DarkDuck

Thu, 23 May 2013 10:00:29 -0400

Steven Ovadia: I wiped Windows and never looked back - Linux notes from DarkDuck:

Obviously, kind of self-promoting, but this is an interview I did where I got to talk about Linux and this site. I also get to talk about my own setup, which is a nice change of pace for me.

Clementine: A Nice, Simple, Cross-Platform Way to Listen to Music

Wed, 22 May 2013 11:00:19 -0400

I have no idea when I started using Clementine. I thought it’s something I picked up from Xubuntu, but going through my notes, I was thinking of Exaile. But at some point, I decided I like Clementine as my music player.

I don’t play much music on my computer, so day-to-day, having a preferred music player didn’t have much impact on my life. However, a few weeks ago my wife got very sick of iTunes and wanted to find a replacement. I sent her this article and then started wondering which Linux music players had Windows ports. I discovered Banshee, Amarok, and Clementine all had Windows ports, so I recommended those to my wife (I just now realized Exaile has a Windows port, too).

Around the same time, I realized I needed a music player on a Windows machine, so I decided to try Clementine, which is when I discovered (or possibly rediscovered) it’s a very impressive piece of software.

For most people, the issue with iTunes is how big it is. Opening it can often feel like a huge, resource-intensive commitment (that and it always seems to require an update — even after you’ve just updated it). The beauty of Clementine is that it’s light and responsive. You open it and can play music right away. It does one thing well.

Clementine’s simplicity is what I love. It plays music. It’s easy to change songs. It does some nice, little things, too. It doesn’t just stop playing, but fades in and out of songs, which is kind of classy. On Windows, if you mouse over it on the taskbar, you get the play/pause/control buttons, so you don’t even need to click into the interface to do things.

It also has some built-in integration with some web-based services, like Last.FM. My OpenSUSE version is running 0.7.1, so I don’t have Google Drive, Spotify or GrooveShark integration, which is available in 1.1. I have those features available within Windows, but it doesn’t interest me, so I don’t miss it (or try and find a more recent version than lives in the OpenSUSE repos).

People seem a bit excited about the new GNOME default music player. I’ll definitely look at that, but I really like to just have a list of artists in one pane, and the songs in another. What’s even nicer about Clementine is you can drill down through individual songs on the left pane, with the main pane acting as a playlist. Playlists are retained across sessions, so you can pick up where you left off.

Most user interfaces favor complexity and customization. Too many tools are afraid to go simple. Clementine isn’t. It’s not robust, but that lack of robustness is a feature. Just point it to your music folder and let it go. It doesn’t matter if you’re on Linux, Windows or OS X. Or all three. Clementine lets you listen to music easily, without slowing your computer down. Sad to say, it’s a rare trait in many desktop music players.

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

Dogfooding the Ubuntu Phone: My (Early) Experience | jonobacon@home

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:00:42 -0400

Dogfooding the Ubuntu Phone: My (Early) Experience | jonobacon@home:

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.

The Linux Setup - Scott Caie, Funtoo Developer

Sun, 19 May 2013 08:48:16 -0400

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 specific usage case. I found Scott while I was looking into Funtoo, which seems like an interesting distro. Hearing from Scott only intrigues me more. Scott also mentions Daniel Robbins, the head of Funtoo, who comes from Gentoo. Daniel did an interview with the original Setup that you might enjoy.

You can find more of The Linux Setup here.

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

Who are you, and what do you do?

My names Scott, or anak1n on the internet. I’m a freelance programmer and part of the Funtoo Core Team. I help bring packages to the main Portage Tree, as well as fix bugs, fix broken packages, help out in IRC, test out some new packages before they’re introduced to the Portage Tree, and I get to work with Daniel Robbins, who is one of my heroes. I really enjoy working with Funtoo, it’s a great distro and the whole philosophy really is, “Linux should be fun, too.” We’re currently talking about bringing the MATE desktop into the main Portage Tree instead of having it added via overlay (different tree), and I’m part of that. I would have to say right now my main responsibility with Funtoo is just helping out with IRC and fixing packages. The latest thing I’ve done would be getting the XChat builds fixed, by adding a patch that Gentoo never added. We fork some of our packages until it’s fixed in Gentoo’s tree.
What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?

Everything I have right now is running Funtoo. Except for one server which is running Gentoo. So that’s, three Funtoo servers, two Funtoo laptops (one of them is dual-booted with Windows 7, though). It’s a reliable, customizable distro.
What software do you depend upon with this distribution?

Funtoo is a fork of Gentoo with a more stable Portage Tree, that being said it’s pretty much built from scratch. A stage 3 install, and compile what you want/need. The main things I always compile though, are Tmux, X.org, Fluxbox, irssi for IRC, Pidgin for GoogleTalk and Facebook chat, Firefox to browse the web while Chromium builds (takes about 2-3 hours), and Konsole for my terminal emulator. I use Fluxbox as my main window manager because it’s lightweight and I can get work done without having to customize it much. It’s a small but useful WM that doesn’t use many resources so I can focus on building and testing new packages, instead of eye-candy.
What kind of hardware do you run it on?

I’ve run Funtoo on tons of hardware — one time on an Acer Aspire netbook with a single core processor @ 1.0GHz. That was fun and took forever. But currently, the servers are all virtual servers, so 512MB of RAM with a dual core AMD processor, and then my laptops. One is an Asus X401A ultrabook, with 4GB of DDR3 RAM, 320GB HDD, dual core Intel Pentium processor @ 2.3 GHz, and Intel integrated graphics (which work surprisingly well). Another working laptop is an Asus K45C laptop with 6GB of DDR3 RAM, 320GB HDD, dual core Intel Pentium processer @ 2.2 GHz, and Intel integrated graphics. Another one is an Asus U50F which I’ve had for a few years that needs some work done. But it’s 4GB of DDR3 RAM, a 500GB HDD, dual core Intel i3 processor. I’m not sure what it’s clocked at though — I need to fix it first. All in all, I really like Asus computers.
What is your ideal Linux setup?

I’d have to say as far as a server goes, something powerful enough to host a bunch of virtual servers so I can rent them out. I rent out a couple right now with the home server I have, but it’s not that great. As far as home-use computers, an Asus with at least 6GB of RAM, 500GB HDD, with a quad-core processor. The compilation times can be a pain sometimes, and I test out a lot of the new GCC builds that are brought into the Portage Tree, and when that happens you have to rebuild everything. I have 1,184 packages, which would take me 1-3 days on the laptop I mainly use. So just something portable but powerful.
Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

Of course!

Interview conducted April 20, 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 - Tríona O'Connell, Academic

Sun, 12 May 2013 09:38:00 -0400

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.

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

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

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

Writers' desktops | Books | The Guardian

Tue, 07 May 2013 20:09:00 -0400

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.

The Linux Setup - Gary Newell, EverydayLinuxUser.com

Sun, 05 May 2013 08:38:00 -0400

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 also seems to enjoy quite a bit. One skill distro hopping seems to cultivate is the ability to evaluate software by feature, rather than as a whole. As you read the interview, you’ll notice Gary comes at everything from a features perspective, rather than a distribution-centric one.

You can find more of The Linux Setup here.

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

Who are you, and what do you do?

I am Gary Newell. I am a software developer living in Aberdeen, Scotland specialising in software for the oil and gas industry.

I am also the author of www.everydaylinuxuser.com.
What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?

I am really bad for distro hopping. I also use different machines for different purposes. On my most powerful PC, which is a Toshiba Satellite Pro, I run a 64-bit version of Linux Mint 14 with the Cinnamon desktop (see screenshot).

On my netbook I am currently running SolusOS. I have another laptop that currently has Arch Linux on it. On another partition on the same laptop I had OpenSUSE up until last week, but now it is running Debian. I have been using Debian mainly for the past week in order to write a review later on this week.

I find Linux Mint works really well on modern hardware.
What software do you depend upon with this distribution?

Well I don’t really use all that much software. I don’t really do much software development at home. All I need in life is a decent browser and I find Chromium serves that purpose. A good screenshot tool is required for the blog. I do use Unetbootin wherever possible to create the bootable USB drives. GParted gets used quite a bit as well.

My favourite piece of software is actually the FUSE Spectrum Emulator. I love retro gaming and the Spectrum holds a lot of nostalgia from my childhood.
What kind of hardware do you run it on?

Linux Mint is running on a Toshiba Satellite Pro with an Intel I5 processor, 64 bit, 16GB RAM,
What is your ideal Linux setup?

As I mentioned before I am a bit of a distro hopper. To be honest it depends on what I am doing at the time. If I want comfort, I use Linux Mint, but I am finding that to boot into something quickly, the Arch install is working really well. It really depends on the distributions that I have available at any given time. When I had Crunchbang installed, I used to go to that quite a bit if I wanted instant access to the internet without having to wait for my computer to boot.
Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

Interview conducted April 14, 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.

Calvin Trillin Predicted Yelp Almost 30 Years Ago

Thu, 02 May 2013 19:21:00 -0400

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] simply by strolling over to a computer terminal he had installed in a small office one flight above his bedroom and punching a few keys—having first dialed a special number in California on the telephone and placed the receiver next to what passes for the machine’s ear…I admit to having been intrigued by the idea of storing restaurant information in a computer. I could think of a few useful ways to arrange New York restaurants into the kinds of subgroups computers are always providing…”

Trillin and Lamport basically imagined Yelp 30 years before it launched.

I wonder what the OS of the mainframe was.

The Linux Setup - John Browning, Engadget

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 13:57:00 -0400

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.

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

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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.

"Isn’t that what you’re looking for in a mainstream product?” Rick chided...."

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 08:33:00 -0400

““Isn’t that what you’re looking for in a mainstream product?” Rick chided. “In 1996 it was: ‘Wow look at this, I got Linux running on xxxxxxxx.’ Even in 2006 that was at times an accomplishment… When was the last time you turned on an Apple or Windows machine and marveled that it ‘just worked?’ It should be boring.””

- It just works: Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition Linux Ultrabook review | Ars Technica