Free software for remote working

April 1, 2020

A lot of us are now suddenly thrust into fully remote work environments. Purism shared their stack of free and open source tools.

My personal situation is tougher, since my colleagues and I have to agree upon our tools, and some of that conversation is informed by access: both what our college pays for, but also the larger university.

For instance, we’re a Windows shop. Rather impressively, Office 365 allows me to get a ton done in the browser.

I’ve been using the non-free (and perhaps sinister) Zoom for web conferencing because it runs flawlessly on Linux. WebEx is horrific if not impossible. I actually now run WebEx calls in a virtual Windows 10 partition. I’d like to experiment with Jitsi, which is free and open source, and looks as easy as anything. Hacker News had a very useful thread on it.

I spend a certain part of each day in the Windows partition, but if it’s not for WebEx, it’s usually for relatively minor formatting issues, either with Word or Excel. I was using Boxes for virtualization, but while it’s simple, it seemed to run slowly and didn’t handle sound very well. VirtualBox feels much more robust.

My Cowin E7 Bluetooth headphones are fussy. Connecting both audio and mic can take a few tries. I don’t know if that’s Linux or the nature of Bluetooth.

But in general, Linux is getting me through, just like always!

Free software for remote working | Purism

The Linux Setup (Again) – Charles Profitt, System Administrator

March 18, 2020

Charles reached out to me about doing another interview, which is something I’ve thought about for a while. You do an interview about your setup and it’s locked in time, when really your Linux set-up evolves. So I was happy to hear from him again, after our 2014 interview. He’s using Fedora and GNOME now, rather than Ubuntu and Unity, but as he mentions, his workflow hasn’t changed. Which is the beauty of Linux. The desktop and distro can change, but your workflow doesn’t have to.

You can find more of The Linux Setup here.

You can follow me on Mastodon here and follow me on Twitter here.

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

    I am Charles Profitt. I am a systems administrator for a K-12 school district. I focus on the technology infrastructure of the district including wireless, firewalls, cybersecurity, and identity management.

  2. Why do you use Linux?

    I use Linux as the operating system of choice because I enjoy the ability to tinker while using a secure and stable system. I am the type of person who enjoyed squeezing enough memory out of my MS-DOS system to be able to use the CD-ROM drive, listen to music, and play a game. Linux still allows me to see under the hood.

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

    I currently use Fedora on both my work and personal laptops. I have used Ubuntu, Debian, SuSE and Arch in the past. For me the best mix of the latest and greatest on a stable platform is Fedora.

  4. What desktop environment do you use and why do you use it?

    I currently use GNOME. I like its simplicity and several of the default apps. I enjoy having GNOME extensions that allow me to personalize my experience. I currently use Disconnect Wi-Fi, KStatusNotifier, Refresh Wifi Connection,
    Transparent Top Bar, and Vitals.

  5. What one piece of Linux software do you depend upon? Why is it so important?

    In my job I rely on nmap, nano and ssh for my job. I use nmap for security scans of my network, to look for unknown and misconfigured devices. Note-taking at meetings is completed using nano. I use ssh to connect to the multitude of appliances that I manage.

  6. What kind of hardware do you run this setup on?

    My work laptop is an X-1 Carbon 6th gen with a core i7 processor, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD. My home laptop is a Dell XPS 13 9343. This laptop has a 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM and a Core i5 processor. I am looking at replacing the home computer with an X1 Carbon 8th gen when they finally go on sale.

  7. How would you broadly describe how your setup has changed since our last interview?

    When I was interviewed the last time, I was a member of the Ubuntu Community Council and was running Ubuntu. Despite the change in distros, not much has changed. While I miss the Unity interface most of my workflow is unchanged.

  8. Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

Interview conducted March 10, 2020

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, for the first or second time, drop me a line.

You can follow me on Mastodon here, follow me on Twitter here and subscribe to the feed here.

Swinging the Vote?

March 3, 2020

The Markup set up a new Gmail account to find out how the company filters political email from candidates, think tanks, advocacy groups, and nonprofits.

We found that few of the emails we’d signed up to receive—11 percent—made it to the primary inbox, the first one a user sees when opening Gmail and the one the company says is “for the mail you really, really want.”

Half of all emails landed in a tab called “promotions,” which Gmail says is for “deals, offers, and other marketing emails.” Gmail sent another 40 percent to spam.

Nothing nefarious here. Just a company controlling access to information in an unknown way during an election. Super normal.

I wonder if there’s a setting for users who “really, really want” democracy. Maybe it’s called “another email service”?

Swinging the Vote? | The Markup

Stop Using Encrypted Email

February 27, 2020

This was an interesting essay arguing that email is so inherently insecure, we should abandon the pretense that it can ever be made reliably private.

I’ve always loved the metaphor of email as a postcard. But any message, on any platform, is only as secure as the people who have access to it. If I have private documents in a safe, but let someone steal the key from me, the strength of the safe becomes moot.

Stop Using Encrypted Email | Latacora

Switch From Your Internet Provider’s Email to Something Better

February 6, 2020

Not to belabor the importance of owning your email account, but switching isn’t even as big a deal as it seems. Some bad habits last year had me wind up with important email conversations happening in a Gmail account that had originally been for junk. I set-up a second Fastmail account and the Gmail account is pretty much back to junk email. The process took a few days of updating email addresses with people, but it feels at least 90% done.

Start the switch and you’ll see it’s easy to finish.

Switch From Your Internet Provider’s Email to Something Better | The New York Times

The Linux Setup – Steve Best, The Art Directed Journal

February 5, 2020

I found Steve via this very thorough review of elementary. I played with elementary years and years ago and it didn’t feel right for my workflow, but it seems like it’s picking up more and more steam. I should probably give it another chance someday. And I definitely hear Steve on the pragmatism of Linux. There are philosophical reasons for choosing free and open source tools, but there are also practical ones. Neither is more valid than the other.

You can find more of The Linux Setup here.

You can follow me on Mastodon here and follow me on Twitter here.

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

    I’m Steve Best, and I have a site that is really more of a hobby than anything else called The Art Directed Journal. I use it to practice/experiment with HTML and CSS, as well as improve my writing skills. By profession, I’m in cyber security, and Linux does cross-over somewhat into my day-to-day.

  2. Why do you use Linux?

    I have used Linux in varying capacities since 2004. I use Linux for all the stereotypical reasons. It’s fast, secure, and free. I’m not against Microsoft or Apple, but I like to use what works. Right now desktop Linux is what works for me. I have found that with my current hardware set up, Windows is just a bit too much in terms of system requirements to be anything other than frustrating. This is an older piece I wrote, which explains my “why” for Linux more in-depth.

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

    I am currently using elementary OS (5.1).

  4. What desktop environment do you use and why do you use it?

    I use Pantheon, which comes default on elementary. It is actually one of the main reasons I use elementary. It is fast, fluid, and it makes my old hardware run like new.

  5. What one piece of Linux software do you depend upon? Why is it so important?

    I have come to rely greatly on Code, which is the default code editor on elementary. It is very lightweight, but yet extremely feature-filled. It is another of the main reasons I use elementary. Anything else I can do on my iPhone.

  6. What kind of hardware do you run this setup on?

    My personal laptop is a very old HP Pavilion with a dual core i5 and 4GB RAM. For a number of reasons, I have just never replaced it, nor do I have any plans to do so in the near future. I really need a new battery, more RAM, and a solid state drive. I’ll eventually get around to upgrading these things on it. However, my iPhone 11 is probably my most used “computer,” in terms of my personal use.

  7. Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

    The wallpaper is from Windows 10x, which I downloaded off Twitter. 🙂

Interview conducted January 26, 2020

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 me on Mastodon here, follow me on Twitter here and subscribe to the feed here.