Desktop Linux for Everyone
This isn’t strictly Linux-related, but it is related to openness. I spent the past year as part of a team training students to evaluate textbooks. The goal of the project was to get student voices in the mix for Open Education Resources.
The toolkit we used for this project is ready and we put it up on GitHub, with the hope that others will use our work. I’m posting this here 1) out of pride and 2) to reach open-minded educators.
textbook-evaluation-toolkit | GitHub
The thing that struck me about this is having to subscribe to Adobe on the off-chance you’ll need it. I’m not opposed to paying for software, and in fact think we should pay for software we value, but I also think at some point, you should be allowed to stop paying. It shouldn’t be a lifetime commitment. So if you know anyone paying for Adobe because they might need it, maybe suggest they explore some free and open source alternatives, that should do the job just fine.
(link via Kara Cutruzzula’s awesome Brass Ring (Daily))
Why I Can’t Stop Wasting Money on Subscriptions I Never Use, According to Experts | Money
I found Tom via this Forbes piece about the band. The knock on Linux has always been that it’s tough for music and video work, but I hear/read that less-and-less often. As Tom points out a few times, Linux has come a long way. I also related to his comments about tweaking and changing distributions. Like Tom, I’ve discovered it’s not a great use of my time. Once I find something that works for me, I stick with with until EOL.
You can find more of The Linux Setup here.
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My name is Tom Ray and I’m the singer for the band Lorenzo’s Music, an art rock band from Madison, Wisconsin. We release all of our music under a Creative Commons license, so it’s free to use for video or to remix or build upon.
We also just recently launched a new podcast on the website called the Lorenzo’s Music Podcast, a show where we talk with other musicians and creators from around the world to learn about what they do and why they do it.
Why do you use Linux?
I got interested in Linux back when Ubuntu first came out. Sort of. I started testing it out during the Breezy Badger release back in 2005.
I used to use a bunch of proprietary software for artwork and I heard about this operating system that had all of this open source software built into it and I was curious. So I tried it out. I dual-booted for several years and realized that I was using my Windows partition less and less. Then one day I was updating to a new version and accidentally did a full install. I wiped my Widows partition completely. So I just decided, ‘okay, I’m just going to use Linux now!’
But really, at that point, I was finding programs that did mostly what I wanted on Linux. My main problem, though, was that video and audio creation programs were all still pretty buggy early on. But over the years that has changed. A lot!
So this year, to prove that it could be done, my band created our current release Rom-Comm Mixtape, using only open source tools and software from beginning to end. That includes recording, mixing, mastering, artwork, videos…everything. And we were pretty happy with the process. As I said, it’s really changed over the years with what you can do.
What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?
I currently run the latest version of Ubuntu Studio, 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish. Over the years I’ve tried a lot of other distros: Fedora, Arch, Debian, Mint. I even used to dabble with the Eeepc back when that was a thing. I used to trick out the way the distros looked and all of that stuff, too. But after a while, I found that I was spending so much time setting it up for what I wanted it to do, or what I needed, that I was wasting a lot of time.
So I just chose a distro that had all of that stuff set up for me, which was Ubuntu Studio. It had the programs I needed already built-in. And JACK and the low-latency kernel were already set up, so I could just start creating.
Plus, with the live distro, I was able to set up USB sticks for each of the guys in the band. That way we could create stuff on our own time and they wouldn’t have to learn how to set things up. I could just show them the programs we use and they boot it up.
We share the Ardour song files (the multi-tracking software that we use) in a GitHub repository. We upload the changes we make there and then all of us can pull the latest version from GitHub.
What desktop environment do you use and why do you use it?
Whatever comes with the latest version of Ubuntu Studio. Xfce, I think? Like I said, I don’t really mess around with the set-up that much anymore! Haha!
EDITOR’S NOTE: Yup!. It’s Xfce.
What one piece of Linux software do you depend upon? Why is it so important?
Ardour. After the process of working on the recent mixtape, it’s really just become what we use to create and record. I also use it for editing the podcasts.
Oh, and I guess the one hidden gem is Audacity, for audio noise removal. I record a lot of the podcast in public places and the noise removal feature in Audacity is still one of the best-hidden secrets to anyone that is recording a podcast. I hear about people recording shows under a blanket or in a closet to reduce noise. I’ve found the noise removal in Audacity is the perfect alternative to all of that.
What kind of hardware do you run this setup on?
I got a laptop from System76 last year, the Lemur version they released. I don’t even think it’s available anymore so I can’t remember everything it has on it. It’s fine. I got the one that was the cheapest. It had enough memory for me to run stuff, which was all I was interested in. I can add stuff if I need to, but never really do.
Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?
I can share a screenshot but it’s pretty dull. I just use the default set up. Haha!
I would just like to add that I actually reached out to the Ubuntu Studio team to see if I could talk to one of them on the Lorenzo’s Music Podcast. So in the next few weeks, I’ll be doing an interview with the team lead for the Ubuntu Studio project, Erich Eickmeyer.
EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s up!
Interview conducted December 4, 2018
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.
I’m always curious about System 76 laptops. The Darter Pro is getting a lot of positive reviews. I no longer use a laptop at home, and I’m more of a ThinkPad person. Plus, my wife has a Dell XPS 11 that looks pretty sweet. I’m kind of glad I don’t have to make any decisions right now.
Darter Pro Review | dominickm.com
Craig’s Linux journey is similar to mine. Windows fails, you’re frustrated, you jump on Linux, and you never leave. I also enjoy Craig’s points about the teaching and learning potential of Linux. As he points out, many education programs use the Linux kernel for pedagogical purposes, which is amazing. You’re not only making software that powers so much of our technology, but you’re using that same software to teach more developers? And improving the code base as it happens? That’s powerful. Also, Craig reached out through the contact form. You should, too!
You can find more of The Linux Setup here.
You can follow Linux Rig on Google+ here (for now…) and follow me on Twitter here.
My name is Craig Nuzzo and I am a professional and hobbyist Linux user, engineer, and admin. I work on a small Systems Engineering team at a start-up-gone-enterprise that develops websites and solutions for automotive dealerships around the world. We are hiring and offer remote work so check out our career page.
I also host a podcast covering various tech related topics, like Linux, security, and programming. I just try to simplify all the noise out there and it helps me think as well. Being an INTJ, it helps to get out of my comfort zone a bit too. The best place to follow us is in on Twitter.
I keep up on alternative technologies that give power back to the people and not to corporations. I enjoy learning how the tech works from a top-level as well as under the hood.
In my free time I enjoy weightlifting, playing basketball, singing, cinema, watching hockey, football, & baseball, going to concerts, listening to metalcore music, and keeping up with the latest Linux/other security-related news.
Check out my Now page to see what I am currently up to.
Why do you use Linux?
TL;DR: Because it is fun. Because it is innovative. Because it is open. Because the knowledge pays the bills.
I had purchased a new laptop for myself after graduating from college back in 2007. I was regretfully and naively a marketing major, but always interested in computers. I just needed that hardware upgrade. I had used the same Toshiba Satellite laptop all four years of college and the CPU on that thing was just not keeping up with new software and all the Google Chrome threads that I concurrently ran. So I went out and bought an Asus U43F laptop. I absolutely loved. It ran the new Microsoft Windows 7 and everything was fantastic. I replaced all my Windows programs with mostly open-source ones, even found a nice little utility to help me out when I did frequent system restores to keep it clean, which was Ninite. That was until the BSODs (Blue Screen of Deaths). They would appear out of nowhere. I could not figure out how to fix them. Based on initial research, it appeared to be some sort of swap space error, but who knows; “DDL Hell” could have been a culprit as well. I tried numerous system restores, kept my memory footprint at a minimum, but nothing. That did nothing. Until one day…
…I got in.
I believe it was just after my first computer programming language course: Visual Basic or maybe Java. I just woke up, downloaded an ISO of Linux Mint, installed it completely over Windows, and never looked back. Not only was my U43F laptop seemingly five to ten times faster at everything it computed, I didn’t have one BSOD or any other hardware issue ever again on my U43F.
I always had replaced the proprietary applications with open-source ones, so why not the kernel!
Linux is a great way to learn computer science-related skills and theory because all the code is open-source, which can be viewed over at Kernel.org. Linux is used in many institutional curricula.
The operating system should be well-organized, use memory efficiently, and give the control necessary to run on most hardware. I believe that an operating system is meant to get the most out of the hardware. To me, the OS is more important than the hardware. I can grab an old laptop and throw a Linux distribution on there and get it up and running. At this point in time, my current operating system criteria belongs to the Linux-based ones.
Besides the technology itself, Linux also has a very innovative and creative community. Sure, sometimes things may get heated and people may not agree on things (i.e. systemd vs traditional init). But, at the end of the day, we are all interested in one common goal: to provide an awesome operating system for our computers. We use Linux to make all types of computing devices.
The above paragraphs have modified and taken from my blog posts over at and . Check them out for more details.
What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?
Ubuntu 18.04. I’ve distro-hopped around for many years, mostly for fun. Yet I still go back to Ubuntu just because it works very well and the community is massive. I keep it simple. Depending on the direction of Canonical in the near future regarding being a publicly-traded company, I may end up on something like Solus or Arch.
What desktop environment do you use and why do you use it?
GNOME. It’s the Ubuntu default now and looks slick. It was a toss-up between that and KDE, but I feel like GNOME has a great direction and works very well. Not that KDE doesn’t, but it’s a Pepsi/Coke thing now, which is fantastic to see. The direct competition is making each desktop environment better.
What one piece of Linux software do you depend upon? Why is it so important?
Audacity. I’m not sure how else I would edit my podcast or my singing voice.
What kind of hardware do you run this setup on?
A System 76 Ratel Pro desktop (discontinued model), with Intel i5-6600 3.9GHz and 32GB RAM. It’s a beauty.
Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?
Absolutely!
Interview conducted December 3, 2018
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 Linux Rig on Google+ here, follow me on Twitter here, and subscribe to the feed here.
I don’t take advantage of i3’s tiling, keeping most windows full, since I use i3 on a netbook. But I know from reddit that users are very interested in the floating aspect of i3, too. Major Hayden has a great tutorial on the topic.
Automatic floating windows in i3 | major.io
I’ve never seen a setup like Simon’s. I love the Zen of it. There’s no attachment to a distribution. It’s just whatever is felt in the moment. I found Simon via this post on Linux usability. I don’t necessarily agree that the original Mac was the gold usability standard, but there’s definitely room for most, if not all, desktop environments to improve, Linux and otherwise. Something is always at least slightly broken. But what fun is a system that doesn’t sometimes drive you a little crazy?
You can find more of The Linux Setup here.
You can follow Linux Rig on Google+ here and follow me on Twitter here.
My name is Simon, but I’m probably better known as probono in the Linux world. An early Mac user converted to Linux, I’ve been trying to help make desktop Linux more like the Mac over the last few years, starting with the klik project over a decade ago, and with what is now named AppImage. AppImage is, basically, a self-mounting filesystem that contains an application and its resources, not unlike an .app inside a .dmg on the Mac. The advantage is that you get “one app = one file,” which you can easily handle without a package manager. And the applications run on most desktop Linux systems.
Why do you use Linux?
Linux allows me to decouple the operating system from the hardware, and the applications from the operating system. Which allows me to mix and match the three. To allow for this, I am running a quite unusual setup: I keep hundreds of different Linux distributions (and versions) as live ISO files on a bootable SSD using SystemImageKit, and all of my applications in AppImage format. This means I can just walk to just about any machine, plug-in and boot from my SSD into any of the Linux distributions, and use just about every application. This makes for a great setup to reproduce and debug issues. I also like this setup because using live ISOs means you have a “factory new” setup each time you boot (also known as “stateless”). Furthermore, OS updates are trivial and can be done within seconds.
What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?
Every time I boot my machine, SystemImageKit shows me hundreds of live ISOs to choose from.
What desktop environment do you use and why do you use it?
None comes even close to the original Macintosh user experience so far, but on the Linux desktop I currently run Xfce most of the time, because it stays mostly true to the desktop metaphor. From time to time it still drives me crazy. I’ve written a six-part series of articles about Linux usability and why we as a community still have a lot to learn and improve.
What one piece of Linux software do you depend upon? Why is it so important?
The web browser, because I practically live in it.
What kind of hardware do you run this setup on?
A Dell tower from a decade ago with lots of RAM. An Acer mini PC from a couple of years ago. Some Retina Macs. A cheap Acer netbook-type notebook for travel. And a couple of self-built boxes.
Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?
There is not one desktop I could share—I make a point of booting into various, different live ISOs and checking out their desktops. So I’ll share this screenshot from my boot menu instead:
Interview conducted December 2, 2018
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 Linux Rig on Google+ here, follow me on Twitter here, and subscribe to the feed here.
The statewide software system default was to send criminal complaints and affidavits to all parties, including defendants and witnesses. The box was not unchecked by an official at the Arapahoe County District Court, and documents that described key details about Henderson’s cooperation were obtained by Terance Black.
Default settings are significant. Just because something can be changed doesn’t mean users will change it. This is a fundamental disconnect between users and too many software developers. It’s awful that a witness paid for that mistake, described by a spokesperson as “clerical,” with his life.
A court official failed to click a box — and a witness paid with his life | The Washington Post
James reached out to me through the contact form and I’m so grateful! When I looked at James’ screenshot, I thought ‘That looks like CrunchBang! So it’s nice to see the design aesthetic of that distribution living on. I’m also glad that James, who works in cyber security, says Linux is relatively secure. Like James says, you can never take security for granted, but all things being equal, it’s nice to use something that’s relatively tough to compromise.
You can find more of The Linux Setup here.
You can follow Linux Rig on Google+ here and follow me on Twitter here.
My name is James Permenter, all-around Unix geek, tinkerer, and programmer. By day I work for a cyber security company called PhishLabs as a Linux systems/infrastructure engineer and by night I can be found hacking away on embedded systems, firmware, playing with kernels and learning anything and everything I can for fun and profit.
Why do you use Linux?
I started using Linux as a teenager after meeting a group of people online who, like me, were interested in writing bots for the popular point-and-click game Runescape. I was walked through how to install Mandriva and the painful Java setup, and began working on automating my leveling efforts via a package called xautomation. After that, I branched out and started learning all I could about this OS, and I became hooked.
Linux for me was, and still is, this giant box of Legos that allows me to build essentially anything I want; it’s total freedom. I’ve been fortunate enough to have built my career around the knowledge and skills gained by having fun all these years and have used a Linux operating system for work and play ever since.
As a security professional I should also point out that while no system is 100% secure, the fine people that work on Linux make it a huge priority to patch vulnerabilities before just about anyone, and the community puts a lot of care into the overall security of its systems, definitely a contributing factor to my using it.
What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?
I’ve been a distro hopper for years but for some time now I’ve been using a Debian derivative called BunsenLabs, which is a fork of the now-defunct CrunchBang distribution that I started with originally.
What desktop environment do you use and why do you use it?
I use Xfce with Openbox and tint2 on top which is the default configuration for BunsenLabs. Despite having relatively beefy specs on my machines, I’m very stingy with my computing resources and love simplistic, lightweight distrubutions. I get queasy around systems that use around 1GB RAM or more to run at idle.
What one piece of Linux software do you depend upon? Why is it so important?
Just one is tough but I’d have to hands down say Vi(m) with various development plugins:
No matter if I’m editing a configuration file, making task lists, writing shell scripts, or building software, it’s usually done in Vim. Vim is very lightweight, and ships with nearly every *nix distro out there.
While not all solely Linux software, I’m also a big fan of Firefox containers, KeepassX, Fishshell, radare2, avrdude, ARM GNU toolchain, Clonezilla, Krita, FreeCAD, Conky, and too many more to list.
What kind of hardware do you run this setup on?
I spend most of my time on my ThinkPad T450s with Intel i7-5600U (4) @ 3.2GHz and 12GB RAM.
Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?
Absolutely!
Interview conducted November 16, 2018
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 Linux Rig on Google+ here, follow me on Twitter here, and subscribe to the feed here.
This is a great post from Aurynn Shaw. I love this line:
The best advice we give programmers is to leave things better than how they started. We do it with code, why don’t we do it with communities? Why don’t we do it with people, colleagues, friends?
I found it via this MetaFilter thread about systemd. I one day hope to have an opinion about systemd. But not today.
Contempt Culture | The Particular Finest
