Puzzled as to why @SlackHQ does not work properly in @firefox and insists on Chrome for voice calls. Was certainly frustrating when trying to receive a call!

February 14, 2018

This was a very interesting Twitter thread about Slack privileging Chrome over other browsers. Slack winds up with a lot of great user feedback about why browser choice is important.

The Linux Setup – Jeremy Garcia, LinuxQuestions.org and Bad Voltage podcast

February 13, 2018

Just to get meta here for a moment, I’m embarrassingly behind in posting interviews, which is why you have Jeremy talking about Unity. So think of some of these interviews as capturing a certain moment in time, rather than the current moment. Luckily, Jeremy’s interview is conceptual. For Jeremy, Linux is easy and it allows the user to tweak, if they want. A lot of Linux users (myself included) don’t necessarily want to modify their Linux setups. They just want the option if they need to.

You can find more of The Linux Setup here.

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

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

    My name is Jeremy, and I’m the founder of LinuxQuestions.org. I’m also a co-presenter on a podcast called Bad Voltage, a community moderator for Opensource.com, and a Linux Fund board member. I do consulting around both implementing open source and building sustainable communities. Outside the tech realm, I enjoy running, traveling, local history, and am a bit of a foodie.

  2. Why do you use Linux?

    I use Linux because the freedom, privacy, stability, reliability, and flexibility it provides are unparalleled.

    Computers, programming and technology in general have always fascinated me. As for Linux specifically, while I was in high school I started working for a local ISP that used Unix almost exclusively. The “Unix Way” just clicked and made a lot of sense to me. It wasn’t long before I wanted to run something similar at home. The ISP used SCO (fairly ironic in retrospect), so home use really wasn’t an option for licensing and cost reasons. Searching for an alternative quickly lead me to Linux. I purchased The Linux Bible from a local bookstore, so my first distro was Yggdrasil. I’ve used Linux as my main OS ever since. I like to tinker and understand how things work, so the fact that I could get an operating system that allowed me to not only see how things worked, but also modify how they worked, enthralled me. I moved to Slackware about a year later and have used Debian, Red Hat, SuSE, Fedora, Mandrake, Conectiva and a few others as my main distro over the years.

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

    I currently use Ubuntu LTS on my desktop, but have been considering alternatives.

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

    I use Unity, more due to force of inertia than anything else. While I used to customize my desktop and switch desktop environments quite a bit, these days I find myself sticking with the defaults on most occasions in an effort to simply get more accomplished.

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

    I depend on so much open source software on a daily basis that it would be near impossible to narrow it down.

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

    I currently use a custom assembled desktop machine, but it’s showing its age and I’ve been looking to replace it with a machine from one of the Linux system vendors.

  7. Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

    Sure.

Interview conducted February 1, 2017

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.