The Linux Setup – Marcel Gagné, Cooking with Linux

November 14, 2018

I know Marcel from his Linux Journal column, so it’s awesome to get to hear how he rolls, Linux-wise. One of the things I love about his writing (you should follow him on Twitter) is his love of Linux always shines through. It’s not stident. It’s joyful. And you see the joy here.

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 Marcel Gagné. I’m just this guy, you know? I’m a science and technology geek, ruggedly handsome, and the guy behind the (in)famous “Cooking With Linux” that began in the Linux Journal. I’ve written for Linux Magazine, LinuxPro, SysAdmin, and several others. I’ve also written six books covering Linux and Open Source software (under the Addison Wesley imprint), promoted Linux and FOSS on television (“Call for Help”), and on radio (“Computer America”), and on YouTube (search freethinkeratlarge). I’m an occasional public speaker on matters tech and free, an occasional teacher on same, and a general (and hopefully, occasionally amusing) nuisance on the Internet.

  2. Why do you use Linux?

    If it was just a question of technological superiority, I would still be running Linux, but it goes much further than that. Linux and free software embody everything I believe in when it comes to technology, namely that people working in an entirely open environment, using open standards, open communication, open development, and open everything, can create wonderful and amazing things. The connected world we live in today, with its social networks, one-day shipping, non-stop streaming video, on-demand music, artificially intelligent agents, smartphones, search engines that deliver the sum total of human knowledge to anyone with an Internet connection, and…all of those things are the products of the open source philosophy. Even those closed source companies that love to talk about their amazing products created in opaque labs, like the Microsofts and Apples of the world, even they owe their existence and success, in no small part, to open source.

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

    My, this is a tough one to answer. I switch from one Linux distribution to another the way other people cycle their under—well, you know what I mean. And I’m talking about my day-to-day working desktop system. This year alone, I’ve been using NetRunner, Fedora, Kubuntu, and as I write this, Manjaro (17.1 development release).

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

    The one I keep coming back to is KDE Plasma. It’s elegant, beautiful, customizable, and everything a modern desktop environment should be. I say “coming back to” because I probably spend 25% of my time in different desktop environments, including GNOME (I like GNOME 3 specifically), Cinnamon, LXDE, and a few others. I have what is probably an unhealthy and entirely nostalgic fondness for WindowMaker.

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

    Can I put in a joke here about how it’s the kernel because without it, my system wouldn’t boot? No? All right then, you force me to name a few. There isn’t a day that I don’t use my Chrome browser, so in the Internet age, that’s a staple no matter what operating system you are running. There’s also never a time that I don’t have at least one Konsole terminal window open or a word processor on the go. However, I also run OBS Studio most days, as well as Kdenlive, Zimbra for email, and Firefox.

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

    I’ll pretend you mean my everyday system as opposed to the other computers scattered around the house (yes, they all run Linux). My current notebook is an ACER ES-774G with an Intel Core i5 turbo processor (2.8 GHz), 12GB RAM, a 17-inch LED display, and an NVIDIA GeForce 940MX graphics card with 2GB dedicated VRAM. The 1 terabyte drive that came with it crashed. This was kind of a good thing because I replaced it with a 250GB SSD drive that is just screaming fast. I’ve never been so happy to have a hard disk crash.

  7. Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

    Sure!

Interview conducted November 7, 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.

The Linux Setup – Pasi Lallinaho, Xubuntu

November 7, 2018

I’ve made no secret of my love of Xfce and Pasi does a great job explaining what makes it so great. Mainly, the fact that it’s light but also very customizable. I’m using GNOME for my daily work, and playing with MATE on an old ThinkPad, but I always find my way back to Xfce.

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?

    I’m Pasi Lallinaho, an open source contributor from Finland.

    I’m currently a Xubuntu council member and website lead. I’ve been contributing to Xubuntu since 2008, with artwork, websites, community involvement, documentation, and more. I like to think that I’m sort of an enabler for other people in the community. I don’t program (and many other things) myself, but I’m happy if I can do something that can make processes and work easier and smoother for others.

    As upstream is important, I’m helping out Xfce (the desktop environment) with their infrastructure. I’m also the co-founder of Shimmer Project, a collective found to make open source beautiful.

    I also have a blog about open source and the phenomena around it called It’s Free.

  2. Why do you use Linux?

    Linux gives me the freedom I want. It’s always free, I can always select the software I want and I can customize my desktop however I want.

    I also would like to emphasize that with open source software, everybody has the possibility to contribute and shape the future of the software they are using, which makes things even more awesome.

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

    I run Xubuntu exclusively on all of my systems. My first experiences with Linux were around 2000 with Red Hat. When I was looking for a Linux operating system back in 2006— I was switching from Windows to Linux exclusively—Ubuntu caught my eye. I used the flagship Ubuntu (with GNOME2 then) for two years, after which I switched to Xubuntu and haven’t looked back.

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

    Xfce, obviously. Xfce has the perfect balance between being lightweight, user friendly, and customizable.

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

    For a lot of my work and open source activites, Inkscape. It’s a wonderful vector graphics editor which I use to create most of my artwork. For example, I’ve used it to create all of the Xubuntu wallpapers over the years. It’s also a handy drafting tool for a lot of things, including websites and all kinds of print stuff.

    I mentioned customizability earlier and an important part of keeping my workflow smooth and productive is the little scripts and configuration I’ve built on top of Xubuntu.

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

    I recently switched to a 7th Generation Intel NUC. I want my hardware to keep out of the way, just like my operating system and desktop environment, and the quiet NUC does just that.

  7. Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

    I like minimalist desktops, so there isn’t much to see, but here you go!

    The wallpaper license is CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Patrik Walde and can be found here.

Interview conducted November 2, 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.

The Linux Setup – Linc Fessenden, The Linux Tech Show

October 30, 2018

Linc is a fan of MATE because it works well across all kinds of hardware. That’s a smart move. I’m running GNOME on Ubuntu and OpenSUSE, and not having to think about my desktop environment simplifies things. Also, Linc reached out to me via the contact form. If you’d like to be interviewed (even though I’m ridiculously behind in them…) or say hello, go right ahead!

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?

    I am Linc Fessenden, a consummate computer geek and one of the founders of The Linux Link Tech Show, and the Lehigh Valley Linux Users Group, among other things. I am currently working as a Linux engineer in Southern California, for Sequenom, Inc., where I do all things Linux including building and managing several high performance computer clusters used in genetic testing. On the rare occasion I have spare time, I am riding my motorcycles 😉

  2. Why do you use Linux?

    Years ago, at another job, I was handed a SCO server and told to make it work. I needed to learn “how to UNIX,” so I set about trying to find something similar I could do at home to learn on and landed on Linux. This was back in the Yggdrasil days (I am dating myself here), followed closely by early Slackware. Linux was just the ticket, and a way for me to learn at home and that is what I did. It wasn’t very long after that when I got my first X display compiled and running, which prompted me to ditch the use of any other OS. I have been a professional Linux geek ever since.

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

    As I mentioned before, Slackware was my mainstay for many years, but I switched to Linux Mint in its early days and have just stuck with it up through its current version.

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

    I use MATE most often. Although I really like Cinnamon, which is the default, I often use multiple differently spec’d systems and MATE seems to be the best fit for a level playing field across all of them, so I just sort of stick with it.

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

    Hands down it’s ssh, followed closely by Chrome. As a Linux admin I spend a LOT of time on other servers and ssh is how you do that. Chrome is what I use for lots of other things like email, information searches, wiki documentation, and even my remote desktop client. I also think xterm deserves a special mention here. While ssh is #1, the terminal is pretty important, I think. There are many many modern terminal programs which do fancy things but good old xterm is monster fast and responsive compared to the rest and when you are opening a pile of terminals for stuff, waiting for them to open slowly is annoying.

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

    Wow! Just about anything you can think of. Right this second I am on an old Dell Vostro all-in-one and a Dell Inspiron laptop, and there is my normal work machine, which is a Dell Optiplex 990. And there are my HP machines running my home infrastructure via KVM, and Raspberry Pi 3s, and on and on!

  7. Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

    Sure.

    Not much to look at there,I know, but you’ll see a pile of terminals sessions I am currently engaged in, and a browser and, of course, Pidgin, for me to chat with other techie people I really dig that dark wood background (which you can’t really see much of), as it is good looking yet not distracting.

Interview conducted November 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.

Journalists Just Can’t Quit Microsoft Word. But Some Are Trying.

October 16, 2018

For now, writers—whether Docs fans or Word stans—need to be ready to accept edits in whatever form they come. But Google Docs appears to be coming for us all, slowly but surely—even if we’re not quite ready to Accept This Change.

I don’t love web-based word processors. They’re just a little laggy for me. But Google Docs is convenient—especially for collaboration. However, I don’t think it’s any better or worse than the online Word or Dropbox editors. I’m not sure it’s good for a news organization to depend upon a free product, though. That would make me nervous. Especially if I were reporting something negative about the owner of the free product.

Journalists Just Can’t Quit Microsoft Word. But Some Are Trying. | Slate