They’re using Debian Testing and GNOME and moving on from Ubuntu.
Even though it’s an internal distro, it would be cool if Google made it publicly available.
Desktop Linux for Everyone
They’re using Debian Testing and GNOME and moving on from Ubuntu.
Even though it’s an internal distro, it would be cool if Google made it publicly available.
I found Jakub via this great post about how he uses Linux for project management. It’s nice to see someone at the C-level using Linux for their personal work. Of course, Jakub’s setup could be used on a Windows machine, although he points out Windows’ lack of virtual workspaces is a deal-breaker for him.
You can find more of The Linux Setup here.
You can follow Linux Rig on Google+ here and follow me on Twitter here.
I’m CIO of PIXERS.
Besides that, I’m a free software lover and (sometime) supporter.
I’m also a Zen Buddhism practitioner and I maintain some Buddhist websites (on Linux servers, of course).
Why do you use Linux?
I love this operating system. Windows is not an option (I really tried once, but it’s so difficult to work on it). The lack of native virtual desktops made life too difficult on Windows.
OS X is, I’ve heard, much better in terms of technical issues, but I’m not big fan of Apple for ethical reasons. Here are some examples (unfortunately only in Polish).
BSD could be an alternative. I used FreeBSD some time ago and it was fine.
What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?
Debian GNU/Linux (Testing). I use Debian on my laptops and servers too. It’s just great. Although I’d like to try Trisquel one day.
What desktop environment do you use and why do you use it?
GNOME. I’m just used to it. When I started Linuxing, KDE was fancier, but there were some issues with its not completely free libraries (although it’s not the case now). I also like Xfce for its lightness.
What one piece of Linux software do you depend upon? Why is it so important?
It’s hard to choose just one. Everyday I use mutt, Emacs org-mode, Vim (yes, both—Emacs and Vim), Firefox, Signal, and LaTeX. Here is more about the tools I use.
What kind of hardware do you run this setup on?
I like ThinkPads. I’d love to switch to a laptop similar to FairPhone, but as far as I know there is no such project for laptops yet (unfortunately). So I use an X220 at home, and an E440 at work.
I tried to install coreboot on the X220, but it failed. Maybe I will try again when I have more time.
Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?
Sure!
Interview conducted August 10, 2016
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 shame. I thought Linux Mint Debian Edition was a great rolling release that felt super stable. Of course, I didn’t use it regularly, so maybe it was having trouble finding an audience. It certainly could have looked sharper. But it was an interesting project.
The future of Linux Mint Debian Edition and its derivatives | ZDNet
Akkana has a great Openbox-driven setup that relies on keybindings but what’s great about her setup is that she chooses Linux not so much for the philosophy, but for the control it gives her (which I would argue is also philosophical). I always appreciate when people recognize Linux for its technical flexibility and sophistication and not just as something that isn’t Windows or OS X. The politics of Linux is important and fascinating, but it also happens to be a wonderful product.
You can find more of The Linux Setup here.
You can follow Linux Rig on Google+ here and follow me on Twitter here.
I’m a developer and tech writer. Right now I’m between jobs, working on various Python, Arduino and Raspberry Pi projects of my own, and on volunteer projects like the website for the local nature center. In the past I’ve worked as a developer at various Silicon Valley startups, at Netscape in the early days of Mozilla, and at various other companies like SGI, HP and Sun, and I wrote the book
Beginning GIMP.
Why do you use Linux?
I like having control over my environment. I’m picky about the look and feel of my desktop and apps, particularly things like key bindings, and I find that open-source software gives me a lot more control. Of course, sometimes getting that control requires recompiling something or writing some code of my own.
I also depend on the power of the command line, and Linux has the best set of shells and command-line tools.
Of course, I love the philosophy of free software too. But I don’t use Linux purely for philosophic reasons; it’s better for the way I work.
What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?
I use Debian these days: Stable on my laptop, Testing or Unstable on my desktop. I used Ubuntu for a long time, but lately I feel like they’re moving away from Linux geeks and concentrating more on interfaces designed for phones and tablets, and the distro was getting less reliable and less efficient, so I switched.
What desktop environment do you use and why do you use it?
I use the Openbox window manager without any desktop environment on top of it. Openbox is super fast so I don’t clog my machine with services I don’t use. I don’t even run a panel—I use key bindings and context menus.
What one piece of software do you depend upon with this distribution? Why is it so important?
I can’t narrow it down to one. I spent most of my day in just a few apps: xterm, mutt, vim and Emacs (yes, I’m bi), Firefox, XChat. And GIMP, of course.
What kind of hardware do you run this setup on?
My “desktop” machine is a Lenovo X201 with Core i5 CPU and 6GB RAM. Not that much horsepower, but it’s fine for what I do, and it’s quiet and efficient. It’s in a docking station so I can use a 20" monitor.
Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?
Sure. The background is a random selection from a collection of photos—it changes every time I boot or wake up from suspend.
Interview conducted August 14, 2014
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.
Stefano is my great white whale. I’ve been trying to interview him for years, so I was very excited when he was able to make some time for this. He’s a Debian user, as you might expect from a former Debian Project Leader. Stefano also has a lot of nice things to say about GNOME Shell. And mutt users will want to check out his software list, as there’s a lot of nice Emacs integrations in there.
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 Stefano Zacchiroli, but I usually go by the nickname “Zack.” I’m a computer science researcher and teacher, as well as a Free Software activist. I’m a Debian Developer, former three-time Debian Project Leader, and a Director at the Open Source Initiative (OSI).
These days my Debian involvement is mostly in Quality Assurance and in the development of infrastructure pieces like Debian Sources. In the past I’ve maintained many packages, e.g., the OCaml stack, Vim, and various Python modules.
Why do you use Linux?
I use Free Software in general—Linux, GNU, GNOME, end-user applications, etc.—to be in control of my own computations. I love the feeling of knowing that I can peek at any point in the software stack, make the changes that I see fit, and share any bit I please with my peers. I refuse to believe that software is a black box, remotely controlled by someone else, and that users should need permission to exercise elementary digital rights on software.
What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?
Debian testing. It’s just the best (not to mention the first) “rolling release” out there: it offers a great trade-off between software freshness and not being too bleeding edge for use on your productivity machine.
What desktop environment do you use and why do you use it?
GNOME 3 with GNOME Shell. Philosophically, I like the GNOME project, their vision, and the courage they have had to reinvent the desktop after many years in which nobody was innovating. But I’m also technically quite happy about GNOME Shell. I love full-text searching for applications, the big switch to mute notifications, the no frills approach, and the well-rounded app integration.
The only feature I miss in off-the-shelf GNOME Shell is tiling window management (there is some tiling support in GNOME Shell, like splitting the screen in half with two main windows, but I do use more complex window arrangements than that). To fill that gap I’m using the Shellshape extension; the result is good enough for my needs.
What one piece of software do you depend upon with this distribution? Why is it so important?
To give an idea of my work flow, here is a list of tools that I use on a daily basis (in no particular order):
My main hardware is my laptop, which I always carry with me. I’m now at my third iteration of (Lenovo) ThinkPads over a period of more than six years and, overall, I’m a satisfied user. As a geek I mostly interact with my OS by typing, and ThinkPad’s keyboards are just unparalleled, in my estimation.
My current ThinkPad is a T440s, i7 CPU, 12GB RAM, 512GB SSD, and a Full HD display (not touchscreen, as I don’t see the point of it). My main regret with ThinkPads is the need to use non-free firmware to get the Intel Wi-Fi working.
Dear Intel, would you please give up on that, liberate your firmware, and finally set your users free?
When at the office I connect my laptop to an external LCD monitor and the best mechanical keyboard I’ve ever used: a Das Keyboard Model S Ultimate. To ease the connection, I use a basic Lenovo docking station, and I also have many (five or more, I think) Lenovo-ish AC adapters: one for the office, one near the couch at home, one for each backpack, etc.
Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?
Sure!
Here is my GNOME Shell workspace three, the one I use for the main ongoing “work” activity during a typical coding session. In the screenshot you can see three windows, tailed automatically by Shellshape: Emacs for coding, Evince for doc reading, and a GNOME terminal running tests (in case you’re wondering, no, I refuse to use Emacs as an entire OS, and I dislike running “terminals” in it).
Interview conducted July 28, 2014
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 know Ron’s name from when he used to organize the New York Linux Users Group (NYLUG). He’s got a no-frills setup with a lot of solid software choices (what’s better than gPodder?). Like many Linux users, Ron is a ThinkPad guy, of which I wholeheartedly approve. They’re great computers in general, and the ones I’ve had have always handled a wide variety of distros very well, without a lot of drama.
You can find more of The Linux Setup here.
You can follow Linux Rig on Google+ here and follow me on Twitter here.
I’m Ron Guerin, and I guess the best way to describe what I do is ‘entrepreneur.’ I also was the main volunteer and then primary organizer of NYLUG for over a decade. I’ve been a member/attendee/volunteer of many tech and FLOSS groups over the years. Now I’m doing some tech/FLOSS events over at http://luny.org.
My distro is Debian GNU/Linux (Testing) with MATE. My first Linux was OpenLinux and I got my copy on April 13, 1999 from Ransom Love at a LUNY meeting. After riding Red Hat Linux to the end, I switched to Debian Testing and haven’t looked back.
On my notebooks, I mostly use Firefox, Thunderbird/Lightning, MATE, VLC, OpenShot, Scribus, Geany, GNOME Terminal, XChat, Pidgin, gPodder, Audacious, Audacity, Apache, MySQL, PHP, rsync, and ssh. When not working, like many people these days, I am both a producer and consumer of content and I use my Linux desktops for that as well.
My hardware is ThinkPad (T61 and T500). I always put as much memory and storage as possible in my desktops, as I use it all.
ThinkPads are pretty much my ideal setup. I presently have two of them set up pretty much the same way. So long as Lenovo maintains the ThinkPad experience, I’d like my next machine to be a ThinkPad as well.
Interview conducted January 21, 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 Linux Rig on Google+ here, follow me on Twitter here, and subscribe to the feed here.
Paul’s got a great Debian setup across a lot of interesting hardware. I appreciated this interview, though, because Paul makes the argument that although software should be free (as in freedom), there are often technical limitations/complications with that free software that create a barrier-to-entry for less sophisticated users. Unfortunately, with Linux, the price of freedom is often technical ease. It’s nice to hear a Debian developer contemplating the issue. It’s not an easy fix, but it is a fixable problem. Especially with developers like Paul on the case.
You can find more of The Linux Setup here.
You can follow Linux Rig on Google+ here and follow me on Twitter here.
I’m Paul Tagliamonte, by day, a Software Engineer with the Sunlight Foundation, and by night, a Debian Developer, an Ubuntu contributor (although, I don’t do as much there these days). I can sometimes be found hacking with the Fluxboxers.
I use Debian GNU/Linux Unstable/Experimental, on amd64, for my personal laptop. I run Ubuntu on my work laptop (for now), and Debian on everything else (such as my netbook, desktop, etc).
I can’t function without vim, mutt, and irssi. I use all those tools on a daily basis, and I love them. I use irssi on one of my remote servers, in an always-on GNU screen session. I have a devoted user, which auto-attaches to a single screen session. It’s handy to ssh in as my IRC user and just close the window when I’m done.
I’m always open to trying to find a new MUA, text editor or IRC client, but so far, there’s nothing I’d rather use.
I’m also blindly in love with dpkg and apt-get.
As for window manager, I have two setups. These days, I’ve been using awesome window manager, because it’s handling of more then one head is amazing. Tiling window managers are pretty cool. My other setup is Fluxbox + Xfce, which is also super rad. I’ve been using Fluxbox since I first got involved with GNU/Linux, so it’s pretty close to my heart.
I also keep a small amount of software in my personal archive that’s not quite fit for Debian’s. I use some of that, but it’s mostly small stuff (metapackages to auto-install stuff I like, some slightly non-free stuff like node-jslint and security issues, like flake8)
In case anyone’s wondering, I name all my machines after things from mythology, and ‘loki’ is always my primary development machine.
My two Linode VPSs are named “metatron” and “lucifer.”
Thinkpad T520i (leliel), in its dock, with its secondary screen, Das Keyboard II (amazing keyboard), and a Wacom Bamboo pad. I also have a few Razer input devices (mamba and nostromo), which seem to do their job fairly well.
My work setup (physically) is about as good as it gets. I have a secondary screen, rotated the long-way (so I can view more of a file at one time), and a solid laptop I can pick up and hack elsewhere.
I love—absolutely love—Debian GNU/Linux Unstable/Experimental (for some newer upstreams during freeze). It’s been my go-to since early 2004 or so.
I would also love a Linux setup that is both free (as in freedom), but also one that I can have my non-technical friends use without problem. Debian is close, but the fact some platforms need non-free software upsets me.
These days I just try to maintain a proper balance of free and non-free software on my system, but as soon as I find proper replacements, I’ll be a happy, happy man.
Interview conducted November 24, 2012
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 came across Terry through a Linux.com feature that mentioned him as a Linux hero. I was also familiar with his work for Free Software Magazine, so he seemed like a great subject.
Terry is another power KDE user who makes great use of the virtual desktops. You’ll also probably be very impressed by the amount of video production Terry does using Debian Testing (although Terry points out that it sometimes requires a bit of work on his part).
You can find more of The Linux Setup here.
You can follow Linux Rig on Google+ here and follow me on Twitter here.
I’m Terry Hancock. I’ve done a lot of different things over the years, but for the last several years I’ve been writing a column for Free Software Magazine about free software and free culture topics.
Since 2009, I’ve been actively working on producing and directing a free-culture science-fiction web video series which will be called “Lunatics.” We’re currently involved in recording voices for the pilot episode, and I hope to be working on animation again before the year is out.
On my desktop workstation, I run Debian’s main distribution—currently the “testing” version, “Wheezy.” I’ve tried some specialized derivative distributions, but none of them really worked out for me. I wind up customizing things and I want to control which apps are installed, try out new ones, and so on. So it’s easier to just use the main upstream distribution.
This is not without headaches though. I probably have more problems with hardware compatibility because of this choice—especially with multimedia software. I have to work out my own dependency problems to a greater degree (though it’s not nearly as bad as installing from source).
My wife is currently using Ubuntu Studio on her system, and we have a couple of other Debian systems for our kids.
We also maintain a virtual private server for web hosting. That system runs Debian as well—though we stick with the “stable” distribution.
Well, first of all, I’m a KDE4 user, and I’m pretty happy with that, although the sound system is not as easy to manage as I would like.
For my work, I use a lot of different applications, but some of the most important are: Inkscape, Gimp, Blender, Kate (the editor—which I’m using more and more instead of Gvim, which I used to use all the time), Libre Office, Konqueror (for file management), VLC, and Audacity (which I’m doing a lot with this week).
I use both Iceweasel and Chromium browsers. I primarily use Iceweasel for general-purpose browsing, while I use Chromium specifically with social-media websites (Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Identica, and Diaspora). I primarily interact with Identica and Twitter using the Choqok client, though.
Debian’s multimedia packages are not as up-to-date as some, and I wind up using a few pacakges from other sources. I’m currently running a build of Blender with Freestyle integration from http://graphicall.org.
When I program, I use Python pretty much exclusively. A long time ago I wrote software in C, C++, and even Fortran, but these days I stick to high-level stuff, and Python serves well for that.
This is a self-built desktop with 64-bit quad-core AMD system with 8GB of RAM. The motherboard and drives are from ASUS. I’m using the on-board graphics and sound systems.
I have an LG Blu-Ray/M-Disc/DVD-RW/CD-RW drive as well, which lets me write just about any optical media I need to. The printer (and scanner) is a low-end HP multifunction machine, and the monitor is a widescreen 21" with 1920×1080 pixels (so it can display full HD video at full-scale — which is important since I’ve got two major projects in that format, both “Lunatics” and “Lib-Ray”).
A lot of the components have been through a few other computers before winding up in this one — there’s always a few parts lying around our place.
We have a LAN and my wife and kids have their own systems. The computers are a bit behind the technology curve, but we’re able to keep them working. Obviously this is something we put a lot of value on.
I’m pretty happy with what I’ve got. There will always be pressure to increase performance for things like rendering scenes in Blender or editing video with Kdenlive, but it’s not really proving to be a problem yet.
When it does, we’re probably talking about creating a render farm server of some kind (not a new desktop).
Which one? 🙂
I actually use the “virtual desktops” feature extensively. I have 20 desktops organized by task, and I spread out the applications I’m using accordingly. So, for example, I have four named desktops for “Lunatics” project work, one for “Lib-Ray,” two for Morevna Project, one for Free Software Magazine, and so on. This way I can leave windows open and just switch desktops when going from one task to another.
I’ve attached a capture of my “Lunatics 1” desktop with Blender and Audacity both open on project files in progress—these are the “heavy-hitting” applications I’ve been using on production for “Lunatics.”
One thing you might notice here is that I use the pin-up notes to keep track of to-do lists and the like on each project. Maintaining this place-like metaphor on my desktops helps me deal with the mental clutter from several projects that I’m working on simultaneously.
Interview conducted September 23, 2012
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 incredible news. Linux Mint Debian Edition, which is powered by Debian Testing, is essentially going to build a new repository, that will represent the latest from Testing, but also packages that have been tested and/or fixed.
This is going to take a lot of the risk out of Testing (especially toward the beginning of a development cycle, when Testing isn’t as solid as it is toward the end of the cycle).
I’m hoping to buy a new laptop by the end of the summer. Linux Mint Debian Edition (the XFCE variant, of course) is going to be my next distro. I was sold before this project, but now I’m insanely psyched.
The Linux Mint Blog » Blog Archive » Introducing Update Packs in Linux Mint Debian
This is pretty neat. A Debian developer is proposing turning Debian Testing into Debian Rolling. Not much would change. Mostly Testing/Rolling would be acknowledged as a viable, distribution in its own right.