Tag: linux

An Interview with Drew DeVault

September 10, 2019

A cool interview with Drew DeVault, a software developer, that includes some questions (and answers) about his set-up:

My main workstation is a Linux tower with four displays in various configurations, as a means of continuously testing sway in various situations, and an AMD GPU. This runs Arch Linux, mostly because a few of my projects still have issues on musl libc (issues I intend to fix). I also keep a laptop on my desk running Alpine Linux, which I SSH into almost daily to work on Alpine, and which I travel with. I also have a Librem5 prototype courtsey of Purism on my desk, again for testing sway, and a HiFive Unleashed RISC-V board, for working on the RISC-V ports of Alpine Linux and musl libc.

An Interview with Drew DeVault | GitPius

The Linux Setup – Sam Slade, Student

August 28, 2019

I found Sam via this post about using Vim to learn Linux. It’s an interesting concept: that Vim is almost a conceptual metaphor for Linux. Sam got into Linux starting with Arch, which to me is like an athlete beginning their career in the Super Bowl.

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 a student at Gloucestershire University reading Computer Science. I love to experiment with open source software, seeing how far you can take it. I am also really interested in retro audio equipment, and am currently on the lookout for a reel-to reel deck for my dorm room.

  2. Why do you use Linux?

    My first experience with Linux was in college. I was introduced to it by the students in the year above me. I had only ever used Windows up until that point, but I was fascinated by how much was open to the user and wasn’t hidden behind closed doors. I installed Arch the same night and dived straight into learning everything about it I could. I have never looked back.

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

    I run Manjaro Illyria on my laptop that I use as my main machine. It’s fairly light and I like the Arch family of distributions.

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

    I use i3-wm with i3-gaps. I fell in love with tilling window managers when I migrated to Linux and i3 clicked with me straight away. More recently I have been delving into configuring the aesthetic side of i3 with the use of i3-gaps and Compton.

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

    Vim. I love it. It was one of the first parts of Linux that I interacted with and it was so unlike any other editor I had used that it really caught my imagination. I have tried editors since but I keep coming back to it as it just does everything I need and does it really well. In particular, the use of snippets makes writing large pieces of code really quick and simple, cutting down on the number of key presses required and allows you to program closer to your speed of thought rather than being limit by your typing speed.

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

    The laptop I use as my main machine I have had for eight years and I got as a present for when I started secondary school. It has 3GB of RAM and an Intel i3-2330M processor that I have underclocked to conserve power and extend the battery life. Part of the reason I installed Linux to begin with was to attempt to improve the battery life of my old laptop, which prior to my move to Arch was an abysmal 45 minutes. I have now got a new battery and can manage two and a half hours. Woo!

  7. Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

    This is my yellow themed i3 desktop. I will typically have a terminal session and Firefox open together on my main workspace, each taking up half the screen each.

Interview conducted August 24, 2019

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.

Linux Journal Ceases Publication: An Awkward Goodbye

August 14, 2019

First Linux Journal was gone. Then it came back. Now it’s gone. I feel bad they couldn’t make a go of it, but online journalism is hard, so I’m not totally surprised.

I’m not a huge Bruce Springsteen fan, but this makes me think of “Atlantic City”:

Everything dies baby that’s a fact / But maybe everything that dies someday comes back

Linux Journal Ceases Publication: An Awkward Goodbye | Linux Journal

My Text Editor Journey: Vim, Spacemacs, Atom and Sublime Text

August 7, 2019

I always love reading these text editor round-ups, even though I’m fairly set with my workflow (Typora for Markdown and gedit for everything else). But you’re only set, text editor-wise, until you’re not, so it’s important to keep an eye out for new tools. Or different tools. This post is from 2017…

I learned about Typora from my interview with Nochka, by the way.

And of course, for all things plain text, you need to visit Scott Nesbitt’s The Plain Text Project, which probably featured that link months, if not years ago.

My Text Editor Journey: Vim, Spacemacs, Atom and Sublime Text | Tristan Hume

Dropbox Brings Back Support For ZFS, XFS, Btrfs And eCryptFS On Linux

July 30, 2019

Dropbox bringing back functionality it dropped is a very Dropbox move. They have a great product and absolutely no interest in maintaining it. Instead, they pivot from new thing to new thing.

So I’m not surprised they would disruptively remove a feature and then put it back.

I’d say it’s good news for Linux users, but I suspect many left when Dropbox stopped supporting non-ext4 file systems.

Look for these file systems to lose support in a year or so.

Dropbox Brings Back Support For ZFS, XFS, Btrfs And eCryptFS On Linux | Linux Uprising Blog

Update on Steam, Ubuntu, and 32-bit support

July 2, 2019

When I first saw this Tweet, I assumed the issue would be resolved:

And it has:

In response to the concerns raised by ourselves and the wider community, the Ubuntu project recently discussed a more conservative approach wherein a selection of 32-bit libraries would still be available on the host system, through at least 20.04 LTS.

I don’t understand the technical issues here, but coordinating projects is hard and sometimes you need a dramatic announcement, like Pierre-Loup’s, to get everyone to see the challenge and get on the same page. So I’m happy things worked out.

Update on Steam, Ubuntu, and 32-bit support | Steam for Linux General Discussions