Tag: ubuntu

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.

Ubuntu 17.10: Return of the GNOME

December 14, 2017

My main desktop is Ubuntu GNOME 16.04, which I guess is now just Ubuntu. I think it’s great. The author of this article seems to think heavy-duty Unity users will have some trouble adjusting to GNOME. Maybe I wasn’t enough of a Unity power user, but it seems like a very easy transition to me. Unity is a failed experiment, but it did help give birth to MATE and Cinnamon, so some good things did come out of it.

Ubuntu 17.10: Return of the GNOME

The Linux Setup – Lee Blue, Web Developer/Online Marketer

September 5, 2017

Lee, among other things, is the developer behind Texpander, a way to turn abbreviations into full-blown blocks of text, sparing you the wear and tear of typing the same things over and over again. Lee is also a Unity fan, or at least he was in November, before Canonical announced they were switching Ubuntu back to GNOME.

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 do a couple things. I run a few online businesses and focus on online marketing and e-commerce. There are more details on my site.

  2. Why do you use Linux?

    I really like the level of control you get with Linux. If something doesn’t work quite like you want it to, you can usually write something yourself in just a couple lines of code—like Texpander.

    I’ve gotten a fair amount of interest in the way of emails and even a few Github pull requests for Texpander, which has been fun.

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

    I’ve tried a few other distros, but the default Ubuntu seems to work the best on my Oryx Pro. I don’t know how to explain it, but for whatever reason even other desktop environments that build on Ubuntu are less stable on my Oryx Pro than the normal Ubuntu it ships with. For example, Audacity crashes and freezes a lot more even on Ubuntu GNOME or Linux Mint.

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

    For the above reason of stability, I generally just use Unity. I’ve tried Cinnamon and GNOME, and like both of them better in terms of their visual appeal, but the Oryx Pro really seems to like the base Ubuntu/Unity setup. So, I just stick with Unity and install the Numix theme and icon set. That makes things look a little better. I also like the Arc theme, but generally keep falling back to Numix. It seems to be the most comprehensive and all the apps seem to work great with the Numix theme and icons. Sometimes the Arc theme would make some apps look a little wonky.

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

    The one piece of software that I couldn’t use Linux without is Google Chrome. I rely on a lot of Google services and without Chrome it just wouldn’t be possible to get things done. I’m constantly on Hangouts, sharing docs in Google Docs, etc. As far as native Linux apps, I use GitKraken a fair amount with BitBucket and GitHub, but I spend the vast majority of my time in Vim and on the command line.

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

    I have an Oryx Pro laptop from System76.

  7. Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

    Here’s a screenshot of me in Vim with Toggl opened up for tracking time.

Interview conducted November 21, 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.

The Linux Setup – Kelly Williams, Web Designer/Computer Technician

August 22, 2017

I appreciate that Kelly is a Linux missionary, helping people to discover its beauty. I also appreciate Kelly’s love of MATE, which is beloved by so many. But mostly, I appreciate that Kelly does a lot of video work on Linux. Video production has come a long way on Linux and it’s nice to see Linux as a viable alternative for people who don’t want to be in the Mac ecosystem.

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 Kelly Williams. I’m a freelance web designer and computer technician. I have been working on computers since the late 90s. I went to high school in Sheldon, Iowa, a small town in the corner of the state. I graduated in the class of 2000. In high school my principal had a bunch of computers in the basement of the school that were old. They wanted someone to go through them to see what works. I did it for fun and that is where I started my career in computers. The computers were Apple IIGSs: fun, simple to use, and simple to work on.

    I enrolled in college for computer science. Once I was in college I got introduced to Linux, which was fun. My college instructor used Red Hat 7.1 on the machines in the lab with a Windows 2000 Professional dual-boot. From there I tried every distribution of Linux I could get my hands on. I tried Slackware, SUSE, and Red Hat, and I liked them all. I was reading an article about a version of Linux that I was interested in trying; it was Ubuntu. It was simple and best of all it was free. I had an old computer at home and I installed Ubuntu. I sat there and learned the Linux environment. Now I use Linux daily for office work, web development, photo editing, video editing, and to play video games.

    I have introduced Linux to people and had them tell me they like Windows better. Others, like my mom, have Linux on their computer (hers isn’t even that old). It give me satisfaction to know that if my mom clicks on the wrong thing on her computer, she is not going to catch something that will damage her computer. I have some friends that have Linux and use it for daily tasks. I helped one friend build his first desktop. He had always wanted to try Linux so I have taken him under my wing, helping him understand Linux and its abilities as an operating system.

    I also have a YouTube channel for whenever I get an idea to share something or to make a product review. Here are my various outlets:

  2. Why do you use Linux?

    It’s free, you can set it up anyway you want, and the best thing is it’s secure. I use it to diagnose hardware issues. Linux also has some great tools to recover files from a hard drive that is corrupted and cannot be recognized.

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

    Ubuntu.

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

    MATE! It is like the old classic GNOME that was in Ubuntu 10.04, which was my favorite Ubuntu version. It’s fast and can run on older hardware.

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

    That’s a hard question for me answer. These are the three programs that I use the most, except for Firefox:

    LibreOffice. It’s what is being used to type this interview as well as all of the notes that I have ever typed about Linux. Every time I install a system for someone, I always install LibreOffice so that they have an office suite installed. LibreOffice gives me the ability to get my work done.

    Kdenlive. It’s a great video editor, priced right (free!) and better than Adobe Premiere.

    LightZone. I use it to edit my photos that I take with my Canon T6i. It’s better than buying Lightroom from Adobe. I post those pictures on Flickr.

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

    I have two laptops running Linux.

    One is a Dell E6510 with Ubuntu 16.04. It’s my daily driver. I use it all the time. It has good battery life and it lightweight. I traded it for an Asus laptop, which felt like a tank and was too big for me. The Dell is a simple machine to work on. It has one single screw between you and full access to its hardware. Since I got it, it has been updated twice. The first thing I did was upgrade it to 8GB RAM and then last year I put an SSD in. The specs are i5 Dual Core, 8GB RAM, and 120GB SSD. Yes it’s a small SSD, but all I do with this machine is documents, photo editing, and it can do some light video editing as well.

    The other is an Asus R500v with Mint 18. I have been wanting to upgrade this machine to an SSD. I really just use it for for 1080p video editing and playing Nexuiz and Open Arena. The specs are i5 Dual Core, 8GB RAM, 320GB hard drive, Nvidia 610m GPU and an Intel 4000 graphics.

  7. Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

    Yes. It’s simple and it’s clean. No clutter.

Interview conducted November 2, 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.