I actually recall my first Linux kernel version was 0.12, and over the decades, I did various things, even producing commercial products with GNU/Linux starting in the mid 90's. I have authored and at times maintained gnu related packages, I had spoken at some Linux conferences, and occasionally my work was published in Linux Journal. I had always been particularly interested in using GNU/Linux for telephony systems and I still do find interesting Linux related projects to do when I can, most often in secure communications. I also know where some of the bodies are buried...
It seems kinda funny to do an introductory post...
- Thread starter dyfet
- Start date
D
Deleted member 140690
Guest
Hi and welcome, your knowledge and experience will surely be of
value to us users and onlookers.
value to us users and onlookers.
Brickwizard
Well-Known Member
Welcome to the forums, your input will be appreciated by all.
I always have desired that we have as small a separation between users and developers as is possible, and that we should do more to include even onlookers to make them into active participants and conspirators...
D
Deleted member 140690
Guest
Very true. It works both ways, devs talking with users leads to
a better understanding of what they want, less work perfecting
things that users are not that keen on whilst disappointing them
by not listening to what they want to buy into and actually want most.
D
Deleted member 140690
Guest
Any hope of a search engine that does not track and collect
information, or a browser that just browses.
information, or a browser that just browses.
The two are I think related. It's why I find hope in things like Gemini...
Welcome to the forums @dyfet!! Looking forward to reading your contributions knowing you have been involved with GNU/Linux for such a long time!
I hope that's an expression, if so what does it mean? And last but not least what is your GNU/Linux distribution of choice to run as your daily driver?
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Well, i have family in New Jersey...
The best distro to me depends on what I wish to accomplish. One distro I really love because I do a lot of device work (and also for containers), is AlpineLinux, which, yes, is the rare non-gnu Linux distro, as it uses musl libc and busybox userspace. I even had setup a desktop on it once. I primarily use Debian for development work now, but I first used Red Hat for delivering OST products starting in 1999, and for federal contracting, too. The fed was a long-time exclusive rhel users, but never seemed to adopt rhel 8, and then many federal contracts replaced rhel with Ubuntu going forward last year, so I actually haven't touched or used Red Hat/CentOS at all for the first time in over 2 decades, since last year.
I never was a big fan of rolling distros, like Arch. When your living on the rez internet connectivity, even electricity, can be rare, and when you have to walk 3-5 miles into town to connect, it's not the distro you want to have fail to update because you weren't able to update it for a few weeks, or to simply have a bad rolling update with... My other negative experiences with rolling distros was as an early adopter of SSD's, where constant updating could kill a SSD, and this bit me twice. Certainly SSD's have become much better since then, and things like btrfs makes it easy to snapshot and rollback installs, but I had too many painful experiences with rolling distros in the past.
I think if I had found commercial opportunities with it, I could have adopted OpenSUSE (and SUSE enterprise). There are nice things in current SUSE. But, especially with federal agencies seeming to abandon rhel and go all-in with canonical, I now find I can do anything I need to with just Debian, and by extension, Ubuntu. For more specialized work, I can often still use Debian as well as Alpine for low end devices, or even OE/Yocto for deeply embedded things. What GNU/Linux distro is best for you depends on what you wish to do, and sometimes for who, too.
I'm not from the US so I wouldn't know.
At home I like rolling release but at work on my workstation I like Ubuntu LTS, but I dislike the way Canonical has integrated Snaps into Ubuntu. What do you think of Snaps?
I do not use snaps, I do not particularly care to deliver things with snaps, and I have no need to work with them. Flatpaks I have considered for desktop apps, though.
Heh... Welcome aboard... In my introduction (as memory serves) I pointed out that folks may already know who I am. While not as prolific as you (or at least not as long), I've been contributing for a long time - in various ways.
So, think of it as an introduction for a smaller group who may not be familiar with your work. Think of it as a good chance to introduce us to your work.
What was the most popular package you've maintained/helped to maintain?
So, think of it as an introduction for a smaller group who may not be familiar with your work. Think of it as a good chance to introduce us to your work.
What was the most popular package you've maintained/helped to maintain?
Welcome to the Forum,
I'm glad the old days of computing are long gone.
You mention SSDs, three years ago I put Linux Mint Cinnamon on a 500GB SSD...I couldn't believe how fast it runs...would never go back to those slow HDDs
I'm glad the old days of computing are long gone.
You mention SSDs, three years ago I put Linux Mint Cinnamon on a 500GB SSD...I couldn't believe how fast it runs...would never go back to those slow HDDs
Wait until you try the NVMe M.2 SSDs... The difference is amazing.
My packages were popular only among small and highly specialized communities. My most widely used package was GNU Bayonne, https://www.gnu.org/software/bayonne/ while a few other GNU packages I introduced, like GNU Common C++, GNU ccscript, GNU ccaudio, and GNU ccrtp were related to this. Even earlier, my first publicly released GNU/Linux software was my VU ui toolkit and WorldVU which I originally wrote for use with QNX and ported to GNU/Linux in the early 90's using SLS, and DBS server, which was written about in Linux Journal, in the mid 90's. Those at least used to be available on ibiblio.
What I thoought would be more popular was our independent implementation of Phil Zimmerman's ZRTP stack, GNU ZRTP, though a descendant of that lives on in Jitsi, and GNU SIP Witch to manage secure telephony endpoints. I had assumed everyone in the general public would both quite naturally want and need to migrate to secure communication solutions well before 2010. Only lawyers and some national governments seemed to understand why and did so at the time.
Welcome to the Forum,
I'm glad the old days of computing are long gone.
You mention SSDs, three years ago I put Linux Mint Cinnamon on a 500GB SSD...I couldn't believe how fast it runs...would never go back to those slow HDDs
Indeed, this was why I was an early adopter even of those initial SSD sata drives, painful as that also was at times with sudden brick syndrome...
J. Q. Public doesn't really care.
As for early adoption of the SSD, I was a pretty early adopter and nothing bricked on me without giving me warning that it was gonna happen.
