Saturday, September 24, 2011

Garrett Cooper Uses BSD

1. Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Garrett Cooper. I've been a FreeBSD user since 2002 (back in the 5.2 days) and contributor for a few years (docs, ports, src). I was most recently working at Cisco IronPort, but I now currently work with iXsystems on the FreeNAS/TrueNAS team! 


2. What hardware are you using? 

 Several platforms: 
A: 4 year old Macbook (I use it mostly for iTunes and syncing with my iPod/iPhone :P) (starr). 
B: A couple custom built Xeon workstations (bayonetta, fallout, streetfighter). 
C: An ASUS Netbook (akai-ntbk). 
D: An Atom machine as a router (toaster). 
E: A couple supermicro servers. 


3. What OS are you running on your main desktop/laptop? 

FreeBSD 9.0-BETA2 


4. What software do you use the most? 

I use alpine as my mail client; audacious as my music player; firefox as my browser; irssi as my IRC client; python and sh for scripting fun; transmission for torrent downloading; vim as my editor; virtualbox for running VMs; and vlc as my video player. 


5.What hardware is your main system on? 

My main system "bayonetta" has a 3TB of storage (1 unRAIDed disk, 2TB RAID10 storage) with an LSI 8704ELP card, a SB Audigy 2 soundcard, and nVidia GeForce 9500 GT. 


6. What is your dream setup? 

A: A workstation hooked up to multiple 24"+ displays (someday I'll have to upgrade to 30" when one of my monitors dies :D..), but has enough juice to run a few 64-bit VMs and do some builds, and some of the trimmings I showed above :). 
B: A dedicated server where I can house my files using ZFS28+. 
C: A laptop that suspends and resumes (I have this working on my Netbook, but it could be polished up a bit more with the default OS settings) with all of the vendor specific buttons (display brightness, wifi toggle, etc) working. 


7. Care to share a screenshot of your desktop?

Friday, September 23, 2011

John Hixson Uses BSD

1. Who are you and what do you do? 

I am John Hixson and I work for iXsystems. I mostly work on FreeNAS these days but occasionally at FreeBSD if necessary.


2. What hardware are you using?

Most of my work is done on a Lenovo Thinkpad T410. I have a plethora of old hardware of various architectures that I will pull out to test and try things on. 


3. What OS are you running on your main desktop/laptop? 

I am currently running FreeBSD 9.0-CURRENT.


4. What software do you use the most?

I use fluxbox for my window manager. My desktop is usually just filled with Eterm's. On a daily basis I use Eterm, vi, firefox, mutt, BitchX and pianobar. That's about it.


5.What hardware is your main system on?

My main system is my Lenovo laptop. It has 4GB of ram, an Intel i7 processor and NVidia NVS 3100M video card.


6. What is your dream setup?

My "dream" setup is to have a FreeBSD laptop that works like a Apple laptop. You know, suspend and resume, long battery life, etc. Then we can grab all the FreeBSD folks you see everywhere with Apple laptops back. Muhahahha!


7. Care to share a screenshot of your desktop?

Josh Paetzel Uses BSD

1. Who are you and what do you do?

I'm Josh Paetzel, Director of IT at ixsystems. I'm a FreeBSD source and ports committer, system administrator for the PC-BSD project and project manager for FreeNAS.


2. What hardware are you using?

My "desktop" is a Lenovo Thinkpad T510, also at my desk is a Thinkpad T500. My main build server is a dual Xeon 5550 with 48 GB of RAM and 9 1TB SAS drives in hardware RAID 6. 


3. What OS are you running on your main desktop/laptop?

PC-BSD 9.0-BETA2 


4. What software do you use the most?

Firefox, Thunderbird, Xchat, Kopete, Konsole, Vim, Subversion, VirtualBox


5.What hardware is your main system on?

A T510 lenovo laptop


6. What is your dream setup? 

Surrounded by hardware, my "desktop" is just a thing that logs into very fast machines. I guess I'd want a dual westmere with 192 gigs of RAM, a Fusion-I/O SLC, a bunch of 15K SAS drives, and a 30" LCD monitor.


7. Care to share a screenshot of your desktop?



Thursday, September 22, 2011

Dru Lavigne Uses BSD

1. Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Dru Lavigne. Currently I'm the Community Manager for the PC-BSD Project. I tend to spend most of my working day beta testing and writing documentation for the PC-BSD and FreeNAS projects.


2. What hardware are you using?

On a daily basis, quite a bit. Aside from my main desktop, I'm currently using:

* a 64-bit Acer Aspire dual booting Windows 7 and whatever desktop of PC-BSD's latest snapshot I'm currently testing; this system tends to be reinstalled several dozen times in a week

* 2 or 3 32-bit Thinkpads from the T-series that I use for testing various operating systems; they tend to get reinstalled several thousand times over their lifetime

* a Mac Mini running Lion that is used for testing purposes

* a Titan Mini running the latest snapshot of FreeNAS 8 which is used for testing purposes

* an older HP mini-server running FreeBSD 8.2 which is used for storing backups

* a bunch of networking equipment, a KVM switch, and some adapters so that the headless systems can be viewed on a 32" TV



3. What OS are you running on your main desktop/laptop?

My main desktop is a ThinkPad Edge dual booting Windows 7 and a heavily customized version of PC-BSD 8.2. 99% of the time I'm booted into PC-BSD but occasionally boot into Windows to test something or grab a screenshot for documentation.


4. What software do you use the most?

On a daily basis: Firefox, pidgin, skype, OpenOffice, VirtualBox, gimp, Calibre, vi, Okular, and ksnapshot.


5.What hardware is your main system on?

ThinkPad Edge. I've been using ThinkPads as my main system since 2004 and have a nice collection of semi-retired systems that get called upon when I need another testing system in my network.


6. What is your dream setup?

A rack with everything neatly tied together instead of scattered about my main working area.


7. Care to share a screenshot of your desktop?

Matt Olander Uses BSD

1. Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Matt Olander. I'm the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at iXsystems, Inc. In addition to the typical duties of a CTO at a high-tech firm in Silicon Valley, I'm also a member of the FreeBSD Project, where I assist with public relations, marketing, and funding code development. Besides funding and managing various FreeBSD development projects, iXsystems is the primary sponsor for both the PC-BSD Project, our desktop endeavor, and FreeNAS, the open-source storage platform based on FreeBSD.


2. What hardware are you using?

What hardware am I not using would be an easier question to answer. Since our primary business is manufacturing and integrating servers and storage for many industries including today's modern Web 2.0 startups, we see all kinds of hardware pass through the doors here, which I am privileged to get to play with ;)


3. What OS are you running on your main desktop/laptop?

PC-BSD 8.x on most of my rigs and PC-BSD 9 Beta 1 and 1.5 in a couple of VMs.


4. What software do you use the most?

I definitely depend on a web browser day-to-day. It's sometimes Firefox and sometimes Opera with Meebo open for IMs, Gmail, some news sites, etc.. In addition, I have a console open most of the day as well where I have a mutt mail client running and irssii for IRC. At work, we rely on OpenOffice for all of our internal documents.



5.What hardware is your main system on?

I've got an Intel Sandybridge workstation at iX in my office running PC-BSD. We've also got a lounge with another Sandybridge workstation connected to a 52" plasma screen TV where I frequently work from a recliner with a wireless keyboard and mouse. That system is also running PC-BSD and after work, I often use it to watch some shows on Hulu or surf the web.

My primary laptop is an older Lenovo IdeaPad U110 with a Core2Duo running PC-BSD 8. It's small and light which makes it ideal for travel. I've also got a Macbook Pro that I use to run various virtual machines during release time.


6. What is your dream setup?

I have to say that I'm pretty close to having it at work. For while, I had dual Nvidia cards connected to 3 LCD's on my workstation. The only way that I could imagine it getting better is with a zero-gravity chair and a suspended monitor setup ;)

7. Care to share a screenshot of your desktop?

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Pau Amma Uses BSD (sort of)

1. Who are you and what do you do?

I'm Pau Amma. I do lots of things, including documenting and translating documentation, translating other semi-random stuff, some programming, lots of bad puns, and learning Tagalog. Most of the above (including the puns) has been related to Dreamwidth lately. 


2. What hardware are you using? 

Main machine is currently an EEE PC 1005P. I also have an old Opteron-based tower (custom-built) with FreeBSD on it, that's been turned off for most of the past 2 years, and probably was semi-obsolete then. 



3. What OS are you running on your main desktop/laptop?

Not BSD, unfortunately. I'm planning to as soon as PCBSD supports my graphics controller chip. (Maybe in early 2012?) Meanwhile, I have Xubuntu on it.


4. What software do you use the most? 

Firefox, ssh, vi, Mercurial, perl, Open Office, GIMP, Inkscape.


5.What hardware is your main system on? 


ASUS EEE PC 1005P.


6. What is your dream setup? 

One I could have extended punwars with.


7. Care to share a screenshot of your desktop?


Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Kris Moore Uses BSD

1. Who are you and what do you do?

I'm the founder and lead developer of the PC-BSD desktop operating system. Currently that involves a lot of work with C++ / QT / Shell and occasionally some other languages for fun. 


2. What hardware are you using?

I have many systems here, from a core i7, down to some Athlon X2's and several laptops to round things out. 


3. What OS are you running on your main desktop/laptop?

PC-BSD of course! Currently running the new 9.0-BETA2


4. What software do you use the most?

Firefox, Thunderbird, vi, konversation, among others. 


5.What hardware is your main system on?

A lot of my development takes place on a AMD Athlon 2 X2 440 system, with dual-monitors running an NVIDIA 8800GTS. In addition I have a nice little Asus EEE netbook that I do development on as well. 


6. What is your dream setup?

Well for my work what I have runs great, but I do enjoy some PC gaming which is a bit more power hungry. In that case a nice Phenom II X6 1100T would be nice, along with a NVIDIA GTX 580 and 16GB of ram. And while I'm dreaming some SSD's would go nicely with that :)


7. Care to share a screenshot of your desktop?


Starting out

This site has evolved from seeing sites like http://usesthis.com , and http://www.mylinuxrig.com/. While they do cover a few BSD related developers and what they use, publication about what key people in the BSD community is largely unknown.

This blog will bring to light some of the key developers in the BSD community and what they use. Largely this started with my search for a good laptop that will run PC-BSD. I hope this helps shed some light for people so they may enjoy what some of their favorite developers use.

Please leave suggestions in the comments, and feel free to share opinions.