What Kind of Computer User Are You?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| dcparris Feb 09, 2006 3:38 PM EDT |
Here at LXer, we strive to bring a wide range of news from a variety of sources. Of course, it helps to understand our audience a little better. With that in mind, we would like to know how you use computers. Are you a developer, system admin, IT executive, a "knowledge worker", or a home user? Do you run a SOHO or do you work in a global enterprise? What subjects are most important to you? Thanks in advance for helping us to make this the best GNU/Linux news site on the web! |
| jdixon Feb 09, 2006 5:01 PM EDT |
Desktop support technician at work (Windows, unfortuantely). General computer use at home (Linux for everything except games). |
| multics Feb 10, 2006 4:37 AM EDT |
I am a C/C++ SW developer (developing for the EDA industry). |
| SFN Feb 10, 2006 4:46 AM EDT |
Network manager for a regional bank. Also run a localized net-based radio station. Plus a home user - normal stuff: web, email, games, etc. |
| SamShazaam Feb 10, 2006 5:00 AM EDT |
Network and telecom manager at work. At home I use Linux exclusively. I use games on a console. I am especially interested in networking, new applications, legal issues, etc. |
| number6x Feb 10, 2006 1:21 PM EDT |
programmer analyst working as a consultant for the last 10 years. I work mainly on Java GUI front ends for existing green screen COBOL/ DB2 / CICS apps. Been learning Ruby on Rails as my personal project for 2006. You know the schpeil "leverage your investment in existing systems utilizing the latest technology in user facing frameworks and platforms." When you learn to speak like that the PHB's know you're worth the per hourly rates their paying. They get a kind of dazed look in their eyes, like the denizens of opium dens, but without the bad smell and other side effects. They've even taken me along to some luncheons to daze the higher ups and board members now and then. ;-) |
| Koriel Feb 10, 2006 3:05 PM EDT |
Programmer C, various assembly, VB, Java, SQL, various PLC's, various SCADA packages mostly for embedded data aqquisition virtually all of it on Windows and custom built hardware.
For some reason i never took to C++ i'm still trying to figure out why not.
All my home development is done in java using eclipse on a Slackware box my general browsing/ripping stuff is done on a PCLinuxOS box. Im about to go into semi-retirement, just resigned my position as lead developer and immigrating to the USA in a few months decided it was time to take it a little easier as for some reason i don't appear to be getting any younger :) |
| cgagnon Feb 12, 2006 5:54 AM EDT |
Wage slave/CAD operator/Operations Manager/unofficial IT guy for a for a 30 person (office staff - 200 company wide), North American dispersed work force, in a mixed OS/2, Windows, GNU/Linux (I snuck a gnu/linux box in the back door they don't know they're using) environment. I'm a computer hobbiest. I enjoy web development (HTML is the only language I truly know), hacking on various php/mysql based apps downloaded off the net. I've hacked together several different apps to make mine and my co workers lives simpler in a company that is filled with technopobes. At home I have 10 boxen that, with the exception of my main machine, I use to see what I am capable of. I've built clusters, diskless/thin client evirontments, replication servers. Basically what ever strikes me at the moment (when I have the time of course). In a free society without walls and fences, who needs gates and windows. |
| grouch Mar 13, 2006 7:41 AM EDT |
Type of user: messy, GNU/Linux addict. Uses: typical browser, email, scan, photo edit, video edit, etc. Development: I'm not a coder. I fumbled and stumbled through piles of HOWTOs and man pages to cobble up a PHP/PostgreSQL/bash mutation thingy for a local business [mumble] years ago and am stuck supporting it. Moved a 2nd local business off the monopoly onto a Debian box -- no support required for 3 months and counting. [Edited: They were migrated in 2004.] Recently stuck my foot in my mouth and offered to do a customer records/bookkeeping thing to help a friend start his own business. Thankfully he doesn't know what a real coder looks like, so I can do PHP/PostgreSQL again. He will have to have 1 MS box for some vendor data that a clueless company sells subscriptions for at $130/month for MS Win but won't talk to you about anything resembling Unix for less than $10,000 up front. Morons. Exact, same data. No broadband so he can't get the data through a web subscription service. If I could learn to just shut up and not say, "Yeah, that could be done", I'd be completely retired. |
| tuxtom Mar 13, 2006 9:14 AM EDT |
Web developer (Java, PHP, Perl), and general sysadmin/network security...mostly server-side stuff, though I have been checking out some of the incredible new Ajax toolkits out there. Tend to be a duct tape kinda guy in whatever shop I'm at. My old boss called me a plumber...I tie legacy systems together and do a lot of parsing (logs, old cobol reports, etc.) and automation. The first language I fell in love with was Perl, which scares a lot of developers. I have saved tens of thousands of dollars and countless man-hours with 30-line Perl scripts and regular expressions. I currently use linux exclusively (MEPIS right now, for my workstation), though I get stuck on a Windows box at some jobs. There is so much .NET work out there right now that I feel foolish not grabbing some of that cash. |
| theboomboomcars Mar 13, 2006 10:26 AM EDT |
I am a hobbyist, I like to tinker with things. I use my computer for school mostly right now, since that is about all I do now, and dream about the time when I can play Never Winter Nights again. |
| phsolide Mar 13, 2006 5:29 PM EDT |
I work as a enterprise application developer in a Major Telecom company. I've put web front ends on a PREMIS system, written a skunk-works DSL "loop qual" system, and designed a second, more corporate system. Right now, I tend the credit card processing system. Corporate software sucks - they only want Java, and sad, crappy Java at that. It must work inside BEA's Weblogic Server, but we can't use Weblogic Server because the licensing fees are so friggin high. You really can't use any data structure more advanced than an array, as maybe they will lay you off and hire some hopeless downtrodden windows codemonkey who's never heard of a binary tree, much less a hashtable. I managed two years in a startup between 2000 and 2003, but since then I've been stuck in a Solaris environment at work. I used to run NetBSD at home, but now I've got 3 or 4 machines all running Slackware. |
| slippery Mar 14, 2006 5:00 AM EDT |
Sysadmin for many Linux servers and a couple of proprietary Unix boxen, AIX and Solaris, for a large school district. Also a part time LAMP developer. In my off hours, I also manage a small RHEL cluster for an ecommerce business in New Zealand. At home, I run several Linux distros and typically have 3-4 loaded on my main system. My firewall has been running Smoothwall for a couple of years. I aspire to make a living some day doing something other than selling my time. |
| herzeleid Jun 09, 2006 7:48 PM EDT |
I'm a senior system administrator for a fortune 100 company. Over the years I've done linux, solaris, irix, hpux, unixware, aix, and bsd. Currently I'm doing more linux than anything else, as linux is replacing legacy hpux and other systems in the infrastructure. On my own time, I user linux for everything, *especially* for gaming and multimedia. I have 4 linux systems running in my office right now, and a few linux test boxes which are powered down. Elsewhere in the house there are 3 other linux systems and 2 macs. The only instance of ms windoze in this house is a win4lin setup on my main linux workstation. I originally set it up a few months ago, thinking I might want it to run the occasional pesky legacy windoze program, but in actuality it has languished, without any real purpose. Fortunately it doesn't use up any resources other than a bit of disk space. |
| lordshipmayhem Jun 11, 2006 7:05 AM EDT |
Home user, SOHO, and cat lover, user of Linux since 2003 |
| hiohoaus Jun 11, 2006 7:39 AM EDT |
Home and work, servers and workstations (and this notebook), typically Mandriva. Penguin is life support. |
| maggrand Jun 11, 2006 9:09 AM EDT |
Developer C++ , perl , php. I use Linux for nearly everything..Server/ developement/ office...I currently use Ubuntu. One of the best dists ever. They only need to spice up the dist a lil bit more to get a full score from me. I have lost count on how many distros i have tried. I started whith red hat 5.0 in 1997. So yea Linux have been ready for the desktop a long time. |
| Teron Jun 11, 2006 9:29 AM EDT |
Home user dabbling in Linux, Windows install contains very little M$ software. I'm not a coder, nor a FOSS extremist. For me, vendor trust>all, and FOSS and small proprietary vendors like Opera tend to provide that needed trust. I don't really know about the future. I'm not ready for a full-scale migration to Linux, Vista sickens me and I'm wary about Apple, though not as much as M$ |
| phubert Jun 19, 2006 9:02 AM EDT |
OLD time mainframer ... Assembly language programmer on RCA Spectra 70 and Sperry/UNIVAC follow-on. Subsequently sysadmin on Stratus VOS, Tandem Guardian & NonStop (and TACL 'programmer'), and IBM MVS-OS/390 (and REXX, of course), and finally more-or-less DBA and sysadmin on Microsoft-based Intel servers and workstations supporting a development environment and production SQL servers. Throw in some Sun, Cisco & Cabletron experience... Linux/OSS advocate since late 90's... (lost cause here, however) |
| tuxchick2 Jun 19, 2006 9:12 AM EDT |
Sleek, sophisticated, stylish, yet humble. |
| grouch Jun 19, 2006 9:28 AM EDT |
tuxchick2: That sounds more like a car advertisement. |
| Sander_Marechal Jun 19, 2006 3:51 PM EDT |
Daytime job:
Application Support in a gargantuan multinational corporation that uaually claims to be an all MS shop. Ofcourse, linux is abundant everywhere except in plain sight. Usually I work on OpenVMS though (god I really hate that OS), but some Linux and Windows as well. Evening job: Web and open source development. SOHO enviroment, all Linux ofcourse (Debian and deratives). Interests: php, xml, standards, GNOME, Debian and anything that is likely to be left standing after the burst of the web 2.0 bubble has wiped the hyped up marketriod junk from the net. |
| Scott_Ruecker Jun 20, 2006 2:44 PM EDT |
I have to use M$ at work but I only use Linux at home. I have a couple of machines and I get asked to install and/or set-up other people's machines as well. As a matter of fact, my mother is paying to fly me out to L.A. to set-up her new computer, as in wipe M$ off of it and load Linux onto it two weeks from now. I prefer KDE over Gnome but I am not a Gnome hater, I just prefer KDE and I keep trying other distro's (I had Kubuntu on my system for the last couple of weeks) but I always seem to come back to SuSE. :-) |
| jimf Jun 20, 2006 3:59 PM EDT |
> I prefer KDE over Gnome but I am not a Gnome hater, I just prefer KDE I can certainly relate to that. I use KDE, but many of the day to day apps I use are GTK based. |
| pogson Jun 21, 2006 1:20 PM EDT |
I mostly use computers for getting and organizing information ;-). I use LAMP on all my systems, An example is a Linux terminal server in a school: Debian+desktop stuff+web applications and dynamic sites for students and staff to find stuff and produce stuff. I have on my server a snapshot of Gutenberg.org indexed by SWISH-e for full-text searching and a snapshot of en.wikipedia.org. I have databases for archiving digital images with searchable descriptions, course management, accounting, and groupware. My present server is AMD64 3000 with 2gB RAM. I can connect thirty simultaneous users via thin clients. I usually use such a setup in a lab with some clients in libraries or classrooms. I have proposed to set up an eight Opteron server like this to run my whole k-12 school. I like the idea of a school without Windows running entirely on Linux via a server and a mess of thin clients. This maximizes value for money and is very low in maintenance. It would be great to have fanless thin clients, but I am leaning to AMD64 multi-seat solutions to do away with the premium on fanlessness. For those unfamiliar with thin client/server technology for schools, please read http://www.skyweb.ca/~alicia/LTSP.pdf |
| Scott_Ruecker Jun 22, 2006 4:28 AM EDT |
jimf: GTK is what is used in Gnome and QT is used in KDE correct? Isnt it possible to run Gnome apps in KDE? I am sure it is not possible for all of them but at least some right? If that is not accurate, let me know. I've got a question, If I wanted to run Fluxbox for example, how do you access the programs that are available in the other window managers? Is there some command or something? or are there compatibility issues that I am unaware of? Do I have to install it again under that GUI? I guess that's more than one question. :-) |
| Sander_Marechal Jun 22, 2006 4:54 AM EDT |
@Scott: GTK apps will run under KDE and Qt apps will run under Gnome, but you need extra libraries for that. Also, the aplpications will not look & feel quite as smooth as native desktop applications (theming can be a problem for example - full desktop integration is another). |
| jdixon Jun 22, 2006 5:30 AM EDT |
Scott: > I've got a question, If I wanted to run Fluxbox for example, how do you access the programs that are available in the other window managers? I can't speak for Fluxbox, never having used it, but in general you can always open a terminal window and run the commands from the command line. As long as the Gnome and KDE libraries are installed they should work. |
| jimf Jun 22, 2006 7:36 AM EDT |
> jimf: GTK is what is used in Gnome and QT is used in KDE correct? Yes. > Isnt it possible to run Gnome apps in KDE? I am sure it is not possible for all of them but at least some right? If that is not accurate, let me know. As sander says, you need the GTK libraries... really gnome, but not the desktop. I've found the look & feel to be excellent and the integration to be pretty good in the latest versions of KDE. Gimp is a typical example of a GTK app that most KDE users are familiar with. > I can't speak for Fluxbox, never having used it, but in general you can always open a terminal window and run the commands from the command line. As long as the Gnome and KDE libraries are installed they should work. Same here... should work. Either command line or add as a menu shortcut... I assume that Fluxbox has a menu :). |
| SFN Jun 22, 2006 7:42 AM EDT |
You can definitely do KDE/Gnome apps in Fluxbox. Here are the instructions for compiling Fluxbox from source to work with either KDE or Gnome. http://suseroot.com/suse-linux-tweaks/fluxbox.php I believe that other distros have binaries that you can install that will add the KDE/Gnome stuff you need. Try googling (your distro) fluxbox kde gnome apps OR applications |
| grouch Jun 22, 2006 7:59 AM EDT |
apt-get install foo Don't worry about what 'foo' needs; that will be taken care of. You're interested in the "app", not whether it needs GTK, QT, or Wiley Willy's Widgets. update-menus Restart your window manager (not X) and check your Debian menus. |
| Bob_Robertson Jun 22, 2006 11:52 AM EDT |
I guess I'd be called a "Power User". Debian Unstable has been my exclusive laptop since Win95 finally crapped out on me in late 2000, I've been using it on servers and desktop machines since 1995. Servers and desktops at work over the years, and it's the only thing I have ever run on my super-gnarly Sony Vaio "desktop replacement" even though all the cute hardware buttons don't work. The reason I say "power user" is that I have done such things as upgrading kernels through a ssh connection from 500 miles away, and tracking Debian Unstable means learning something new every few months when something becomes (surprise surprise) unstable for a little while. |
| hkwint Jun 28, 2006 3:28 AM EDT |
Quoting:Debian Unstable means learning something new every few months when something becomes (surprise surprise) unstable for a little while. Sounds like Gentoo! |
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