Who uses Linux? (+Emacs, +TeX)

Some really rough notes. Suggestions welcome.

Notable people who use Linux (with additional notes on Emacs and TeX users), a first draft.

My rough criterion for determining who counts as "famous": does the person have a Wikipedia entry? 

Presumably many more can be added under "computer-related" (which is why I put it at the bottom). I'm only listing each person once, under most relevant/salient category (otherwise I could, for instance, list Shuttleworth also under an "astronaut" category).

See also: "The Setup / Linux" and "My Linux Rig" for more 'prominent' people and their Linux setups.

Political

Rick Falkvinge, founder of Swedish Pirate Party [Wikipedia entry]

• Uses an Ubuntu Linux set-up [1]

Christian Engström, Swedish Pirate Party MEP [Wikipedia entry]

• Seems to use some sort of Ubuntu Linux set-up [1, 2, 3]
• Couple of pics with Richard Stallman from 2004 [1, 2]

Amelia Andersdotter, Swedish Pirate Party MEP [Wikipedia entry]

• Mentions using Arch, Fedora [1, 2]
• Also Emacs and TeX (see above links)

Vinay Gupta, geopolitical risk analyst [Wikipedia entry]

• uses Ubuntu Linux [1] 
• inventor of Hexayurt [1]

Writers

Cory Doctorow, blogger, journalist, & sci-fi/fantasy author [Wikipedia entry]

• Uses Ubuntu Linux since 2006 [1, 2]
• arguments for copyright reform (videos):
• Pwned: How copyright turns us all into IP serfs
• The coming war on general computation
• @ the Pirate Party International General Assembly in Prague 2012

Charlie Stross, sci-fi/horror/fantasy author [Wikipedia entry]

• formerly the monthly Linux columnist for Computer Shopper
• uses Linux, but mainly for running server, otherwise Mac [1, 2, 3]
• position on piracy: "If you've downloaded unauthorized copies of my books, instead of hitting on a tipjar button, I urge you to buy a (new) copy of one of my books....Your typical book publisher is not like the music or movie industry; they run on thin margins, and they're staffed by underpaid, overworked folk who do it because they love books, not because they're trying to make themselves rich on the back of a thousand ruthlessly exploited artists. I think their effort deserves to be rewarded appropriately..." [1]

Piers Anthony, fantasy/sci-fi author [Wikipedia entry]

• switched to Linux in 2000 [1, 2, 3, 4]
• mentions using a number of different distros, including Ubuntu & Fedora [1]
• use of Linux seems at least in part principle-driven [1, 2]
• uses LibreOffice [1]
• concerns about piracy:
• speaks approvingly of Harlan Ellison's war on piracy (2002-4) [1, 2]
• complaints about piracy & Ebay (2010) [1]
• some recognition of danger of censoring internet: "THE WEEK had an item on Internet piracy of music, books, and movies, and efforts to stop it. I have discussed this here before, but it bears repeating: pirates are thieves who are destroying the ability of creative artists to make a living, myself included; a LOT of my works are chronically stolen. The pirates need to be stopped. The problem is how to do it without censoring free expression itself. I think there does have to be a law, but one carefully crafted to shut down only the pirates." (2012) [1]

Neal Stephenson, sci-fi/speculative fiction author [Wikipedia entry]

• fondness for both Mac & Linux [sources?]
• author of long essay "In the Beginning... Was the Command Line" (1999)
• ebook git repository
• zipped plain text file
• print book from Amazon 
• used Emacs [1]
• for which novels? (Cryptonomicon? others?)
• stopped using Emacs [1]
• plans to start using Emacs (& Linux) again [1]

Actors & film-related

Stephen Fry, actor [Wikipedia entry]

• big fan of Apple products [1, 2, etc.]
• but also touts GNU [1, 2, 3]

Wil Wheaton, actor [Wikipedia entry]

• primarily uses Macs, but also uses Linux [1, 2]
• support for Bittorrent [1]

Asia Carrera, adult-film actress [Wikipedia entry] 

• early Linux-adopter, ran own website since 1998 [1, 2]

Cindy Margolis, model [Wikipedia entry]

• apparent Debian user [1, 2]

Programmers & computer-related

Linus Torvalds [Wikipedia entry]

• creator of Linux
• used Fedora (2008) [1]
• switched to openSUSE at some point in 2012(?) [1]
• uses Apple hardware [1] 
• uses an Emacs-like editor based on MicroEMACS, a customised version of uEmacs/PK

Richard Stallman [Wikipedia entry]

• used gNewSense, a fully-free GNU/Linux distribution in 2010 [1]
• founder of the GNU project (1983)
• founder of Free Software Foundation (1985)
• creator of Emacs (1976)
• co-creator of Texinfo, presupposing knowledge/use of TeX
• supports copyleft
• one (of many) talks on copyright issues: @ University of Calgary (2009)
• statement on copyright 
• statement on worries about abolishment of copyright for copyleft (re: Pirate Party platform)

Mark Shuttleworth, programmer, entreprenuer, astronaut [Wikipedia entry]

• started the Ubuntu Foundation (2005) for Ubuntu Linux development

Donald Knuth, computer scientist & professor [Wikipedia entry]

• creator of TeX typesetting system (1978), upon which LaTeX, LuaTeX etc. are based
• uses Ubuntu Linux (as of 2008) [1]
• uses Emacs to edit TeX [1]
• friends with computer security researcher Jacob Appelbaum [1]

American McGee, game designer [Wikipedia entry] 

•  switched to Ubuntu Linux (from Windows) with plans to "stay switched" (2006) [1]

John "maddog" Hall, director of Linux International & professor of computer science [Wikipedia entry]

• runs different Linux distributions depending on employer [1]

---

Some Initial Ruminations

A number of the people above fall into two rough groupings: "technology/gadget-lovers" vs. "ideological-users". So Stephen Fry and Wil Wheaton would fall into the first category, as would perhaps Charlie Stross and even Linus Torvalds. On the ideological side are (of course) Richard Stallman, Cory Doctorow, Piers Anthony, and the Pirate Party MPs. Anthony's position in the latter grouping is interesting, given his position on piracy. Stallman's position is similar to the Pirate MPs in certain respects, but values the legal status of copyleft.

What about Free Culture proponents?

What computer setups do Free Culture proponents use? Particularly, I'm wondering about Lawrence Lessig, founding father of the Free Culture movement (largely based on Stallman's Free Software Foundation) and founder of the Creative Commons licences. Nina Paley is another prominent Free Culture activist, but I'm pretty sure she's largely (solely?) a Mac user.

Hattrick winners and other random notes

Amelia Andersdotter, Donald Knuth, and Richard Stallman take hattrick prizes for Linux-Emacs-TeX use. (For an extra bonus, Andersdotter also explicitly mentions use of org-mode in Emacs.) 

Of course there are various connections between some of the characters mentioned above. For instance, Doctorow releases his novels under Lessig's Creative Common licences; Doctorow & Stross are co-writing a novel [1]; etc.

In terms of the general public, the actors are (unsurprisingly) probably the best known: I would guess Stephen Fry is the most famous person listed above.

Again, suggestions/additions welcome.

Vote for Emacs and Conkeror in the 2011 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards

Vote for Emacs in the Text Editor of the Year category and in the IDE/Web Development Editor of the Year category.

Vote for Conkeror in the Browser of the Year category.

rms on apple and brain scans

On his RSS stream, Richard Stallman posted the following item:

Some Apple addicts truly worship that company, suggest brain scans.
That must be why they allow it to abuse them so much and don't care.

I know a number of Apple fans, and they do tend to have strongly favourable attitudes towards Apple products. (Apple things generally seem to be superior to Microsoft things, but the Apple company doesn't seem any less evil than Microsoft, and Linux is generally superior to both anyway.)

But I question whether this is a reaction which is actually specific to Apple fans. I imagine my brain scans might show similar reactions to GNU/Linux and Emacs.... (Most Windows/Microsoft users probably wouldn't show similar results, given that it's really just the "default" nowadays.)

Emacs in Tron

JT Nimoy discusses the creation of software art for creating visual effects in the film Tron: Legacy. Additionally, he mentions that:

In Tron, the hacker was not supposed to be snooping around on a network; he was supposed to kill a process. So we went with posix kill and also had him pipe ps into grep. I also ended up using emacs eshell to make the terminal more l33t. The team was delighted to see my emacs performance -- splitting the editor into nested panes and running different modes. I was tickled that I got emacs into a block buster movie. I actually do use emacs irl, and although I do not subscribe to alt.religion.emacs, I think that's all incredibly relevant to the world of Tron.

Links:
(1) The original article/post by JT Nimoy
(2) On jwz's blog
(3) On boingboing
(4) On reddit

Tip: let Synaptic handle updates to Buuf icon set

If you want the synaptic package manager to keep your Buuf icons up-to-date, you can do so by using the Ubuntu Satanic Edition repository, as follows:

1) add the secure key; in terminal enter:

wget -q http://ubuntusatanic.org/ubuntu-se-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -

2) add the following repository to your system (you could go to Go System->Administration->Software Sources->Other Software->Add and enter the following APT line:), choose the appropriate version (the following assumes you're using Ubuntu Maverick 10.10):

deb http://ubuntusatanic.org/hell maverick main

3) then in the terminal add the Buuf package by entering:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install buuf-icon-theme

Linux: More than 1%

We are more than 1%:

With this initiative, we intend to refute the statistics of certain press organizations that ensure that the use of GNU/Linux does not exceed 1% and has not advanced in recent years at the desktop.

If you want to help us accomplish this goal, please participate in our statistics!

Link: http://www.dudalibre.com/gnulinuxcounter?lang=en



Interestingly, from the statistics collected on the above site (as of 15 Oct 2010), there are large numbers of Linux users in Poland and Russia.

Hack: prevent screensaver from crashing fullscreen games on Ubuntu (II: xscreensaver)

I realised that this doesn't work if gnome-screensaver is disabled and xscreensaver put in its place.

In that case, preventing the screensaver from starting (and locking the system) during a fullscreen game can be accomplished with the following script:

#!/bin/bash
xscreensaver-command -exit
[COMMAND TO START GAME OR PROGRAM HERE]
xscreensaver -no-splash

[Ubuntu 10.04]

Humour: Dependencies

http://xkcd.com/797/

Hack: clearing out old entries from the "open with" window in Ubuntu

From OMGUbuntu:

 To clear out old entries (esp. wine) from your "open with" window, delete everything in ~/.local/share/applications

Cory Sadowski adds:

~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list is what stores certain file associations, notably the one that controls what application opens when you click a location in the Places bar. Install LXDE and suddenly find that PCManFM has taken over your Places menu? Look in mimeapps.list and introduce that jerk to your delete key.

Tip: Make sure non-Eastern non-European characters display in Linux

In order that characters used in and for transliterating non-Eastern non-European scripts/languages like Sanskrit, Egyptian, Sumerian, Akkadian, and Hittite be displayed properly in Linux, make sure to install (through the Synaptic Package Manager in Debian/Ubuntu) the ttf-ancient-fonts package.

You can test it by going to the Wikipedia page on Hittite cuneiform (there should be no little boxes in the text, but rather Hittite cuneiform characters).

Hack: prevent screensaver from crashing fullscreen games on Ubuntu

Playing the Amnesia demo on Ubuntu, but after 5 mins the screensaver turns on and then the whole system locks up.

It seems that with some fullscreen games this happens.

Hack:

(from stoogiebuncho on ubuntuforums.org)

Create a shell-script:

#!/bin/bash

gconftool-2 --set /apps/gnome-screensaver/idle_activation_enabled --type bool 0

[COMMAND TO START GAME OR PROGRAM HERE]

gconftool-2 --set /apps/gnome-screensaver/idle_activation_enabled --type bool 1exit 0

And then make the shell-script executable, and link to it instead of to the game binary in the Games menu.

Seems to work so far.

[Ubuntu 10.04]