My 23 years of using Linux

In the late 1990s I started using Gnu/Linux (or just Linux as it is often called), but at the time there was not enough desktop software for me to do everything I needed to do for my work. This meant that I maintained a dual boot system, boot into Linux for most things, and boot into Windows when I needed to. Gradually though, as more desktop software became available, and its quality improved, I found that I booted into Windows less and less, until late 2001 when I just removed the Windows partition, and I have just used Linux ever since.

A few times, my work was challenging because of the general failure of our species to separate file formats from software due to the protectionist nature of software companies and their proprietary file formats. However, I never relented. I have been in job interviews where I said "I am an open source guy, I use Linux for my work, if you have a problem with that, don't hire me."

I am yet to find something I can't do on Linux, and I have done books, written around 90 research papers, prepared hundreds of business documents, responded to million dollar RFPs, given hundreds of presentations, made over 50 videos including all the imagery and animations they contain (see https://youtube.com/@exipay for some examples), helped to manage several businesses, created extensive financial models, managed my collection of millions of photos and thousands of videos, and written children's books.

Sometimes I get asked what software I use. I shared this with a colleague last week, and it might be useful for others as well so I am sharing it here. I use the following:

? Operating system: the latest version of Ubuntu Gnu/Linux (23.10 on my primary work desktop and 24.04 beta on my laptop);

? Desktop environment: Gnome (a reasonably good desktop environment that I keep because much of my workflow is based on plugins I wrote for the file manager);

? General office tools: Libreoffice (presentation, vector graphics, word processing, spreadsheets, uses open document formats);

? Advanced vector graphics: Inkscape (working with proprietary Adobe Illustrator and EPS files, uses the open SVG format);

? Raster graphics: Gimp (90% overlap with Photoshop excluding plugins, can read PSD file format);

? Video editing: KDenlive (Incredibly powerful video editor that so far has everything I have needed);

? Video recording: OBS (open broadcaster studio - the golden standard for live streamers also works well for recording desktop sessions and presentations);

? Text comparison: Meld (good for checking text between different documents);

? Backups and photo syncing: GRSYNC (I use this mainly for downloading photos from my camera because it just does a straight download into a folder of my choice with no stupid intelligence);

? Photo collection management: Digikam (it has he best tagging and meta data management that I have ever seen, and works passably well with the file system);

? RAW editing: Darktable (like Adobe LightRoom without the cost);

? Audio recording and editing: Audacity (by far the best audio recording and editing tool on any platform for non-music audio);

? Cellphone as webcam: Irun webcam (useful sometimes when I want to show a leopard outside my office while I am in a meeting);

? Video optimisation and conversion: Handbrake (essential for sharing video to places where a 3Gb file is a problem);

? Image to video with effects: PhotoFilmstrip (I have just gotten it and only used it a couple of times, but it works really well for animating photos);

All are open source, and cross platform as far as I know so you can even use them on Windows and Mac.

Now Gnu/Linux is not perfect, there are changes afoot as with all operating systems. Sandboxed applications (Flatpak and Snap) require disks to be mounted differently, so I had to change a lot of my workflow scripts. The Gnome file manager seems to be designed to work with tiny little disks and it sometimes freaks out on my system that has 4 16 Tb hard drives most of which are full. Sometimes you have to try different versions of applications to get them to work with the file system, and frustratingly some features simply don’t work at all and I have no idea why. And partly this is my fault because I always want to run the latest version of everything, some of them in pre-Alpha! But, hey, this is Linux, you can do that, or you can stick with long-term-support versions, and everything just hums along fine. You get to choose.