I have been an active member of the Linux community since I first installed kernel 1.1.13 back in 1994. Over the years, I've also installed, run, or administered alternative UNIX-style open-source operating systems, such as OpenBSD, MINIX, FreeBSD and NetBSD, and, against my will, various closed-sourced monsters like NT, Solaris and VAX/VMS. I prefer the BSD license over the various GPL ones; and I refuse to install closed-source software on my computers, nor will I recommend it if you ask.

My favorite Linux distribution is Gentoo, which I've been abusing since 2002; but I've also had my run-ins with, in this order, Slackware (my first!), RedHat (before they went evil on August 11, 1999), SUSE and Debian. Why Gentoo? I like the portage package management system.

I use joe (Joe's Own Editor) to edit documents and LaTex to typeset them, and mupdf to view the PDF. (PDF support in the open-source world is still, rightly, lukewarm. Alternatives to mupdf: zathura, evince (GNOME), okular (KDE).) pdftk is a great tool. I normally work in a GNU bash environment within tmux (a terminal multiplexer), but when I am in X, I will run st (simple terminal) and dwm. (I used to use urxvt and fvwm.) I enjoy the suckless.org philosophy on code: read-able and sans bloat. The suckless programs I like best are: surf, dmenu, st and dwm. (I provide various patches to these programs here.) I use mpd and mpc and a bunch of bash scripts to listen to music. I use mplayer to watch movies. I recently tired of alpine (a PINE replacement) as the way to read e-mails and, inspired by xapian and projects like mu and notmuch, I've started cooking my own MUA. (Code here: scripts. I'm not happy with this solution.) I use offlineimap if I have the space or more simply fetchmail to suck the mail in. I use elinks and surf to browse the web. I wish gnash (a GNU flash player) worked better. Better still, I wish flash would die. xeyes is still my favorite X program. I use when to keep track of my schedule. xclip and xosview are great. I now use linphone as a command-line VOIP client (it also does video!); do not install skype, for the love of humanity.

My preferred programming language is c and my preferred scripting language is bash. However, I do know, and have programmed in, C++, Java, perl, php, SQL, and python. I'm pretty excited about go, Google's new programming language. I hate Javascript, CSS, and HTML.

I currently own: Lenovo Thinkpad x220 with IPS; Transformer Prime (TF201); Macbook Air (4,2); Gateway MX6920. I used to be a big fan of the EEEPC series, having owned an 701SD, 901 and a T91.

Over the years, I have administered the full panoply of Internet servers and daemons, e.g.: MTA Servers (sendmail, postfix, qmail, msmtp), HTTP Servers (apache, squid), IMAP Servers (imapd), FTP Servers (wu-ftpd), SSH Servers (sshd), Backup Services (RAID, rsync), Databases (mysql, postgresql), LDAP Servers (slapd), DNS Servers (named, dhcpd), amongst others. (I've been employed in the computing field since 1996 and now have two resumes: one for this computing life the other for my academic life.)

I have a blog, but I don't use Web 2.0 applications, and neither should you.
peter period hartman @utoronto.ca