Robert L. "Bob" Morgan reminds me why I miss the times when Linux Journal was headquartered in Seattle, not far west of U-Dub: the University of Washington. RL is one of many old Unix/Linux hands in Alpha Geek circle there.
I ran into Bob again at Digital ID World in September, in one of the few Open Source sessions held there. He sat in the back row, worn laptop on his knees, and asked Knowing Questions. So I immediately asked him to be the object of our subject for this month. Here's how he ran down his goods:
My laptop is a 3-year-old IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad X41 (non-tablet), now running Fedora 9. I have used a series of "ultralight" ThinkPads for perhaps a dozen years (560Z, X21, X31, now X41), and run RedHat or Fedora Linux on every one. I do all my work on my laptop and carry it everywhere, so lightness, durability and stability are key. This combination has worked for me.
In my job (identity management architect for the University of Washington and Internet2) I do lots of email (4000 messages sent per year, average 200 incoming per work day). I use Pine, for much the same reasons as above for my choice of laptop and OS: it's fast, very stable, and keeps on working year after year. It's nice to know that the folks who write it work upstairs from me, but I haven't needed any special support.
Maybe the most retro choice on this machine is the WindowMaker window manager. It hasn't changed much at all in the last several years, but once again, it's fast and it keeps on working. I live happily switching among my 20 virtual desktops with well-practiced keystrokes, and don't miss all those fancy features.
Like anyone else I use modern full-featured apps like Firefox and OpenOffice.org, but if I'm not reading or composing email in Pine I'm probably taking notes in Emacs. I guess I'm just a retro kinda guy.
And it's great to have those guys around.
- Doc Searls