«Podcast Start» Hello and welcome to LinuxCrazy Podcasts. Today I am pleased to introduce to all of you, Mona aka (GentooApologetin). I met Mona after she placed third in the 2010 Gentoo Screenshot contest. I was so impressed with her Linux skills I just had to get her to tell us how she did it? Hi Mona welcome to the Podcast. «interview start» 1) OK I am just dying to know, who is Mona :) I'm 35 y.o. computer hobbyist from Munich/Germany. I work as a secretary in a lawyers office. 10 years ago I've also worked at the computer help desk in a bigger law firm. 2) Why don't you work at the helpdesk any more? Well the companies IT department was restructured and I found myself jobless. So I started working as a secretary again, which is my profession (can one say this so???) 3) What has your journey been like with Linux, and how did it start? I first tried out Suse Linux 6 in 1999, but I didn't like it and gave up on Linux. In 2001 I tried Mandrake 7 and decided to keep it. Coming from Windows it was a totally new experience, but a much better one... No bloat, no viruses, that impressed me :-) 4) What motivated you to become involved in open source projects, and become a Gentoo user? Well, I was fascinated by the principles of open source software and the community behind it. It was cool to be able to share and even modify software, at least if one wanted to. I became a Gentoo user first in 2002, because there was some real big hype around Gentoo, you know, and I was simply curious and tested it out. 5) Could you describe your experience with Gentoo? Sure :-) For me it was a way to gain more Linux knowledge . I loved experimenting with all its possibilities. It has helped me preparing for the LPIC-1 certification, which I made in 2004. 6) So you have been using Gentoo for about 8 years now? No, unfortunately not. My first episode with Gentoo ended in 2005, when I managed to destroy my installation. I had no backup and was to lazy to recompile everything with my 800MHz laptop. That was the time, when Ubuntu came out. But in the end I finally switched back again and have kept it since. And nowadays I have a working backup setup ;-) 7) What aspects of Gentoo do you feel the developers and maintainers have got right? Sorry, I'm too much of a user to be able to answer this question accurately. 8) What is it about Gentoo you would like to see improved? The speed of the portage database. When I try to update world, why does it take more than a minute on a fast computer only to see, what would be installed? Then I would love to see more publicity for Gentoo. And I believe, Gentoo needs more manpower, I mean more developers and more maintainers. And I really miss the Weekly Newsletter... 9) What are some of the projects within Gentoo that you would consider contributing to? I could imagine working over the documentation or doing some translations. 10) Have you met any other woman using Gentoo or Linux? Not yet :-( 11) For people that have never used XFCE please give us an overview? For me XFCE is somewhat like a little Gnome desktop. It's a lightweight, gtk+ based and full-featured desktop environment. I only hate one thing: they have not enough developers; thus the progress in development is really slow. 12) Describe some of your favorite applications. Claws-mail is one of the apps I can't live without, though I hate its antique interface. But it's a nice lightweight mailclient and it has a nice plugin system. Compiz, is also a must-have for me. 13) What are some of first things you set up after a new install? Always the same: Compiz, claws-mail, gimp, the svn version of the gtk murrine engine and some lightweight programs like abiword, pcmanfm, deadbeef a.s.o. 14) What are some programs you want to check out one day? The next version of XFCE... 15) Have you done any programming? I have tried with Java and C, but I'm not too good with these things, or maybe I was too impatient to learn it... but I like writing bash scripts. 16) What are you currently working on, studying or learning? I try to learn Russian :-) 17) Which open source programs would you like to see developed? A lightweight music player with a similar look & feel like wxmusic; I was really unhappy when the developer gave it the last rites... 18) What resources have you found most helpful when troubleshooting within Gentoo and Linux in general? Documentations and forums, newsgroups, the usual resources ;-) 19) What would be your dream job? Being a Linux admin not only at home... 20) What can users do to improve Gentoo, or their favorite program for that matter? Submit bug reports or learn to develop... 21) What are the specs of your current boxes? a dual-core Lenovo Thinkpad T61 and a Lenovo Thinkcentre M55 workstation. Both are Gentoo boxes. The thinkcentre is my compile and backup station. 22) Describe your home network? just those 2 boxes, plus 2 Ubuntu laptops of my boyfriend 23) What gives you the most enjoyment within the Open Source community. When you have a problem, the most people are helpful. And I guess the most people in the community are nerdy like me :-) So I feel at home in the community :-) 24) How did you come up with the nick: GentooApologetin All other nicks were already taken ;-) Being the only Gentoo user in a crowd of windows and Ubuntu users I sometimes feel a bit like an apologist for Gentoo...