Say hello and introduce yourself to the FOSS RIT community.
What do I post here?
Tell us a little about yourself! Post an introduction in this category and say hello. In your introduction, consider answering some of these questions:
What is your affiliation to RIT? Student, faculty, staff, or just interested in FOSS RIT?
If a student, what is your major and year of graduation?
What are some of your hobbies and interests?
What’s something you want to learn more about in the next year?
Is there something with FOSS RIT you are interested in specifically?
I’ve now had several turns as an adjunct instructor teaching the Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software (HFOSS) course. Always a great privilege and most of the time a lot of fun!
I thought I knew a lot about FOSS but I’ve seen the truth in the idea that to really learn something, you have to try to teach it–I’ve learned, and continue to learn, so much, both from my students, and from the broader community.
Also, does every introduction ahve to be a new topic? Seems like a single topic with intros would be … tighter, and sufficient.
(to extend my intro in this vein, I’ve been using a variety of topic-oriented web forums for a long time, starting with the WeLL but extending from that through a number of other systems inspired by its software, PicoSpan).
Hey @deejoe, welcome to the Discourse site! Glad to have you here. It will be great to have your feedback in the Site Feedback category about how we can improve the usability of the site for email users too.
Nope! I have no preference. Posting them in this thread works just the same too.
Hello, I’m Christian Martin, also known by my handle of “ctmartin”. I am a 3rd year New Media Interactive Development student in GCCIS, but also do a variety of less-interactive things including cloud computer (aka banging my head against servers and/or burning things to the ground digitally). I’ve been with RITlug & FOSS@MAGIC for a couple years now and you can find me active in the #rit-foss IRC channel.
I’m Ian Effendi (@rimij405) but I also use my name as my handle (effendiian). I am a fourth year Game Design & Development student in IGM, but, this is my first real dive into FLOSS (via my HFOSS course). I’m pretty busy this semester so I haven’t had an opportunity to go to many meetups with RITlug or FOSS@MAGIC, but, I’m around. I’ve made a couple repiles and posts here and there, so, figured I’d make an official introduction here.
Hello I’m Kent Reese, Third Year Game Design and Development Student at RIT. I’m into hiking, camping, canoeing and other outdoors-man activities. I’m also very invested in the RIT game development community through both ROC Game Dev and RIT Game Dev Club.
I’ve always wanted to learn how to skydive, I plan on learning that this summer. In relation to FOSS, I hope to learn and contribute more to projects like GoDot and AntiMicro. I’ve been a member of FOSS@RIT for a year now and I’m ready to rock.
Hi, I’m Dev. I’m a first year CS at RIT with a distaste for nonfree software. I’d like to learn about more FOSS projects to make my life better. Currently looking for a DE/wm that doesn’t suck. Lemme know if you find one. I’d like the beauty of KDE/Wayfire, with the UX (and battery life) of Xfce, and the configurability/speed of awesomewm or i3wm, but there’s no such thing as perfect so it probably doesn’t exist.
It is early now, but you will want to keep an eye out for IGME-582 Humanitarian Free & Open Source Software Development course that runs in the spring. @deejoe can give more context there.
For KDE, @ctmartin or maybe @jxr8142 could likely offer some suggestions. For window managers, @Tjzabel could offer some ideas.
Honestly, finding that perfect environment and configuration is such a personal experience. What makes a great DE/WM depends on so many different factors.
If you want to try something new, you can run i3 within Xfce super easily. I did that for quite a while before I switched fully to i3-gaps. If you’re also just looking for workspace inspiration, and haven’t heard of it before, https://reddit.com/r/unixporn is always a great resource
finding that perfect environment and configuration is such a personal experience
Both the benefit and the downfall!
you can run i3 within Xfce super easily
Really? What does that look/act like. Sounds actually really neat, and may serve extremely well at some point.
/r/unixporn is always a great resource
It was, until every post became virtually the same Arch/i3-gaps rice with maybe a different color scheme and the occasional music control menu…
In happier news, I’ve been toying with KDE a bit and I’m honestly impressed. This might have a to stick around, at least long enough for a real stress test!
KDE is a great option! I’ve never used it, but I’ve only heard good things about it.
In terms of i3wm within Xfce, there are a ton of resources online for how to do so. All it really is, is going into the Xfce settings, removing Xfce4wm from the strartup scripts, and adding in i3wm. Here is an old picture of my workstation using i3wm + Xfce for reference. You can all the benefits of a DE, with the speed of a tiling WM. Theoretically, any WM can replace the xfce4wm. I’ve only personally tested it out with bspwm and i3.
Also, yeah, reddit.com/r/unixporndoes seem to see the same posts over and over again
I can be a bit long-winded and verbose. Deal. Or don’t.
I am a former denizen of the “Not-So-Great White North” where I resided for 22 years. I spent time on the “dreaded quarter mile” and in the trippy tunnels under the dorms – though I was a commuter student, retreating to the house I grew up in ~15 miles to the north.
I was a member of the Shire (now Barony) of Thescorre – Damien Dobyon of Erewhon, later known as Nick of Thyme – because our herald of that era was a bit, shall we say, anal retentive, and I promised I could do much worse than my originally proposed heraldic shield, to whit “A gyronny of eight; gules, or, azure, vert. In chief, a rondel sable. In base, a cobra sable, raised to strike.” (If you draw it correctly, and go with my original persona name, there’s a visual pun related to the anagram of the name.)
I was a “triple S” major (Systems Software Science) but alas, I ran out of money and did not finish.
Though I sometimes consider going back to the SCA, it hasn’t happened in over 30 years. I’ve been a long-time advocate of FLOSS, long before the concept had a name – back in the enlightened ages when everyone had a mainframe and source code was freely shared. I’m also a musician and vocalist – albeit not a particularly stellar one, despite performing for an audience last Sunday. I’m a charter member of the second oldest hackerspace in the US (source: WIRED magazine and Wikipedia), now serving as a board member of said space. And, a cyclist who did a solo trip from Brain-Washington, DC to Pueblo, CO. Three months, 2350 miles. A Linux user since 1993, and a Pythonista since ~2000 (If you’re going to PyCon 2020, Philly in April, look for the guy with the yellow laptop bag with the PyCon 2003 logo.) I was sorta, kinda, involved with the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project and knew RIT students under the tutelage of Steve Jacobs and Remy DeCausemaker who were working on a video-chat program for the XO – my other connection being the Gallaudet <-> NTID link.
I keep threatening to learn Rust, Haskell, Go, and WebAssembly (the language not the game) and analog electronics. but probably won’t. More likely: I had let my musical skills atrophy, but in the past year have re-juiced them and the trend continues. So, I’m looking at software like MuseScore 3 and others, taking voice lessons, jamming on flute with a bunch of folk / rock acoustic guitarists, and… relearning C in an effort to resurrect my Munster that was last alive in 1993. (I still have all the data files it produced…)
I still hate snow. But, I keep running into folks like Remy, Steve, Gurcharan Khanna. And just this morning, I stumbled across a blog post by one Justin W. Flory that suggested, if interested in the topic, there was continuing discussion on this forum… Now I need to find where on the forum it exists.
Hi @ubuntourist, welcome to the FOSS RIT forums! I’m glad to see you have connected back with RIT after all this time.
It’s funny you mention this; I was on a call with someone yesterday and I broke down this “enlightened age” in the context of how FOSS began growing as a movement in the 1980s. A lot of people in tech don’t know this, about how software was once shared.
Awesome!! Remy has moved on to other things from RIT, but Steve Jacobs is still heading things at the FOSS@MAGIC initiative. You can check out more about the program on our website. Recently, we pulled off a one-day conference called The Future is Open in October. Perhaps you would be interested in joining us for it in 2020!
Do you know much about the MusicBrainz project? This might be really interesting to you if you haven’t dug deep into it already.
I appreciate you following up on this. Like I said in DM, give me a few days and I’ll work on starting a new thread for this once I have a chance to collect my thoughts a bit more. I didn’t really think about how I wanted to collect feedback when I wrote my blog post.
Glad to have you here. It will be great to have your feedback in the 
Looking forward to seeing you both around.
that was last alive in 1993. (I still have all the data files it produced…)
