I'll avoid discussing what I use at work and on my personal servers, and go over what I have used as my primary OS on my primary desktop/notebook/PC.

1) Redhat - 1997ish - Wasn't my style, so it didn't last long.
2) SuSE - 1998-2001 - Nicely polished; I only stopped using because of new hardware.
3) - dark ages - 2001-2002 - I toyed with lots of distros, but none of them really did what I needed for my hardware. Windows was primary during this timeframe.
4) Gentoo - 2002-present* - Gentoo has been my go-to since '02. There was a period between 2006-2007 where it was seemingly in "meltdown," but those days are past.
*5) KUbuntu - 2006-2007 - I needed a working OS, and Gentoo was it during this timeframe.
*6) Fedora - 2011 - I tested Fedora on my desktop last year for a few months before I abandoned land-locked PCs and went full time to a laptop/netbook.
*7) Arch - 2011 - I also tested Arch on my netbook, but it didn't like the poor little thing for a multitude of reasons.

*Also, as of June of 2012, my primary home PC is a Mac.... So my primary home OS is not, and probably will never again be, a Linux distro. But this isn't the place to discuss that....

I've played around with OpenBox in the past (and most other WMs, to be perfectly honest). I don't recall specifically why I chose FluxBox over OpenBox, but both meet my needs. They both keep the BlackBox flavour alive.

Years ago I was a BlackBox user. I've always preferred low-impact WindowManagers and never jumped on the Evolution bandwagon. These days I use BlackBox's primary fork, FluxBox, on both my primary desktop and my "Netbook." The menu format is easy to work with and the memory footprint is negligible.

I don't use a file manager, but I do build most things with GNOME support (if proper), so Nautilus is kinda/sorta there. I'm also not a big panel user - I don't like having tachometers, usage monitors, or any extra stuff filling up my workspace. (I take minimalism to new lows.) Others will have to help you in those respects.

Greetings from a user living in "The Forbidden Land of Gentoo!"

While there are times when prebuilt packages (such as this map) are beneficial, I suspect this is not one of them. We, the Gentoo userbase, encourage you to compile your own maps! Only then will they be most accurate and most efficient for your local implementation!

Happy Emerge-ing!

Katyrnyn / Cydonian Monk

(Resident of "The Highly Efficient (yet occasionally broken) Free State of Gentoo" since 2002.)

If you're an engineering student and you "cheat"* to get past material you don't understand, you are disgracing the profession. And you're placing our lives in danger. Your core courses aren't chosen haphazardly, and you're expected to understand and respect that. Do us a favour and do it right or find another profession.

And whether you hold to it or not, there is always the Creed:
http://www.nspe.org/Ethics/CodeofEthics/Creed/creed.html

* Let's be careful about what we call cheating, though. There is a case to be made for collaboration between students, as most of us don't work in a vacuum and you'll be better prepared for the workforce if you know how to work with others.

I'll admit that even it has been a little rough,
with quirks and blips and little ticks since OS 3.1.
But even now I just say wow at the news that its been snuffed,
'cause as of late it's been so great to Find Wi while on the run.

It was lean and pretty clean as apps are want to be,
and so of use and not obtuse so now I'm slightly mad.
For no bugs I've seen have been so mean to give clear reason to me,
to kick it out and without a doubt this makes my phone so very very sad.

Uneven rules and duplicate tools have no doubt likely doomed,
our favorite apps we bought for laughs with money oh so small.
So let none be shocked and none be fooled to find out that we've zoomed,
on to other phones with other tones and no more garden wall.

The outcome of this case is beneficial both for Open Source Software community and the Model Railroading hobby.

In general model railroading is a very open and diverse hobby. Some are better with structural engineering and carpentry, others with electronics, model building, methods of railroad operation, et cetera. As a community we work together to share and improve our techniques, both to improve ourselves as modelers and to increase our satisfaction from the hobby. There are many well established venues for sharing our knowledge, from regular conventions (NMRA National, Regionals, and plenty of Special Interest Groups), a large number of printed an online periodicals, online communities, and just general "how did you..." questions at any old time.

Unfortunately our openness attracts thieves and greedy sorts who are more interested in making a quick buck than improving the hobby, and manufacturers and other entities attacking hobbyists is nothing new. I imagine this greedy nature is present in all hobbies and walks of life, but it seems to be more common now than when I entered the hobby 20 years ago.

Hopefully the outcome of this case will make others that prey on innocent hobbyists think twice.

Thanks, Bruce, for your well-written summary of the case. I'd mod your article up +1: Insightful if the Internet gave out mod points.

I can honestly say the only time I used IE6 at home was right after a new install to download {insert you choice of replacement browser of the last decade}.

At work, the majority of our internal corporate software is "customized" for IE6, and the teams responsible for it (and even the IT folks) seem to be in no hurry to "upgrade" to something that will break the existing system. What's worse - our remote employees and anyone that needs to access work-related materials from home has to keep a copy of IE6 around. We can use some of the features of the system on other browsers, but some critical items simply don't work. [It's outside of my programming responsibilities, else I would've pushed the issue to "fix" and standardize things ages ago.]

And of course it's a violation of the 11th Commandment to install any other browser on our work boxes. And traffic outside of our intranet is forbidden by the 12th Commandment, except for those in the corporate "priesthood." And a few of us Systems Programmers, like me.....