Justin W. Flory: How do you Fedora?

We recently interviewed Justin W. Flory on how he uses Fedora. This is part of a series on the Fedora Magazine where we profile Fedora users and how they use Fedora to get things done. If you are interested in being interviewed for a further installment of this series, you can contact us on the feedback form.

Who is Justin W. Flory?

Justin W. Flory is a student majoring in systems administration and networking at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). His minor is in Free and Open Source Software. He has professional training as a barista and supports direct trade coffee. “I am also a coffee fanatic,” Flory said. “I can make some pretty fantastic espresso with the right equipment.” Justin has been fascinated with computers since a young age. He credits Minecraft with changing his life. “Minecraft is a game that has changed my life, beginning with my own early experience with entrepreneurship and later my experience with the Spigot community, which landed me the opportunity to go to London this past July to attend the annual Minecraft convention, MINECON. It also indirectly introduced me to Linux and Fedora.”

Flory is not a big fan of movies and he doesn’t watch TV, but his favorite two movies are Inception and The Matrix. Justin’s favorite food is smoked salmon with cream cheese on crackers.

The Fedora Community

Justin wanted to become an Ambassador for most of 2014, but did not take the leap until after attending Flock 2015. At Flock 2015, Flory was pulled in by the tight-knit nature of the Fedora community. “I could see that the friendships made from Fedora went beyond IRC, lines of code, and more into real life.”

When asked about one thing he would like people to know about the Fedora Project, Flory said, “You don’t have to be a code whiz to be a Fedoran. There are so many different places you can help.” Justin is also inspired by being part of a community that is passionate and dedicated to making a positive impact on the world.

The person most responsible for helping Flory become involved is Remy DeCausemaker. “I have to thank Remy DeCausemaker for opening the Fedora door for me,” Justin said. DeCausemaker gave him advice with regards to attending Flock 2015 and has helped Flory become more involved in the Fedora Community. He also wanted to thank Paul Frields, Ryan Lerch, Gabriele Trombini, Bee Padalkar, Patrick Uiterwijk, and many more.

Justin contributes mostly through Fedora Community Operations (CommOps) and Fedora Marketing. He finds CommOps exciting because he gets a bird’s eye view of the entire Fedora Project. Flory stated, “I’m still learning the ropes, but I feel like I’m able to see the big map of Fedora, observe where everyone else is, and help figure out how to make sure everyone can land and take off safely.”

When asked about the advice he would give people who are thinking about becoming involved in the Fedora Project, Flory was very emphatic. “Do it! Don’t wait!” He recommends joining #fedora-join on Freenode and asking for some help finding a place to contribute.

What hardware?

Flory has several pieces of hardware. He has a self-built desktop he made in 2014, a laptop, and another self-built server made in 2015. His desktop has an AMD FX-6300 processor coupled with 8GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti graphics card. The boot drive is an SSD, but he pairs that with a traditional 1TB hard drive. The FOSS Fighter, as he calls it, is currently running Fedora 23 Workstation.

Justin’s laptop is a Toshiba C55-A equipped with an Intel Core i3 processor and 4GB of RAM. It is currently running Fedora 23 Workstation, but he is considering getting an upgrade or running Xfce due to the age of the laptop.

Inside the FOSS Fighter

The server is another home-built system and is equipped with an Intel Core i7-4790S and 24GB of RAM. RIT provides a free RHEL license, so Flory runs RHEL 7 on the server. It currently hosts RITcraft, RIT’s official Minecraft server.

What software?

As a music lover, Flory depends on Rhythmbox for playing his library and Scrobbling his plays to Last.fm and Libre.fm. He also makes use of MusicBrainz’s Picard to categorize, sort, and correct metadata for all of his music.

For messaging, he makes use of both IRC and Telegram. For IRC, Flory is a fan of HexChat and is active on Freenode, SpigotMC, and Espernet as jflory7. For personal messaging, Justin uses Telegram on his laptop using the desktop app or on his Android when he is without his laptop.

As a student, he depends on LibreOffice for his productivity suite. Writer helps him take notes in class, creating PDFs, and other tasks. He makes use of Dropbox to keep his files synchronized on all of his devices.