Luis Motta: How Do You Fedora?

We recently interviewed Luis Motta 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 Luis Motta?

Luis Motta was born in 1963 on the same day as Mick Jagger, which may explain why he has been a rock and roll guitar player since 1982. Motta plays in three different bands. He and his friends play gigs at local bars with a preference for heavy rock. Motta says, “Louder is better!” His favorite music groups are Rush, System of a Down, and Red Fang. As a guitarist, he likes Alex Lifeson. “Today, me and a friend, Jesiel Rocha, give lectures on the use of free software for music recording,” said Luis.

Motta explains, “I have always been a hacker. As a child, I disassembled radios.” He first started using Linux in 2001 with a Brazilian distribution called Conectiva, which was based on Mandrake Linux. It used RPM packages like Fedora.

Luis works as an IT manager in a school supporting 800 students with 200 computers and tablets. He built the entire infrastructure using Linux. Luis says, “We use PFSENSE, Samba, Squid, IDS, and LiquidSquid.”

Fedora Community

Motta got involved in the Fedora community in 2015 when he joined the Brazilian Portuguese localization (L10N) team. When asked about his first impressions about the Fedora Community, Luis said, “I was very well-received!” He attended the 16th International Free Software Forum (FISL) and met with some Fedora community members. Luis said, “Thanks to Bruno Zanuzzo, I was registered as a translator the same day and contributing as a translator in the same week.”

When asked about one thing he would like to see change in the Fedora Project, Motta responded, “Improved support for graphics cards from manufacturers like NVIDIA. All the rest is perfect!” He would also like to let more people know how solid Fedora is. “It uses the best applications for Linux and always with the latest versions,” said Luis.

When speaking about his work in the Fedora Project, Luis explained, “We are like the Jedis!! We care about the other people who want to use Fedora. We manipulate the force in a good way!” This is one of the points that convinced Motta to contribute to Fedora. He credits Bruno Zanuzzo for giving him an effective way to contribute to Fedora. “He was a good speaker and did not speak badly of any other Linux distribution. He talked about the advantages of Fedora,” he continued. “For me, this is the spirit: freedom to choose!”

Motta values people who are ethical, sincere, open-minded, and have a good sense of humor. He values people wanting to promote open source software, and Fedora also needs willpower and persistence so that they never give up.

What hardware and software?

Luis has an ASUS XL 550N notebook computer equipped with a 2GB NVIDIA card, 6GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive. He utilizes Fedora 24 KDE Spin. He likes KDE, KDEnLIVE for video editing, GIMP and Inkscape for image editing, and LibreOffice. He uses SNES9X to emulate SNES for playing vintage Nintendo games.