We recently interviewed Radka Janek on how she uses Fedora. This is part of a series on the Fedora Magazine. The series profiles Fedora users and how they use Fedora to get things done. Contact us on the feedback form to express your interest in becoming a interviewee.
Who is Radka Janek?
Radka Janek is a former game programmer and community manager. She actively contributes to gaming and open source communities. Radka describes herself as: “Currently wearing her Red Hat, inspiring the desolate whitespace of Linux world with the delicate C# letters of simplified artificial intelligence. Trails of her C#, C++ and Python keystrokes can be found in the World of Tanks and several of the Angry Birds games. Her Fedora feels the delicate .NET presence as well.”
Radka wanted to be an astronaut and a princess, or an astronaut princess. She was inspired by a Slovak astronaut named Ivan Bella. Bella went to the Russian Mir station when Janek was nine years old. This fascination with space continues with Janek’s favorite movies, Stargate and Star Trek.
Her favorite food? Cookies!
Janek works a lot. She keeps busy working for Red Hat on the .NET team and contributing to Fedora and personal projects. Her free time is now dedicated to going out with friends and colleagues. “I really like tea, we often go to tearooms.” Radka used to practice Iaido. Iaido is a Japanese martial art that emphasizes being aware and capable of quickly drawing the sword and responding to a sudden attack.
Fedora community
Janek’s involvement with the Fedora community started when she got an offer from Red Hat to work on .NET enablement. After learning more about the Fedora community, Radka started the .NET SIG. She hopes to make Fedora, and Linux in general, C# friendly. “It is not all closed Microsoft anymore, it’s time to realize that!” Janek is also a member of the CommOps and Diversity teams.
Radka is truly impressed with how inclusive and encouraging the Fedora Project is. She credits Justin W. Flory with influencing her decision to created the .Net SIG. “Justin W. Flory helped me when I first joined CommOps and encouraged me to start the whole .NET thing.”
Janek considers herself a bit of a revolutionary. As a Red Hatter she is enabling .NET in Linux despite the historical association with closed source software and Microsoft. “It is a new open source project, it is not the old .NET Framework, and people should realize that.” She is hopeful that the world of open source software can grow based on attracting .NET developers from the Microsoft world. “I would like to believe that Fedora has the potential of becoming welcoming for the .NET developers.” Radka’s concern about unresolved conflicts between contributors could be a stumbling block for such efforts which is why she joined the Diversity team.
What hardware?
Radka makes use of a Red Hat-issued Lenovo T460p with Fedora 25. She also has a Windows machine at home. “I do have one Windows machine (rather powerful), overclocked and watercooled which is a historic piece reminding me of my past life of a game developer (and player). I no longer use it much, not more than once a month.” Janek also has a Core i7 water cooled server used for network storage. The home computer list is completed with a Raspberry Pi 3 which was used to run a bot that has been moved to a VPS. She makes use of a Logitech MX Anywhere mouse, K810 keyboard, Sennheiser microphone and Creative Soundblaster soundcard.
What software?
She usually upgrades her OS about a month or two after release. Her network storage server is running unRAID Linux with SSD Cache. Radka considers herself a fairly standard user when it comes to work software. “As far as my Fedora (notebook) goes, I’m not using anything special for my work. Browser, git, weechat… the usual suspects.” When it comes to C# she makes use of JetBrains Rider for an IDE. “I really can’t stand Visual Studio or VS Code.” Once JetBrains is released she hopes to never again have to use Visual Studio.
Ali Yousefi
Glad to see another Fedora user.
Can I ask you something?
Where did you but/get the red Hat (the hat one!) you just wear in the first picture?
Unfortunately, I can not buy anything from international online shops like Amazon (because of sanctions against my country). I asked once from Red hat (the company!) to send me a red hat but they refused.
As I am a Red hat and Fedora enthusiast, I like to have an original gift of Red hat!
Paul W. Frields
@Ali: The red hats are a gift the company gives to associates when they join the company. 🙂
Ali Yousefi
Oh! So, It seems I can not have a red hat, because I’m not a Red hat employee 🙁
Radka
Oh I’m pretty sure you could find a cute red fedora somewhere hehe… If I wasn’t currently all black leather evul kind of style and stuff, I would be probably wearing it outside >_<
Saadaoui Khaled
Fedora KDE users are the best !!!
Radka
Yey!! \o/ 😀
ifoolb
Don’t know if I’d ever be capable enough to join RedHat. Also I’m interested in computer graphics recently and tired of kernel stuff. But anyway I want a red hat too.
Jens J.
Sad to hear she doesn’t like VS Code. Not a huge MS fan myself, but I think vscode and it’s multi-platform-ness is one of the great things MS has done. Kills sublime and textmate 😉
antikythera
From a user point of view, very interesting reading. I like these interview pieces, as you get a great insight into the background and skills of the participants. It also dispels the stereotype of all developers being greybeards (I highly doubt Radka for example shaved her beard off especially for the accompanying pictures).
I’ve tried looking up the notebook model mentioned in this interview as it sounds like a decent bit of kit. I believe Lenovo may be replacing/upgrading it currently as it isn’t currently available for purchase new according to their own UK or US websites.
Also, the subject matter is fascinating here. I hope the core project does achieve the intended goals and remains sustainable long term.
@Radka, never give up the aspiration to be an Astronaut, if you want it badly enough you could undoubtedly be involved in a space program with your skill set.
One highly important question though, what’s really the best type of cookie for gaming marathons? I prefer double or triple chocolate chip cookies
Radka
I like to alternate choco chip ones with … dunno what to call them, they are filled with nutella kind of cream 😀
anonymous
How do you get this bunny logo right to screenfetch output?
Radka
Hey, it’s well-placed, sized and scaled slitghtly pinkish bunny with alpha background, simply set in Konsole’s settings (settings -> edit profile -> edit color scheme -> in the bottom!)
Jeddak
Too bad we don’t have pix of her rigs. :/
@Radka: may we ask you to upload some photos? 0_0
Radka
@Jeddak: you actually do have them right there, the one in the far left behind monitor is my desktop (i7, 32gb ram, gtx1070, ssd, hdd… overclocked and water cooled) and the one on the right is the mentioned unRAID server (older i7, 16gb ram, no gpu, SSD cache, a few HDDs… overclocked and water cooled as well, eh?) And please don’t ask me why, i built these computers VERY long time ago, when I used to play games a little more actively (they are ivy and sandy bridge generation) with just the graphics card being very recent upgrade due to technical malfunction related to the old one…
Here are some pictures: http://imgur.com/a/URhy7