Taz Brown: How Do You Fedora?

We recently interviewed Taz Brown 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.

Taz Brown is a seasoned IT professional with over 15 years of experience. “I have worked as a systems administrator, senior Linux administrator, DevOps engineer and I now work as a senior Ansible automation consultant at Red Hat with the Automation Practice Team.” Originally Taz started using Ubuntu, but she started using CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora as a Linux administrator in the IT industry.

Taz is relatively new to contributing to open source, but she found that code was not the only way to contribute. “I prefer to contribute through documentation as I am not a software developer or engineer. I found that there was more than one way to contribute to open source than just through code.”

All about Taz

Her childhood hero is Wonder Woman. Her favorite movie is Hackers. “My favorite scene is the beginning of the movie,” Taz tells the Magazine. “The movie starts with a group of special agents breaking into a house to catch the infamous hacker, Zero Cool. We soon discover that Zero Cool is actually 11-year-old Dade Murphy, who managed to crash 1,507 computer systems in one day. He is charged for his crimes and his family is fined $45,000. Additionally, he is banned from using computers or touch-tone telephones until he is 18.”

Her favorite character in the movie is Paul Cook. “Paul Cook, Lord Nikon, played by Laurence Mason was my favorite character. One of the main reasons is that I never really saw a hacker movie that had characters that looked like me so I was fascinated by his portrayal. He was enigmatic. It was refreshing to see and it made me real proud that I was passionate about IT and that I was a geek of sorts.”

Taz is an amateur photographer and uses a Nikon D3500. “I definitely like vintage things so I am looking to add a new one to my collection soon.” She also enjoys 3D printing, and drawing. “I use open source tools in my hobbies such as Wekan, which is an open-source kanban utility.”

The Fedora community

Taz first started using Linux about 8 years ago. “I started using Ubuntu and then graduated to Fedora and its community and I was hooked. I have been using Fedora now for about 5 years.”

When she became a Linux Administrator, Linux turned into a passion. “I was trying to find my way in terms of contributing to open source. I didn’t know where to go so I wondered if I could truly be an open source enthusiast and influencer because the community is so vast, but once I found a few people who embraced my interests and could show me the way, I was able to open up and ask questions and learn from the community.”

Taz first became involved with the Fedora community through her work as a Linux systems engineer while working at Mastercard. “My first impressions of the Fedora community was one of true collaboration, respect and sharing.”

When Brown talked about the Fedora Project she gave an excellent analogy. “America is an melting pot and that’s how I see open source projects like the Fedora Project. There is plenty of room for diverse contributions to the Fedora Project. There are so many ways in which to get and stay involved and there is also room for new ideas.”

When we asked Brown about what she would like to see improved in the Fedora community, she commented on making others more aware of the opportunities. “I wish those who are typically underrepresented in tech were more aware of the amazing commitment that the Fedora Project has to diversity and inclusion in open source and in the Fedora community.”

Next Taz had some advice for people looking to join the Fedora Community. “It’s a great decision and one that you likely will not regret joining. Fedora is a project with a very large supportive community and if you’re new to open source, it’s definitely a great place to start. There is a lot of cool stuff in Fedora. I believe there are limitless opportunities for The Fedora Project.”

What hardware?

Taz uses an Lenovo Thinkserver TS140 with 64 GB of ram, 4 1 TB SSDs and a 1 TB HD for data storage. The server is currently running Fedora 30. She also has a Synology NAS with 164 TB of storage using a RAID 5 configuration. Taz also has a Logitech MX Master and MX Master 2S. “For my keyboard, I use a Kinesis Advantage 2.” She also uses two 38 inch LG ultrawide curved monitors and a single 34 inch LG ultrawide monitor.

She owns a System76 laptop. “I use the 16.1-inch Oryx Pro by System76 with IPS Display with i7 processor with 6 cores and 12 threads.” It has 6 GB GDDR6 RTX 2060 w/ 1920 CUDA Cores and also 64 GB of DDR4 RAM and a total of 4 TB of SSD storage. “I love the way Fedora handles my peripherals and like my mouse and keyboard. Everything works seamlessly. Plug and play works as it should and performance never suffers.”

What software?

Brown is currently running Fedora 30. She has a variety of software in her everyday work flow. “I use Wekan, which is an open-source kanban, which I use to manage my engagements and projects. My favorite editor is Atom, though I use to use Sublime at one point in time.”

And as for terminals? “I use Terminator as my go-to terminal because of grid arrangement as well as it’s many keyboard shortcuts and its tab formation.” Taz continues, “I love using neofetch which comes up with a nifty fedora logo and system information every time I log in to the terminal. I also have my terminal pimped out using powerline and powerlevel9k and vim-powerline as well.”