We recently interviewed Vipul Siddharth on how he 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 Vipul Siddharth?

Vipul Siddharth is an intern at Red Hat. He is pursuing a bachelors degree in computer applications from Christ University in Bengaluru, India. Vipul started using Linux in 2015 His first distribution was Fedora and despite trying Arch, Elementary and others Fedora remains his primary operating system.

Siddarth’s current daily routine starts with working out, the college and finally the office. He is currently working on Fedora Cloud. “Now I am working on building a testing framework for fedora cloud.” Along with this, he regularly contributes to Fedora Quality Assurance. Vipul also organizes FOSS and Fedora events. “I have organized Fedora activity days and fedora-release parties for Fedora 25 and 26.”

Siddharth’s childhood hero was Goku from Dragon Ball Z. “I wanted to eat, laugh and protect the world like him. I kinda still do.” Vipul’s favorite movies are 12 Angry Men and The Godfather (I, II and III)

Vipul is a self-taught Python programmer. “I learnt basic python form a free course on Codecademy. After that, I started referring few books like ‘learn python the hard way’ and ‘learning python'”. He continued his learning by reviewing code in open source projects. He recommends ‘Competitive Programming 3 by Steven Halim and Felix Halim’ for data structure.

When asked about his favorite food Vipul responded that he switched to “the salad life”, but confided that he enjoys a few spoons of Nutella as an ocassional treat. “I used to be 130 Kgs and lost 53 Kgs (116 lbs) in a year and a half.” In order to do this he had to give up junk food.

Siddarth’s hobbies include both intellectual and physical pursuits. The physical pursuits couple with his rabbit food meal plan help keep him in shape. “If I am free even for 2-3 hours, I try to go to the gym. I love working out.” The intellectual pursuits involve using Fedora to pursue digital content. “Other than that, I visit quora and Reddit too often and read popular threads/subreddits.”

The Fedora Community

Vipul is an active particpant in the Fedora Community with Quality Assurance. “I participated in Fedora 24 graphical upgrade testing at Red Hat Bangalore office which was organized by Sumantro Mukherjee.” Mukherjee mentored Siddharth and helped him with his first QA contribution. Siddarth’s first impression of the Fedora Community he responded, “Friendly, easily approachable and very helpful.”

Siddarth would like to see the Fedora community grow in India and sees universities as the key to that growth. “I would love to increase Fedora community in India. I have already started a step towards the goal.” Vipul works with a few friends to organize ‘FOSS and Fedora’ sessions in multiple univerisities. His hope is that the Fedora becomes more well known among college students. He believes having more active Fedora ambassadors in India will positively impact the growth.

Vipul truly embraces the four cornerstones of Fedora: Freedom, Friends, Features, First. “Fedora uses bleeding edge technologies. It leads the pack by showing the path that others follow.” He feels this makes Fedora the perfect platform for students to learn and grow with. “This makes it a great learning platform especially for developers and students who wants to be up to date with technologies.” Siddarth also feels that the Fedora Community is excellent place for students and developers to get started. “I wish people knew how easy it is to start contribution at here because of the super helpful community.”

Vipul had two suggestions for becoming involved in the Fedora Community. “Just drop an Introductory email to user@fedoraproject.org and let them know what you are interested in.” In the case of not being sure about an area of interest Siddarth suggests approaching a Fedora Ambassador. “If you are not sure about your interest, approaching ambassadors to organise a Fedora Onboarding calls is a great idea. They can help you by making all the possible areas clear.” Vipul had a humorous reminder for those considering where to get involved. “Software is written by humans and therefore has bugs.”

What Hardware?

Vipul uses a Lenovo Thinkpad T440p at work. It is equipped with an Intel Core i7-4710MQ Processor, a 512GB SSD. “This laptop is great for running multiple VMs at once.” He uses a Thinkpad docking station to attach to a dell 24” monitor. Siddarth uses a Lenovo N50 wireless mouse and would like to eventually get a DAS professional keyboard. His personal computer is a Dell 7548 which is a touchscreen laptop.

What Software?

Siddarth mentione an array of software that he makes use of. It all starts with Fedora on both systems. “I am using Fedora 27 on both my systems and it works flawlessly. I have customised my fedora with gnome-shell extensions and an icon pack and it looks absolutely gorgeous.” His favorite extensions are: Dash to dock, Coverflow alt-tab, Clipboard Indicator, Multi-Monitor add-ons, and pomodoro. “I tried multiple finger touch, pinch in zoom, scroll and they are working flawlessly on my T440p.” He uses Clipboard Indicator to cache clipboard history. “Clipboard Indicator is a clipboard manager which caches clipboard history allowing to select from and paste up to 50 entries. It especially helps in writing playbook when we try to arrange tasks in order.” Pomodoro is a time organizer. “Pomodor helps me to focus on working in a systematic manner. I work with complete focus for 40 minutes then 10 minues break. Once I am refreshed, start again. Every three repetition, It reminds me to take a 30 minutes break.”

Vipul uses VIM and Atom for text editors. “I absolutely love VIM. I use the ultimate vim configuration.” Atom helps with navigating through a tree of project files. He makes ues of Terminator and Gnome-terminal. Vipul kicks his terminal experience up another notch using a framework for managing his zsh configuration. “I use oh-my-zsh to boost terminal experience.” He also make use of the following: GIMP, Darktable, HexChat, Riot, VLC media player, and SMplayer.