We recently interviewed Fedora user Maria Leandro on how she uses Fedora. This is part of a series here on the Fedora Magazine where we will 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 are you?

I’m Maria Leandro, known also as Tatica and I work as a photographer on my own business, Tap.Pics. I work exclusively with Open Source tools, which has made my life quite interesting. I started with Linux back in 2005 and since then, I have never felt the need of change my OS. It started (like many other people), at college, and it became part of my personal and professional life. All my works have been related directly to Open Source technologies, including teaching and organizing events.

I started using Fedora in 2006, and still use Fedora as my base OS. I joined the community a bit later in 2008 and Fedora became a family to me. I have contributed with Design and Marketing, and have organized some events to attract more contributors.

What Hardware?

As a designer and photographer you always want more, so I usually work on my Lenovo Thinkpad x201 Tablet (i7, 6gb RAM and a Wacom prenabled) running Fedora 20 (yes, I haven’t upgraded it yet) and using Fluxbox; but I swich from time to time to a couple of other systems: an AMD A8-5600K 3.6GHz Quad-Core and an MSI FM2-A75MA-E35 Micro ATX FM2 Motherboard, 8GB DDR3 RAM (our Frankenstein) that do have the latest Fedora release installed. I work using 2 LG 21″ screens, but recently got an 42″LG TV that I will be using to make sure I see every pixel.

When you work with design and photography, biggest issue is space; so I use a ZyXEL NAS with 2 2tb HDDs to save data; however, I assume it will run short sooner than expected.

My photographic gear holds a Canon 1000D (Kiss Rebel) and a Canon 60D, and I use both for every photoshoot to it makes easier to shoot with two lenses without changing them out. I use a couple of Canon 50mm 1.8 lens, a Sigma 70-300mm, a Tamrom 28-80mm, a Canon 35-80, a Canon 18-55mm and an Opteka 6.5mm, which I love. Aditional to this I have aquired some lighting equipment to start building my own studio. However, I have been using them more on the move when I go to weddings and photoshoots.

The lighting equipment has an 80cm portable Soft-Box with two 5000K 50W lights, also a full Cowboy Studio with 3 160W Strobe, 3 tripods, 2 80cm softboxes, an umbrella and several backgrounds; as well for extra lighting I also have a couple of simple home lights, 2 Bayco SL-1002 Halogen lights, a regular and a macro ring led lights, 2 80cm bouncers (5 colors), 1 60cm bouncer (2 colors) and a Canon Speedlight 580EX. When outdoors I have an extra Look tripod, more strong to work with wind, and the most recent baby to this family is a cheap Roxant Stabilizer.

What Software?

It’s always a long list, but I will try to make it short and focus on what I use on daily basis. I like to use Fluxbox as my Window Manager since it allows me to not waste resources and keep me focused on work. I even use it without a background; despite working on Fedora backgrounds with the Fedora Design Team. I use both Chrome and Firefox since I check how my websites look on both of them. I use the XChat IRC client to keep online with the community and Hotot to stay tuned to Twitter.

I keep always a terminal open just in case I need to kill something, and use Nautilus as my file manager. When comes to photography, I use Darktable to organize and develop my RAW images. I always shoot on RAW so Darktable has proven to be a fast/easy/powerful tool to work with. I use Gimp mostly to fix details; sometimes skin imperfections or simply make some photo-magic that comes to my mind. When comes to Vectors, Inkscape is my first choice, it allows me to create my clients branding (from logos to full websites) and it comes handy to create presentations, icons and much more.

When comes to video/audio I work with Kdenlive and Audacity, I have tried Cinelera, OpenShot, Pitivi and many more, however, Kdenlive is probably the only tool that never crash on me when I add 20 clips of 5sec and 200Mb each one, its easy to add transitions, effects, music and more. I’m not an expert on audio editing, so Audacity makes it quite easy to me, I use it mostly to edit the audio for my wedding videos.

I like to experiment and try every single graphic app that is available, so it’s not weird to see me working on Blender to render some logos or even do some interior design demos, Scribus to publish some magazines for some clients, Tupi to create animations to include on my photoshoots videos or even SlomoVideo, which I’m new at, trying to make slowmotion videos of my dog.