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Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)

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How things have (and have not changed). I'm still a command-line junkie with at least two xterm windows open. I'm still using a 3x3 virtual desktop. However, instead of fvwm, it is now LXDE. I've also switched from FreeBSD to Linux and I'm running Lubuntu as my distribution.

There are a lot of indispensable GUI tools that I use. These include Firefox, lyx, Gimp, KeepassX, Shutter, viking, dia, Wireshark, calibre, audacity, Handbrake and VLC. But where possible I still prefer to script things. My main development languages are still shell, Perl and C.

My shell is now bash. The vi keystrokes are burned into my fingertips and, as long as vim can be ported to new systems, that will be my text editor until I pass on. My mail client is now mutt (definitely not a web client) and my mail is stored locally, not on someone else's server.

The only issue I have is that, since a job change, I now have to deal with Windoze things. Thus, I have VirtualBox, libreoffice and Wine to help me do that.

I started with Unix on a Pyramid 90x. I now have a smart phone that blows the 90x out of the water on performance, RAM and storage. But I'm so very happy that, somewhere down underneath, there is still a Bourne shell and an operating system that does open(), close(), read(), write(), fork() and exec()!