Who uses Linux? (+Emacs, +TeX)

Some really rough notes. Suggestions welcome.

Notable people who use Linux (with additional notes on Emacs and TeX users), a first draft.

My rough criterion for determining who counts as "famous": does the person have a Wikipedia entry? 

Presumably many more can be added under "computer-related" (which is why I put it at the bottom). I'm only listing each person once, under most relevant/salient category (otherwise I could, for instance, list Shuttleworth also under an "astronaut" category).

See also: "The Setup / Linux" and "My Linux Rig" for more 'prominent' people and their Linux setups.

Political

Rick Falkvinge, founder of Swedish Pirate Party [Wikipedia entry]

• Uses an Ubuntu Linux set-up [1]

Christian Engström, Swedish Pirate Party MEP [Wikipedia entry]

• Seems to use some sort of Ubuntu Linux set-up [1, 2, 3]
• Couple of pics with Richard Stallman from 2004 [1, 2]

Amelia Andersdotter, Swedish Pirate Party MEP [Wikipedia entry]

• Mentions using Arch, Fedora [1, 2]
• Also Emacs and TeX (see above links)

Vinay Gupta, geopolitical risk analyst [Wikipedia entry]

• uses Ubuntu Linux [1] 
• inventor of Hexayurt [1]

Writers

Cory Doctorow, blogger, journalist, & sci-fi/fantasy author [Wikipedia entry]

• Uses Ubuntu Linux since 2006 [1, 2]
• arguments for copyright reform (videos):
• Pwned: How copyright turns us all into IP serfs
• The coming war on general computation
• @ the Pirate Party International General Assembly in Prague 2012

Charlie Stross, sci-fi/horror/fantasy author [Wikipedia entry]

• formerly the monthly Linux columnist for Computer Shopper
• uses Linux, but mainly for running server, otherwise Mac [1, 2, 3]
• position on piracy: "If you've downloaded unauthorized copies of my books, instead of hitting on a tipjar button, I urge you to buy a (new) copy of one of my books....Your typical book publisher is not like the music or movie industry; they run on thin margins, and they're staffed by underpaid, overworked folk who do it because they love books, not because they're trying to make themselves rich on the back of a thousand ruthlessly exploited artists. I think their effort deserves to be rewarded appropriately..." [1]

Piers Anthony, fantasy/sci-fi author [Wikipedia entry]

• switched to Linux in 2000 [1, 2, 3, 4]
• mentions using a number of different distros, including Ubuntu & Fedora [1]
• use of Linux seems at least in part principle-driven [1, 2]
• uses LibreOffice [1]
• concerns about piracy:
• speaks approvingly of Harlan Ellison's war on piracy (2002-4) [1, 2]
• complaints about piracy & Ebay (2010) [1]
• some recognition of danger of censoring internet: "THE WEEK had an item on Internet piracy of music, books, and movies, and efforts to stop it. I have discussed this here before, but it bears repeating: pirates are thieves who are destroying the ability of creative artists to make a living, myself included; a LOT of my works are chronically stolen. The pirates need to be stopped. The problem is how to do it without censoring free expression itself. I think there does have to be a law, but one carefully crafted to shut down only the pirates." (2012) [1]

Neal Stephenson, sci-fi/speculative fiction author [Wikipedia entry]

• fondness for both Mac & Linux [sources?]
• author of long essay "In the Beginning... Was the Command Line" (1999)
• ebook git repository
• zipped plain text file
• print book from Amazon 
• used Emacs [1]
• for which novels? (Cryptonomicon? others?)
• stopped using Emacs [1]
• plans to start using Emacs (& Linux) again [1]

Actors & film-related

Stephen Fry, actor [Wikipedia entry]

• big fan of Apple products [1, 2, etc.]
• but also touts GNU [1, 2, 3]

Wil Wheaton, actor [Wikipedia entry]

• primarily uses Macs, but also uses Linux [1, 2]
• support for Bittorrent [1]

Asia Carrera, adult-film actress [Wikipedia entry] 

• early Linux-adopter, ran own website since 1998 [1, 2]

Cindy Margolis, model [Wikipedia entry]

• apparent Debian user [1, 2]

Programmers & computer-related

Linus Torvalds [Wikipedia entry]

• creator of Linux
• used Fedora (2008) [1]
• switched to openSUSE at some point in 2012(?) [1]
• uses Apple hardware [1] 
• uses an Emacs-like editor based on MicroEMACS, a customised version of uEmacs/PK

Richard Stallman [Wikipedia entry]

• used gNewSense, a fully-free GNU/Linux distribution in 2010 [1]
• founder of the GNU project (1983)
• founder of Free Software Foundation (1985)
• creator of Emacs (1976)
• co-creator of Texinfo, presupposing knowledge/use of TeX
• supports copyleft
• one (of many) talks on copyright issues: @ University of Calgary (2009)
• statement on copyright 
• statement on worries about abolishment of copyright for copyleft (re: Pirate Party platform)

Mark Shuttleworth, programmer, entreprenuer, astronaut [Wikipedia entry]

• started the Ubuntu Foundation (2005) for Ubuntu Linux development

Donald Knuth, computer scientist & professor [Wikipedia entry]

• creator of TeX typesetting system (1978), upon which LaTeX, LuaTeX etc. are based
• uses Ubuntu Linux (as of 2008) [1]
• uses Emacs to edit TeX [1]
• friends with computer security researcher Jacob Appelbaum [1]

American McGee, game designer [Wikipedia entry] 

•  switched to Ubuntu Linux (from Windows) with plans to "stay switched" (2006) [1]

John "maddog" Hall, director of Linux International & professor of computer science [Wikipedia entry]

• runs different Linux distributions depending on employer [1]

---

Some Initial Ruminations

A number of the people above fall into two rough groupings: "technology/gadget-lovers" vs. "ideological-users". So Stephen Fry and Wil Wheaton would fall into the first category, as would perhaps Charlie Stross and even Linus Torvalds. On the ideological side are (of course) Richard Stallman, Cory Doctorow, Piers Anthony, and the Pirate Party MPs. Anthony's position in the latter grouping is interesting, given his position on piracy. Stallman's position is similar to the Pirate MPs in certain respects, but values the legal status of copyleft.

What about Free Culture proponents?

What computer setups do Free Culture proponents use? Particularly, I'm wondering about Lawrence Lessig, founding father of the Free Culture movement (largely based on Stallman's Free Software Foundation) and founder of the Creative Commons licences. Nina Paley is another prominent Free Culture activist, but I'm pretty sure she's largely (solely?) a Mac user.

Hattrick winners and other random notes

Amelia Andersdotter, Donald Knuth, and Richard Stallman take hattrick prizes for Linux-Emacs-TeX use. (For an extra bonus, Andersdotter also explicitly mentions use of org-mode in Emacs.) 

Of course there are various connections between some of the characters mentioned above. For instance, Doctorow releases his novels under Lessig's Creative Common licences; Doctorow & Stross are co-writing a novel [1]; etc.

In terms of the general public, the actors are (unsurprisingly) probably the best known: I would guess Stephen Fry is the most famous person listed above.

Again, suggestions/additions welcome.

LaTeX table manipulation using Emacs/AUCTeX+align.el+rectangular selection

Tables in LaTeX are sometimes somewhat difficult to manage; in particular doing anything with columns---in contrast to most word processors, which allow for the manipulation of columns in certain environments (e.g. tables). However, the text editor Emacs in fact allows for rectangular selections anywhere, which means that using Emacs as an editor for (La)TeX files makes working with tables easier.

The AUCTeX package for Emacs adds a vast number of useful features; however, it does not automatically format tabular environments. Here I  offer some notes on how to deal with LaTeX tables in a Emacs/AUCTeX environment.

So let's say we have a LaTeX document containing a (big) table, like this:

And let's say we want to switch the third and fourth columns. Easily done in a typical word processor, but not necessarily so for a LaTeX document. Let's look at the LaTex .tex source for this table:

A rectangular selection will work only if we have  our columns aligned in our source .tex file. The align.el package for Emacs is needed here (as of Emacs 22, this functionality is built in).

Place the cursor at the beginning of the tabular environment (in our current example, right below the first \hline command will work), and use the align-current function (press M-x and then type align-current RET):

 

[Make sure there are no blank lines in your tabular environment; "align-current" will stop when it hits a blank line.]

If you're working with a large table, as in this example, you still won't be able to see the entire width of the table, so hold down SHIFT and left-click the mouse and choose "Decrease Buffer Text Size" repeatedly until the entire width of the table is visible on your screen (maximizing the Emacs frame to the maximum width of your desktop will be helpful as well...). You should then  be able to view the table as so:

All of our columns are now aligned. Now we need simply to select a rectangular region. There are (at least) two ways of going about doing so. Firstly, the ability to select rectangular regions is a built-in feature of Emacs (see the relevant section of the Emacs manual). Simply select the columnar area (mark it using C-SPC) and press either C-x r r to copy the rectangular area to the register or C-x r k to cut ("kill") the rectangular area and place it in the register. And then use C-x r y to paste ("yank") the copied/cut rectangle into the position you want it (with the cursor in the position of its upper left-hand corner).

However, if your Emacs has the visible selection turned on (as is the default as of Emacs 23), then it is nicer and easier to be able to see the selected area as a rectangle. One nice option is to use the rectangular selection features of the CUA package (a built-in default as of Emacs 22). One of the main functions of the CUA-mode is to change Emacs' copy, kill/cut, and yank/paste keybindings (M-w, C-w, C-y) to the "common" C-c, C-x, C-v. If you, like me, don't want to change the default Emacs keybindings, then include the following in your .emacs configuration file:

(cua-selection-mode t)
(setq cua-auto-tabify-rectangles nil) 

[If you do want the "common" keybindings, then use (cua-mode t) in place of (cua-selection-mode t).]

With this configuration in place, we can now visibly select rectangular areas, and use the normal copy/kill/yank keybindings to copy, cut, and paste the rectangular selections. In CUA-mode rectangular selections are made using C-RET rather than C-SPC. Here is the rectangular selection in our example:

I then kill ("cut") this rectangular area with C-w. And then position the cursor at the point where I want the upper left-hand corner of this rectangular area to be inserted:

And then yank ("paste") the column in its new position with C-y:

That's it. Here is the resulting table (with columns 3 and 4 switched):

Oh, and here is a nice video demonstration of the use of rectangular selection cut-and-pasting (with CUA-mode): Emacs Column Editing by Mark Mansour. It doesn't deal with LaTeX, but rather HTML; however, it illustrates the general use.