Richard Stallman's Computer Setup

Stallman reminds me more of Steve Jobs than anyone else does:<p><pre><code> - 70's wunderkind - simple, clear belief about what computing should be - realized his vision, creating permanent improvement enjoyed directly or indirectly by every computer user - uncompromising in his determination to control his environment </code></pre> Personally I believe he has some major blind spots -- so did Jobs. The failure of this community to hold him in comparable regard is just that, a failure.

Well, not the best way to expand your horizon.<p>When he would use things like the iPad from time to time, he would understand that convenience is the biggest threat to open source. Nobody cares how free Stallman's device really is. When he would speak for better open source devices, he would actually make progress. Right now is Shuttleworth advancing the free software movement to be accessible for everyone.<p>Reminds me of these ultra leftists, who declare their own government and live without electricity and fresh water. What do they achieve in the big picture? They do this just to feel better themself.<p>Linus Torvalds is the man who made everything possible. Google/Facebook would never have existed with a Hurd kernel and Git is now the big accelerator of open source. Stallman started it, but what did he achieve significant in the last 20 years?

You have to give the guy some credit; Stallman believes in the free software movement, fights for it, and refuses to compromise his rights or values.

When this link appears on HN I make a quick diff on two things and none of them change: what Stallman uses and what the comments are (I can make a bet I'll see comments about his mail forwarded web pages). And there are also comments about how GPL is restrictive and BSD is not...<p>But hey - this guy has principles and sticks to his guns. I respect him for that and I don't give a dime if he uses a one inch display on a PC with 64K of RAM

Sadly, this didn't actually provide the details of the most interesting bit of this setup: a separate system that receives URLs via email and emails back a text version of the webpage, which allows integrating browsing into an almost entirely offline batch-processing setup.

&#62;<i>"Once or twice or maybe three times a day I connect and transfer mail in and out. Before sending mail, I always review and revise the outgoing messages. That gives me a chance to catch mistakes and faux pas."</i><p>I consider that a practice worthy of adoption.

The Lemote link was broken when I was reading the article. This may be the updated link?<p><a href="http://www.lemote.com/en/products/Notebook/2010/0310/112.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.lemote.com/en/products/Notebook/2010/0310/112.htm...</a>

Some comments on the other posts here: I often find people to be most interesting and potentially valuable to communicate with when I don't totally agree with them. I don't agree with some of Richard's positions but acknowledge his huge contributions. I believe that he deserves some positive karma every time I use Emacs, gcc toolchain, various GNU utilities, and software and services built using GNU software (Google, Twitter, many libraries and applications, etc.) His knowledge, talent, and works are broad and deep in scope. It is interesting to hear so much dislike for the guy, but people have the rights to their opinions.

This has been on here a couple of times already.<p>I respect his Setup, but i think if your not the founder of the Free Software Movement, this is a bit extreme ;)

5 years back when Mr.Stallman worried about Privacy,Free Software I used to think he is nuts.. Now with SOPA/PIPA scenario its nuts to not listen him. So now i'm following his advice i will never move my data to Cloud.....

Richard Stallman's Computer Setup <i>from 2 years ago</i>

To understand Stallman, I highly recommend one read up on the history of Lisp Machines. Wikipedia's page is actually fairly decent: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_machines" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_machines</a><p>In particular, I think this passage give some key insight into how Stallman developed his philosophy:<p>&#62; <i>Around this time Symbolics (Noftsker's company) began operations – it had been hindered by Noftsker's promise to give Greenblatt a year’s head start, and by severe delays in procuring venture capital. Symbolics still had the major advantage that while 3 or 4 of the AI Lab hackers had gone to work for Greenblatt, a solid 14 other hackers had signed onto Symbolics. There were two AI Lab people who did not get hired by either: Richard Stallman and Marvin Minsky. Stallman, however, blamed Symbolics for the decline of the hacker community that had centered around the AI lab. For two years, from 1982 to the end of 1983, Stallman worked by himself to clone the output of the Symbolics programmers, with the aim of preventing them from gaining a monopoly on the lab's computers.</i>

It's awesome how small this entry is compared to what other developers would describe as their setup.

Very narrow minded in my option. There's a reason why people prefer an iPad over a Lemote Yeelong. There is more to life than principles. I do respect his opinion but if he would like to continue to make a difference in the open software community he could stop spending so much time in email and concentrate on technology advancements and how to promote open source.

I am curious to know what cloud services he uses if any. I'm researching alternatives to proprietary/hosted software for some of my important data so I can avoid the privacy and security issues. Some of the services I would like to replace are GMail/Calendar/Contacts, Lastpass, RescueTime. Any suggestions?

Walking the talk is a big thing with RMS.

Incidentally same computer I have.<p>Linux siguran 3.1.0-1-loongson-2f #1 Tue Jan 10 15:20:55 UTC 2012 mips64 GNU/Linux<p>It's fun for a hobby because it feels like the old days of Linux when you had to patch and compile a lot to get things running.<p>Of course my other computers are macs, this is just for the commute to work on some hobby stuff.

Are there really no other fully free systems available on the market by now?

Hey! That might be the set up I was looking for in order to hack on my clojure project during a 14 hours flight I will be taking in couple of months. At least it's not gonna take battery.

Seeing larger developers using a really small computer with a really small screen is similar to seeing a basketball player driving a compact. It makes you wonder... Why?

This is from Jan 23, 2010. It's probably not his current setup.

Wonder if this netbook has open source hard disk firmware?

I love that Sears was the most likely seller, when I did a product search for the Lemote Yeeloong.

Stallman...the uncompromising philosopher! 'Gotta love 'em!

It is a pretty crappy setup (just my humble opinion), but if he is happy with it...

"Hey, I'm a geek; it's my <i>job</i> to make things difficult for myself."

Not a very appealing setup in 2012.

The saddest part of all this is that kids will read it and think "this is what 'sticking to my principles' is going to get me, so fuck it."<p>RMS used up his "I was there when" cred a long time ago. He's now the demented grandparent no one has the heart to tell to STFU when he yells at the TV. And yet simultaneously, one of the greats.