A server under heavy load takes an unpredictable amount of time to shut down. Shell scripts have found no sensible way to make restart work reliably. Systemd helps there with management of process groups.

The problem is with companies refusing access to the specs of their hardware so others can write drivers for them.

Linus Torvalds advanced things a little.

Happens all the time. It's so sad that as a result, we cannot have attractive, interesting people around any more, just more of those male programmers.

I do programming and systems administration, both mostly in Perl.
This computer is more than five years old, a Gigabyte GA-EP45 motherboard, an Intel Core 2 quad CPU at 2.66GHz
maxed out at 8GB RAM, swap often used little; currently, less than 1%.
2 1TB disks in software RAID 1
Has never run any OS but Fedora, now F22.
XFCE desktop.
Three monitors: two 27" Kogan 2560x1440 displays, one Samsung 2443 1920x1200
AMD HD5450 with heatsink only, no fan, for reliability. DisplayPort, DVI, VGA outputs drive each monitor.

Perl still runs fast.

And, before running, detects typing mistakes in variables when you "use strict;" (which, of course, your editor automatically inserts). Python has this little problem that such mistypings are still a run-time error. When the code that uses them executes. Oh the horror.

Yes, I did that. It helped a lot.

I worked in a computing department in a college that had a lecturer from a particular university co-located, sitting close to my desk. I was interested in plagiarism management, and was using the Moss system from Berkeley together with code I had written to manage plagiarism in an unofficial way in my programming classes.

Official paths were blocked at my college by a rule requiring expulsion and exclusion for a minimum of two years, so plagiarism "did not happen" there due to this "death penalty", so I was on my own.

The lecturer from that university told me about efforts to clamp down on plagiarism exceeding two-thirds of first year computer science students at his university. The head of the school at his university announced the initiative to punish those that were identified as guilty. The students demanded each have a proper hearing, and students from the law faculty offered to help in the representation of these hundreds of students. In the hearings, students were demanding compensation from the university for loss of their intellectual property due to the "obvious lack of security" of the assignment submission system. There were other, more complex and more imaginative defences. There were few lecturers and staff to represent the school, and unending numbers of students, each requiring a minimum of a 45 minute hearing, with appeals and other procedures demanded in addition. The lecturer told me that the head of school backed down, admitting defeat.

Let's hope Duke has a more positive outcome.

IEEE shows "PERL" at number 11. IEEE, It's Perl, not PERL.

Randal L. Schwartz (Floss Weekly, Schwarzian transform) would be proud of me.

I run unison from cron; it is hard to see how other people do without it.

Windows comes pre-installed with loads of crapware to make money for the OEM.

I hate that.

Linux comes unencumbered with Digital Restrictions Management, without the need to paff around with anti-virus software.

All the software on my Linux system comes with source code. I can change that. I can fix it when it breaks for me. I can share my changes with any one else. I'm not stuck with hanging on the phone sending the vendor data I know they won't need to solve the problem. I love all that freedom.

I am a keen listener to FLOSS Weekly hosted by Randal Schwartz, and am astounded at how often he is away on a geek cruise ship, evidently having a great time, and learning from other geeks. I cannot imagine a better person to address this question to.

The Gimp is software that I am now happily familiar with, and want to improve my knowledge of.

I buy books to learn more about how to do things I want to do with the Gimp.

My hope is that money will become available to pay Gimp developers to more rapidly produce such wonderful things as the GEKL support and make the Gimp more useful to professionals as well as people like me.

I can't vote here.

If someone is paying me, then they get to say what will change. I might tweak it to do something that helps others, especially if it helps the work that pays me. And I always aim to do it right. But if no one is paying me, then the most important input is from me. If other people want something implemented, I will always listen.

But that is all obvious, isn't it?

We usually make several production releases every day. We have a complete configuration management system (conform) that totally automates building a server and releasing software. We have a complete dev environment and two test environments. We test code in pre-production first. But the key is our automation. It automates releases and rollbacks. Without complete automation (and competence), we would be submerged in paper work and bleary-eyed midnight releases like other teams in the company.