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Andreas Kling

Creator of SerenityOS

in developer, linux

Who are you, and what do you do?

I am Andreas Kling, founder of the SerenityOS project. After finishing a drug rehab program in 2018, I decided to build a new operating system to keep myself busy and stay healthy. I put my code on GitHub and kept hacking away on it, and over time it grew into an active open source community with people from all around the world joining in.

Roughly 6 months into the project, I began recording videos of myself working on the system and posting them to my YouTube channel. I also started a tradition of putting out a monthly update video where I demo recent changes in SerenityOS. The YouTube channel has grown to a decent size (28,000 subscribers at the time of writing) and it's one of the main ways people learn about the operating system.

In May 2021, I quit my job to focus on SerenityOS full time.

What hardware do you use?

A while back, some very generous people on the /r/SerenityOS subreddit decided to build me a computer! They started sending me random parts from around the world until I had enough to assemble a full machine. That's the system I use today, although I've also added a dedicated GPU for faster video encoding.

CPU: Intel i9-9900k PSU: Seasonic 560W Cooling: Corsair H115i RGB Platinum AIO liquid CPU cooler Memory: 64GB DDR4 Hard drive: 240 GB SSD Keyboard: Logitech K740 Illuminated keyboard Mouse: Logitech M330 Silent Plus Graphics card: NVIDIA RTX 2060

In my YouTube videos, I use a Blue Yeti microphone and a Logitech C920 webcam.

And what software?

My main development machine runs Ubuntu MATE. This is of course temporary until SerenityOS becomes the more comfortable option! :^)

For software development, I mainly use the CLion C++ IDE from JetBrains, and Neovim for other text editing. For video production and live streaming, I use OBS Studio, Kdenlive, Audacity, and GIMP.

Outside of programming and video production, I do almost everything else in the browser, and I use multiple browsers daily (a habit I picked up for compatibility testing while working on Apple Safari.) At the moment I have Microsoft Edge, Chromium, Firefox and GNOME Web installed.

What would be your dream setup?

I'm super happy with my current hardware already - the main thing I would love to add is some physical space. We're looking for a larger (and cheaper) place right now. It would also be nice to have something elevated that my cat could sit on when she visits me at my desk.