The Linux Foundation regularly awards scholarships as part of its Linux Training Scholarship Program. In the five years that the Linux Foundation has hosted this program, it has awarded a total of 34 scholarships totaling more than $100,000 in free training to students and professionals. In conjunction with this program, we are featuring recent scholarship recipients in the hope that their stories will inspire others.
Kyri’ay Vanderpoel, 22, works as a helpdesk technician at Systeem Medical while studying computer science at the University of North Texas, where he is taking courses in Network Security, Cryptography, and Penetration Testing. He started using Arch Linux when he was 17, and he’s been learning about Linux ever since. Kyri’ay, a scholarship recipient in the Whiz Kids category, thinks a course in Linux will allow him to be more useful in his job and prepare him for his goal of working in a security-related field.
How did you become interested in Linux and open source?
I started putting together Bitcoin miners with Arch Linux when I was 17 and I fell in love. As a gamer, I didn’t have a reason to invest in a Linux machine until my sophomore year of college. I purchased a refurbished C720 Chromebook, installed Xubuntu to start with, and landed on Arch Linux again. I’ve been working with this machine extensively as well as the Debian network controllers we have set up onsite for clients at work.
What Linux Foundation course are you planning to take with your scholarship?
Advanced Linux System Administration and Networking (LFS230).
How do you expect to use the knowledge you gain from this course?
Understanding Linux networking is essential to all of the career paths I am pursuing. I am particularly interested in using the knowledge I gain from this course to set up a lab environment to practice virtualization deployment and penetration 
testing.
What are your career goals? How do you see a Linux Foundation course helping you achieve those goals?
My primary goal is to actively participate in the open source community for my career. Ideally, I would like to pursue a mix of virtualization, security, and programming. The course I am taking with allow me to foster networking skills that are applicable across these disciplines.
What other hobbies or projects are you involved in? Do you participate in any open source projects at this time?
I try to pursue hobbies away from technology since I spend so much time working with it. I enjoy recreational outdoor sports, jazz guitar, and travel, although much of my free time is spent learning. I have a solo project that I am working on that should be ready for GitHub in a month or two, but I am looking for active projects to work on alongside my own.
Read more:
Linux Foundation Scholarship Recipient: Erich Noriega, SysAdmin Superstar
Linux Foundation Scholarship Recipient: Eva Tanaskoska, Women in Linux
Linux Foundation Scholarship Recipient: Enrique Sevillano, SysAdmin Superstar
Linux Foundation Scholarship Recipient: Anthony Hooper, Whiz Kid
Linux Foundation Scholarship Recipient: Yashdeep Saini, Developer Do-Gooder
Linux Foundation Scholarship Recipient: Kiran Padwal, Kernel Guru
Twitter is a social networking service that is a bit of a conundrum to many. At any given time it can be used to connect with people of a like mind, and at another it’s an exercise in frustration, thanks to the never-ending stream of data. But for those that depend upon the service as a means to either stay connected, promote a product or service, or even (on certain levels) research a given topic, it’s a boon.
But for Linux users, the client side of things has lagged behind for some time. Thankfully, you can now find solid clients that do the job and do it well. Back in “the day” amazing tools like Tweetdeck were client-based tools for Windows and Mac. Running the best of the best required you install WINE and download the .msi installer and cross your fingers. That was then…this is now. Most services like Tweetdeck now run flawlessly in nearly every browser (even Midori).
But even though the browser has become King of the apps, there are still desktop and command line clients for the likes of Twitter available—each of which offers a variety of features. But if one of those desktop clients won’t do it for you, I’ll show you a handy trick to help make one browser-based client behave a bit more like a desktop client.
Let’s first look at what I consider to be the two best in breed Twitter clients for Linux.
Choqok is the Persian word for sparrow and is a Twitter client that has an impressive list of features. Although it is a KDE-centric app (and does run a bit better in its native environment), Choqok will perform splendidly in nearly all desktop environments and it supports the latest Twitter API. Choqok also enjoys panel integration (even with Ubuntu Unity), where you can do quick posts, update your timeline, and configure the app. But what is most impressive about this desktop client is its interface. Unlike Tweetdeck or Hootsuite (which can both very quickly become overwhelming), Choqok simplifies the Twitter experience and even helps to curtail the insanely fast flowing stream of tweets (that can cause you to miss out on 
something you actually want to see).
Installing Choqok is actually very simple, as it is found in your standard repositories. You can open up the Ubuntu Software Center (or whatever you happen to use—AppGrid, Synaptic, etc.) and, with a single click, install the client. The nice thing about installing from the Ubuntu Software Center is that this is one instance where you actually get the latest release.
Once you’ve installed it, I recommend logging into your Twitter account using the desktop’s default browser. With that out of the way, fire up Choqok and then (when prompted) request an authentication token. Once you have the token, copy/paste it into the requesting Choqok window and grant the app permission to your Twitter account. You will finally be greeted by the Choqok main window (Figure A).
Beyond the interface, one feature you will want to make use of is the Choqok filtering system. With the help of this filtering system you can make it far easier to see exactly what you want from your Twitter feeds. This is actually one area where Choqok excels. Here’s how it works.
Open up Choqok and then click Tools > Configure Filters. When the new window opens, click the + button to open the filter definition window (Figure B).
At this point you have to make a few choices. The first is the Filter field. There are four options:
Post Text: filter the text of a post
Author Username: filter the name of a Twitter user
Reply to User: filter replies from a user
Author Client: filter through the client used by the author.
Let’s say you want to set up a filter for posts containing the keyword linux. To do that you would set the following options:
Select Post Text from the Filter field
Select Contain from the Filter type
Enter linux in the Text field
Select Highlight Posts from the filter action.
Once you’re done, click OK and the filter is ready. These are considered quick filters, so they are applied immediately. How do they work? Simple. Since we selected Highlight Posts from the Filter action, all posts that match a filter will be highlighted with a red box as your timeline updates (Figure C).
This makes it incredibly easy to scan through your main Twitter feed to find posts related to your filters.
Here is another simple-to-use Linux Twitter client with an eye for outstanding interface. Once again you won’t be inundated with a blinding fast timeline that’s nearly impossible to follow. Corebird is to GNOME what Choqok is for KDE…and it does so with a bit more zip. It offers a very similar feature set to Choqok and can be installed from a specific PPA. Here are the steps for installation:
Open up a terminal window
Add the PPA with the command sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/corebird
Update apt with the command sudo apt-get update
Install Corebird with the command sudo apt-get install corebird
Allow the installation to complete
If you run into dependency errors during installation, solve the errors with the command sudo apt-get install -f
One of the best features of Corebird is the inclusion of lists. This makes following a collection of users so much easier (especially when you have thousands of people you follow). Say, for example, you follow a number of users interested in (or posting about) linux and you want to be able to quickly see what they’ve posted on a regular basis. You can create a list for these users by doing the following:
Open Corebird
Click on the list icon in the left navigation (third up from the bottom)
Enter a name for the list
Click Create.
Now that the list is created, you have to add users. To do this, simply find a user in your timeline (there’s a handy search function for that) and then, from the drop-down in their profile, select Add to/Remove from list. In the popup window, locate the newly created list(s), select the list, and click Save (Figure D). The user has now been added to the list. Continue adding users until your list is complete.
To read posts associated with that list, click on the List icon, locate the list in question, and double click its name. All posts from users on the list will appear in the feed.
At one time, the only way you could enjoy Tweetdeck was to install the Chrome addon and view it from your browser. Now, however, Tweetdeck works perfectly from within Firefox. However, if you happen to be a Chrome (or Chromium) user, here’s a cool trick. You can create a launcher for Tweetdeck such that it will open the webpage in its own app-like window (without the extraneous web browser bits and pieces). I’ll demonstrate how to do that in Elementary OS Freya.
Install the Tweetdeck addon to Chrome (or Chromium)
From within Chrome, click the Apps button
Locate the Tweetdeck icon
Right-click the Tweetdeck icon
Click Create Shortcuts
De-select Desktop
Right-click the Tweetdeck icon again
Select Open as window
Click on the desktop menu (aka Slingshot Menu)
Locate and click the Tweetdeck entry to open the “app”
That’s it. You should see Tweetdeck open in its very own app-like window (Figure E).
While the Tweetdeck window is open, you can right-click its icon on the dock and select Keep In Dock to add a launcher on the dock.
For those who prefer the command line over a GUI, you’re in luck. The TTYtter application is a simple tool you can use to quickly post to Twitter from the command line. It’s easy to install, a bit tricky to set up, and very simple to use.
To install TTYtter, do the following:
Open a terminal window
Issue the command sudo apt-get install ttytter
Type your sudo password and hit Enter
Type y to continue
Allow the installation to complete
Once installed, you run the app with the command ttytter. On first run, the app will request a token and then return a URL that you then must paste into a browser (one that has already logged into your Twitter account). When prompted (in your browser) click the Authorize App button which will present you with an authorization PIN. Enter that PIN into the waiting command prompt (Figure F) and hit Enter. Run the ttytter command again and you will be logged on with your Twitter account.
To post to your account with TTYtter, you simply issue a command as such:
ttytter -status=”The Linux Foundation rocks!”
You can also issue the command ttytter and then hit Enter to get a TTYtter prompt, where you can post status simply by typing your post and hitting Enter (without having to add ttytter -status=””). To exit out of TTYtter, hit CTRL+c.
Personally, of the three GUI options, Tweetdeck is by far the best—but it’s not truly a desktop client. If you’re looking for a straight up desktop Twitter client for Linux, you can’t go wrong with either Choqok or Corebird. If you’re okay with a web-based client, you can always trick Tweetdeck into behaving like a desktop app with my handy little trick (which also works for most desktop environments).
Happy tweeting!
