My name is Wally (Walter) Wilson, and I am a GNU/Linux user.

My current line-up includes:

• Mepis 6.5:  Acer Aspire 3690 laptop
  • 512megs RAM, Celeron 1.6, 70gig HDD
• Mepis 6.5 64-bit:  Dell Dimension C521
  • 1gig RAM, AMD 64 x2 3800+, 250gig SATA HDD
• Xandros 3.0.2 OCE:  An old HP Vectra business machine (at my cabin in the woods)
  • 256megs RAM, PIII-350, 20gig HDD

I spent 12 years in the US Coast Guard, and was an aviation machinist mate, flight mechanic, rescue hoist operator, and search-and-rescue aircrewman on HH-3f helicopters, and then on HH-60j (JayHawk) helicopters.  I was medically retired after sustaining some permanent and disabling injuries in the line of duty.

I am now (just finishing up my last class: statistics) an environmental horticulturist/urban forester/restoration ecologist in Seattle, WA, US.  I am involved in integrated pest management research on western tent caterpillars, as well.  I also have a great need to make extensive use of GIS (geographical information systems) software to keep track of overlapping data (forests, streams, topography, climate, disease/infestation areas, etc.) so they can be mapped and modelled.  For this I use one program (HUGELY EXPENSIVE) in the Windows world, and I use qGIS on SimplyMEPIS. 

QGIS is not huge and fancy (like that really expensive Windows-only program), but it does import all of my data sets, and it works well...very well.

I regularly use:

• OpenOffice Calc
• OpenOffice Word
• qGIS
• salSTAT
• Kivio
• Xfig
• Kjots
• Photo Manager (digiKam) for my Kodak z740
• Inkscape
• The GIMP
• gRPN calculator
• Palm Pilot Tool (Palm Zire72)
• Plucker
• Korganizer
• Firefox
• gFTP
• Kwireless
• Clipboard utility applet
• Online Dictionary applet
• kGPG
• Kmail
  • ClamAV
  • Bogofilter (anti-spam, and it works great!)
• f-prot antivirus scanner
• PDF-creating CUPS driver
• Music Manager (Amarok)
• Grip
• Audacity
• Xine
• kdiff3
• krename
• regexxer
• khexedit
• rsync
• TinyCA
• Backgammon
• PySol

I also am always on the prowl for new/different software to compile, and new/better ways to break my computer.  :-)  I promise to share!

If you ever need any help, please feel free to Email me (justwally@mousemeadows.com)   I have plenty of experience with Linux, especially different flavors of Debian (like SimplyMEPIS and Xandros).  I'm also a KDE user, and I abhor Gnome (Gnome is, to me, infuriatingly dumbed-down).

Other hobbies include tent-camping, hiking, fly-tying, fly-fishing, kayaking, canoeing, gardening (vegetables and other stuff), computers, Internet-stuff, 4-wheeling, wood carving, looking out for birds and bugs, playing the harmonica (when no one is around), and wood-working. 

My personal Webpages and photo albums are at www.savagehamsters.com.