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This issue we asked our experts: Linux and its developers can be pretty smart, but what could be smarter in the world of Linux?
Jonni Bidwell
Douglas Adams once said that he was “rarely happier than when spending an entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand.” It’s a sentiment I share entirely and it’s my general excuse whenever my copy is late for Linux Format.
Neil Bothwick
Most of my life is driven by shell and Python scripts. My ultimate goal in home automation is to reach the level achieved by Wallace in TheWrongTrousers. Although I may have to use Windows to control it as one lesson from that film is that letting anything penguin-powered near such a setup can have disastrous consequences.
Matthew Hanson
I love tinkering and building PCs at home, which inevitably involves a certain amount of troubleshooting to find out what’s gone wrong when things break. This is really frustrating, so I’d like to build a robot that would do that for me. Of course, if I needed to troubleshoot that robot, I’d need to build another… And another… what have I done?
Les Pounder
While I enjoy walking my dog, all that cold wintry weather is awful, even if my beard keeps me cosy. A GPS-controlled dog walking robot would be great. I could plot the route and schedule a time from my phone, and receive Twitter updates during the walk. Oh and it could also get some bread on the way home.
Nick Peers
I’d like to automate our home’s lighting system. First off, it’s good for the environment, but it’s also very good for my wallet. It would also help mitigate the effects of my family’s apparent allergy to switching off lights when they leave a room. When things get really tough, I could always initiate ‘disco mode’ for a family dance off.