The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins, Tenet 14 — Use Open Source software
Image by Opensource.com: CC-by-SA 4.0 Author’s note: This article is excerpted in part from chapter 16 of my book, The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins, with...
A short review of Fedora 41
Fedora 41 was released on October 29, and I installed it on my primary workstation within a few minutes after I received the notification. No...
How I reverted from firewalld to iptables — and why
First, let's get something straight. Linux has only one firewall. One. Netfilter is a part of the Linux kernel and it implements the logic contained...
A day at ATO’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Conference (DEI)
Sunday, October 27, Yesterday as I write this, was an amazing day. The All Things Open DEI Conference featured some amazing speakers who offered some...
The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins, Tenet 13 — Make programs portable
Image by Opensource.com: CC-by-SA 4.0 Author’s note: This article is excerpted in part from chapter 15 of my book, The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins, with...
What does it mean to be a SysAdmin?
A lot of us call ourselves SysAdmins (aka System Administrators1) and, sometimes, that's what our job title might be. You might not even realize that...
Welcome, “We (heart) Open Source”
We ❤️ Open Source is "A community education resource." A recent article at FOSS Force, "‘All Things Open’ Revives the OpenSource.com Community Abandoned by Red...
The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins, Tenet 12 — Use separate filesystems for data
Author’s note: This article is excerpted in part from chapter 14 of my book, The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins, with changes. There is a lot...
Why I won’t use the BtrFS filesystem
Over the more than twenty-five years I have been using Linux, the default filesystem for Red Hat Linux (not RHEL) and Fedora has evolved considerably....
What are load averages — and what do they mean?
Most system monitoring tools like top, htop, atop, glances, and others display individual processes and information about them. These tools also display three numbers called,...
The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins, Tenet 11 — Store data in open formats
Image by Opensource.com: CC-by-SA 4.0 Author’s note: This article is excerpted in part from chapter 13 of my book, The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins, with...
Linux User Accounts and Security
Author’s note: This article is excerpted in part from Appendix 1 of my book, Linux for Small Business Owners, with some changes to update it...
How I use SSHFS to access remote filesystems
I've taken a lot of digital pictures over the years, and scanned a bunch more prints into digital format. I've also collected a good number...
What is an operating system?
The operating system manages the operation of the computer and of the application software which runs on the computer. The definition A simple definition of...
The dd command — the Disk Destroyer
Yes -- dd -- the disk destroyer. The command that strikes fear into the hearts of SysAdmins everywhere. It did for me, too, until I...
The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins, Tenet 10 — Use common sense naming
Typing is not my forte and the Lazy SysAdmin does everything possible to reduce typing. I take that seriously. This tenet expands on that but there is much more to it than just reducing the amount of typing I need to do. It is also about the readability of scripts and naming things so that they are more understandable.