My oldest computer turns 20 today
My oldest computer turns 20 today, August 30, 2025. I use this data because, according to the Dell service information for it, that’s the date that this Dell Optiplex was shipped from the Dell factory. Unable to even install current versions of Windows, I keep it running using the most current versions of Fedora Linux.
Building a random text generator
Generate your own random placeholder text by writing a few lines in Bash.
Exploring GNU Algol 68
Since early 2019, I’ve spent some time here and there refreshing my appreciation for the Algol 68 programming language, courtesy of Marcel van der Veer’s...
Why I switched to Linux
When I first encountered Linux as an operating system, it wasn't exactly love at first sight. As a kid, I learned computing on an Apple...
10 reasons to use Linux
Southern humorist, newspaper editor and columnist, comedian, and author, Lewis Grizzard once said that there are two kinds of naked in the south. There's naked...
Good Reasons for Linux as your daily driver
Linux stands out as a consumer operating system thanks to its unique blend of freedom, performance, and community-driven innovation. Whether you’re on a budget laptop,...
End of 10…
There’s an interesting new movement gearing up as Win10 nears the end of it’s supported lifecycle. It’s called, “End of 10…” and can help keep 400 million computers out of the recycling stream — or worse, landfills.
Getting started with the Linux cat command
Cat is a fairly simple tool designed to concatenate and write file(s) to your screen, which is known as standard output (stdout). You can expect...
How to choose a computer store
I’ve never purchased a computer or components from a big box store like Best Buy. And I’ve never had one repaired there either.
Manage multiple service instances with systemctl
Services, services, services. A service is a huge part of computing. You're reading this article on a service. Your computer is running services. The internet...
A great year for Both.org
Both.org is having a great year thanks to readers like you. We’ve got some really great stats and I thought it would be good to share them with you.
Xfce lock screen fails
I like and frequently use the Xfce desktop because of it's simplicity and relatively small resource footprint. But sometimes, like all things tech, things break....
Introducing Jan: A Privacy-Centric, Open-Source GPT for AI Enthusiasts
Are you looking for a locally hosted open source GPT that protects your privacy while allowing you to leverage the latest AI models? Then you need to download Jan. Jan is easy to install on Linux, macOS, and Windows and has excellent documentation to guide that process.
Begin the Journey: Finding a practical starting point with Free Open Source Software
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on 2025-07-20 at https://beardystarstuff.net/ and is reproduced here with the author’s permission. As I’m writing this post it’s...
The IBM PC — 44 years old today
On August 12, 1981, the IBM PC — the IBM 5150 — was announced to the world. I’d known about it for several months as I’d written the training course for the IBM Customer engineers who were slated to repair it.