What is the Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins?
The Unix Philosophy is an important part of what makes Unix unique and powerful. Much has been written about the Unix Philosophy and the Linux philosophy is essentially the same as the Unix philosophy because of its direct line of descent from Unix.
3 steps to identifying Linux system automation candidates
How do you know what to automate first on your network? Here are three steps to put you on the right path. Automating the tasks we perform is one of the most important parts of our jobs as sysadmins.
How to do fast, repeatable Linux installations #2 — Bash scripts + RPM
In Episode 1, How to do fast, repeatable Linux installations #1 -- Bash scripts, I discussed how I used a Bash script after performing a...
Tips for using the ‘ls’ command in Linux
One of the first commands I learned in Linux was ls. Knowing what’s in a directory where a file on your system resides is important....
Linux Malware scanning using ClamAV
Image via Creative Commons, modified by Both.org Introduction There are many different ways of protecting a system, right from keeping the software up-to-date, to removing...
Is Linux Still Linux?
Many things have changed since Linus Torvalds released the Linux kernel in 1992. Is it still Linux — or not?
How to do fast, repeatable Linux installations #1 — Bash scripts
Image by: Opensource.com Some of my articles and an entire book have been about The Linux Philosophy For SysAdmins and its impact on the daily...
Holiday Fireworks
I realized just a few days ago that Both.org should do something to celebrate the U.S. Independence day holiday on the 4th of July. And...
Two open source desktop recording tools
A picture might be worth a thousand words, but a video demonstration can save much talking. I'm a visual learner, so seeing how to do...
The Linux Filesystem Hierarchical Standard
In Linux, and many other operating systems, directories can be structured in a tree-like hierarchy. The Linux directory structure is well defined and documented in the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS). This standard has been put in place to ensure that all distributions of Linux are consistent in their directory usage. Such consistency makes writing and maintaining shell and compiled programs easier for SysAdmins because the programs, their configuration files, and their data, if any, should be located in the standard directories.
Can Windows security get any worse?
Really -- the lack of security. If you've been reading this site or my books for any length of time, you know my attitude towards...
How Both.org is rebuilding a community after the death of an organization
For about ten years, a large number of writers from around the world contributed articles to Opensource.com. OSDC, as we called it, published thousands of articles, helped to guide and mentor many of us as we began or boosted our writing careers. OSDC also helped some of us make connections into the book publishing world. We were a vibrant and active community.
OSDC was created and supported by Red Hat — until it was purchased by IBM and soon deemed extraneous.
Learn how Both.org is rebuilding that community.
Celebrating 30 years of FreeDOS
FreeDOS is a great example of the open source model: developers working together to create new programs
How many usability testers do you need?
It doesn’t take many testers to get results that are “good enough” to improve your design.
Intro to the Linux chgrp and newgrp commands
In a recent article, I introduced the chown command, which is used for modifying ownership of files on systems. Recall that ownership is the combination...
Screencasts for usability testing
With screencasts, you can extend your usability testing.