Open Sauce, reborn.

Posted on October 2, 2010 by Peter Loshin

If you read the popular computer magazine Computer Power User during the first decade of this century, you may have seen my column, Open Sauce. From the first issue of CPU until a year or so ago, you could read my reporting from the front lines of the open source movement.

I enjoyed writing those columns, and was always gratified by the response from readers. So, I’ll be re-running some of those columns, along with a bit of commentary to bring the stories up to date–and I’ll be writing new Open Sauce columns and publishing them right here.

Whether you’re an old fan or new one, thanks!

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Interesting list apps

Posted on September 30, 2010 by Peter Loshin

There’s a particular application that I want in the worst possible way, but if I can’t find it I’ll just go ahead and make it myself (if I can figure out how to actually do that). Meanwhile, I keep searching for list-oriented applications. Here are a few that I’ve found so far:

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Quote of the Day

Posted on September 30, 2010 by Peter Loshin

I like the qotd concept, and always have. It’s amazing to me that such a simple tool can be so interesting. As implemented since the dawn of time on UNIX systems, fortune offers an astonishing amount of functionality in such a trivial program: basically, it just pulls out a random quote listed in a simple text file, but with lots of command-line knobs and dials.
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What can Google tell me about lists?

Posted on September 30, 2010 by Peter Loshin

I’m not the only person in world to have developed the possibly unfortunate habit of googling whenever I have a question of some sort. That’s how it’s going with lists, for me. Try it yourself, Google lists. As you’re doing it, wonder (as I did), “Is Google really anything more than a huge list of every (Google-able) web page in the internets?”
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I’ve been thinking a lot about lists, lately.

Posted on September 23, 2010 by Peter Loshin

You can’t get away from lists. They are everywhere, and they are fundamental to almost everything we do. That is, if you think about lists the same way I’ve been thinking about them.

What is a list? I’m going to propose that we define a list as a collection of items, all of which have something in common. Even a list whose member items have nothing in common could be considered to have in common the property of not having anything in common. But that’s a philosophical diversion. Likewise for saying things like, “It’s not a collection of items, but a collection of references to items”, or, “But you have to define what an ‘item’ is, first”.
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On the stability of Linux (and other UNIX-type OSes)

Posted on September 22, 2010 by Peter Loshin

You may have noticed that there is a gap since my last post; sorry about that.

What you may not have noticed is that I’m migrating all my blogs into WordPress. It’s really quite great, and I like having much more control over how things are working here.

I was surprised at just how easy it was to install WordPress, as well as how straightforward it was to migrate my content: I just needed to export my content into a text file formatted for WordPress, then import that file into WordPress. A little fiddling with user names (so you know it was me that wrote all the articles here), and I was done. Quite literally, a matter of a few minutes, all together.

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Linux tips, hints and how-to’s.

Posted on July 29, 2008 by Peter Loshin

Here are some tips, hints, and how-to’s for Linux fans of all stripes. But don’t just read the articles–keep going for even more help and insight from the readers’ comments.

Let me know how you like these links–and if you have any good ones to add!

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Good advice about backups

Posted on July 17, 2008 by Peter Loshin

There are many approaches to doing backups. Unfortunately, most of them are some variation of "it’s too much trouble". But even if you are doing backups, this article reminds us that Your backup is only as good as your last restore.

Which brings me to another article about backup, this one much more technical and complete, from IBM: Automate backups on Linux. Maybe not everything you need to know about automating your backups, but it’s a good place to start if you need to know your backups are being done, and being done securely.

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Command line-fu from Foogazi

Posted on July 7, 2008 by Peter Loshin

You only really get better at the command line by using the command line, so it might seem counter-intuitive to write about 10 Linux Commands You Probably Don’t Use. If you don’t use the command line, there’s a lot more than 10 that you don’t use–but if you do use the command line at all, or what to use it more, definitely read that link.

Check out Foogazi for more Linux tips/news/etc. The last week or so seem to have been heavy on the "what’s so great about Linux" articles that Linux-lovers always love, but there’s plenty of other how-to goodness in there.

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More Linux Tips from IBM

Posted on June 2, 2008 by Peter Loshin

There are good reasons so many Linux wizards like, no, LOVE the command line. If you know what you’re doing, it can be way faster and easier to use than fiddling around with mouse pointers and windows and so on.

IBM is a great resource for Linux how-to (see IBM: Great stuff, hard to find), and here’s another excellent article: UNIX tips: Learn 10 more good UNIX usage habits. Which is, in turn, a follow-on to the also excellent article UNIX tips: Learn 10 good UNIX usage habits by Michael Stutz.

Enjoy!

Posted in Command Line, How-To, IBM Linux Articles | Leave a comment