A server is a computer with an operating system that is configured to allow other computers to connect to it from across a network. This is one of those arguments that sounds good superficially but which is not borne out by the evidence. If you plan to incorporate such software …

Initially, there is only one directory on the disk, the root directory. But note that this book does not cover the Linux programming environment -for example, there is no tutorial on make in these pages. The count is the number of kernel entities that are dependent on this module. In …

Named pipes (often called FIFOs, short for "first in, first out") are an interprocess communication (IPC) mechanism that provides a communication channel over a file descriptor, accessed via a special file. I say somewhat, because the use of sed in conjunction with pipes is somewhat more comfortable (at least to …

A keyboard is an example of a character device. Not only you earn more capabilities as a developer, you also learn (sometimes the hard way) how to solve issues, monitor your machine for potential problems, configure different components and more. However, free software itself is not. The takeover of software …

Internal commands are, as you might expect, built into the shell program. In contrast, the source code for closed source operating systems is not released to the public for scrutiny, which means customers must rely on the vendor of that closed source operating system to provide secu- rity. Frequent emails …

However, this is no less "programming" than anything else. On these foundationless grounds, what would be the problem with using Skype and locking not only yourself, but also all of your friends, into one company's software and protocol? It uses YUM for package management. A host wishing to know the …

Linux is a popular platform for everything from middleware to embedded computing and clusters, to parallel supercomputers and gadgets. Anyone who knows what they are doing is welcome to develop for the core, and submit patches. All controllers are different, but they usually have registers which control them. A block …

The issues with the Diebold [2] voting systems in the US is testament [3] to the need for transparent systems that are trustworthy. In the above example, the vfat and msdos modules are both dependent on the fat module and so it has a count of 2. For Linux, a …

Therefore, an alias definition appearing on the same line as another command does not take effect until the next line of input is read. Let's face it; Windows OS is vulnerable to different types of attacks (or hacks). Grep will take the output for that command, which is the name …

Proficiency with the proprietary Unixes has always been considered valuable, and it is well rewarded in the job market. The results of such concurrent accesses rely on the ordering of the individual operations, and are generally unpredictable. But I don't see the need for a true Linux Advocate to spotlight …

Linux systems always have a root filesystem. Linux does not. Signals have no inherent relative priorities. Even in the days before the Internet, information and so-called "intellectual property" could still be, and were, exchanged.

A simple guide to resize2fs

For example, software that can be freely modified but that does not have the same strict requirements for redistribution as the GPL is also considered open source. This means that it's not enough for a Linux platform to support what an enterprise needs right now. People who are completely new …

Although initially intimidating for many inexperienced users, using an all-text mode, also referred to as a command line interface (CLI) or a shell, can provide valuable experience for those who want to become truly proficient at Linux. Even so, most software developers, even those who have grown up during this …