LINUX STUFF - TIPS AND TRICKS

Or... The Diary of an Open Source Addict...

February 10th, 2009 - Haaaa, yes, Linux...

It’s a practical example of socialism at work in computing. An Open Source operating system - wow, I just noticed how many O’s and S’s there are in there - put together by a global collective of programmers. I came from an official Microsoft background, having drunk the Kool-Aid@ and believing that nothing done in any kind of volunteer work would fly long term - that’s my view from 2001. Full disclosure: my employer used an MS environment, and my boss at the time was a total MS-head. The state of the kernel back then wasn’t anything to write home about and, quite frankly, for someone used to the Apple and Microsoft server-client solutions, well, it was hell.

So, jump a couple of years - and jobs - to 2007. After my gig at the ms-friendly shop, I had two contracts, one with a small startup and the other with a mid-sized company that where both running their web, mail and file sharing services on Linux, serving windows clients. Over the four and a half years leading up to 2007, I was massively exposed to the penguin and, as the distributions got better, started enjoying what the OS had to offer. What actually got me really hooked were some neat appliances; Monowall (then PFSense, which is based on Monowall), and a couple little NAS projects. Actually, the Monowall I set up six years ago at the startup still runs their main internet feed, as far as I know (yup, it’s a CD and floppy system and I don’t think it’s ever been rebooted since I left).

I couldn’t leave well enough alone, so I took a one year program at a local college to learn Linux in a formal environment, and that filled in a lot of the blanks. As a result, I picked up a bunch of discarded old PCs from work and set up a complete network in my basement, to my better half’s consternation. The horror. It didn’t get better with time; I ended up getting a bunch of Pentium 3 class 1U and 2U servers on eBay to replace the desktops; they take less space, but the basement’s a whole lot warmer - which is fine in Winter, but not so great in the Summer. Thank God my lady tolerates it (Yes Dear works wonders, something my fellow male comrades in geekdom may want to practice as Valentine’s Day approaches, specially if you plan to try and sneak a dual Xeon by her...).

What am I leading to? Well, if you’re willing to go through the learning curve, Linux satisfies. Greatly. But that doesn’t mean you have to suffer, so I’m making a deal with you, dear visitor/reader/automated bot from the Google overmind: if you don’t rag on me for my past life of Windows/Mac bigotry, I’ll disclose the neat stuff I find and learn. And I’ll keep it close to the heart, i.e. I will post the recipes that work for me. Bonus: I’ll even have a cheat sheet, with commands that will make your life easier.

So dig in. Penguin’s pretty tasty, when it’s done right.

My Linux Cheat Sheet