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In most of the places I have worked there has been a centralized computer and application standard that was more or less mandatory for all employees. There are benefits of such an environment, which I will not go into in this piece, but for me, as an open source and Linux enthusiast, I try to use the tools I'm used to and like.

The era of microservices calls for a new approach to logging with built-in infrastructure for both aggregation and storage. Multiple applications running in isolated containers require a specialized approach to make sure all data is collected, stored and usable later.

If you haven’t been looking to open source to help address your security needs, it’s a shame—you’re missing out on a growing number of freely available tools for protecting your networks, hosts, and data. The best part is, many of these tools come from active projects backed by well-known sources you can trust...

I've previously written about the fact the Apache Software Foundation offers an exemplar of large-scale open source governance. Even with those supreme qualities, things can still go wrong. Apache offers some of the best protections for open source contributors but its mature rules can be manipulated by skilled politicians and/or determined agendas. What can we learn from their experience? read more

One of the common criticisms of open source in general, especially when it comes to open cloud platforms such as OpenStack and ownCloud, is lack of truly top-notch documentation and training resources. The criticism is partly deserved, but there are some free documentation resources that benefit from lots of contributors.

In this edition of our open gaming roundup, we take a look at the SteamVR for Linux beta, a new open source game engine, and more. Open gaming roundup for February 12-25, 2017 read more

A few hours after dark one evening earlier this month, a small quadcopter drone lifted off from the parking lot of Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, Israel. It soon trained its built-in camera on its target, a desktop computer's tiny blinking light inside a third-floor office nearby.

In most cases, when a machine crashes or fails, we lose whatever we had loaded into memory, which for some applications can result in quite a bit of time and effort to recover when the system comes back online. At LinuxCon Europe, Maciej Maciejewski, Senior Software Engineer at Intel, talked about how persistent memory can be used to retain its contents after a power failure.

If you happen to administer one or more OpenLDAP servers, you know that they can be a challenge to work with. Working with LDAP itself can be a bit tricky; to that end, many opt to go the phpLDAPadmin route (which is an amazing tool for individual servers). There’s one particular piece of software that does an outstanding job of managing multiple LDAP servers: Apache Directory Studio.

Suppose you are a system administrator in a company where teams mostly work on Linux with limited privileges. Now imagine a situation where members of one of the teams - as part of some new work - need to frequently edit a file that requires superuser privileges. What would you do?

In this week's top 5, I highlight an intro to the Linux boot, a primer on the ESP8266 board, Linux command-line tools for data analysis, a Python script to find corrupted images, and open source applications for a Windows machine.

VIA unveiled an SODIMM-style COM based on its Cortex-A9 WM8850 SoC, with 512MB RAM and 8GB eMMC, plus Ethernet, CSI, graphics, USB, and serial ports. The 68.6 x 43mm “SOM-6X50” computer-on-module appears to be VIA’s second-ever ARM COM.

SSL security allows users to trust the authenticity of a site’s content. While you can host an SSL blog on both GitHub and GitLab pages, only GitLab supports SSL for custom domains. This article shows you how to use Pelican and Let’s Encrypt to produce... Continue Reading →

If you love technology, you can find a space for yourself and connect with others around mutual interests, according to Avni Khatri, president of Kids on Computers (KoC), a nonprofit that sets up computer labs using donated hardware and open source software in areas where kids have no other access to technology.  

What is the best language for a budding programmer to get their start with? There are probably as many opinions about which language is best for beginners as there are languages to choose from. And the options change all of the time. When we asked this question two years ago, Python came out on top as the clear winner. But is it still the best choice today? read more

When you mention open source hardware, people typically think about community-backed hacker boards. However, the open hardware movement is growing on many fronts, including medical devices, rocketry and satellites, 3D printers, cameras, VR gear, and even laptops and servers.

You don't have to be a data scientist to be fascinated by the world of machine learning, but a few travel guides might help you navigate the vast universe that also includes big data, artificial intelligence, and deep learning, along with a large dose of statistics and analytics. read more

Why, you ask, should anyone care about Vim? It's complex, it's so old it's a fossil, and you like Kate/Leafpad/Geany/Gedit/Nano/Jed/Lime/Emacs/what-have-you, and the Linux world is cram-full of great text editors, so why bother with Vim?

There are many compelling reasons to use Open Source Software (OSS), all of which add up to a competitive advantage for the organization.

Learn how to work from anywhere and keep your data, identity, and sanity. If your systems administrators are remote workers, you may wish to establish a set of guidelines to help ensure that their workstations pass core security requirements. This will help reduce the risk that they become attack vectors against the rest of your IT infrastructure.