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There is one common saying among Linux advocates that is really annoying to hear. There is this constant claim that Linux is "secure by design," or that it is more secure than Redmond's Windows. Let's look at this.

It seems as though everything is a trend. Everything is a buzz word. Perfection is just another abstraction away. It's sad really. The magical software powering the world was really created in 1969 and everyone acts as if the old should be done away with to make room for the new. Is there any other piece of software still running in such a major capacity? UNIX was created in 1969. BSD, Solaris, AIX, HPUX and others are still running. UNIX inspired MINIX, which inspired Linux. Linux powers phones, desktops, servers, mainframes, and super computers. It says that everything is a file. It says that everything should do one thing well. It says that all tools should expect string input and give string output. The simplicity is beautiful.

It is well known that Slackware ships with KDE4 and codecs for various types of audio and video. However, MP4 and a few other codecs are not supported OOB.

Ada is a general purpose programming language with a wide array of features. It's structured, statically typed, imperative, wide-spectrum and OOP capable. It offers tasks, concurrency, synchronous message passing, and a quite a few other modern features. It happens to be my preferred programming language.

The "Introduction to C" series is an ongoing tutorial on the C programming language. It assumes no prior knowledge of the C programming language, and only moderate knowledge of concepts in operating systems, application installation/configuration, and general computer jargon. It will guide readers through basic, intermediate, and advanced concepts in C programming, and end with the Linux programming interface, ncurses, and FLTK.

Patrick Volkerding, the founder of Slackware Linux, agreed to an interview with LQ. Here is what he had to say. Some question were contributed by members. Those questions have the member's name in parenthesis after them. Thanks Pat!

A few days ago, I experienced a motherboard failure. This gave me ample opportunity to do a fresh Linux installation. The first disk on hand was Pardus Kurumsal 2 for AMD64. I thought it would be interesting to give the distribution another spin.

People seem to cleave fanatically to their form factors and platforms. Unfortunately, it's all a load of dingos' kidneys. Let's take a look.

Notice how the 11 comes before the ten. This does signify that eleven is, indeed, louder than ten. Everyone loves hating Unity. It's new. It's different. It's pretty. It's everything that Linux typically isn't. People also love hating Ubuntu in general. While people struggle to make their Linux desktops look and feel more like OSX every day and there are over 9000 different OSX-like docks out there, people apparently really hate having something that looks and acts like an OSX desktop. It's very odd.

We all know these arguments. An outsider comments on Linux distribution plurality and says that the lack of a unified platform is what hurts Linux adoption. This argument is not without its merits, but it isn't exactly a valid argument anyway. The first main issue with it is an obvious one. If no one singularly owns and controls Linux, no one would be able to pull all variants off of the virtual shelves and standardize the community on a singular distribution. Beyond this, there exists an entirely different yet practical reason for distribution plurality that people tend to overlook.

People often look at Slackware with a certain amount of trepidation. It appears complicated, difficult, or tedious. If you ever felt like trying Slackware but didn't because of those fears, this is an article for you. I am going to cover installation step by step, and then proceed to common post install configuration tasks, and a few system management tasks. Before beginning, you need either to have backed up your data, or to have prepared a virtual machine.

In a recent article over at MyBroadband, Alastair Otter says that the end of the OS is nigh. I couldn't disagree more. His argument is that cloud applications along with browser innovations will replace our normal applications and operating systems. He argues that cross platform compatibility of those cloud applications will be the push. I see a few problems.

Learning find can seem daunting at first, but it is worth learning. There is no single more useful search tool for UNIX like systems. You could almost consider find a very primitive scripting language in itself as find can find the files you request and then perform tasks upon them. Let's get some basics together.

If you are reading this, you are most likely a Linux user in some way. You are also quite likely familiar with a certain phenomena. You probably love, hate, hate loving, and love hating Linux. Why does this occur?

So often lately, I hear of the cloud and the wonderful things it will do for the world. I increasingly hear that any software effort that is not directed toward the cloud is going to fail. So much, I hear that desktops and laptops are antiquated due to the superiority of cloud-utilizing dumb terminals. I completely disagree, and should the cloud be the true future of computing, I think I may just have to find a new interest.

Computers have long been a rather expensive luxury for those who could afford them. Desktops have drastically fallen in price, but with a cost of roughly $300.00 for a modest machine the price is still nothing to laugh at. Laptops have fallen in price as well, but $500.00 is still a lot of money. Worldwide, our economies are not in the best shape. Along with coffee, people tighten their technology budget. It's a natural reaction. Food, water, gasoline, car maintenance, and home maintenance are far more important in the survival sense. The tightening of that budget may negatively impact children who are interested in technology. It's also rather obvious that there are parts of the world that are not quite as well off as others. Luckily, their are some very bright, very clever people in the world. It just so happens that a few of them love technology and Linux. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK based charity that has found a solution to this problem.

A long time ago, in a college far far away, some nerds were playing with UNIX. At that time, UNIX shipped with ed. Some rather clever programmers made a replacement for ed called em. Em became en. En became ex. Ex is Vi. Why is this important? Understanding where Vi comes from, helps you to understand its rationale. Why does Vi matter? It's an editor that has become part of the UNIX specification. Knowing Vi means that you know at least one text editor that is present on nearly all UNIX-like operating systems (ones like: most Linux distributions, *BSD, AIX, HPUX, Solaris, OSX, etc...). This makes Vi the defacto UNIX editor. Also, while it may take time to familiarize yourself with Vi, once you know it you can be insanely efficient.

Pardus Kurumsal 2 was a rather interesting respin of a great distribution. I decided I would give it a try on the VIA ARTiGO A1100. Overall, it's a great experience. If you own an ARTiGO, this would be a distribution to try on it.

So, I am sitting in my apartment in the North East Georgia mountains, an unlit cigarette is hanging out of my mouth, I have no idea what to write, and I am realising that this unfortunate bout of writer's block is likely due to the fact that nothing is really going wrong with my Linux box(es).

Often, we forget how things came to be the way that they are. In our case, this means we may forget the origins of computing. I am going to take some time to go through our origins step by step.