Don I was volunteering at the local public library, where I find myself frequently these days. The library has some older Dell OptiPlex All-in-One desktops that have been in service for over 10 years. They came to the library as Windows 8 machines. The computers were delivered to the library in January 2015, and they have … Read more
I started using Pop!_OS in 2017, then purchased a computer from System76 and used it, and I recommended it to my friends. For much of the last five years, I’ve been using Linux Mint Cinnamon on the desktop and tinkering with other distributions in VirtualBox or using a spare laptop. My daily driver is a … Read more
I have been doing a lot of reading and listening to YouTube videos about immutable distributions and why they might offer the most flexibility for developers and tinkerers like me. I have been experimenting with Fedora Silverblue, NixOS, and traditional distributions like Linux Mint, Ubuntu 24.04, and Fedora 43. I was looking for ways to … Read more
In our small public library, where I volunteer weekly, we have several ten-year-old all-in-one desktops with i5 CPUs and 8 GB of RAM. They’re currently running Windows 10, and the library needs to upgrade to Windows 11, according to the IT folks at the library system. Those of us who are regular Linux users know … Read more
What if the universe isn’t just expanding — what if it’s remembering, connecting, and waking up? That was the bold conviction of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit priest and paleontologist who saw evolution not as a blind shuffle of matter, but as a spiraling ascent toward deeper consciousness and greater unity. Long before the … Read more
Recently, I was helping a Windows-using friend transition from her ten-year-old Windows 10 laptop to a new Windows 11 laptop. All of her important files had been backed up by Microsoft OneDrive, which was a great relief when we logged into the new computer. My friend is a Microsoft Publisher user, and you guessed it: … Read more
System76 is celebrating 20 years, and they did so by officially releasing Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS and the COSMIC desktop. I got an email from Carl Richell today that said, “COSMIC is built on the ethos that the best open source projects enable people to not only use them, but to build with them. COSMIC is … Read more
Choosing the Right Hardware My daily driver is a System76 Meerkat, powered by an Intel Core i7-255H and with 32 GB of RAM. It is marketed as “AI-ready” and has lived up to this promise, effortlessly handling open-source AI applications locally. Recent market forces driven by the AI and ML boom have driven up the … Read more
1. Classic Utilities: Top and Htop One of the earliest lessons in managing a Linux machine is learning the top command. This lightweight, text‑based utility comes preinstalled on all Linux distributions and provides real‑time information about running services, CPU usage, and memory consumption. It also allows administrators to selectively kill processes that are misbehaving, making … Read more
Protecting your data has never been more crucial. With the advent of hybrid work, cloud-native applications, and ransomware threats, reliable backup solutions are indispensable for individuals and organizations alike. Open-source tools have emerged as leaders in this domain, offering transparency, flexibility, and community-driven innovation. In this article, I will present a list of fifteen open-source … Read more
