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
It’s been awhile since I tried a new Linux distribution so I was game for a new experience when an edtech blogger I follow suggested giving Zorin OS a try. I had heard of Zorin but until recently had never downloaded and installed it. The landing page for the site proudly proclaims that Zorin is: … Read more
Recently I’ve been helping folks who have Windows machines. In one case I needed to create a Windows Server 2022 and Windows Server 2025 bootable drives to install the operating system on physical hardware. Microsoft has a media creation tool that works very well if you have a Windows host system to make the media … Read more
I first started using VirtualBox many years ago, and it quickly became my favorite virtualization platform. What drew me in initially was its open-source nature. The base package, which includes both the source code and binaries, is licensed under GPL version 3. VirtualBox is impressively versatile. It runs on Linux, macOS (both Intel and ARM … Read more
I got a telephone call this morning from a person I had never met before. He’d been referrred to me by a mutual friend who I had helped with a technology problem a couple of weeks ago. This fellow said, “my computer is no longer getting security updates and a technician with my internet service … Read more
Last week, Windows 10 users faced a dilemma: transition to Windows 11 and potentially purchase a new computer, or embrace the growing Linux community. Personally, I’ve been using Linux as my primary operating system for over two decades and have been an advocate for it ever since. Just last week I was helping a client … Read more
In 2025, WordPress continues to be the backbone of accessible, customizable web publishing—especially for community organizations, libraries, and small businesses. Built on a robust open-source database, WordPress empowers users to organize content intuitively through categories and tags. Categories help group broader topics like “Digital Literacy” or “Community Programming,” while tags such as #Python, #GoLang, or … Read more
