Linux

Why are we complaining about the smallness of the proportion of desktop computers that run Linux -- perhaps we should be celebrating instead?

Categories: Linux

Select a directory from a list, and play all the music files in that directory. How difficult can that be?

Categories: Linux, command-line hacking

If a podcast has an RSS feed, we can download it, parse it, and then download all the content into a single folder, which can then be played by any audio player.

Categories: Linux, command-line hacking

This article describes how AppImage packaging works on Linux. It's based on a simple demonstration that uses nothing but commonplace command-line tools, to create a self-contained, distributable application (albeit a trivial one).

Categories: Linux

Animated musical scores are quite common on YouTube, for educational and promotional purposes. This article explains how to create one, using OpenShot and other Linux tools.

Categories: Linux, music

I don't much care for how hot my laptops run, before the cooling system takes action to bring the temperature under control. What can be done about that?

Categories: Linux

MX and antiX are both Linux variants that offer some hope to people who want to keep their old-ish computers running. Both tip-toe around the systemd rabbit hole, but in different ways. But which is better?

Categories: Linux

As the Microsoft Windows user experience continues to worsen, what should Linux advocates do?

Categories: general computing, Linux

There was a time when merely being a Linux user set you apart from the common herd. These days, with Linux so ubiquitous, you'll need to take additional steps to make yourself out as one of the elite.

Categories: Linux

Wayland isn't new, but many of us have been able to avoid it until recently. With many Linux distributions now pushing Wayland hard -- even for the Raspberry Pi -- it's getting harder to justify ignoring it. This article is for people who have been hoping until now that Wayland will go away, particularly X developers, and don't know much about how it works

Categories: Linux

I don't want to post yet another anti-systemd rant, but I think the ubiquity of systemd could eventually create real problems for embedded Linux. I just wish I knew what to do about it.

Categories: Linux

It isn't easy to run Linux well on ten-year-old laptops -- Linux distribution maintainers no longer see this as a worthwhile endeavour. In this article I compare Gentoo and MX Linux as potential solutions to this problem.

Categories: Linux

Can you fit an NVMe solid-state drive into a computer that was made long before NVMe was invented? And should you?

Categories: Linux

For a Linux user in particular, which of these popular services is the most effective?

Categories: Linux

The Vim text editor is almost ubiquitous on Linux systems, and for good reasons. This is the first article in a series which seeks to uncover some handy features of Vim, that don't seem to be widely known.

Categories: Linux

Will my Gentoo journey be coming to an end after the first month?

Categories: general computing, Linux

Not everybody likes Pulse audio or PipeWire. But is it practicable to abandon them in favour of traditional ALSA at this point?

Categories: hifi, Linux

Regardless of the subjective merits of 'bit-perfect' audio, is it technically possible on Linux?

Categories: hifi, Linux

It's not that difficult, but there's no built-in support.

Categories: Linux, security

Even seasoned Linux developers speak of Gentoo in hushed tones. It's not for the faint-hearted, that's for sure. But how stout-hearted must you be, for Gentoo to be appropriate?

Categories: general computing, Linux

Artix is a low-resource Linux that can be configured to run well on old, low-powered computer hardware. In this article, I describe my first attempts at setting it up.

Categories: general computing, Linux

Using Linux date calculations to displaying a running countdown time in the terminal.

Categories: Linux, command-line hacking

Encryption of home directories is out of favour in modern Linux distributions, but it offers some compelling advantages over the alternatives, if used with care.

Categories: Linux

How to use Bash shell arithmetic, along with the 'date' utilty, to calculate the phase of the Moon on a particlar day.

Categories: Linux, command-line hacking

The Raspberry Pi has a bunch of GPIO pins we can use to connect push-buttons. But how do we interface push-buttons to an application that expects only keyboard input?

Categories: Raspberry Pi, electronics, Linux

This article is part of a series on building a custom Linux installation for a Raspberry Pi-based appliance. It explains how to make a bootable SD card with Pi firmware, a Linux kernel, and a shell. It's about as minimal as a Linux system can be.

Categories: Raspberry Pi, Linux, embedded computing

Using simple file and string handling techniques in the Bash shell.

Categories: Linux, command-line hacking

The Pi Pico is an impressive microcontroller for its size and cost, but it lacks specific non-volatile memory. This article explains how to use the program flash ROM for that purpose.

Categories: software development, C, Linux, embedded computing, Pico

Darktable isn't supposed to be an alternative to Adobe Lightroom, but many people hope to use it as one. After all, Darktable's (free) pricing is very appealing. Here are my views on whether a move to Darktable makes sense.

Categories: general computing, Linux

Mapping keyboard keys to key codes on Linux is well-documented for the graphical desktop. But what about console applications on embedded Linux systems? There's not much documentation in this area.

Categories: Linux, C, embedded computing

This article continues my original framebuffer just the essentials article, by describing how to handle less straightforward framebuffer configurations.

Categories: software development, C, Linux, embedded computing

The absolute minimum information needed to start using the Linux framebuffer as a graphical display in C/C++ applications.

Categories: software development, C, Linux, embedded computing

This article describes how to generate and use compressed, anti-aliased font data, for use in a microcontroller application.

Categories: C, Linux, embedded computing, Pico

Many portable and automotive media players accept USB memory sticks or SD cards containing audio files. Very often, these players have no sorting logic, and display files and directories in the arbitrary order they appear in the filesystem. This article describes how to sort a FAT filesystem using Linux utilities, to make playback more convenient.

Categories: hifi, Linux

Desktop Linux will take off next year -- or so people have been saying for years. Do desktop containerization technologies like Flatpak make this more, or less, likely?

Categories: Linux, containers

Using 'date' and 'timedatectl' to build a utility to help with scheduling meetings in different timezones.

Categories: Linux, command-line hacking

How to use tools like curl, sed, and groff to retrieve a weather forecast from the BBC, and format it for the terminal.

Categories: Linux, command-line hacking

How to use Bash shell arithmetic to create a simple tide table

Categories: Linux, command-line hacking

How to use Bash shell techniques to extract metadata (tags) from various audio file formats.

Categories: Linux, command-line hacking

Using Linux command-line utilities to query an on-line database of Internet radio stations.

Categories: Linux, command-line hacking

Using a Linux Bash script to generate audio/visual cues for timing paced breathing exercises.

Categories: Linux, command-line hacking

How to use tools like curl and xsltproc to retrieve news headlines from the BBC, and display them using the manual viewer

Categories: Linux, command-line hacking

How to use basic Bash constructs, along with the Gnome gio utility, to assign folder icons to a set of directories.

Categories: Linux, command-line hacking

This article describes how to write a trivial program for Linux using no compiler tools at all, but entering machine language directly in hexadecimal. Because we can.

Categories: software development, Linux

You've created a custom Linux installation for the Raspberry Pi. How do you turn that into a bootable SD card image that can be distributed?

Categories: Linux, Raspberry Pi

We've all gotten so used to graphical desktops that we're losing sight of how much can be accomplished on Linux using only a console. This is a shame, because efficient console-only operation is possible on a computer that would otherwise be fit only for landfill, and on modern high-efficiency devices with limited computing power.

Categories: Linux

Implementing a program to run Conway's cell population simulation, using a 3D perspective view on the Linux framebuffer.

Categories: software development, C, Linux

Introducing a series of articles on building a custom Linux installation for the Raspberry Pi, for appliance applications.

Categories: Raspberry Pi, Linux, embedded computing

Make an auxiliary LCD display for a computer that displays data sent to it over a USB connection. Ready-made devices of this sort are widely available, but it's more fun to build your own.

Categories: software development, C, Linux, embedded computing, Arduino

The ease of installation and use of modern desktop Linux distributions comes at a price. I review a couple of low-complexity alternatives to mainstream Linux distributions: Alpine and Devuan.

Categories: general computing, Linux

This article is part of a series on building a customer Linux installation for a Raspberry Pi-based appliance. It explains how to install and set up the minimum software to get audio playback working.

Categories: Raspberry Pi, Linux, embedded computing

This article is part of a series on building a customer Linux installation for a Raspberry Pi-based appliance. It explains how to set up a system which hitherto only boots to a root shell, to a network-aware installation with service management.

Categories: Raspberry Pi, Linux, embedded computing

This article is part of a series on building a customer Linux installation for a Raspberry Pi-based appliance. It explains how to obtain and install fundamental utilities for use in a system with a read-only filesystem, and no package manager.

Categories: Raspberry Pi, Linux, embedded computing

It's entirely possible to run simple, X-based applications in an appliance-based Linux installation: you just have to dispense with the graphical desktop and all its baggage. This article explains how.

Categories: Raspberry Pi, Linux, embedded computing

Writing graphical applications for minimal and embedded Linux systems can present a challenge. One of the problems is producing nicely-rendered text without the facilities that a graphical desktop would provide. This article describes how to use the FreeType library to render text to the Linux framebuffer.

Categories: software development, C, Linux, embedded computing, Raspberry Pi

The notion of resource limits (on memory, CPU, etc) has never been very well-defined, and the use of container-based deployment makes the situation worse. This article describes why, and what can be done about it.

Categories: Linux, containers

Containers have become increasingly important for Linux developers and administrators. A number of frameworks like LXC, Docker, and Podman are now available to automate the management of containers. However, all these frameworks rely on similar kernel features, particularly control groups, namespaces, and virtual networks. This article demonstrates how to build a functional container from first principles, using only simple command-line tools. It's objective is to make clear all the details that the more sophisticated tools conceal.

Categories: Linux, containers

Creating stop-motion animated movies using a DSLR camera and some basic Linux tools. It won't rival Pixar, but it's something to do with your kids on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Categories: science and technology, Linux

Using the official Raspian repository to assist the construction of a custom Linux for embedded applications is quick and convenient, compared to building everything from source. However, this approach has certain hazards.

Categories: Linux, Raspberry Pi, embedded computing

This article outlines, with step-by-step examples, how to carry out the most fundamental Linux storage management tasks: partitioning a disk, creating a filesystem, setting up swap space, managing a logical volume management (LVM) storage pool, and configuring a RAID mirror.

Categories: Linux

A quick-and-dirty way to make it possible to execute Java JAR files at the prompt, without needing to invoke the JVM.

Categories: software development, Java, Linux

The built-in cd command in the bash shell is not as smart as it could be; but it's a little fiddly to extend its functionality.

Categories: Linux