Grep is a utility to find string patterns in text files. I cannot show you all the magic that grep can perform. Often the stuff you want to find in a file is buried in a lot of crud you don’t want in the file. Web server files? Yeah. Those. Spreadsheets? Unfortunately, they get large… Read more »

On September 3rd, 2015 Joseph asked… Hi Matt, I have the opportunity to install Linux at work on a 5 year old iMac rarely used due to its age. My gut tells me I should go with Ubuntu Studio as it has access to just about every type of creative and office software imaginable upon… Read more »

Long week? Yeah, me too. I have my heavy metal Linux band in the motel room and no customers to attend to at the moment…let’s do some Bash scripting! Remember the “thumbnailing” script I did a few weeks ago? This is the script I use before doing thumbnails. It’s actually a bit more trippy and… Read more »

I have a friend who has a passion for bicycle racing. He has teenage boys who do very well in the sport and have won a lot of races. One of his sons flew to Belgium to compete this last summer. As you can imagine, he was a very proud father. I once casually showed… Read more »

There have been a lot of news reports and blog posts that have been making waves in my pond lately: the too many Linux distros argument. I actually chimed in on this topic a few years ago by contributing with a post about how the landscape of Linux distros are like a garden. A garden… Read more »

Growing up in a time of vinyl records and 8-track cassettes, it’s safe to say that I have an appreciation for music. Flash forward to today and we’re now able to enjoy any song we want, on demand! With music services provided by Amazon and independent sources, legally downloading music has never been so easy…. Read more »

Before we get started, let’s avoid any confusion. There are two meanings to the term “File System” in the wonderful world of computing: First, there is the system of files and the directory structure that all of your data is stored in. Second, is the format scheme that is used to write data on mass… Read more »

Over the years, I’ve ranted and complained about the state of FOSS documentation and the barrier to entry for the casual user. With mixed success, I’ve championed various efforts to provide FOSS training and documentation. Recently, I was contacted by a friend of mine who has put together a team of individuals dedicated to providing… Read more »

In total, I have about 20 virtual hosts I take care of across a few workstations. On one system alone, I keep five running constantly, doing builds and network monitoring. At work, my Ubuntu workstation has two Windows VMs I use regularly. My home workstation has about eight: a mix of Fedora(s) and Windows. A… Read more »

I was recently in a discussion about meta-packages, and realized many users don’t know what they are or what they do. So, let’s see if we can clear-up the mystery. Meta-packages in a nutshell A ‘meta-package’ is a convenient way to bulk-install groups of applications, their libraries and documentation. Many Linux distributions use them for… Read more »