Archive

Writing about technology over the years I've produced many guides on how to do cool stuff with your computer. However, without the right foundation, even the most thorough guide can leave room for pesky variables to creep in. This made me realize how important it is to establish what firm footing fo...

In this piece, I aim to provide a range of simple but effective options for encrypting a small number of files. In particular, these options are salient for use cases like tax filing, where users are sending sensitive documents to recipients with an unknown degree of technical proficiency. Fond as I...

In spite of being a beloved companion to computer hobbyists the world over, the Raspberry Pi doesn't get enough credit. In fact, single-board computers of all stripes haven't gotten their due -- I just happen to have a Raspberry Pi.

This piece is a demonstration of one means of setting up file-level encryption which is widely available for Linux desktop users. To offer a similar encryption scheme to as many users as possible, we'll walk through how to use fscrypt to create an encrypted filesystem. While simple, fscrypt offers m...

Average computer users would be forgiven for not having any idea what PGP is. There is so much going on below the surface of the modern computing experience that even critically important security tools like PGP are tucked away. To be sure, there are specialized circles that make regular explicit us...

Getting familiar with Linux up close and personal is easy to do with a free service provided by DistroTest.net, which allows testing without ISO downloads or local installations. Are you a wandering Linux distro hopper looking for a way to streamline the selection process? Are you a Windows or macOS...

A recent episode of a Linux news podcast I keep up with featured an interview with a journalist who had written a piece for a non-Linux audience about giving it a try. It was surprisingly widely read. The writer's experience with some of the more popular desktop distributions had been overwhelmingly...

It's common for Linux users to hop between distributions and survey the field, and I recently reached a point where I had to seriously rethink the one I was using most of the time. Between hardware compatibility issues with my old standby and some discouraging missteps with other go-to choices, I fe...

It's common for Linux users to hop between distributions and survey the field, and I recently reached a point where I had to seriously rethink the one I was using most of the time. Between hardware compatibility issues with my old standby and some discouraging missteps with other go-to choices, I fe...

Meaningful security is more than an app or an OS. It's a mindset. Linux security tools by themselves will not make you or anyone more secure. Security requires trade-offs in convenience, so the tools I'll highlight here are not recommended as "daily drivers." Only you can determine your ideal balanc...

As much as I love to poke at the inner workings of my computer, I'll admit that until recently, I didn't give much thought to which version of the Linux kernel my desktop system was running. For most desktop users, this isn't odd. Compatibility of kernel modules is often critical for servers and pro...

"How do you run an operating system?" may seem like a simple question, since most of us are accustomed to turning on our computers and seeing our system spin up. However, this common model is only one way of running an operating system. As one of Linux's greatest strengths is versatility, Linux offe...

There is more to the shell, the terminal's interpreter software, than commands composed of alphanumeric characters. In addition to those familiar programs, there is a whole host of processing tools hiding behind the symbols of a standard keyboard. To say nothing of their incredible potency in combin...

If you've taken the time to get the hang of terminal basics, you're probably at the point where you want to start putting together what you've learned. Sometimes issuing commands one at a time is enough, but there are cases when it can be tedious to enter command after command just to perform a simp...