One of the top reasons that I use Linux at all is because of the command line environment. It is far more likely that you’ll see me using my Linux systems via putty from a Windows system than actually sitting at my Linux system itself. Now this isn’t because I’m anti Linux on the desktop or anything, not at all. In fact I do run Linux on my laptop for when I cannot remotely access my server at home such as when we’re traveling yet it’s usually so I can run a terminal.

Read on to learn more about what you can do with the Linux command line.
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Here is a tip for anyone who may read this. When you send an email, it should always have a subject. Always. It’s just common net etiquette. An email without a subject is like a book without a title and a book without a title is not something you would want to read because it apparently has no point. If you’re writing an email and you can’t come up with a subject, then you need to rethink whether or not your email has any purpose in the first place and if not, then don’t send the email.

Subjects provide the potential reader with a starting point of what your message is probably about. It sets the tone, makes it so the message is easy to find again later and sets it apart from all of the others. A subject allows the reader to sort messages, follow a conversation, group related messages and most importantly it tells the reader that your message has some sort of purpose.

So please, the next time you’re about to click that send button, take a moment to check your subject field. If it’s empty, fill it in. If it’s not then kudos to you my friend.

I recently started doing some freelance web work. The company I’m working with right now demands that sites be coded to XHTML strict standard and that testing be done on all major browsers on the major platforms. Macintosh is one of those major platforms that I don’t have yet have always secretly wanted to get one. Doing freelance work is the perfect excuse to pick up a Mac Mini so that’s just what I did today and I’m expecting it to arrive sometime next week.

I’m not sure if owning a Mac Mini will convince me to make a full switch or not. It’s hard to say at this point because I’m so used to the Windows world but others have tried to make the switch for themselves and lived to tell about it. And with the new Mac’s being based on Intel processors and the availability of VMware Fusion or Parallels it’s possible to run Windows along side OS X anyway.

Recently on digg.com there was a list of UNIX/Linux commands every person should know. A few people were a bit miffed that the list included nano rather than VIM. VIM is easily my favorite text editor so I wanted to share some of the most useful commands that VIM provides. No doubt there are people out there that have their own set of commands they use most so I encourage them to comment about it.

Read on to learn more about VIM.
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A while back I wrote about my luck when it comes to items I purchase and the service we get. Well it just seems to continue for me.

I just sent my Wii off for repair. It would begin to buzz loudly after playing for a while as the system reached operating temp. The “nice” thing about working with Nintendo is I got someone on the phone right away, they didn’t speak with any kind of accent and they didn’t try to walk me through some automated script that had nothing to do with my problem. They even told me my warranty would be extended another year from the date it was sent back to me. That’s good service.

Now tonight, as I write this, I’m on my laptop, plugged directly into my network because my wireless router, which is less than a year old, has seemingly gone haywire. I’m within 10 feet of the thing and I’m connected at 1Mbps. If I get connected at all, it isn’t for long and it’s very slow.

Poor me.

Today I was approached by someone in need of some help. They had purchased a VCR and DVD recorder combo and didn’t know how to use it. They asked if I knew how to use such a device. Having never had the desire to transfer video from tape to DVD (garbage in/garbage out anyone?) my was answer was no. They then asked if maybe I would read the book for them and then show them how to use the device to which my response was, sure, at my rate of $25 per hour.

To this the person, who works with kids, presumably a teacher at some level, responded with something along the lines of why do you get paid so much and the kicker, “my job is more important that yours.” This took be by surprise because for one it’s a little rude to throw around who’s job is more important and two because it makes me assume they think I should do the work for free. I mean seriously, here is a person asking me to do something they aren’t willing to do and balking at the idea that someone might actually want to get paid for it. Do they say the same thing any other trained service technicians working on their car, plumbing or what have you? Have they ever considered what they’re paying them in that case?

Besides that if they’re a teacher then why not…you know…teach yourself how to use an item you purchased?

I’ve been a Linux user for a long time, eight years in fact. Now I’m not trying to toot my horn, I merely am pointing out that I’ve been around long enough to see a lot of changes and a number of flash-in-the-pan distributions come and go. Most of the time the short lived distributions were simply repackaged and re-branded versions of an existing Linux project like Red Hat or whatever and they were pretty easy to pick up. Everything looked and felt like a Red Hat system but this “new” distribution focused on a certain aspect. Mandrake Linux or Linux Mandrake as it might been more commonly called back then, was in fact based on Red Hat but with an experience more focused on KDE and ease of use. Today of course Mandrake is known as Mandriva and you can no longer say that it is simply a repackaged Red Hat (or Fedora) distribution.

Now like I said, I’ve been using Linux as a desktop or server OS since about 1999, probably longer than a lot of people. During that time I pretty much have used Red Hat (or Fedora Core) exclusively and I’ve grown accustomed to it’s inner workings. I don’t have to reference anything to know how to install packages, what packages are called, manage services, edit config files or what have you, it’s all just familiar territory. Much like walking around my house in the dark, there are no surprises anymore.

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Continuing with today’s theme of software I like I wanted to post a bit about OpenVPN. OpenVPN is a cross platform (Windows, Linux, *BSD, Solaris and OSX) VPN available at http://openvpn.net/. Using OpenVPN you are able to connect a remote client or remote network to another network across the Internet with minimal firewall fuss. I use OpenVPN for various client to network and network to network style VPNs. I also use OpenVPN on my Linux server at home so my laptop can send and receive email from anywhere.

If you’re looking for a way to image the drive in your computer look no further than Snapshot. Snapshot is available at http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/ and allows you to image your hard drive while the computer is running. Now I’ve used a number of backup solutions in my day and Snapshot ranks right up there as the best. Using Snapshot I have backed up and restored my laptop a number of times. Go ahead and click the link to read more about it. It costs about $49 USD.

If you’re like me then you probably have a number of email addresses that you’ve acquired over the years. Among all my accounts, I’ve had this one Hotmail address for the longest but I never log into it anymore because of the amount of spam I was getting. The problem with hotmail is the spam blocking tool is rather hit or miss.

For all of my POP or IMAP accounts I use Thunderbird and I’ve always been impressed with its spam blocking feature. Well not too long ago I found out about a great extension for Thunderbird that lets you add your existing free webmail accounts like Hotmail and use all of the features of Thunderbird you’re used to.

You can find the extension at http://webmail.mozdev.org/