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Last year, I brought you 19 days of new (to you) productivity tools for 2019. This year, I'm taking a different approach: building an environment that will allow you to be more productive in the new year, using tools you may or may not already be using.

Linux users say that choice is one of the platform's strengths. On the surface, this might sound self-aggrandizing (or self-deprecating, depending on your perspective). Other operating systems offer choice, too, but once you look at the options available for nearly anything you want to do on Linux, it doesn't take long to conclude that a new word ought to be invented for what we mean by "choice."

Last year, I brought you 19 days of new (to you) productivity tools for 2019. This year, I'm taking a different approach: building an environment that will allow you to be more productive in the new year, using tools you may or may not already be using.

StreetComplete is an Android app that makes it fun and easy to contribute to open data by completing quests.

Quests are used to fill in incomplete or inaccurate information on OpenStreetMap, an open data project dedicated to mapping the world through crowdsourcing. Anyone can contribute to the map and, thanks to free culture and open source licenses, that data can then be used by anyone for anything, from video games to custom map applications and artwork.

The nice aspect of being a physicist and a researcher is the openness of our community. There is a lot of collaboration and sharing of ideas (especially during coffee breaks). We also tend to share the software we write. Since we are very picky about algorithms, we want to modify other people’s code to fix the obvious errors that we find. It feels frustrating when I have to use proprietary tools since I cannot understand their inner workings. Having grown up professionally in such an environment, open source has been my go-to solution for all the software I use.

Multiple books in the Open Organization series discuss the many ways new communication technologies are changing the nature of both work and management. I've seen these changes firsthand during my nearly three decades working for Japanese corporations. Over time, I've been able to classify and characterize some of the impacts these technologies—particularly new telecommunication technologies and social media—are having on daily life in many organizations.

Last year, I brought you 19 days of new (to you) productivity tools for 2019. This year, I'm taking a different approach: building an environment that will allow you to be more productive in the new year, using tools you may or may not already be using.

In Linux, every program and daemon is a "process." Most processes represent a single running program. Other programs can fork off other processes, such as processes to listen for certain things to happen and then respond to them. And each process requires a certain amount of memory and processing power. The more processes you have running, the more memory and CPU cycles you'll need. On older systems, like my seven-year-old laptop, or smaller computers, like the Raspberry Pi, you can get the most out of your system if you keep an eye on what processes you have running in the background.

I am often approached by software developers who are on board with the switch to test-driven development (TDD). They understand that describing expectations first and then writing code to meet those expectations is the best way to write software. And they agree that writing tests first does not introduce any overhead since they must write tests anyway. Still, they find themselves stuck, not being clear on what to test, when to test it, and how to test it. This article will answer those questions.

Last year, I brought you 19 days of new (to you) productivity tools for 2019. This year, I'm taking a different approach: building an environment that will allow you to be more productive in the new year, using tools you may or may not already be using.

What's your favorite Linux distribution? Take our 7th annual poll. Some have come and gone, but there are hundreds of Linux distributions alive and well today. The combination of distribution, package manager, and desktop creates an endless amount of customized environments for Linux users.

We asked the community of writers what their favorite is and why. While there were some commonalities (Fedora and Ubuntu were popular choices for a variety of reasons), we heard a few surprises as well. Here are a few of their responses:

As part of my role as a senior product marketing manager at an enterprise software company with an open source development model, I publish a regular update about open source community, market, and industry trends for product marketers, managers, and other influencers. Here are five of my and their favorite articles from that update.

Last year, I brought you 19 days of new (to you) productivity tools for 2019. This year, I'm taking a different approach: building an environment that will allow you to be more productive in the new year, using tools you may or may not already be using.

Last year, I brought you 19 days of new (to you) productivity tools for 2019. This year, I'm taking a different approach: building an environment that will allow you to be more productive in the new year, using tools you may or may not already be using.

With so many tools on the web offered as services, there's more to getting organized than just choosing the most convenient online vendor.

You have to think of your system of organization as part of your product, whether that's personal productivity or a software project you ship to hundreds or thousands of users. Using open source isn't a matter of brand loyalty. Open source is about you owning the tools that enable you to do what you do.

Being able to validate your network connection speed puts you in control of your computer. Three open source tools that enable you to check your internet and network speeds at the command line are Speedtest, Fast, and iPerf.

Speedtest is an old favorite. It's implemented in Python, packaged in Apt, and also available with pip. You can use it as a command-line tool or within a Python script.

Install it with:

Last year, I brought you 19 days of new (to you) productivity tools for 2019. This year, I'm taking a different approach: building an environment that will allow you to be more productive in the new year, using tools you may or may not already be using.

Imagine using Python's IDLE interface to edit text. You would be able to load files into memory, edit them, and save changes. But every action you perform would be defined by a Python function. Making a word all capitals, for instance, calls upper(), opening a file calls open, and so on. Everything in your text document is a Python object and can be manipulated accordingly. From the user's perspective, it's the same experience as any text editor.

Cybercriminals are turning to social engineering to try to trick unsuspecting people into divulging private information or valuable credentials. It is behind many phishing scams where the attacker poses as a reputable company or organization and uses it as a front to distribute a virus or other piece of malware.

I recently read a survey on StackOverflow that said more than 49% of developers use Node.js for their projects. This came as no surprise to me.

As an avid user of technology, I think it's safe to say that the introduction of Node.js led to a new era of software development. It is now one of the most preferred technologies for software development, right next to JavaScript.