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Linux offers a lot of commands to help users gather information about their host operating system: listing files or directories to check attributes; querying to see what packages are installed, processes are running, and services start at boot; or learning about the system's hardware.

Each command uses its own output format to list this information. You need to use tools like grep, sed, and awk to filter the results to find specific information. Also, a lot of this information changes frequently, leading to changes in the system's state.

Keeping program configurations separate from code is important. It enables non-programmers to alter configurations without having to modify the program's code. With compiled binary executables, that would be impossible for non-programmers because it not only requires access to source files (which we do have with open source programs) but also a programmer's skill set. Few people have that, and most people don't want to learn.

On Linux, you may be familiar with the standard Unix archive command: tar. There's a version of tar on FreeDOS too (and a bunch of other popular archive programs), but the de facto standard archiver on DOS is Zip and Unzip. Both Zip and Unzip are installed in FreeDOS 1.3 RC4 by default.

Chatwoot is an open source customer relationship platform built with Ruby and Vue.js. It was written from scratch to allow customer-relations teams to build end-to-end platforms for ticket management and support.

This article looks at Chatwoot's architecture, installation, and key features.

Chatwoot requires the following components to function properly:

The Large Hadron Collider is powered by Linux. Laptops on the International Space Station run on Linux.

Sometimes, a program needs enough parameters that putting them all as command-line arguments or environment variables is not pleasant nor feasible. In those cases, you will want to use a configuration file.

When I first started using DOS, I enjoyed writing games and other interesting programs using BASIC, which DOS included. Much later, I learned the C programming language.

I immediately loved working in C! It was a straightforward programming language that gave me a ton of flexibility for writing useful programs. In fact, much of the FreeDOS core utilities are written in C and Assembly.

As a longtime volunteer and mentor (and current board member) at the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) and vice president of the Apache Incubator, I'm proud to offer my insights into the unique processes and values with which the ASF operates.

On Linux, package managers help you handle updates, uninstalls, troubleshooting, and more for the software on your computer. Seth Kenlon wrote about dnf, the command-line package management tool for installing software in RHEL, CentOS, Fedora, Mageia, OpenMandriva, and other Linux distros.

Recently, GitHub added a small indicator that shows details about projects, including what programming languages a project uses. Before this, it was hard for new contributors to know this type of information about the projects they were interested in.

I run Linux as my primary operating system, and I boot FreeDOS in a virtual machine. Most of the time, I use QEMU as my PC emulator, but sometimes I'll run other experiments with GNOME Boxes (which uses QEMU as a back-end virtual machine) or with VirtualBox.

Many Linux programmers use the find command every single day of their career. But find gives a limited set of filesystem entries, and if you have to do a large set of find operations, it's not even very fast. So instead, I prefer to use the Rust fd command because it provides sensible defaults that work for most use cases.

Not all applications need configuration files; many applications benefit from starting fresh each time they are launched. Simple utilities, for instance, rarely require preferences or settings that persist across uses. However, when you write a complex application, it's nice for users to be able to configure how they interact with it and how it interacts with their system. That's what configuration files are for, and this article discusses some of the ways you can implement persistent settings with the Lua programming language.

In the early days of personal computing—from the late 1970s and through the 1980s—many people got their start with BASIC programming. BASIC was a universal programming language that came built into most personal computers, from Apple to IBM PCs.

When we started the FreeDOS Project in June 1994, it seemed natural that we should include an open source BASIC environment. I was excited to discover one already existed in Bywater BASIC.

If you work on the Linux command line, you will be familiar with the du command. Knowing commands like du, which returns information about disk usage quickly, is one of the ways the command line makes programmers more productive. Yet if you're looking for a way to save even more time and make your life even easier, take a look at dust, which is du rewritten in Rust with more intuitiveness.

There are thousands of configuration files on your computer. You may never directly interact with the bulk of them, but they're scattered throughout your /etc folder and in ~/.config and ~/.local and /usr. There are probably some in /var and possibly even in /opt. If you've ever opened one by accident or to make a change, you may have wondered why some configuration files look one way while others look completely different.

On Linux, I often use the GNU Emacs editor to write the source code for new programs. I learned GNU Emacs long ago when I was an undergraduate student, and I still have the "finger memory" for all the keyboard shortcuts.

When I started work on FreeDOS in 1994, I wanted to include an Emacs-like text editor. You can find many editors similar to Emacs, such as MicroEmacs, but these all take some shortcuts to fit into the 16-bit address space on DOS. However, I was very pleased to find Freemacs, by Russell "Russ" Nelson.

Man pages were my go-to resource when I started exploring Linux. Certainly, man is the most frequently used command when a beginner starts getting familiar with the world of the command line. But man pages, with their extensive lists of options and arguments, can be hard to decipher, which makes it difficult to understand whatever you wanted to know. If you want an easier solution with example-based output, I think tldr is the best option.

When I was growing up, it seemed every "personal computer" from the TRS-80 to the Commodore to the Apple let you write your own programs in the Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC) programming language. Our family had a clone of the Apple II called the Franklin ACE 1000, which—as a clone—also ran AppleSoft BASIC. I took to AppleSoft BASIC right away and read books and magazines to teach myself about BASIC programming.

The Biden Administration's recent executive order on cybersecurity aims to improve security assurance and the use of best practices. Transparency and project health are two factors that help to support security across the entire software industry—especially now.