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Every year, my wife's book club has a book exchange during the holidays. Due to the need to maintain physical distance in 2020, I created an online gift exchange for them to use during a book club videoconference. Apparently, the virtual book exchange worked out (at least, I received kind compliments from the book club members), so I decided to share this simple little hack.

In past years, the exchange has gone something like this:

One of the things I appreciate about Linux versus proprietary operating systems is that almost everything can be managed and configured from the command line. That means that nearly everything can be configured locally or even remotely via an SSH login connection. Sometimes it takes a bit of time spent on Internet searches, but if you can think of a task, it can probably be done from the command line.

In prior years, this annual series covered individual apps. This year, we are looking at all-in-one solutions in addition to strategies to help in 2021. Welcome to day 12 of 21 Days of Productivity in 2021.

Organizations from all industries and of all sizes strive to deliver quality software solutions faster. This guarantees not only their survival but also success in the global marketplace. DevOps can help them chart an optimal course.

DevOps is a system where different processes are supported by tools that work in a connected chain to deliver projects on time and at a lower cost.

I believe edge computing, which "brings computation and data storage closer to the location where it is needed to improve response times and save bandwidth," is the next major phase of technology adoption. The widespread use of mobile devices and wearable gadgets and the availability of free city-wide WiFi in some areas create a lot of data that can provide many advantages if used properly.

I use VirtualBox frequently to create virtual machines for testing new versions of Fedora, new application programs, and lots of administrative tools like Ansible. I have even used VirtualBox to test the creation of a Windows guest host.

In prior years, this annual series covered individual apps. This year, we are looking at all-in-one solutions in addition to strategies to help in 2021. Welcome to day 11 of 21 Days of Productivity in 2021.

This is the second article in a series on the future of work, as explained in The Shift, a book by Professor Lynda Gratton. Previously, I presented Gratton's thoughts on five forces that will impact work in the future. In this article, I'll provide more detail on what Gratton says will be the results of these forces. These forces will create new global work environments, and we must face those new environments head-on.

It's pretty safe to say that most of the modern web would not exist without JavaScript. It's one of the three standard web technologies (along with HTML and CSS) and allows anyone to create much of the interactive, dynamic content we have come to expect in our experiences with the World Wide Web.

In previous years, this annual series covered individual apps. This year, we are looking at all-in-one solutions in addition to strategies to help in 2021. Welcome to day 10 of 21 Days of Productivity in 2021.

When I was in primary school in the days before the commercial internet, teachers would often give my class an assignment to keep a journal. Sometimes it was targeted at something particular, like a specifically formatted list of bugs and descriptions or a weekly news article summary for a civics class.

CrowdSec is an open source cybersecurity detection system meant to identify aggressive behaviors and prevent them from accessing systems. Its user-friendly design offers a low technical barrier of entry with a significant boost to security.

Virtualization is one of the most used technologies. Fedora Linux uses Cloud Base images to create general-purpose virtual machines (VM), but there are many ways to set up Cloud Base images. Recently, the virt-install command-line tool for provisioning VMs added support for cloud-init, so it can now be used to configure and run a cloud image locally.

Big data’s one of many domains where open source shines. From open source alternatives for Google Analytics to new features in MySQL, 2020 brought several ways for open source enthusiasts to learn big data skills.

Get up to speed on how open source data science languages, libraries, and tools help us understand our world better by reviewing the top 10 data science articles published on Opensource.com last year. 

In prior years, this annual series covered open source organization apps like Notmuch and Syncthing. This year, we are looking at all-in-one solutions in addition to strategies to help in 2021. Welcome to day 9 of 21 Days of Productivity in 2021.

Recently, the microSD (secure digital) card in my Raspberry Pi stopped working. It had been in constant use as a server for almost two years, and this provided a good opportunity to start fresh and correct a few problems. After its initial installation, it began experiencing disk problems and the official Raspberry Pi operating system (OS) received a significant update (and was renamed from Raspbian to Raspberry Pi OS). So I acquired a new microSD card and preceded to rebuild.

Opensource.com exists to educate the world about everything open source, from new tools and frameworks to scaling communities. We aim to make open source more accessible to anyone who wants to use or contribute to it.

Getting started in open source can be hard, so we regularly share tips and advice on how you can get involved. If you want to learn Python, help fight COVID-19, or join the Kubernetes community, we've got you covered.

In prior years, this annual series covered individual apps. This year, we are looking at all-in-one solutions in addition to strategies to help in 2021. Welcome to day 8 of 21 Days of Productivity in 2021.

There is a term you hear a lot these days: Self-care. This concept is possibly one of the most critical things we need to do in a world where we are mostly working from home, social distancing, and spending a lot more time on video conferences.

Communities and the value they inherently have in our lives has never been more highlighted than over the past year as we deal with a global pandemic keeping us home, away from conferences and events, and busy with the complexities of childcare, elderly care, working remote, and more. 

If you happened to have a time machine and chose to shoot yourself back a year to ask me what I thought about making open source contributions (of all the things you could've done), you may have guessed that I would just shrug and say something along the lines of, "I don't know, isn't that reserved for all the hard-core devs with the insane GitHub stats and decked-out macros and stuff? I'd have no idea what I was doing, and who would even care what some random college student had to say about their code?" And you'd probably be correct.

In prior years, this annual series covered individual apps. This year, we are looking at all-in-one solutions in addition to strategies to help in 2021. Welcome to day 7 of 21 Days of Productivity in 2021.

There are lots of ways people manage email. Most people I have talked to over the past few years fall into one of two categories: The people who keep everything in their Inbox folder, and those who do not. For those that do not, the concept of Inbox Zero comes into play frequently.