Here is a a really very detailed explanation (with examples) of how a program ends up going from code to an executable that your processor can run. This post details all of the steps along the way, from the original code, compiling, compiler optimizations, assembly, machine code, etc. The Birth and Death of a Running [...]

Here is a somewhat lengthy but very good in-depth description of how an x86 machine boots up from the point you hit the power button until the operating system kernel initializes. “Things start rolling when you press the power button on the computer (no! do tell!). Once the motherboard is powered up it initializes its [...]

“Work began on the Hurd, the true kernel of the GNU operating system, in May 1991, but it has yet to materialise as a production-ready kernel. Richard Hillesley tells the story… Although the GNU operating system was first conceived in 1983 and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) had first declared an interest in using the [...]

Now here is a really lengthy and interesting article from one of Microsoft’s engineers discussing the creating the Windows 8 user experience. In addition, the author describes a bit about the history of Windows UIs and the many reasons behind the many decisions made along the way. “At the D: All Things Digital conference in [...]

If you’re using a Unix or Unix-like operating system you can leverage the GNU iconv library to validate the encoding of a file or files. Although, the GNU iconv library is actually meant to do file conversions, it can still be used in a way that will give you some understanding if the file(s) contain [...]

original source: 16 Linux Server Monitoring Commands You Really Need To Know iostat The iostat command shows in detail what your storage subsystem is up to. You usually use iostat to monitor how well your storage sub-systems are working in general and to spot slow input/output problems before your clients notice that the server is [...]

Some tricks covered in the article include: using passwordless, key-based login; setting up local per-host configurations; exporting a local service through a firewall; accessing a remote service through a firewall; setting up a SOCKS proxy for Firefox; executing commands remotely from scripts; transfering files to/from remote machines; mounting a filesystem through SSH; and triggering admin [...]

“In the early days computers were much simpler. The various components of a system, such as the CPU, memory, mass storage, and network interfaces, were developed together and, as a result, were quite balanced in their performance. For example, the memory and network interfaces were not (much) faster than the CPU at providing data. This [...]

& – This causes the application to run in the background. You will get a new shell prompt after issuing this command. nohup and disown – Both of these prevent SIGHUP (hangup) signals so the application isn’t killed when the terminal session is closed. nohup does this when the job starts. disown can be used [...]

Now here’s a really interesting feature article on Unix history and how it came to be. It’s quite amazing how successful a piece of software has become and how it came to influence the world of computing in the past (roughly) 40 years. “They say that when one door closes on you, another opens. People [...]