Linux Gazette
linuxgazette.net · Group blog · on HN since 2007
Linux Gazette is a long-running online Linux magazine with articles on shell tools, Python, and system hacking.
What HN saysHN links its old issues for Linux history, such as the origin of rm and rmdir, and for 1990s articles on CAD and other topics.
30HN people shared it
17linked it in comments
15stories submitted
259story points
1 year agolast shared
2007people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Q and A: The difference between hard and soft links3 people · 5 points · first shared 2011 · 1 comments on HN
- 2The reason why I have switched to zsh - Part 22 people · 4 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 3A Brief History of the 'rm' and 'rmdir' commands (2000)2 people · 2 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 4GNOME and Red Hat Linux eleven years ago (2009)1 people · 128 points · first shared 2025 · 81 comments on HN
- 5Python Generator Tricks1 people · 43 points · first shared 2010 · 14 comments on HN
- 6A 'revisited' guide to GNU Screen1 people · 43 points · first shared 2009 · 29 comments on HN
- 7Writing your own Toy OS1 people · 16 points · first shared 2008 · 10 comments on HN
- 8Hack: Discover the hidden 8 bit Sound card in your PC1 people · 6 points · first shared 2007 · 1 comments on HN
- 9A slightly advanced intro to vim1 people · 4 points · first shared 2008 · discussion on HN
- 10Howto: Linux Software RAID1 people · 4 points · first shared 2008 · discussion on HN
- 11TCP and Linux' Pluggable Congestion Control Algorithms1 people · 3 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 12Preventing Domain Expiration1 people · 1 points · first shared 2008 · discussion on HN
- 13Rossum1 people · first shared 2023
- 14Pedersen1 people · first shared 2008
- 15Anonymous1 people · first shared 2023
What HN people wrote when they linked it
anthk · 2025-06-23
The Linux Gazzete had several articles on that, one of them from Andorra.
Great times.
https://linuxgazette.net/issue45/ward/ward.html
jrvarela56 · 2011-08-24
Hope this helps:
(Python)
def closure(x):
return lambda y:x+y
a = closure(5) #'a' is a function now
a(2) #returns 7
a(3) #returns 8
The function 'closure' can be carried around and it remembers the value of x from when it was created.
Got the example from this article: http://linuxgazette.net/109/pramode.html (I believe it was shared a few weeks ago) - great reference for other FP concepts and a good way to get started in FP if you already like working with Python.
marttt · 2023-05-28
Oh, I would love to NO_COLOR the Links [1] text-based web browser. Can anyone help?
Trying to make it happen via the config file wasn't satisfactory -- my barebones Linux (Tiny Core Linux in console-only mode, that is; not a GUI terminal window) still highlights URLs as neon white, etc.
I tried to single-color my screen on the system level with a script that sends some escape sequences [2]. Unfortunately, the default settings of Links browser seem to override that. (Meaning, if the script turns normal text to amber, URLs in Links still highlight as bright yellow or something -- looks like some kind of color gradient is at play in the Links' source code. But the code doesn't have many comments, so it is troublesome to spot for a hobbyist like me.)
1: http://www.jikos.cz/~mikulas/links/
2: Interesting reading (from 1999) on what can be done with Linux escape sequences! https://linuxgazette.net/137/anonymous.html
blueflow · 2024-11-06
A Brief History of the 'rm' and 'rmdir' commands : https://linuxgazette.net/issue49/fischer.html
app4soft · 2023-07-26
And here is mentioned «LinuxCAD Impressions» by Robert Wuest published in Issue 30 of Linux Gazette, July 1998.[0]
[0] https://linuxgazette.net/issue30/wuest.html
thesuperbigfrog · 2023-07-07
>> From my small user surveys, "open source" means a lot of things.
Asking people to vote on something does not change the meaning.
The term "open source" referring to the distribution of source code and the rights associated with it have historical origins that are well-documented:
https://opensource.org/history/
https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/The-Brains-Behind-Freeware-To-…
https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/FREEWARE-PIONEERS-Innovators-A…
https://linuxgazette.net/issue28/rossum.html
If you want to use some other license and call it "open source", then don't be surprised when people call it out for whatever the differences are.
fulafel · 2018-03-23
I'm sure you found these too, but your comment made me want to refresh my memory:
For older kernels, there is a ftrace way for tracing retransmits: http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2014-09-06/linux-ftrace-tcp-retransmi…
The oldest are SNMP style counters used by "netstat -s" / "sar -n ETCP" for all retransmits on the system, if you don't need per flow stats.
Ten there's an application level getsockopt TCP_INFO, detailed at: https://linuxgazette.net/136/pfeiffer.html
joonoro · 2015-08-21
Depends on the use case, but ext4 is a pretty good default. I like using IBM's JFS on my laptops to prolong battery life since it minimizes CPU usage [0][1][2].
[0] http://fsbench.netnation.com/
[1] https://www.debian-administration.org/article/388/Filesystems_ext3_rei…
[2] http://linuxgazette.net/122/TWDT.html#piszcz
thezilch · 2015-04-01
There are plenty of alternatives to every library having to have yet another probably broken security layer. Probably better to focus on this layer being separate from everyone having to implement it.
Like, stunnel: https://www.stunnel.org/index.html and how to setup (Re: MySQL over stunnel) http://linuxgazette.net/107/odonovan.html
jnazario · 2013-07-15
i wrote one a long time ago:
http://linuxgazette.net/67/nazario.html
i still use a buttload of awk for data science type uses.
gnosis · 2011-11-20
zsh's extended globbing support makes the use of find unnecessary in most cases. See the "extended globbing" section of the link below[1] for some examples.
zsh also has the 'zargs' command, which works something like xargs, except that it gets its arguments from the command line (often in conjunction with extended globbing) rather than from stdin.
You might also be interested in reading about the "useless uses of cat"[2]
[1] - http://linuxgazette.net/184/silva.html
[2] - http://partmaps.org/era/unix/award.html
tmm1 · 2011-03-04
The reason fork is so slow on Linux is because the default page size is 4k. This means for a 300MB process, 76800 page table entries have to be copied during the fork.
There are ways to enable HugeTBL on linux to increase the page size, which can improve fork performance as well. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2731531/faster-forking-of-large-pro… http://linuxgazette.net/155/krishnakumar.html and http://sourceforge.net/projects/libhugetlbfs/
Does anyone know how fork is implemented on BSD/OSX and why it doesn't exhibit the same characteristics?
Strunk · 2010-12-09
http://linuxgazette.net/77/krishnakumar.html
just with a little google. :)
erikano · 2010-11-24
I can't seem to find any terminal emulator called st, or were you referring to using an Atari ST [1]?
[1]: http://linuxgazette.net/issue70/arndt.html
0x44 · 2008-05-13
whacked_new · 2008-04-01
Wow, the '.' is certainly an enviable feature.
http://meghnad.iucaa.ernet.in/intranet/sysadm/help_desk/emacs/49.html
isn't reassuring either. How does C-x (, C-x ), and C-x e compare?
http://linuxgazette.net/issue47/pedersen.html
axiolite · 2021-03-25
> why are there so many attempts towards recreating the macOS UI and UX in Linux
I imagine it's because, when the year of the Linux desktop didn't arrive, developers everywhere decided they could make it happen if only they tried hard enough to put together the perfect UI, and so the kitchen-sink approach proliferated.
> Or back in the '90s/'00s, attempts towards recreating the Windows UI/UX?
I take exception to this one. In fact it was Microsoft with Windows 7 (released in 2007) which copied much of the UI of older Linux desktops like KDE and GNOME versions 1.0 (circa 1997). See:
https://linuxgazette.net/165/misc/laycock/gnome.png
https://images.channelpartner.de/bdb/490847/1066x600.jpg
Linux desktop environments were better back then. XFce is the only tolerable one I can think of, today. Even there, I hate the defaults and preferred it in the XFce3 days when it was just an (improved) CDE clone. Fluxbox or bust!