Ever wondered why programming in Bash is so difficult? Bash employs the same constructs as traditional programming languages; however, under the hood, the logic is rather different. The Bourne-Again SHell (Bash) was developed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) under the GNU Project, which gives it a somewhat special reputation within the Open Source community. Today, Bash is the default user shell on most Linux installations. Although Bash is just one of several well known UNIX shells, its wide distribution with Linux makes it an important tool to know.

iptables is the user-space tool for configuring firewall rules in the Linux kernel. It is actually a part of the larger netfilter framework. Perhaps because iptables is the most visible part of the netfilter framework, the framework is commonly referred to collectively as iptables. iptables has been the Linux firewall solution since the 2.4 kernel.

Part I of this Deep Dive on containers introduces the idea of kernel control groups, or cgroups, and the way you can isolate, limit and monitor selected userspace applications. Here, I dive a bit deeper and focus on the next step of process isolation—that is, through containers, and more specifically, the Linux Containers (LXC) framework.

Nextcloud could be the first step toward replacing proprietary services like Dropbox and Skype. In its simplest form, the Nextcloud server is "just" a personal, free software alternative to services like Dropbox or iCloud. You can set it up so your files are always accessible via the internet, from wherever you are, and share them with your friends. However, Nextcloud can do so much more.

Encryption and secure communications are critical to our life on the Internet. Without the ability to authenticate and preserve secrecy, we cannot engage in commerce, nor can we trust the words of our friends and colleagues.

Qubes OS is a security-focused operating system that, as tech editor Kyle Rankin puts it, "is fundamentally different from any other Linux desktop I've used". Join us this weekend in reading Kyle's multi-part series on all things Qubes. Secure Desktops with Qubes: Introduction

Five observations about why your server monitoring still stinks by a monitoring specialist-turned-consultant. Early in my career, I was responsible for managing a large fleet of printers across a large campus. We're talking several hundred networked printers. It often required a 10- or 15-minute walk to get to some of those printers physically, and many were used only sporadically. I didn't always know what was happening until I arrived, so it was anyone's guess as to the problem. Simple paper jam? Driver issue? Printer currently on fire? I found out only after the long walk. Making this even more frustrating for everyone was that, thanks to the infrequent use of some of them, a printer with a problem might go unnoticed for weeks, making itself known only when someone tried to print with it.

OpenGL is a well-known standard for generating 3-D as well as 2-D graphics that is extremely powerful and has many capabilities. OpenGL is defined and released by the OpenGL Architecture Review Board (ARB). This article is a gentle introduction to OpenGL that will help you understand drawing using OpenGL.

Embedded developers working on kernels or bare-metal programs often go through several development cycles. Each time the developer modifies the code, the code has to be compiled, the ELF (Executable and Linkable Format)/kernel image has to be copied onto the SD card, and the card then has to be transferred from the PC to the development board and rebooted.