*nix Recipes



A bit of personal history...

I've started learning about *nix operating systems around year 2004 when I did a quite ackward web application (in PHP) for CNFT-2004. Then until 2011 I've steadily increased my use of software running on such operating systems while, in private, learning a bit more with every (failed) installation of RedHat (later Fedora). The big step forward was in the summer of 2007 when joining te LHCb collaboration at CERN and starting to work extensively on SLC (4 at that time). But, for a few years more I was reluctant to give up on M$ Windows as the main OS. Finally, in 2011 I've realized that interfacing M$ Windows and Linux (at the level I was envisaging then) would be too time consuming and difficult for me and I completely switched to using *nix (changing the distribution successively from RedHat to Mandrake, then Ubuntu and finally Mint). Yet, my dream of having a comfortable and secure user environment and easy deployment of the software regardless of the underlying OS has never died, and I bet it is the more or less conscious dream of every computer user. So this page will contain various recipes in an effort to help everyone take a step further towards this goal.

Some random tips...