Do not reinvent the wheel
Re-Use

Others have walked a mile (or more) in your shoes.
In 1977 I joined Bell Laboratories in North Andover, Massachusetts and first laid hands on a Unix system. Long before, I had heard of Unix, but even though I had worked on many operating systems, I had never actually seen Unix.
I interviewed at Bell Labs to become a "systems administrator." Beatrice ("B") Fink, who was to be my supervisor, wanted me to be the systems administrator of a CDC Cyber system. As fascinating as that system was, I wanted to be a Unix systems administrator. "The Labs" had developed Unix, and I knew I could find out anything about it by looking at the source code. Besides, Unix ran on PDP-11s and VAX systems from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and had mostly been developed on DEC equipment, and I liked DEC's gear. At the time, I knew nothing about CDC equipment and did not see much of a future in learning about the Cyber.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
Linux Mint 20 Reaches EOL
With Linux Mint 20 at its end of life, the time has arrived to upgrade to Linux Mint 22.
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.
-
Go-Based Botnet Attacking IoT Devices
Using an SSH credential brute-force attack, the Go-based PumaBot is exploiting IoT devices everywhere.
-
Plasma 6.5 Promises Better Memory Optimization
With the stable Plasma 6.4 on the horizon, KDE has a few new tricks up its sleeve for Plasma 6.5.
-
KaOS 2025.05 Officially Qt5 Free
If you're a fan of independent Linux distributions, the team behind KaOS is proud to announce the latest iteration that includes kernel 6.14 and KDE's Plasma 6.3.5.
-
Linux Kernel 6.15 Now Available
The latest Linux kernel is now available with several new features/improvements and the usual bug fixes.
-
Microsoft Makes Surprising WSL Announcement
In a move that might surprise some users, Microsoft has made Windows Subsystem for Linux open source.
-
Red Hat Releases RHEL 10 Early
Red Hat quietly rolled out the official release of RHEL 10.0 a bit early.
-
openSUSE Joins End of 10
openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.
-
New Version of Flatpak Released
Flatpak 1.16.1 is now available as the latest, stable version with various improvements.