With a few lines of self-written firmware and a simple Perl script, Perlmeister Mike Schilli trains one of his Linux computers with a plugged in Arduino board to switch electrical equipment on and off using a relay. Enchanting.

Chronicler Zack Brown reports on the latest news, views, dilemmas, and developments within the Linux kernel community.

Chronicler Zack Brown reports on the latest news, views, dilemmas, and developments within the Linux kernel community.

When the Perlmeister is on the road, he likes to know what's going on at home. Armed with just two scripts, he draws on the Tumblr API to store snapshots cyclically from his home security camera.

The PHP XHP extension lets you use HTML and XML tags directly in the PHP code.

It started off harmlessly enough with a few funny pictures of cats, but eventually it became the Internet phenomenon par excellence. It's no joke: Perl gives you some great tools for building and customizing memes yourself.

Your favorite office suites have a surprisingly active life at the command line, and various supplementary scripts can help you perform some functions more easily there than on the desktop.

Chronicler Zack Brown reports on the latest news, views, dilemmas, and developments within the Linux kernel community.

SysV init was formerly the sole candidate for starting processes on Linux, but today, a tech-savvy generation of init systems is waiting in the starting blocks.