This chapter excerpt on Linux Administration (download PDF) is taken from the book The Accidental Administrator: Linux Server Step-by-Step Configuration Guide. Among the topics covered in this book ...

One of the most powerful features of Unix and Linux is that using traditional command line tools, everything is a stream of bytes. Granted, modern software has blurred this a bit, but at the command ...

Older commands can still be faster—and more flexible, powerful, and accessible too!

Linux might sound scary for first-time Linux users, but actually, it isn’t. Linux is a bunch of open-source Unix operating systems based on Linux Kernel. These operating systems are called Linux ...

Working on the command line is an integral part of being a successful Linux user. You need to have a firm grasp of certain commands to work effectively. There are even certain commands that you must ...

GUIs are great—we wouldn’t want to live without them. But if you’re a Mac or Linux user and you want to get the most out of your operating system (and your keystrokes), you owe it to yourself to get ...

Turns out ls is more memorable when there’s loot involved.

Shell scripts enable every level of system administration and user interaction on Unix and Linux systems. Several system administration tasks can be automated with shell scripts. Disaster recovery ...

If you don't love the shell you're using on your Linux system, change it! There are plenty, including bash, fish, ksh, tcsh, zsh. There are quite a few shells on Linux system and more that can be ...

The wget command is my go-to for downloading remote files to a local machine when a GUI isn’t available. There are two reasons I tend to default to wget: It’s the first command I learned to use for ...