Field notes.
Networking, development, archery, and whatever the road throws up. Written from the field.
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systemd: Teaching Linux to Keep Things Running
At the end of the package management post I said we finally had a machine we could navigate, control and keep stocked with software — but that we had not…
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Subnets, With the Maths
A while back I wrote Subnets Without the Scary Maths, and I stand by every word: for a great many days you really can get by on “slash twenty-four means…
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NAT: How Ten Thousand Devices Share One Address
Here is a small mystery hiding in plain sight on your desk. You have a laptop, a phone, a TV, a couple of smart plugs and a games console —…
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Package Management: Linux Had an App Store First
At the end of the permissions post I promised we would stop poking at software that is already on the machine and start adding our own. Here is where the…
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Permissions: Who’s Allowed to Touch It
In the filesystem post I flagged a second half to the story: knowing where files live is one thing, but knowing who’s allowed to touch them is most of Linux…
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Everything’s a File: The Linux Filesystem
You can move around now — the last post gave you pwd, ls and cd. But where are you moving around? Coming from Windows, the first surprise is what’s missing:…
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SSH and the Endless Connectivity
In the console post I left you a promise: everything we did was sat in front of the machine, but in the real world you almost never are. You’re at…
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Finding Your Feet at the Console
At the end of the last post I left you installing a distro (or firing up WSL), and warned you’d end up right here: a screen with nothing on it…
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So Many Linuxes: Choosing Your First One
You’ve decided to learn Linux. Good. You go to download it, and immediately hit a wall — not the command line everyone warned you about, but a menu. Ubuntu? Debian?…
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Subnets Without the Scary Maths
Right at the end of Networking 101 I promised to come back for the scariest-looking rung on the ladder — subnets — and show it’s far tamer than the notation…