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    • Wake Forest, NC, — 2025-09-20
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1

Development isn’t over until it’s packaged

January 14, 2026
2

Tinkering with Immutable Linux: How Fedora Cosmic Atomic Won Me Over

January 13, 2026January 6, 2026
3

Using Wildcards on the Bash Command Line

January 12, 2026January 5, 2026
4

2025 — a Great Year for Both.org

January 10, 2026January 11, 2026
5

How Immutable Linux Could Save Libraries Thousands

January 9, 2026December 31, 2025
6

The difference in open source licenses

January 8, 2026January 8, 2026
7

Counting words from online articles

January 7, 2026December 29, 2025
8

Buying a Linux laptop that will last

January 6, 2026January 6, 2026
9

Introduction to the BtrFS Filesystem

January 5, 2026December 25, 2025
  • Home
  • David Both

dboth

David Both is an Open Source Software and GNU/Linux advocate, trainer, writer, and speaker who lives in Raleigh North Carolina. He is a strong proponent of and evangelist for the "Linux Philosophy." He’s been in the IT industry for over 50 years. He taught RHCE classes for Red Hat and has worked at MCI Worldcom, Cisco, and the State of North Carolina. He has been working with Linux and Open Source Software for over 25 years. David likes to build his own computers to ensure that each new computer meets his exacting specifications. He has written articles for magazines including, Linux Magazine, Linux Journal, and Opensource.com. He currently has five books published with Apress, "The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins", a self-study training course in three volumes “Using and Administering Linux: Zero to SysAdmin,” that was released in late 2019, and “Linux for Small Business Owners” with Co-author Cyndi Bulka.
Bash Command Line Linux

Using Wildcards on the Bash Command Line

The function of any shell, whether Bash, KSH, CSH is to take commands entered on the command line; expand any file globs, that is wildcard...

David Both
January 12, 2026January 5, 2026
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Both.org Linux

2025 — a Great Year for Both.org

2025 was an amazing year for Both.org. We started with only a few visitors per day and grew rapidly. Although the time up to the...

David Both
January 10, 2026January 11, 2026
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BtrFS Filesystems Linux

Introduction to the BtrFS Filesystem

Over the nearly 30 years I have been using Linux, the default filesystem for Red Hat Linux (not RHEL) and Fedora, the EXT series of...

David Both
January 5, 2026December 25, 2025
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Backups Filesystems Linux Tips and tricks

Quick Tip for umount

Sometimes learning a new thing can be the result of my innate curiosity.

David Both
January 3, 2026December 31, 2025
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BtrFS EXT4 Filesystems Linux

The Truth About Disk Fragmentation

Modern Linux filesystems make defragmentation irrelevant for most of us.

David Both
January 2, 2026December 24, 2025
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Opinion

Prognostications for 2026

The advent of a new year always seems to give us an excuse to inflict our opinions about what we expect -- or hope --...

David Both
January 1, 2026December 24, 2025
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Linux Stress testing System Administration

When an Apparent DDOS Attack is a Good Thing

Both.org is 2 years old and has been growing steadily. But we’re now seeing some interesting growth phenomena.

David Both
December 20, 2025
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AI Slop Linux Opinion

Mozilla Firefox AI Slop

I've been using Mozilla Firefox since its original release 21 years ago. Firefox started as an excellent open source browser with a relatively small code...

David Both
December 19, 2025December 19, 2025
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BtrFS Filesystems Linux

Converting to BtrFS — Episode 4

In the 3rd episode of this series, I used the btrfs-convert command to convert the EXT4 filesystem on an LVM base to BtrFS on LVM....

David Both
December 16, 2025December 15, 2025
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DevOps Linux Stress testing System Administration Testing

Advanced stress testing for DevOps

I recently discovered stress-ng which, while similar to the original stress program, offers far more flexibility and granularity in testing.

David Both
December 15, 2025December 27, 2025
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BtrFS EXT4 Filesystems Linux Storage System Administration

Everything you never wanted to know about the /etc/fstab File

Mounting of filesystems during the startup process is managed by the /etc/fstab configuration file.

David Both
December 11, 2025December 19, 2025
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AI Linux Opinion Windows

What do AI and Timothy Leary have in common?

If you were around in the '60s, you probably know who Timothy Leary was. If you weren't around then, the short story is that he...

David Both
December 8, 2025December 5, 2025
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EXT4 Filesystems Linux Storage Storage Management Tools

The secret to fixing a mangled filesystem

Modern computers and the storage devices we use in them, both HDDs and SSDs, are quite resilient. It's seldom that a power failure, tripping over...

David Both
December 4, 2025January 2, 2026
Read More
DNS Internet Performance Ramblings

Is the Internet grinding to a halt?

Is there a new conspiracy theory to worry about?

David Both
December 1, 2025December 1, 2025
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BtrFS Filesystems Linux

Converting to BtrFS — Episode 3

It worked — sort of.

David Both
November 25, 2025November 24, 2025
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AI Slop Linux Opinion Windows

AI slop broke Windows

30% of the code in Windows has been written by AI. At the same time, pretty much all Windows core features are broken.

David Both
November 24, 2025November 24, 2025
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Posts pagination

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David Both ATO Interview

Last October at All Things Open (ATO) I was interviewed by Jason Hibbits of We Love Open Source. It just posted this week in the article “Why today’s AI isn’t intelligent (yet)“.

Random Quote

Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting some useful work done.

— Gilb’s laws of unreliability

Links: Moving to Linux

  • 7 Reasons Fedora Might Be a Better Windows Replacement Than Linux Mint
  • 7 Reasons Why Windows Users Avoid Linux (Which Aren’t True Anymore)
  • Best Linux distros to try before Windows 10 support ends
  • How to switch your Windows 10 PC to Linux Mint – for free
  • I replaced my entire Microsoft Office subscription with free open-source apps
  • Isn’t It Time to Switch to Linux? 12 Reasons to Abandon Windows
  • KDE for W10 Exiles
  • Linux: A true story
  • Why Denmark is dumping Microsoft Office and Windows for LibreOffice and Linux
  • Why I Switched to Linux From Windows

“systemd for SysAdmins” Now Available

May 13,2025

My latest book — a #1 New Release on Amazon — “systemd for Linux  SysAdmins” is now available from my publisher, Apress, and on Amazon.

Technically We Write — Our Partner Site

Our partner site, Technically We Write, has published a number of articles from several contributors to Both.org. Check them out.

Technically We Write is a community of technical writers, technical editors, copyeditors, web content writers, and all other roles in technical communication.

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  • About Us
  • End of 10 Events
    • Wake Forest, NC, — 2025-09-20
  • Linux
    • Why I use Linux
    • The real reason we use Linux
  • My Linux Books
    • systemd for Linux SysAdmins
    • Using and Administering Linux – Zero to SysAdmin: 2nd Edition
    • The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins
    • Linux for Small Business Owners
    • Errata
      • Errata for The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins
      • Errata for Using and Administering Linux — 1st Edition
      • Errata for Using and Administering Linux — 2nd Edition
  • Open Source Resources
    • What is Open Source?
    • What is Linux?
    • What is Open Source Software?
    • The Open Source Way
  • Write for us
    • Submission and Style guide
    • Advertising statement
  • Downloads

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