Systemd Timers: Alternative to cron on Linux
Scheduling recurring tasks is one of those things every Linux user eventually needs to do. For decades, cron was the only real option. It is still everywhere, still works, and still makes sense…

Scheduling recurring tasks is one of those things every Linux user eventually needs to do. For decades, cron was the only real option. It is still everywhere, still works, and still makes sense…

A few days ago I received an email from Eric Marceau, a longtime member of the ubuntu-mate.community forum, reaching out to ask whether LinuxCommunity.io would be willing to accommodate a group for MATE…

Monitoring dashboards occasionally indicate low CPU utilization (e.g., 22%) and ample free memory, yet applications may exhibit sluggishness and increased response times. This common discrepancy in Linux environments often stems from process states…

The curl command in Linux is one of those tools that looks simple on the surface but has surprising depth once you start using it regularly. Most people know it as “that command…

The strace command in Linux separates the sysadmins who guess from the ones who actually know what’s happening. When a process misbehaves, hangs, eats CPU, or refuses to start, strace shows you exactly…

Setting up a Linux server is one of the best ways to learn Linux and server management hands-on. Linux servers offer unmatched flexibility, performance, and control for hosting services, running applications, supporting production…

Mar 24, 2026 10min Read Summarize with: Inbound email marketing is a strategy in which you only email people who signed up to hear from you. Instead of cold-emailing strangers, you attract subscribers…

If you’ve spent any time on the Linux command line, you’ve probably seen the sed command used in a one-liner and thought “I should learn that properly.” Most people pick it up piecemeal,…

I run a Discourse forum behind Cloudflare, and getting the WAF rules right took more trial and error than I expected. Discourse is a Ruby on Rails application that most people self-host in…

Every write to disk costs something, whether it’s wearing down an SSD, slowing I/O on a busy server, or draining battery on a laptop. One of the biggest offenders is logging. Between systemd-journald,…

Update 2026: This article has been updated to fix broken links and verify long-term reliability. After 4 years, every device recommended below is still working in my lab, including multiple SD cards that…

SELinux and AppArmor have been around for many years, but are still essential for maintaining a secure Linux environment. This article will cover how to set them up and troubleshoot these mandatory access…

This article is a follow-up to the previous 90 Linux Commands Frequently Used by Linux Sysadmins post. As time allows, I will continue to publish articles on each of these 90 commands, geared toward…

Feb 23, 2026 Summarize with: Web applications are the digital tools you rely on every day to work, communicate, shop, and manage information directly through a browser. From email and online banking to…

I’ve been spending the past month or so working on a hobby project I started last year, a weather and hurricane tracking site built for the Eastern Caribbean. I figured it was worth…

Every VPS provider loves to advertise NVMe storage. It sounds fast on paper and is usually a noticeable upgrade over older disk (HDD) and traditional SSD storage. The problem is that those IOPS…

Servers aren’t what they used to be. If you’ve spun up a small VPS (Virtual Private Server) recently and felt underwhelmed by its snappiness, you’re not alone. A basic 1-core CPU with 1…

Servers can sometimes appear idle yet still perform sluggishly. This scenario is common across web hosting servers, database servers, VPS or cloud instances, or even containerized workloads. In all mainstream Linux distributions, the…