Introduction

Linux Voice

Article from Issue 202/2017
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This month in Linux Voice.

Understanding modern Linux systems is both difficult and important. If you're working in technology, sooner or later, you'll hit a "weird" bug: the sort of problem that seems to come out of nowhere and, by all rational thought, shouldn't exist, yet somehow does and tends to be caused by something deep within the internals of the system. Personally, I take quite a perverse pleasure in these problems because they really push your skills and understanding.

When facing these problems, your key weapons are almost always old-school, low-level tools for probing the system. This month, both Valentine Sinitsyn and Mike Saunders take a look at some of these tools. In Core Tech, Valentine investigates nmap which is, in my opinion, the best network analysis tool. Mike, meanwhile, pokes the very fabric of executable files themselves. These are the sorts of skills you need to master if you really want to become a Linux expert.

These days, there's a good chance that if you're working on a large computer system with these sorts of ghostly problems, it is analyzing large amounts of data. Simon Phipps and I take a look at this problem from different angles. I investigate Spark, one of the leading tools for processing Big Data, while Simon takes a look at the regulatory and moral issues that these systems unleash.

Of course, you don't always have to get your hands quite that dirty. If you prefer your Linux to be a little less industrial, Graham is here as always with his pick of the best new Linux software to make your computing a bit more entertaining, and Mike introduces Cherry Tree, which can help you get your life in order.

– Ben Everard

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