Pandoc and Markdown for the Win

2020-09-23

When real life intersects my love of FOSS, I get excited. I’ve been working with a physical therapist to learn exercises to prevent future lower back injures. My physical therapist opens our session by asking how frequently I did the exercises that he assigned, and how they went. I decided that instead of trying to recall 3-7 days of exercises, I would keep a log. Since I’m a geek, I kept my log in plain text.…

Using Hugo to Learn Skills

2020-08-30

After spending my free time of the past week enhancing discoverfoss.com , I decided to reflect on why this blog exists, and why I’m using Hugo to manage it. Discoverfoss.com came from a desire to give back to the free and open source community which has given so much to me and my family. I’m not a coder. I have no ambitions of being a “Youtuber”. I enjoy writing, and my profession requires long form writing for teaching and manuscripts for public speaking.…

Wrangle Dotfiles with Yadm

2020-08-23

Running a Linux distribution as your computer’s operating system opens up a world of tweaks, configurations, and personalizations. FOSS offers choices in desktop environments, window managers, and favorite programs. All these choices enable you to set up a computer environment that serves your unique needs. What happens when you want to recreate that same experience on a 2nd or 3rd computer that is also running a Linux distribution? You can manually copy each of your configuration files from one computer to another using a folder connected to syncthing or a USB flash drive transferred with sneakernet .…

MX-Fluxbox Pseudo Tiling

2020-08-18

Eventually the experienced FOSS user will discover tiling window managers. Similar to fluxbox, tiling window managers are light weight on resources, but they might need additional customization to enable features that come turned on automatically in desktop environments like Gnome , Plasma , Mate , and XFCE . Tiling window managers include FOSS like Awesome , Xmonad , i3 , and herbstluftwm just to name a few. Tiling window managers use keyboard shortcuts to quickly arrange your program windows into tiled layouts to make the most of your screen real estate.…

MX-Fluxbox Window Grouping

2020-08-16

When you hang around technology enthusiasts who love to be productive on their computers, you might hear the term “workflow.” Workflows tend to be as different as the individuals who establish their personal workflow. In FOSS communities individuals will sing their praises of their desktop environment often because they like its default workflow or it fits their preferred workflow. Perhaps, I’m an odd duck, but I have found “workflows” that work for me in all the major desktop environments.…

MX Fluxbox Puts a Shine on Old Code

2020-08-09

Shame on me for taking this long to try MX Linux. My teenage son has been a code contributor to MX since before their October 2019 release of MX-19. He loved MX from his first install, but I dismissed it for my use. I have used distros based on Debian Stable and longed for updated packages. Honestly from a distance, MX appeared to be an eclectic mix of applications from different frameworks on top of a stable (dare I say boring) base of Debian and XFCE.…

Introduction and Terms

2020-08-09

Welcome to Discover FOSS or “Discover Free and Open Source Software.” I have enjoyed FOSS and running a variety of Linux distributions since the early 2000’s. I started Discover FOSS to document my own journey of discovery and to share that journey with the wider community of enthusiastic users. I hope to provide content that tells my story of discovery while at the same time introduces you to perhaps new corners of the free and open source world that you have not discovered on your own.…