Category: Computing
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Fedora + Xfce: The Distro You Get When You Refuse to Pick a Lane
I’ve been running the same Fedora install since 2018. Not “Fedora” as a rolling habit of reinstalling every year or two — the same install. It started life as Fedora 28 or 29, I genuinely can’t remember which, and it’s currently sitting at Fedora 44. In between, it has been dnf-upgraded across something like sixteen…
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The Greatly Exaggerated Death of Perl
Perl is great. I would not say I am an expert at it, but I have been working with this fascinating programming language for a number of years that it’s become something close to a reflex.So it’s not exactly neutral territory when someone tells me Perl is dying; it gets under my skin every time…
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One Narrow Patch: Staying Ready in the Comfort of Your Niche?
Specializing in a niche software field offers job security and develops strong interpersonal skills through direct user interaction. However, deep expertise in a narrow area can lead to career vulnerability if market demands shift. Specialized professionals risk finding their experience disconnected from broader technological trends and current hiring needs.
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Reclaim Your Terminal: How Lazygit Supercharges Your Git Workflow
Finding the right tools for your development workflow is a constant struggle, and Git tooling is no exception. Despite the plethora of Git clients available, none of them ever felt quite right. For a while, I settled on GitFiend. It worked well enough, but my workflow was still not quite right: I’d use the GUI…
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Why XFCE Makes Windows Optional
Windows isn’t the default anymore. Xfce is fast, familiar, and finally polished — running it on Fedora’s bleeding-edge spin, coming off years of i3, and I haven’t noticed a single performance hit.
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How to Fix i3 Workspace Assignment Failing for LibreOffice (Startup Race Condition)
I tweaked my i3 configuration to automate application placement. During this process, I encountered a frustrating issue. LibreOffice was ignoring my workspace assignments. While the main suite started correctly, specific components like LibreOffice Writer refused to land in their designated workspace. The first attempt I originally used the assign directive in my config as it…
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AI and Sufi Poetry: Analyzing Abdul-Qadir Bedil with Large Language Models
But beneath all that, a profound reality is that we’re building tools that can engage in subtle, reflective, and culturally rich conversations.
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Beyond Idle: The Quiet Power of Volunteer Computing
This piece originally ran back in 2017. I’ve recently revisited it to update legacy information, swap out retired projects for active ones, and keep the science accurate for today’s hardware. Volunteer computing is an arrangement where everyday users donate their unused computer resources to massive scientific projects. It’s a brilliant way to crowdsource the kind…
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AWK CSV Column Sum: Quick Command Line Tutorial
Imagine you have a file with multiple columns and you need to quickly get the total of a column in command line in UNIX. The easiest way is to use AWK in the command line. Let’s take the following file: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 2 3 4 5 6 7…
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