GNU/Linux and BSD Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Aug 13, 2026

• Kernel Space / File Systems / Virtualization

  • SANS ☛ Linux Kernel Process Accounting - SANS Internet Storm Center

    A couple of days ago, Xavier posted about Atuin to gain more insight into the command history. Atuin does a great job of better organizing what is usually handled by "bash_history" and collecting meaningful additional data. Our reader David commented that this can also be done quite well with Linux's kernel process accounting feature, and I think he is very right. I really like Linux process accounting for a number of reasons, so here is a quick introduction.

    Process accounting is a kernel feature. You will not see a specific process responsible for it. Instead, the "accton" command signals the kernel to start logging process data to a specific location (usually /var/log/account/pacct). Once a process terminates, the kernel will log respective details to the binary log file.

• Applications

  • TecMint ☛ Rio Terminal for Linux: Speed Up Your Command-Line Workflow

    That’s usually when the new terminal gets blamed and uninstalled, even though the problem isn’t really the terminal itself.

• WINE or Emulation

  • PC World ☛ This free tool lets you run Windows apps on Linux

    If you’ve ever thought about switching to Linux, but worried about leaving your favorite Windows programs behind, Wine is a great way to ease the transition. Despite the name, Wine isn’t a drinking app—sorry to disappoint the Linux vinophiles out there. It’s a decades-old open-source compatibility layer that lets many Windows applications and games run directly on Linux, macOS, and BSD without installing Windows itself.

• Desktop Environments (DE)/Window Managers (WM)

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Weeks 9 & 10: Multi-Select and Mobile Selection Mode

      Over the last two weeks, I worked on adding multi-select support for deleting multiple entries at once. It sounded like a straightforward feature at first, but it ended up leading me down an interesting debugging involving an asynchronous race condition.

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Flipper Blog ☛ Flipper OS — the operating system for Flipper One

    Why build Flipper OS, yet another operating system, when there are already so many? Why not simply take a standard Debian-based system, as Raspberry Pi does, and customize it?

    The problem is that conventional Linux distributions are designed for traditional computers/servers. They are not convenient for a multitool like Flipper One, which can be a network router, a radio lab, a desktop computer, or a TV media box all on the same device.

  • BSD

    • Dan Langille ☛ Attempting to reproduce the missing etcmerge from 15.0 to 15.1 upgrade

      This post documents my attempt to reproduce the problem outlined in FreeBSD...

  • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

    • HowTo Geek ☛ I ditched Unraid's app templates for Ubuntu, and my homelab finally took off

      I used Unraid as my only home server platform for nearly five years before I decided to jump ship to a traditional Linux distro. Unraid was still working well for me, but there were just one or two things it didn't excel at, and those areas are right where Ubuntu shines.

      [...]

      When I first started my most recent homelab back in 2021, it was all centered around one machine: my Lenovo RD440 rack-mount server running Unraid. It did everything for me. It was my storage server, virtual machine system, and Docker host.

      I had one system and it honestly handled my needs just fine. I was actually surprised at how well Unraid handled being a jack-of-all-trades operating system. At the time, TrueNAS didn't offer Docker support in a stable version of its operating system like it does today, and the jails that it did have were nowhere near as capable as Docker on Unraid.