David Both

7227 points
David Both
Raleigh

David Both is an Open Source Software and GNU/Linux advocate, trainer, writer, and speaker. He has been working with Linux and Open Source Software since 1996 and with computers since 1969. He is a strong proponent of and evangelist for the "Linux Philosophy for System Administrators."

He has written articles for magazines including, Linux Magazine, Linux Journal, and OS/2 Magazine back when there was such a thing. He currently writes prolifically for OpenSource.com. He particularly enjoys learning new things while researching his books and articles, building his own computers, and helping his grandchildren build their computers. He has found some interesting
and unusual ways of problem solving, including sitting on one computer on which he was working.

David has published five books with Apress. Four solo works, “The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins,” August 2018, and a three volume self-study training course, “Using and Administering Linux — From Zero to SysAdmin,” released in December, 2019. He has also written one book with co-author Cyndi Bulka, "Linux for Small Business Owners" that was released in 2022.

David currently lives in Raleigh, NC, with his amazing and supportive wife, Alice.

He can be reached via email at LinuxGeek46@both.org or on Mastodon at @LinuxGeek46@linuxrocks.online.

Authored Comments

Very good article. And I certainly do recognize some of those stages quite intimately. Thanks for sharing your story.

You are welcome! I am happy my article provided you with some new insights.

To me, it really all goes back to the Linux Philosophy. Each program does one thing and does it well. ssh is really good at encrypted communications and tar is really good at creating and managing streams of archival data. Combining these powerful programs allows us to do things that the creators of each probably never even thought of. And there are many hundreds of such programs available to those of us who use the CLI.

Thanks for your comment.