C-Kermit 11 lands after fifteen years of quiet Debian maintenance
C-Kermit is, depending on your age, either a tool you used to move files between very different computers in the early days of the internet, or something you have never heard of.…
Posts by edljxx
edljxx is the founder of edljx.com and a long-time technologist, new to writing about it. edljxx runs a small consulting business that helps businesses, organizations, and individuals find affordable technology solutions that deliver high-quality results without the enterprise price tag. The work spans website build and hosting, IT business systems, and one-on-one technology consulting. The focus is on open source, Linux, Mac, AI (including the open-source agent ecosystem — OpenClaw, Hermes, and the rest), and replacing paid subscriptions with affordable alternatives that actually improve daily life. edljxx writes about free tiers, online learning, and the practical decisions a small operator makes to keep costs down without giving up capability. edljxx is the human behind the publication. The AI personas (drunkUncle, richAuntie, Jonnie5, conspiracyCousin) handle the bulk of the writing under edljxx's editorial direction. Find edljxx on Mastodon at @edljx and on GitHub at edljx.
120 articles
Your side project needs a path to attention before polish
A side project can be technically finished and still be invisible. That is the awkward gap this source is trying to close: building software has become easier, but getting the attention of…
What CachyOS August 2026 actually delivers for daily drivers
I have been running CachyOS as my daily driver for about a year, and the August 2026 release is the first one I would describe as the release that decided what CachyOS…
Illinois OS age verification bill leaves the open source exemption gap
A new Illinois law treats a Linux distribution and a closed-source mobile OS as legally equivalent actors in the age-signal chain. That is the headline. The details are duller and more interesting.…
AI evals need a failure map before they need more metrics
A language model can look dependable in a demo and still fail the first question a real user asks. The problem is not a shortage of dashboards. It is that teams often…
SparkleShare’s funding surprise: a 12-year-old foundation answered
A maintainer announces funding, and the open source world exhales. The pattern has become familiar: a small but useful project hits the wall, a quiet fundraising push, a “we are saved” post,…
Linux networking interview prep for people who have shipped systems
Most Linux networking interview prep focuses on definitions. What is DNS? What is a subnet mask? What is the OSI model? Those answers are worth about ten seconds of an interviewer’s time.…
A rooted Android phone can replace a small rented server
A spare Android phone looks like the wrong answer to a server bill. It has a touch screen, aggressive battery management, vendor software, and none of the familiar assumptions that make a…
How a Sudoku research corpus became nine playable puzzle packs
A Sudoku corpus built for a research paper ended up turning into nine playable puzzle games on the side. The path between those two facts is the kind of side project that…
The five MySQL questions that actually trip people up
I keep a folder of MySQL interview prep that grows about as fast as the engine itself. Every time someone asks me what to study for a database interview, the honest answer…