My name is Nick Doubleday, and I am a Linux Engineer/Site Reliability Engineer. I started as a hobbyist a long time ago, and somewhere along the line, people started paying me to play with this stuff.
What is a hacker?
I don’t mean ‘hacker’ in the same sense that you would see it used on major news networks. Instead, I mean the traditional MIT Definition of Hacker, or ‘One who applies ingenuity to create a clever result’. Every discipline and subject matter has its hackers. However, the Linux Hackery community should adhere to the Tenets of the Hacker Ethic developed by Steven Levy in Hackers: Heros of the Computer Revolution:
- Access to computers - and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works - should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On imperative!
- All information should be free.
- Mistrust authority - promote decentralization.
- Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.
- You can create art and beauty on a computer.
- Computers can change your life for the better.
What is Linux Hackery?
The purpose of Linux Hackery is to serve as a resource for intermediate and expert hobbyists and professionals alike, while still remaining useful to a beginner.
As a hobbyist: I reached a point where most of the resources I could find were tutorials on basic tasks.
As a professional: I find that I can find tons of articles and information on the most obscure enterprise Linux software offerings.
However, finding resources regarding workflow hacks, interesting desktop software and the likes between those levels is difficult. Most of what I’ve discovered is the result of my own exploration and conversations with other Linux professionals regarding their experiences.