ALSA stands for the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture. It consists of a set of kernel drivers, an application programming interface (API) library and utility programs for supporting sound under Linux.

Linking is the process of combining various pieces of code and data together to form a single executable that can be loaded in memory. Linking can be done at compile time, at load time (by loaders) ...

I've been covering the Free Software Foundation's Defective By Design campaign against Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies since its planning stages. Starting from scratch, in less than three ...

In this article, we explore the optimization levels provided by the GCC compiler toolchain, including the specific optimizations provided in each. We also identify optimizations that require explicit ...

Have you ever wondered how system calls can be intercepted? Have you ever tried fooling the kernel by changing system call arguments? Have you ever wondered how debuggers stop a running process and ...

The "Argument list too long" error, which occurs anytime a user feeds too many arguments to a single command, leaves the user to fend for oneself, since all regular system commands (ls *, cp *, rm *, ...

Data compression works so well that popular backup and networking tools have some built in. Linux offers more than a dozen compression tools to choose from, and most of them let you pick a compression ...

It's a given that all disks eventually die, and it's easy to see why. The platters in a modern disk drive rotate more than a hundred times per second, maintaining submicron tolerances between the disk ...

Many Linux administrators and support technicians regularly use the top utility for real-time monitoring of their system state. In some shops, it is very typical to check top first when there is any ...

With NSA Security-Enhanced Linux now integrated into the 2.6 kernel and making its way into distributions, an increasing number of people likely will be installing SELinux and experimenting with it.

All the big film studios primarily use Linux for animation and visual effects. Perhaps no commercial Linux installation is larger than DreamWorks Animation, with more than 1,000 Linux desktops and ...

As more people and companies start to write Linux kernel code, understanding acceptable kernel programming coding style and conventions is very important. This article starts out by explaining the ...