gpgdir uses GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) to encrypt and decrypt files or a directory tree. You could accomplish the same objective by tarring the filesystem up and then encrypting the tar.gz file with GnuPG, but then you would still have to shred or wipe every file in the original directory tree. With gpgdir the whole tree is encrypted in one command.

I have been planning to move to Funtoo Linux, a derivative of Gentoo Linux, for over a month now. The install is basically the same as a Gentoo installation. The only difference is that instead of using Gentoo’s Portage, you can choose to just use Daniel Robbin’s Funtoo git-based Portage located at Github.

A file archiver is computer software which brings together a group of files into a single archive file. An archive file is therefore a collection of files and directories that are stored in one file. There are many advantages of storing multiple files this way. For example, an archive is a great way to store backup data, transfer files to another directory, or to a different computer.

"Today, I spent some time looking at better ways to organize the Portage tree in git, and I'm interested in getting feedback on what I've done. Please take a look at my new portage-new git repository..."

The default journaling file system on non-boot partitions on Ubuntu 11.04 is ext4. Other journaling file systems supported are ext3, xfs, jfs, reiserfs, and btrfs. The journaling file system of interest in this article is btrfs, the B-Tree File System. Btrfs is an ongoing attempt to create a ZFS-like file system for Linux.

n KDE-speak a "servicemenu" is a special entry that appears in Konqueror's context menu depending on the file(s) that are selected. You may have seen them in action without even knowing it. For instance, if you have the KDE file archive utility "ark" installed you will see a menu entry to "Extract here..." whenever you right click on a tarball or zip file.

A good backup system can help you recover from a lot of different kinds of situations: a botched upgrade (requiring re-installation), a hard drive crash, or even thumb-fingered users deleting the wrong file. In practice, though I've experienced all of these, it's the last sort of problem that causes me the most pain. Sometimes you just wish you could go back a few days in time and grab that file.

Linux Mint 10 is the first version of Linux Mint with built-in support for the B-tree File System (btrfs). Btrfs is one of the newest file systems in the Linux kernel.

Using Gentoo Linux, you have to get used to things just breaking, especially in the last couple of years. Portage is probably one of the best package management systems in the open source community. I have been quite impressed with Portage 2 the last couple months. Things seem to be improving. Yesterday I woke up to check some email. Later I needed to do some web development for an NGO.