Well, it's been a while since I posted the first Tips and Tricks article. Most of the following stuff was gathering dust (of the digital kind) ;-), waiting to be formalized into a post. So, I finally took pity of it and came up with this post.

1. Handling zombie processes

To reap (can't kill a zombie) a stubborn zombie process, you can do either of the following:

• Using kill, send SIGCHLD (signal number 17 on Linux) to the parent of the zombie.

• Send SIGCONT (signal number 18 on Linux) to the zombie process itself.

2. Safer output redirection in Bash

To prevent files from being overwritten by any redirection operator such as >, >& or <>, put either of the following in your ~/.bashrc:

set -o noclobber

-- or --

set -C

This can help you from accidentally overwriting files. If you decide that you do want to go ahead with the operation, you can use the >| operator instead.

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FOSS:

• NewsFox 1.0.9 was released. This is a big update with a lot of useful changes such as, 2 threads for updating feeds, independent set of columns (in the article pane) for different feeds, mark selected articles of a feed as unread, and more.

• A great article on *next-gen* filesystems, mainly Btrfs. I can't wait for Btrfs to go stable.

• FreeBSD 10 was released with a number of notable changes.

• LibreOffice 4.2 was released and it brought with itself a new start screen, better compatibility with MS OOXML and an Expert Configuration window in the options menu.

Security/Privacy:

• Kali Linux 1.0.6 was released and the biggest change it brought is the ability to destroy your encrypted data with a special (separate) password.

• The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is being used to stage DDoS attacks.

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So, while I had dropped the idea of posting Interesting Links for some reasons, heavy reader demand (read: 1 reader :P) forced me to be back with this post type. From now on, I'll try to post these monthly or bi-monthly, depending upon feasibility.

Also, a very happy new year!

So here's my first post for 2014.

Linux / FOSS:

• Multiprocess feature coming to Firefox soon.

• ownCloud 6 brings collaborative ODF editing along with other new features.

• WordPress 3.8 was released, and it brought with itself a great new design for the dashboard, better support for different device types, a new default theme and much more.

• A new point release of Debian 7, i.e., 7.3, was made available.

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