apt-get install and start samba on the laptop. smb-client over ethernet for the daw to get to the laptop to get to exchange some files. open two or three more terminal windows for mutt, iceweasel. the latter for the ardour manual. ardour now running on the daw. monitor the microphone input and in another terminal updatedb to locate some old audiofiles, for importing. open skype. ah, i know, ideologically dubious, but at least some telecom giant is not getting my moola. make voice-over-internet call, send email, read manual, record a poem. transfer files, strum guitar. actually all this running simultaneously on two linked machines with 5 or 6 open terminals. now this, for me, is linux, if not alan turings universal machine. this is the possibility to think through the local area network. make music. take notes. do research. learn and experience. but, and i realize, perhaps beyond the linux effect, or maybe another part of it, is the fact that all this is made possible through a social context, where friendship and help can be found. and interestingly the very two people who made so much of what i just described doable for me are the same two people who have taken the responsibility for putting together this conference. therefore i owe more than a special thanks to martin rumori and frank barknecht. for keeping me on the path, for putting together this wonderfull gathering and for generally being extremely nice people to know.

as Anthony said.

bash (GNU Bourne-Again SHell) cat (concatenate files and print on the standard output) convert (convert between image formats as well as much more) cut (remove sections from each line of files) dirname (strip last component from file name) echo (display a line of text) exit (cause normal process termination) expr (evaluate expressions) find (search for files in a directory hierarchy) grep (print lines matching a pattern) head (output the first part of files) java (the Java application launcher) ls (list directory contents) more (file perusal filter for crt viewing) ne (A nice editor) pdftk (A handy tool for manipulating PDF) Processing (a flexible software sketchbook) PuTTY (a free SSH and telnet client for Windows) rl (Randomize Lines.) rm (remove files or directories) sed (stream editor for filtering and transforming text) tail (output the last part of files) tr (translate or delete characters) wc (print newline, word, and byte counts for each file) Xvfb (virtual framebuffer X server for X Version 11)