Several open-source utilities are available to handle all your archival and zip file formatting needs on both Windows and Linux desktops and servers.

By Max Hetrick

How do you commonly handle archived and zip file formats on your Windows and Linux systems? In this TechTip, I'll show you a few free and open-source utilities available to handle these tasks, plus remind you of a few native Linux system utilities.

Are you backed up? Linux backups couldn't be simpler if you use the open-source utility Synbak.

By Max Hetrick

One of the most common mistakes anyone can make is not having a quality backup of data available at their disposal. I know it only took me one instance of deleting something that I didn't have a copy of to implement some form of backup system. For home use, I back up my Linux laptop weekly onto an external USB disk and also nightly across the network onto a desktop system with a RAID 1 200G mirror using Synbak. This ensures I have more than one location to pull data from in case I get excited and delete something that I thought I didn't need access to again.

Start tracking all your IT assets, computer and network equipment, licenses, software, and vendors with the free open-source software GLPI.

For the longest time, I was searching for a way to combine information about all my IT assets into one searchable location. When you start adding up printers, PCs, laptops, networking devices, monitors, and various other peripherals on the network, it can easily become difficult to manage those assets. Furthermore, I also have to track and maintain software licenses, service contracts, vendor and warranty information, and documents associated with these.