Rant: Management Responsibility

Imagine you're the head of a small business and you need to hire someone to run a portion of your company. How would you go about doing that? Well, a reasonable person would evaluate various job applicants. You would check their qualifications. Do they have the necessary job skills and experience? Are they honest? Do they have a good work ethic? Is their temperament suitable for the job? Do they demonstrate good judgment?

Today I want to share my thoughts on the role citizens play in a democracy. There is a common belief that we are separate from our government and that we, as citizens, have no power over it. I would argue it's quite the opposite. We are the government and we have all the power. We just need to use it.

America is a Business

To understand this, let's consider the American government in terms of corporate structure. America, as well as its government, is a business. It produces work products such as roads and bridges, timely weather forecasts, various economic reports. The government also provides services like firefighting, law enforcement, public schools, and libraries for its customers, the citizens in exchange for taxes.

The government is managed by its citizens, people like you and me, who act as both the Board of Directors and its customers. We hire the management team, the elected officials in whom we place our trust to operate the machinery of government according to our policy directives. Our corporation has a set of bylaws called the Constitution which the management team is bound to obey and enforce. We have a separate board called the courts that provides guidance regrading the application of the bylaws and their resultant policies. Ultimately, all power rests with the citizens since we are the ones who sign the management team to their multi-year contracts.

But with great power comes great responsibility. In our case it's management responsibility. We have the responsibility to be engaged and vigilant. We must hire carefully, and constantly evaluate the management team's performance. In order to be good at this role, we must understand what our government does and how it works. We must understand the bylaws and how they shape the government. 

America Always Gets the Government It Deserves

So what happens when we neglect our management responsibility? A brief look around answers that question. In the year 2026, we have a deeply corrupt and incompetent government whose actions are dictated by a handful of wealthy donors, and these billionaires don't seem very interested in our well-being. So it's up to us to perform our management responsibility and straighten this mess out.

Now, I know that people are busy with their personal lives and don't have the time or necessarily the inclination to perform the required oversight, but the management of our government is important because it is tasked with securing our economic, societal, and environmental safety. Not something that you want to leave to chance or worse, exploitation by evil people.

Like they say, freedom isn't free.

The Linux Command Line, 7th Internet Edition Now Available in Swedish

Thanks to the efforts of Josef Andersson, there is now a Swedish translation of the The Linux Command Line available in both HTML and PDF formats. You can find links to both on the "Books" page.

 

Announcing The Linux Command Line Seventh Internet Edition and Third Print Edition

 

Good News Everyone!

I have just released the Seventh Internet Edition of my book. Along with the Internet Edition release, we're just days away from the general availability of the new print edition which is based on the aforementioned Internet Edition.

So what's new? The Seventh Internet Edition is an enhanced version of the previous release with numerous cleanups, fixed typos, and small clarifications throughout. For a detailed list of the changes, see the release notes available here.

The Third Print Edition has been significantly modernized and expanded and contains all the changes found in the Sixth and Seventh Internet editions (the previous print edition was based on the Fifth Internet Edition). You can get all the details at No Starch Press.

Enjoy! 

Announcing The Linux Command Line, 6th Internet Edition

After eighteen months of semi-serious effort, I am pleased to announce the release of the 6th Internet Edition. With nearly forty pages of new, additional content, it's perhaps the largest revision since the book's original release in 2009.

Highlights of the 6th Internet Edition include:

• Updated Package Management chapter.
• Extensive revision of the Storage Devices chapter.
• Coverage of additional shell builtins such as eval, getopts, and select.
• Expansion of the Arrays chapter including how to simulate multi-dimensional arrays.
• There is now a downloadable collection of example scripts appearing in the book.

And many more additions and improvements.

For a detailed list of changes, see the Release Notes.

The 6th Internet Edition is now available for free download at https://LinuxCommand.org/tlcl.php.

Enjoy!

Recent Change to Community Translation Policy

I recently added a paragraph to the Community Translation Policy for The Linux Command Line as follows:

Be aware that once you are approved for performing the translation I will add your name and email address to the "Books" page on LinuxCommand.org so that others can contact you regarding your progress and perhaps offer you assistance in the translation.

I am hoping that with change I can get some of the translations moving. Some of them have been "in progress" for more than 5 years and it would be great if they got finished.

I will be making the change to the "Books" page soon, so keep an eye out for your chance to contact one of the translation team to offer help or encouragement.