The "Year of the Desktop" has been a perennial call to arms that's sunken into a joke that's way past its expiration date. We frequently talk about the "Year of the Desktop", but we don't really talk about how we would achieve that goal. What does the "Year of the Desktop" even look like? What it comes down to is applications—rather, a market for applications. There is no market for applications because of a number of cultural artifacts that began when the Free Software was just getting up on wobbly legs.

Want to distribute Python programs to your Python-less clients? PyInstaller is the answer. If you're used to working with a compiled language, the notion that you would need to have a programming language around, not just for development but also for running an application, seems a bit weird. Just because a program was written in C doesn't mean you need a C compiler in order to run it, right?

As a novice software developer, the one thing I look for when choosing a programming language is this: is there a library that allows me to interface with the system to accomplish a task? If Python didn't have Flask, I might choose a different language to write a web application. For this same reason, I've begun to develop many, admittedly small, applications with Bash. Although Python, for example, has many modules to import and extend functionality, Bash has thousands of commands that perform a variety of features, including string manipulation, mathematic computation, encryption and database operations. In this article, I take a look at these features and how to use them easily within a Bash application.

Have you fully unlocked the potential of DevOps? Need some expert advice on how to accelerate application delivery on hybrid cloud? Join us for this free webcast for Linux Journal Readers.

In my last article, I started to look at multitenant Web applications. These are applications that run a single time, but that can be retrieved via a variety of hostnames.

For some time now, there has been tremendous growth in the world of Web applications. It's quite amazing to see what you can do just via a Web browser—not only can you buy just about anything, but also a growing number of sites offer "software as a service", often abbreviated as SaaS. The idea is that in exchange for a monthly service fee, you get access to a service.

During the past 20 years, there has been a growing sense of inadequacy about the "command and control" model for managing IT systems. Years in front of the television with a remote control have left us hard pressed to think of any other way of making machines work for us.

Back when I started to use the Internet in 1988, there was a simple way to get answers to your technical questions. You would go onto "Netnews", also known as Usenet, and you would post your question to one of the forums. There were forums, or "newsgroups", on nearly every possible topic, from programming languages to religions to humor.

There's an old saying in the real-estate business that the three most important things in a property are location, location and location. We can assume this is still true when it comes to real estate, but it also is increasingly true when it comes to Web applications.

Take on "dependency hell" with Docker containers, the lightweight and nimble cousin of VMs. Learn how Docker makes applications portable and isolated by packaging them in containers based on LXC technology.

Even the most beautiful Rails application can lose its elegance if not deployed correctly. Like other Ruby frameworks or languages, such as Sinatra, Rails is based on the Rack interface. This article provides a basic introduction to Rack hosting and Rack-based application deployments.

Generally, good programming is considered to be the measured application of an art form, craft or discipline, with the objective of producing a competent and evolving business solution. In traditional environments, computer programming is a practice that has multiple phases, such as designing, developing, testing, debugging and maintaining application code.