Adding a user is one of the most fundamental exercises on any computer system; this article focuses on how to do it on a Linux system.

Before getting started, I want to mention three fundamentals to keep in mind. First, like with most operating systems, Linux users need an account to be able to log in. This article specifically covers local accounts, not network accounts such as LDAP. Second, accounts have both a name (called a username) and a number (called a user ID). Third, users are typically placed into a group. Groups also have a name and group ID.

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Emoji are those fanciful pictograms that snuck into the Unicode character space. They're all the rage online, and people use them for all kinds of surprising things, from signifying reactions on social media to serving as visual labels for important file names. There are many ways to enter Unicode characters on Linux, but the GNOME desktop makes it easy to find and type an emoji.

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In Measuring the health of open source communities, I covered some of the key questions and metrics that we’ve explored as part of the CHAOSS project as they relate to project founders, maintainers, and contributors. In this article, we focus on open source corporate constituents (such as open source program offices, business risk and legal teams, human resources, and others) and end users.

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