Variables are an important part of shell scripting, just as they are for every programming language. Simply put, a variable defines a location in system memory that holds a value for later use. This value can be a text string, a number, a filename, or the output of a command. The nice thing about variables is that you can assign a value to one once, and then re-use that value as many times as you like by simply referencing the name of the variable. There are several types of variables, and in this post we'll look at environmental variables.

I wanted that same “AI in the doc” feel that I have with my coding IDE: chat in a sidebar, multi-turn conversations, and the AI actually doing things, reading and changing the document, and web searches as necessary to answer questions. I wanted this for Writer but I figured Calc and the others could happen eventually. Exposing the full Writer API to an agent is not an easy problem, especially since it can create very complicated documents, including embedded spreadsheets.

Linux 7.0-rc3 is out as the latest weekly test candidate in leading up to the stable Linux 7.0 release in mid-April...

The 282nd installment of the 9to5Linux Weekly Roundup is here for the week ending March 8th, 2026, keeping you updated on the most important developments in the Linux world.

The CM0IQ is a compact carrier board designed for the Raspberry Pi CM0 compute module and measures 42 × 36 mm, placing it among the smallest boards built around the platform. The design exposes several interfaces typically associated with larger Raspberry Pi boards while maintaining a minimal footprint. The board is based on the Raspberry […]

The newest open-source concern around AI that is seeing a lot of interest this weekend is when large language models / AI code generators may rewrite large parts of a codebase and then the "developers" claiming an alternative license incompatible with the original source license. This became a real concern this week with a popular Python project experiencing an AI-driven code rewrite and now published under an alternative license that its original author does not agree with and incompatible with the original code...