Michael K. Johnson's Home Page

Welcome to my 'umble web abode

• Linux Application Development
  For over a year and a half, I spent most of my spare moments slaving away, torturing my co-author Erik Troan, building a detailed and careful tutorial, guide, and reference for programming on Linux. Have a favorite local bookstore? Encourage them to stock it. Barnes & Noble and fatbrain will sell it to you, as well.
• I once wrote something called the Linux Kernel Hackers' Guide. If you are looking for it, stop now. It's old, not updated, very broken, and by now is almost entirely misleading. Go buy a copy of Linux Device Drivers, 2nd Edition by Alessandro Rubini and Jonathan Corbet, instead. Really. Trust me!
• Flying!
  I'm an instrument-rated private pilot.
• My first Linux box...
• What I do: keep too many irons in the fire... That means that this is nowhere near a complete list.
  • I am a founding engineer at rPath, Inc.
  • I was an operating system developer for Red Hat, working on Red Hat Linux. I managed the kernel team for about three and a half years, and I was the founding technical leader of Red Hat's Fedora Project.
  • I wrote (and use...) serial-port monitoring software called ttywatch which has a small but appreciative following.
  • I once wrote a program called vlock, initially as a demonstration of Linux virtual console locking, which is now maintained by Frank Benkstein.
  • I wrote the original procps suite of /proc-using utilities (which includes ps).
  • I wrote the original UMAX scanner driver on which the SANE driver for UMAX scanners is based.
  • I have worked on the GNOME project, mainly as a developer.
  • I occasionally teach conference courses, most commonly giving full-day tutorial sessions on material related to the core content of Linux Application Development.
• More Books!
  I used to scan in public-domain books and put them here when I had time. Quite a few of the books I scanned in are also available in the excellent Christian Classics Ethereal Library hosted by Calvin College. The CCEL is an indispensible resource. Thanks much to Harry Plantinga for maintaining it so faithfully.
  Another good collection of on-line books, including instructions on how you can contribute new on-line books, is at The On-Line Books Page. Many of George MacDonald's books are available on-line, and all of them in print in hand-bound editions, at Johannesen. I can vouch for the quality of their work; not perfect, but much better than the average book on bookstore shelves.
  If you are looking for on-line music, try Mutopia, Virtual Sheet Music, Werner Icking Music Archive, and other sites listed in the Open Directory project's public domain downloadable music sheets listing.
  Do you like having public domain documents on the web? Do you find the ability to use public domain information generally useful? Do you realize that copyright is gradually being extended with no end in sight? A reasonable compromise between honoring copyright for extended periods of time and moving material into the public domain has been designed. I would encourage every reader of this page to visit the Reclaim the Public Domain petition and seriously consider signing your name to it, as I have.
• Faith
  Yes, as my appreciation of the CCEL indicates, I'm a Christian.
• Images and writings
• PGP
  My PGP public key. Don't lose it (just kidding). It's on the keyservers as well.
• DeCSS
  The MPAA are trying to sue everybody and their brother who want to view DVDs on Linux, using the DeCSS software. Just to confuse them, here's a version of DeCSS.
• A word of advice, if you care: avoid doing business with Network Solutions. My experience was that they failed to live up to their promises and then refused to provide a refund, and not only refused, but kept writing me new emails to tell me that they refused; they seemed to be going out of their way to be offensive. Their "customer service" was worse than many of the two-bit retailers I've dealt with in my time.

Slashdot-free since 17 December, 2001.