Tidbit: Discovering Xubuntu Distribution from PHP

📅 September 24, 2016
In PHP, we can use php_uname to grab information about the operating system that the server is running on.

echo php_uname(‘s’) will give the name of the OS, but this is a general name. When executed from a server running Xubuntu, it returns the string “Linux.” Is this Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Linux Mint, or…what?

What if we want to get the specific Linux distribution? Is this possible from PHP without performing host OS system calls or executing Bash scripts? Yes.

Playing DSD Audio Files in Linux

📅 September 6, 2016
“Can I play DSD files in Linux?”

Yes. However, the process is not exactly user-friendly due to DSD being a rather obscure audio format compared to FLAC and MP3. If you want to play .dsf or .dff files in Linux, you must first install players that will support DSD or convert DSD into PCM.