Christmas Gift Ideas for Tech Geeks

Christmas is approaching rapidly and if you know a Linux geek, admin or developer you want to present with a nice gift, this is exactly the inspiration you are looking for.

The list of things I found include electronic devices, coffee mugs, shirts, a book, a film, cufflinks and something special at the end.

So without further ado, here is a list of Christmas gift ideas for tech geeks.

Cooking for Geeks

Most geeks I've met like to eat and it's a myth that we order Pizza every day. Being away from the computer and cooking your own meal is a relief you should grant yourself from time to time.

Cooking for Geeks contains many recipes but is more than a usual cookbook, as it explains the kitchen hardware, talks about ingredients and flavors, and tells readers why things are done the way they are.

Emacs and Vi Reference Coffee Mugs

People get religious about the text editor they use. The competition between the Vi and Emacs editors is even referred to as the Editor War. Perl hacker and Floss Weekly host Randal L. Schwartz asks his guests in every show whether they use Emacs or Vi himself making no secret of his preference for Emacs.

Personally, I have used Emacs a long, long time ago without ever really mastering it. Nowadays I use Vi only when Vim is really not installed.

Linux users sooner or later find their preferred editor. If it happens to be either of these two the Emacs Reference and the Vi Reference coffee mugs will both serve the vital coffee and be an aid to memory for the most important editor commands.

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite

The people I know who own a kindle are very happy with it. They like that it's an easy to use device for reading ebooks with a long battery life, that offers space for over 1000 books and puts less strain on the eyes than for example a tablet.

Most people obviously don't care about the underlying operating system of an eBook reader. Still, it is nice to see a very popular family of devices running on top of the Linux kernel.

Bash Fork Bomb T-Shirt

Bash is the default shell in many Linux distributions. People, especially clueless Windows promoters, often argue that you cannot use Linux without a terminal. While this has been wrong for a while, many Linux people love hacking the command line.

One command you should not try is a fork bomb, unless you're doing it for science. This somewhat cryptic form of a fork bomb in Bash fits nicely on a shirt and is guaranteed to grab some attention. There is also a variant of the shirt with a fork bomb printed in green available.

There is no place like ~ T-Shirt

On Linux/Unix systems the tilde "~" usually indicates the user's home directory, a convention derived from the Lear-Siegler ADM-3A terminal in common use during the 1970s, which had the tilde symbol and the word "Home" on the same key, see Wikipedia.

This shirt shows the text There's no place like ~ printed in a white font, other products and colors are available as well.

Born at Unix Time T-Shirt

As most Linux people know Unix time is defined as the number of seconds that have elapsed since 00:00:00 UTC, Thursday, 1 January 1970.

Why wear a shirt with a traditional birth date or year when you can show that date as a Unix epoch instead? Use this tool to get your personalized t-shirt.

Samsung Galaxy Tab Android Tablet

There has been controversy over Google's Android potentially violating the Linux kernel's copyright, but guess who put it best by saying:

I don't see what the whole brouhaha would be all about. Except if it's somebody politically motivated. If it's some desperate cry for attention by somebody, I just wish those people would release their own sex tapes or something, rather than drag the Linux kernel into their sordid world.

Looks like Linus has no problem with Android so why would someone else? Anyway, it is more or less a choice between an iPad with iOS or an Android tablet like the Samsung Galaxy Tab if you are looking to buy a tablet computer.

Handcrafted Sterling Silver Tux Cufflinks

Tux is a very popular mascot in the Linux community. The idea of having a penguin as the Linux mascot came from Linus, so Tux was created by Larry Ewing in 1996 and named by James Hughes, who said it stands for "(T)orvalds (U)ni(X)".

Tux is also the short form of Tuxedo, the outfit which comes to your mind when you see a penguin, so it seems only logical, at least for Linux geeks, to wear a tuxedo with handcrafted silver Tux cufflinks.

Revolution OS Starring Linus Torvalds

Revolution OS is a documentary from 2001 about the history of GNU/Linux, and the open source and free software movements, featuring interviews with well-known hackers like Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Eric S. Raymond and others.

The DVD set contains one DVD with the 85 minute film and a second DVD with 70 minutes of additional interviews, over 100 pages of open source and free software writings, major easter eggs and most importantly a music video of the The Free Software Song.

Jump Ropes

Physical activity is often neglected by tech geeks. Sitting at a desk the whole day combined with lots of coffee and unhealthy food add up to a pretty unhealthy lifestyle.

One way to improve is to become active. So why not start with a really basic movement like jumping. Jump ropes are certainly the healthiest gift idea in this list, they are easy to carry around and you can use them inside and outside, so there are no excuses for not using them.

The Gift of Linux

Last but not least give Linux as a gift. Do you know someone who wants to try Linux? You can help to find the right Linux distribution, install it and give some initial guidance on how to use Linux.

And, yes, this will make the world a better place. Happy gifting!