Quick Tech Tip: lsof

So here is a newsflash for all non-Linux people: EVERYTHING IN LINUX IS A FILE. LITERALLY EVERYTHING Microphones Your devices like your camera and microphone are mounted at /dev. The ulility “arecord” from the alsa-utils uses this little trick to allow you to do stuff like open the microphone file and forward the data to other command line tools like mpv: arecord -f cd - | mpv - Cameras The same can be done with your camera, except it’s ffmpeg that relies on the camera being a file: ...

April 21, 2025 · 5 min