Top 5 Linux Tricks

1. wget:

This utility has saved me, perhaps a hundred times in my career with Linux. Often times, we get stuck in a terminal shell, without a terminal web browser like lynx. How can we download a specific file that will save or patch our system without a web browser?

Well wget lets you do just that. simply type wget into the terminal, and then the website address. This will retrieve any file on the world wide web, and place it on your system.

For more information on wget, click here.

2. Colour your text in the terminal:

Stop using just a black and white terminal! Use colours for your directories, and executable files. This will make it much easier to distinguish your files, without using a slow GUI file manager. Get creative, and style out your own colours for your file system.

Check out this guide on howto enable and configure your ls colours.

3. The Mystery of the Arrow Up button:

Did you know that at any time while you are in the terminal, you can hit the up button, and use a command that you have previously used? The shell keeps track of everything you type (so be careful). This can be extremely useful. Often times, we end up using the very same commands, on the very same files. Why type it out twice? Use this trick, and make your terminal life more effective.

4. The power of the TAB button:

Did you know that while you are typing at the terminal you can press the tab button, and it will auto-complete what you are typing? It?s pretty fantastic. It?s not wonder why many Linux Gurus prefer to use the terminal over a graphical user interface. For example, if you want to copy the file, myFile from /users/dug/desktop/ to /usr/local/bin all you have to do is start typing:

cp /u now hit tab, and it should complete /users. Hit the d key next and then hit tab again, this will complete: /users/dug now hit the d key again, and then tab, this will complete /users/dug/desktop If there are more options that start with the letter you are currently typing, it will display them if you hit the tab button twice.

5. X11 Forwarding:

Did you know that you can run graphical X11 programs remotely, without using a program like remote desktop? This is really useful if you are a university student, and you need to run MatLAB, or any other X11 program, but you don?t have time to run to the Uni.

Here?s the quick coles notes way to run graphical programs from other computers:

ssh into the remote computer with the -X option, then, simply run your graphical app from the command line, and it will popup, provided that the server has X11 fowarding enabled.

If you would like to run your own ssh server from home, or work. Check out this handy guide to getting X11 forwarding.

Top 10 Linux Shortcuts

Here are some popular ones:

Control-Alt-F1: Switch to the first terminal. There are actually 6 terminals, so you can press control-alt-F1 all the way to control-alt-F6. This can be very handy! I?ve used it to get out of a jam several times. Especially if your system crashes when X tries to startup. You can always fall back on this terminal.

Control-Alt-F7: Switch back to the GUI.

Shift Page-UP: If you are in a terminal, this command will scroll the terminal output. Have you ever typed a command in, and gotten a ton of output, and wanted to scroll up to see all of the output, but you couldn?t because you weren?t using X? This shortcut makes that all possible, and it is especially useful when the computer first boots. You can scroll up to see the boot messages, and errors.

Control-Alt-[+]: This command will up the resolution on your X server. Way faster than opening up a resolution manager.

Control-Alt-[-]: This command will down the resolution on your X server. Great if you have it hooked up to a TV.

Control-Alt-Backspace: This command kills the current X-server. It?s great if X crashes. In some distributions, this will automatically restart X as well.

Control-Alt-delete: This starts up the system?s normal reboot process. It?s way better than hitting the restart button, and is more convenient than finding the restart button in X.

Control-Z: Send the current process to the background. This handy shortcut can let you do other things in the terminal, while the program you just executed is still running.

Control-C: Just like in DOS, this will kill the current process in the terminal.

Learn how to make the switch to Linux

Hardcore-user mag Maximum PC shows you how to make the switch to Linux. Specifically, Ubuntu Linux. This exhaustive article covers every step, from downloading and installing the OS to connecting to your network to actually using Linux.

You Can Switch to Linux!

Technorati : Linux

Linux Kernel 2.6.21 Released

Linux Kernel 2.6.21 has been announced. Linus writes: “So the big change during 2.6.21 is all the timer changes to support a tickless system (and even with ticks, more varied time sources). Thanks (when it no longer broke for lots of people go to Thomas Gleixner and Ingo Molnar and a cadre of testers and coders.” More info and