You need a purpose. For instance I needed to copy and edit config files for a bunch terminals my company has deployed last week. Instead of manually copying the template directory 80 times and editing the 2 lines that needed to be changed in the parameter file for each one I used powershell to extract the name and id for each terminal from the log files and create copy of the template directory for each one, then replace the terminal name and id in the parameter file of the new directory with the ones extracted from the logs. This would have taken me all day to do manually and it only took about 45 minutes to write up the script and run it. I did have some prior experience with doing this kind of thing but hadn’t tied them all together lile that before so i learned some stuff.

Maybe you need to have some sort of objective before you get started, otherwise yeah, you don’t have much to do in the console :) In my case I only use linux for work, so I’m ssh-ing away and running commands to compile this, apply that, show me the logs for this, grep that, etc.

Oh-My-Zsh (https://ohmyz.sh/) is good if you want to try a nice suite of plugins and dotfiles.

or zoxide and yazi

What Ctrl+Shift+(do a little spin)+Ins isn’t intuitive enough for you??

Jokes aside, that’s understandable. I guess I’ve just become used to it, but there must be some way to override the default binding if you don’t like it… Personally I like the kitty terminal’s approach which uses mod+c/v for copy and paste in the terminal like you’d expect, while still leaving ctrl+c/v for sigint and verbatim respectively.

Many terminals let you do that, just change keybinds. The issue is Ctrl+C is used to stop/kill a running command.

middle mouse click is like magic, but CTRL-SHIFT-C/V usually works

you’ve seen top, get ready for btop

i’d also recommend scoop. when i had windows before i switched, i preferred it to winget or chocolately.

As an administrator, powershell is an essential tool these days. There are tunables that Microsoft simply only exposes via powershell even in their cloud Microsoft 365 environments. Just last month I had to rely on Powershell to trim previous versions on SharePoint, and 2 weeks ago I had to use Powershell to adjust a parameter on Exchange.

But also being able to pop a Powershell session and quickly apply a registry fix or run a diagnostic command or even just install a piece of software without disrupting a user’s work is absolutely brilliant (plus saves a call when I can just email back and say “I’ve pushed it remotely, reboot and it should be sorted now”)

They were there long before the browser. The problem is that they should work in the browser but they don’t.

Imma just update: I have given up and wiped the drive to use it as a game drive for windows again. Each turn just gave hours of headache and I’m just done trying.

Installing Mint took over 3 hours of searching obscure errors with solutions that were way too technical. In the end having gone from 5pm to 11pm just to get Mint dual booting. Got it installed and got teamspeak and stuff installed, after a bit too long having to find out but that’s fine. Spent 4 hours trying to get steam games to run, not a single working boot and couldn’t find anything online.

I might try again once I get my new AMD based game pc whenever I have budget for it. But for now, nah this took too long and took way too much effort. I just started a new work project which has already been exhausting and I just plain don’t have the energy to bother with this. Its not plug and play like people like to say online.

https://flathub.org/ is a great way to manage linux apps/programmes. Very easy and several other benefits

With .tar.gz software usually the steps are:

1. Extract the archive
2. Find a file with the .sh extention - that’s the shell script. It will most likely be named something like install.sh
3. Make it executable - by right clicking and enabling it in the properties or by opening a terminal in this folder and using a command:

chmod +x install.sh

4. Run the installer in the terminal:

./install.sh

It might ask you to run it as root and quit. In that case put a sudo before the command above and it will ask you for your password

sudo ./install.sh

And tbat’s it, installation should begin. Follow the instructions in your terminal.

Can’t say for TeamSpeak, but will say for Linux: setting everything up and figuring out your steps in edge cases is the hardest part. Once you figure it out, it gets so much easier.

next step to full on conversion is making your own dotfiles repo :)

I have to check out some of these!

As for the browser, how does it display sites? Does it display images/video/play audio or is it mostly for just the text based stuff? How about ads/adblockers?

Saved! Thank you so much.

I’ve used Linux full-time since late 2020 and I never knew about ctrl+y and ctrl+u.

I’d also like to contribute some knowledge.

aliases

You can put these into your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc or whatever shell you use.

###
### ls aliases
###
# ls = colors
alias ls='ls --color=auto'

# ll = ls + human readable file sizes
alias ll='ls -lh --color=auto'

# lla = ll + show hidden files and folders
alias lla='ls -lah --color=auto'

###
### other aliases
###
# set color for different commands
alias diff='diff --color=auto'
alias grep='grep --color=auto'
alias ip='ip --color=auto'

# my favourite way of navigating to a far-off folder
# this scans my home folder and presents me with a list of
#    fuzzy-searchable folders
#    you need fzf and fd installed for this alias to work
alias cdd='cd "$(sudo fd -t d . ${HOME} | fzf)"'

recommendations

ncdu - a shell-based tool to analyze disk usage, think GNOME’s baobab or KDE’s filelight but in the terminal

zellij - tmux but easy and with nice colors

atuin - shell history but good, fuzzy-searchable. If you still have the basic shell history (when pressing ctrl+r), I cannot recommend this enough.

ranger - a terminal file-browser (does everything I need and way more)

Saving this! Absolutely gold, thanks for writing it up. You’re what makes the Linux community cool. ❤️

tab completion works in more places than you might expect

I’ve found tab to be such a nice “please give me a hint” button.

• Bonus tip : Sometimes you won’t get auto complete because there’s too many possibilities and the computer can’t be certain which one you want. Hitting tab multiple times will show the possibilities, so you can type in enough characters to remove ambiguity, hit tab again, and boom auto complete!

…That was a terribly convoluted explanation I’m sorry. Just try hitting tab multiple times for fun if you’re stuck it’s kinda handy. Lol

If you’re looking for a full list of these kind of navigation shortcuts, they all come from readline so read the man page for that. Or just look up the basic navigation of emacs which is what readline is mimicking.

Nice list, TIL about Ctrl+U and Ctrl+Y.

If I may add, Ctrl+X into Ctrl+E opens $EDITOR to edit the current line.

• alt-. also pastes the last argument of the previous command (useful if you need to modify it a bit)
• instead of any shortcuts starting with “alt” you can also press “esc” followed by the second key, e.g. pressing “esc”, releasing it and then “a” is the same as pressing “alt-a” (useful if you have only one hand available, or if alt is not availalble)
• if you put a space before a command, it will not be saved in history (useful sometimes, e.g. if you pass a password directly as an argument)

I’ve been using the commandline for so long but was always too lazy to look up the rest of these commands after ctrl+a/e and ctrl+r THANK YOU!!!

post this commend again and again! There’s always lazy idiots like me who will be helped that way!

Makes me realize just how illogical and bad these shortcuts are

I’m thinking of making Linux my daily driver apart for some software I need for work. People are super positive about it on here, but isn’t it still the case that some peripherals won’t work? Or that I’ll spend a ton of time making the system work instead of actually using the system?

It would be for gaming that I’d use the Linux installation mostly.