The rm command is used to delete files on a Linux system. It can be used to delete a lot of files at once, but you will need to use certain options when trying to delete directories or certain files. In this tutorial, you will learn how to say YES to ALL with the rm command when trying to delete files via the Linux command line.
In case you are wondering when a software package was installed on your Linux system, the information is stored by the package manager and can be accessed via the command line. This can come in handy for a number of reasons, such as when troubleshooting issues that started on a certain date, to see if any packages installed at that time could be causing the problem. In this tutorial, you will learn how to show the installation date for a software package on all major Linux distributions.
New users are often surprised by the number of commands that can be used to shut down a Linux system. Thanks to the flexibility of Linux and its storied history, there is almost always more than one – or more than a few – ways to accomplish the same task. Although Linux is always giving users plenty of choices on how to operate their system, one method usually proves better for certain scenarios, and all come with their pros and cons.
If you have one or more files that you need to send to a friend or store for a long time, compressing the files into a .zip archive is a good way to save on space and combine all files into a single object. If you need to keep the file contents private, for fear that they could be intercepted by the wrong party, or that someone could try to access them on your own system, then it is possible to add a password to your zip file. In this tutorial, you will learn how to zip files and add a password to your zip archive on a Linux system.
Processes that utilize the network connection of your Linux system will occupy a port whenever they are uploading or downloading data, or listening for incoming connections. A common example present on many Linux servers would be the SSH protocol, which listens for and accepts incoming connections on port 22 by default. Ordinarily, administrators can kill a process using the PID number, or by specifying the process name. But in some cases, we may want to kill a process according to which port number it is using.
Fedora is one of the most popular Linux distributions: the distribution is sponsored by Red Hat, but its development is community-driven. While the default version of Fedora ships with the GNOME desktop environment (it is probably the ideal choice if you want to use a vanilla version of the latter), there are many alternative spins available, which allows us to try a variety of desktop environments such as XFCE or KDE Plasma. In few easy steps it is even possible to build and try a custom Fedora live image.
Fedora Silverblue is an immutable variant of Fedora Workstation: every installation of this distribution is identical to the others, which is ideal for testing and predictability. On Fedora Silverblue, flatpaks are used as the primary method of installing software together with rpm-ostree which basically creates an additional layer over the immutable filesystem each time an rpm is installed. The toolbx utility is included in Fedora Silverblue as a way to create isolated, mutable environments using podman and the containers technology, allowing the user to install development tools and libraries without touching the main system. Toolbx can be used also on regular Fedora versions.
When you need to quickly or forcibly close a running process on a Linux system, many users will try to determine the process ID and then kill a process by its ID. While this works fine, it is sometimes easier or more convenient to kill a process by name. This way, we get to skip the step of looking up the process ID, and let our terminal do the work for us.
Everything that is currently running on your Linux system is a process. Some processes are meant to run in the background (application updates, for example), so you may not be readily aware of their existence. And other processes (a web browser, for example) are very apparent, and get started or stopped by the user on a constant basis. All of these processes are assigned an ID number, called PID or “Process ID”, and can be referenced in various situations, including killing a running process via the process ID.
Environment variables contain data about the current system configuration. These variables are mostly referenced by scripts and system programs that need some information on the current configuration in order to adapt to various scenarios. For example, a script might check an environment variable to see what language is set on the computer, and then output prompts in the target language. One of the most commonly accessed environment variables is the PATH environment variable.
PDF documents are used for just about anything these days, and are usually considered to be a very professional way to send important data such as contracts or terms for businesses and other formal entities. If you have a JPG image – perhaps the scan of a signed document, for example – you can convert this to a PDF document, which would be a more formal file extension to use for such a matter. In this tutorial, you will learn how to convert a JPG image to a PDF document on a Linux system via command line and GUI.
When it comes to managing remote systems in Linux, the SSH protocol is the most used method. SSH is popular because it allows a user to securely log in to remote devices, including other Linux systems, firewalls, routers, etc. When you are done with your remote management, you can quit out of the SSH connection.