In this tutorial, we will learn how to create a custom application launcher for an appimage in the Gnome Desktop Environment in Ubuntu. Although we are focusing on Ubuntu for this tutorial, this method should also work in other distributions that use the Gnome Desktop Environment and may also be useful reading for those using other Desktop Environments as some parts are still applicable.
Justin Chapin
How to Install Open-Source VSCode Without Telemetry on Linux
Visual Studio Code or VSCode is a text editor developed by Microsoft that supports many popular programming languages such as Go, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, Python, C and C++. It is a directory based, language agnostic source code editor which focuses on directories rather than projects and has many extensions available for it. VSCode’s feature set includes bracket matching, syntax highlighting, code folding, linting, debugging, and built in version control via Git, Subversion or Perforce. Ever since the initial release of VSCode in 2015, it has become an increasingly popular programming tool amongst users of all desktop operating systems including GNU/Linux.
How to install Swift on Ubuntu 20.04
Swift is a modern open source high-performing programming language with a focus on safety. It was developed by Apple and released in 2014. Swift was designed as a replacement for the older Objective-C language. Although, the language was originally proprietary, in 2015 Apple open-sourced the language and made it available for GNU/Linux systems. Although Swift is most well known for being the language used in iOS app development, there is an uptick in using it for server-side programming on Linux. Additionally, the fact that it is a young open source general-purpose programming language may lead to increased use in other domains over time.
How to install Anaconda scientific computing python distribution on Linux
Anaconda is a distribution of python and other open source packages that are meant to be used for scientific computing. It is frequently used for data science, predictive analytics, and machine learning. Installing Anaconda is the fastest way to have all of the tools for scientific computing readily available to you. It includes the conda package manager, IPython the interactive python shell, the spyder IDE, along with the Project Jupyter interactive web based computational environments: Jupyter Notebook, and JupyterLab.
How to prevent NetworkManager connectivity checking
NetworkManager is a software utility for configuring and managing network interfaces. It is developed by the Gnome project and is used in many distributions and by many Desktop Environments. The stated goal of NetworkManager is to make setting up and configuring networking as automatic and painless as possible, so that it just works. To aid in this goal NetworkManager can perform connectivity checking in order to determine whether your network has full internet connectivity.
How to rollback pacman updates in Arch Linux
Arch Linux is often praised for it’s bleeding edge software and rolling release model. We discuss these features more in depth in our article comparing Arch Linux and Manjaro. In addition to this praise, Arch Linux also has a reputation for being unstable. This reputation stems from the sometimes unpredictable nature of bleeding edge software. The latest software from upstream developers may contain bugs that were not apparent during initial testing. As a result, the risk is always present that updating with the package manager, pacman, may bring about unexpected results. These may include a specific piece of software no longer working properly (or at all) or even multiple applications or Desktop Environments no longer working as expected.
Install Arch Linux in VMware Workstation
Arch Linux is a powerful and customizable operating system with a minimal base install. If you are a newer Linux user then you may be interested in installing Arch Linux, but have been reluctant to do so because of the learning curve that is sometimes associated with the process. If that is the case then it is a great idea to first install Arch Linux as a virtual machine and take it for a test drive. This tutorial will guide you through the steps of installing Arch Linux as a guest machine in VMware Workstation. Following this guide will leave you with a very minimal base Arch install which you can choose to customize however you would like.
How to stress test your CPU on Linux
There are many reasons why you may want to stress test the CPU on your Linux system. You may want to see how your operating system and hardware perform when you are at full CPU utilization in order to spot software bugs or hardware failures. Alternatively, you may want to generate a lot of heat fast to troubleshoot a temperature-related issue with your machine; maximizing the CPU utilization will do that. Whatever the reason, there is a fast and easy way to accomplish that goal.
How to monitor network activity on a Linux system
There are many reasons why you may want to monitor the network activity on your Linux system. You may be troubleshooting a network issue, you may want to check to make sure that there are no malicious applications creating suspicious network activity, or you may simply want to know if any processes are phoning home. Whatever the reason, here are a few methods to see which processes on your system are engaged in network activity and who they are communicating with.
Best Terminal Games on Linux
Intro
GNU/Linux gaming has come a long way over the past decade. We are lucky to live in an age where there are a number of native linux games including AAA titles to choose from on the platform. Steam has also vastly increased the number of games available on Linux. Despite the vast availability of GUI based games, sometimes it can be more relaxing and entertaining to play terminal based ones. This is not so surprising considering the fact that most Linux users spend a lot of time on the command line and feel at home there. Luckily, there are a number of great terminal based games available on the platform as well.
How to create compressed encrypted archives with tar and gpg
There are many reasons why you may want to create compressed encrypted file archives. You may want to create an encrypted backup of your personal files. Another possible scenario is that you may want to privately share content with a friend or colleague over the web or through cloud storage. Tar.gz files, or compressed tarballs, are created using the tar command. These tarballs are pretty much the standard go-to format for archives on GNU/Linux, however they are not encrypted. In the above scenarios that we mentioned it is often desirable to have encryption in order to secure your data. This is where gpg comes in.
Tips & Tricks with Netcat command on Linux
Netcat is a versatile networking utility which can be used for reading from and writing to TCP and UDP connections on arbitrary ports (as with other utilities used on Linux, ports below 1024 require root/sudo privileges). By default netcat uses TCP connections, but UDP can be specified with the -u flag. Netcat can be used as both a server and a client. When used as a server the -l flag is used to listen for a connection. Similar to the cat command, netcat can receive information from stdin and write to stdout making it great for workflows involving pipes and redirects. The nc command is typically used to evoke netcat for ease of use.