beginner

Ubuntu GNOME Desktop

How To Choose The Best Linux Distro

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Introduction

Choosing a Linux distribution can be one of the most difficult things for a Linux user. There are so many excellent options, and they all have their own unique strong suits.

There are also constant updates, news, and general community chatter that muddy the waters even more, making the process much less of a direct route. However, there are a couple of questions that you can ask yourself in choosing a distribution that help clear things up. It’s also important to remember that there usually isn’t a wrong answer. Every distribution is good. Sure, running Arch on your enterprise scale production deployment probably isn’t the best idea, but it’s still technically possible. It’s all about picking a distribution that fits around that sweet spot of what you want and need.

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Clear Linux desktop

Clear Linux Download

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Clear Linux is Intel’s entry into the Linux space. It’s a free and open source distro that Intel has developed for maximum performance. For other most popular Linux distributions please visit our dedicated linux download page.

Unsurprisingly, Clear Linux has been optimized to perform very well on Intel hardware. Being developed by a hardware giant means that the operating system can undergo improvements that more community driven Linux distributions may be likely to neglect.

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Oracle Linux running GNOME desktop environment

Oracle Linux Download

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Oracle Linux is an enterprise level distro based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. You’ll find it to be in the same league as most other enterprise focused distributions, such as SUSE Linux. For other most popular Linux distributions please visit our dedicated linux download page.

As you might expect, Oracle Linux has been developed to integrate well with other Oracle products. This makes it a solid choice for businesses that have invested in other Oracle software or hardware, including their popular database applications. It features the “Oracle Unbreakable Kernel” which Oracle touts as highly stable and reliable.

Following in RHEL’s footsteps, Oracle Linux comes with the GNOME desktop environment by default. It’s free to install and use as you please, but has optional support available for those that wish to subscribe. This is a departure from RHEL’s model that makes a subscription necessary to use their OS.

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Convert timestamp to date and vice versa

Convert timestamp to date

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The date command on a Linux system is a very versatile command that can be used for many functions. Among them is the ability to calculate a file’s creation date, last modified time, etc. This can be built into a script, used for scheduling, or just used to obtain basic information about a file or directory on the system.

The date command can also handle addition and subtraction arithmetic to help calculate dates and times. It uses Unix’s epoch time as a base of reference, which is 00:00:00 UTC on January 1, 1970. From this date, it can assign a timestamp based on the number of seconds something occurred before or after it.

These timestamps are great for calculation, but hardly usable for people. It’d take a machine to know that Thu 02 Jun 2016 12:59:59 PM UTC translates to 1464872399. In this guide, we’ll explain how to convert a timestamp to a human readable date and vice versa.

In this tutorial you will learn:

  • How to convert a timestamp to date

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Killing a process by name on Linux

How to kill process by name

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How to kill a process on a Linux system is an essential thing for admins and users to know. The go-to method for this is usually with the kill command, which involves killing a process by its PID (process ID).

Sometimes, though, it’s more convenient to kill a process by name rather than going through the routine of locating its PID each time. There are two commands we can use to kill a process by name, those being killall and pkill.

In this tutorial, we’ll go over both killall and pkill commands and show examples for how they can be used to kill processes by name only.

In this tutorial you will learn:

  • How to kill a process by name with killall and pkill

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Excluding a directory from rsync transfer

Rsync: exclude directory

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The rsync command on a Linux system can be used to synchronize the contents of two directories. By default, rsync will transfer all files and directories over to the specified destination. If there’s a subdirectory you wish to exclude from the transfer, rsync gives us two options for doing so.

In this tutorial, we’ll show two methods for excluding one or multiple directories from an rsync transfer. Follow along with the example commands below on your own system to configure a directory for exclusion.

In this tutorial you will learn:

  • How to exclude a directory in rsync command

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How to obtain Sunrise & Sunset time for any location from Linux command line

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Objective

The objective is to use command line and bash shell script to obtain Sunrise & Sunset time information for any given location.

Operating System and Software Versions

  • Operating System: – Linux distribution agnostic.

Requirements

Installed lynx tool and access to shell command line. Your location code obtained from https://weather.codes/search/.

Difficulty

EASY

Conventions

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Deleting a local and remote Git branch

Git: delete branch

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When working with Git, it’s common for projects to contain multiple branches. Over time, these branches may become irrelevant and need deleted. Other times, they change purpose and its necessary to rename the branch.

In this guide, we’ll show you the step by step instructions for deleting Git branches via the command line on a Linux system. We’ll show the process for deleting local branches as well as remote branches in the sections below.

In this tutorial you will learn:

  • How to delete local and remote Git branches

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nslookup command on Linux

Nslookup Linux command

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The nslookup utility can be installed and used on a Linux system to find out information about the DNS records for a domain or IP address. It’s particularly handy when troubleshooting DNS issues. A popular tool that also comes installed with nslookup is dig, which is similar but uses different resolvers. It’s a good alternative to nslookup, but nslookup is typically easier to use.

In this tutorial, we’ll guide you through the installation of nslookup on major Linux distributions and show various command line examples that you can use on your own system when you need to obtain DNS information.

In this tutorial you will learn:

  • How to install nslookup on major Linux distros
  • Nslookup command line examples

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Creating and testing a symbolic link in Linux

How to create symlink in Linux

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Symbolic links (also known as symlinks or soft links) are one of two types of links that you can create on a Linux system. If you’re just now learning about symbolic links, it may help to think of them as “shortcuts,” a term commonly used by Windows systems to represent basically the same thing.

Symbolic links are used to link to hard links. If you’re interested in learning more about hard links and how they compare to symbolic links, check our guide on creating hard and soft links. Suffice it to say that symlinks are just entries in the file system that point to files or directories. They’re mostly used for convenience.

In this guide, we’ll run through the step by step instructions of creating and removing symbolic links. You can follow along with our examples below on your own command line to get a feel for how they work.

In this tutorial you will learn:

  • How to create and remove symbolic links

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Renaming Git branch

Git: rename branch

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When working with Git, it’s common for projects to contain multiple branches. Sometimes these branches change purpose over time or simply have a naming error, and in such cases it’s necessary to rename the branch.

In this guide, we’ll show you the step by step instructions for renaming Git branches via the command line on a Linux system. We’ll show the process for renaming local branches as well as remote branches and go over what you need to know to ensure a smooth transition.

In this tutorial you will learn:

  • How to rename local and remote Git branches

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Use killall to end a process by name on Linux

How to use killall command on Linux

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When it comes to killing a running process, there are a few options available on Linux systems. One such option is the killall command, which differs from the kill command, as we’ll see below.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to use the killall command to end running processes on Linux. You’ll also be given various examples that you can apply to your own system.

In this tutorial you will learn:

  • How does the killall command work?
  • killall command examples

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