But how do Linux users handle the crippling loneliness of their operating system not pestering them with ads on every update? How else can you know if your computer loves you? Where is the warmth of the corporate embrace?

“Hey computer, I don’t like when you ask for that confirmation, just do it”

“Oh, -y, I got you”

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

• 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)

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)

The moment I loved the FOSS community was when I went on an Linux IRC channel, complained about my wifi not working, and some stranger messaged me detailed instructions with a patch in 20 minutes that completely fixed my issue.

I once plugged my linux laptop into the scanner and it just worked

I spent days tinkering with proprietary, outdated (seriously, win XP as target) programs that provide sort-of drivers, and nothing worked, on windows.

Mine worked out of the box on mint. Like, it detected the network HP shitbox and I could print, no user intervention. I was floored.

Amen. Hallelujah! AMEN! Ooh yeah brothers and sisters, AaaAAaAmen!

PS: this is not a cult BTW

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")

FWIW, most Debians (which includes Ubuntu and Mint) have Ctrl+Alt+T set to open the default terminal program without needing to install anything else. This is usually reconfigurable in the system settings too if that's an awkward stretch.

But I get that people like the drop-down terminals too, for which see also Yakuake and Guake.

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.