Linux refers to the family of Unix-like computer operating systems using the Linux kernel. If your question is about a certain distribution only, use a more specific tag.
19
votes
4answers
18k views
How to list folders using bash commands?
Is there any way to list just the folders in a directory using bash commands? ( as the ls command lists all the files and folders )
18
votes
6answers
948 views
zero fill vs random fill
Many tutorials suggest that i should fill a disk with /dev/urandom instead of /dev/zero if i want it to be unrecoverable. But I don't quite get it, how can a disk still be recoverable after being ...
14
votes
5answers
10k views
11
votes
5answers
4k views
NumLock is completely useless, and I want to disable it completely on Linux
Forget all the rants about Caps Lock, Num Lock is the most useless key of them all. It's never, ever useful. You don't want to use your numpad as an arrowpad, since the arrows are 1cm away from it. ...
11
votes
2answers
11k views
Linux equivalent to robocopy?
It's kind of funny, there are a lot of ways in which Linux command line tools are vastly superior to Windows ones, but one thing I have not found an equivalent to is robocopy. Robocopy is way more ...
7
votes
3answers
9k views
Create Virtualbox image of a physical partition
I've a drive with Fedora and Windows 7 on different partitions with dual boot.
Now, while running Fedora, I'd like to suck up the Windows partition and create an image I can run in VirtualBox - how ...
7
votes
4answers
23k views
Apple Magic Mouse scrolling in Ubuntu 9.10
Just received new Apple Magic Mouse and tried to install it on my computer with Ubuntu 9.10.
Mouse was found as Bluetooth mouse, I entered PIN as 0000 (could not find it in user manual, so just ...
7
votes
3answers
672 views
How to automatically boot from Linux distro to Windows?
Here's the thing:
I've got dual boot computer with Ubuntu 8.04 and XP Pro. Sometimes I want to switch between these two. To do this I need to issue "Reboot" in Ubuntu, wait for grub menu and choose XP ...
6
votes
4answers
9k views
Linux DLNA Server
I have just recently set up a DLNA server on my GNU/Linux desktop at home. I am using PS3 Media Server to do the job. I like it a lot so far, but I was curious about whether or not it is the best ...
3
votes
5answers
22k views
External Hard Drive bad sectors recover/mark utility in linux
I've just installed the new version of Ubuntu, Karmic Koala, in my laptop. Everything is fine, except for the fact the system identified about 300 bad sectors in my 1TB external hard drive. I'd like ...
1
vote
8answers
439 views
What peripheral software do you install right away upon doing a fresh install of Linux? [closed]
I use Ubuntu but this is really a distro-agnostic question.
What is the must have software that you install once you've done a fresh linux install?
20
votes
4answers
2k views
Paint.NET equivalent for Linux?
On Windows, my favorite image editor is Paint.NET. However, on Linux, GIMP is as unfriendly as photoshop despite having less features. (i.e. It takes ages to load, their's far too much stuff).
Most ...
14
votes
6answers
6k views
Linux keylogger without root or sudo! Is it real?
Somebody on Youtube claims to have a keylogger on Ubuntu that was neither executed nor installed as root. The link below shows a demo of it working.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1fZAZTwyPQ
...
13
votes
4answers
22k views
How to gzip multiple files into one gz file?
I have 100 files: cvd1.txt cvd2.txt ... cvd100.txt
How to gzip 100 files into one .gz file so that after I gunzip it, I should have cvd1.txt, cvd2.txt ... cvd100.txt separately?
Thanks for your ...
13
votes
1answer
7k views
Measure script execution time
In bash shell, is there a simple way for me to monitor the time taken to run a script and output the time taken?
11
votes
3answers
11k views
How can I recursively copy files by file extension, preserving directory structure?
At the Linux command line, I'd like to copy a (very large) set of .txt files from one directory (and its subdirectories) to another.
I need the directory structure to stay intact, and I need to ...
11
votes
12answers
6k views
The best lightweight window manager for linux? [closed]
What is the best lightweight window manager (optimized for running over a network) for Linux?
9
votes
3answers
1k views
Wired to wireless bridge in Linux
I am attempting to set up my Raspberry Pi as a bridge, using Debian wheezy. I have a hostapd.conf: (some details changed for security, and yes, I know WEP is no good)...
interface=wlan0
bridge=br0
...
9
votes
7answers
3k views
Good Alternative to Cygwin with Copy/Paste?
I am annoyed that I can't copy and paste into Cygwin... is there a good alternative to Cygwin that will let me do this?
9
votes
8answers
11k views
The best IMAP client for Gmail in Linux [closed]
I'd like to use an IMAP client to have an offline backup and access to Gmail. Now I use mutt, but I am not very satisfied. What is the best IMAP client for Linux to use with Gmail?
I want it to be
...
9
votes
7answers
6k views
How to create a zip file compatible with Windows under Linux
I need to make a zip file available to all my Windows users visitors, so I naively produced a zip file with the Unix zip command (let's call it madeinlinux.zip).
It opens successfully with WinRar or ...
8
votes
2answers
12k views
Linux: find out what process is using all the RAM?
Before actually asking, just to be clear: yes, I know about disk cache, and no, it is not my case :) Sorry, for this preamble :)
I'm using CentOS 5. Every application in the system is swapping ...
8
votes
3answers
1k views
Why use multiple partitions on Linux installations?
Does it really perform better than a single partitioned installation?
Why?
7
votes
3answers
8k views
Linux Command Line Tool to get bitrate of DivX/Xvid
What is a good command line tool to get the video bitrate of a divx or xvid avi file for linux?
5
votes
5answers
2k views
How to take notes in PDFs in Linux
In Adobe Acrobat Pro you can do things like put little sticky notes in PDFs, highlight text, and create bookmarks. I have found this very useful for learning. In school you learn better when you put ...
4
votes
1answer
1k views
How to recursively rename files/folders to make their names Windows-friendly?
I have a bunch of files on a Ubuntu box, which have various characters in their filenames that Windows doesn't accept (mostly ":" and "*", but possibly others).
What's the simplest way to get these ...
4
votes
4answers
3k views
What FLOSS DB design tool for Linux would you recommend?
I want to find a relational DB design tool for Linux, that could export DB schema for MySQL, SQLite and PostreSQL at least. And it should be handy, of course. Good-looking GUI is also a plus ;-) I use ...
4
votes
7answers
386 views
Dual Booting Linux and Windows XP
To start off, I am strictly a Windows user. I've used a Mac, and especially never used Linux before. However, I would like to learn more about Linux in general, and I figured the best way to do this ...
2
votes
2answers
1k views
Linux Live CD: Flash preinstalled?
I need to create a Linux Live CD that has the newest version of Flash pre-installed. How can I do this or find a distro with this?
The flavor of Linux doesn’t matter, so long as I can run Flash ...
2
votes
7answers
824 views
Free, reliable backup-tool for Windows/Linux
What's a good portable backup-tool, for a bunch of Linux/Windows machines? It should only backup data-folders specified by the user, doesn't need to be full images of the system.
Ideally, the backup ...
19
votes
5answers
13k views
What does source do?
$ whatis source
source: nothing appropriate.
$ man source
No manual entry for source
$ source
bash: source: filename argument required
source: usage: source filename [arguments]
It exists, it is ...
12
votes
3answers
5k views
Why won't windows exe's work on Linux?
I'm not asking about how to make a Windows exe work in Linux.
I'm asking WHY it does not work.
What is different about the way Windows runs an executable and Linux runs an executable? Why did they ...
12
votes
2answers
2k views
What happens to running processes when I lose a remote connection to a *nix box?
I occasionally lose my remote SSH connection to my VPS. I use screen for long-running processes, but am wondering what happens to the processes I had running aside from those run within a screen ...
12
votes
4answers
2k views
Why is wine “not an emulator”?
Isn't the difference between Windows apps and Linux apps just libraries asked by applications running? (see previous question) How is possible then to make Windows applications running on a Linux ...
10
votes
5answers
2k views
Is it better to dual-boot or run a VM?
I want to run Windows Vista 64bit (Eventually Windows 7) and Ubuntu on the same machine.
I want to play games and do graphic design in Windows. I want to write code, surf the internet, check email, ...
9
votes
4answers
5k views
How to convert a 1 page PDF to a 2 page per sheet PDF?
I would like to print a PDF so that on the front of the first page are the first two pages, on the back the 3rd and 4th and so on.
----------------- -----------------
| | | ...
9
votes
5answers
6k views
With Linux iptables, is it possible to log the process/command name that initiates an outbound connection?
I would like to keep track of the processes that initiate outbound connections on a Linux desktop. The best I can come up with is this:
iptables -A OUTPUT -m state --state NEW -j LOG --log-uid
This ...
9
votes
3answers
4k views
8
votes
4answers
3k views
Remove VIM search highlight
After a search I've done, all the matches for the respective query remain highlighted and it's annoying. This happens even after I close the respective file (normal behavior?). How to I remove this?
7
votes
2answers
639 views
What's the difference between “su” with and without hyphen?
I'm quite new to Linux terminal and I'm not quite sure what the difference between su with a hyphen and su without a hyphen is, for example: su - username vs. su username.
I looked into the ...
7
votes
5answers
1k views
Disadvantages of not having a swap partition
I recently installed Ubuntu 10.04 on my laptop. Due to space constraint of the SSD, I did not set a swap partition for the OS, and I have 1.5GB of RAM.
There's a warning during installation, but I ...
7
votes
2answers
429 views
How do I delete a file named “-p” from bash?
How do I delete a file named -p in bash? Trying rm "-p" complains that -p is not a valid argument.
7
votes
4answers
14k views
How can I display the memory usage of each process if i do a 'ps -ef'
In linux, how can I display memory usage of each process if i do a 'ps -ef'?
I would like to the 'virtual memory', 'res memory', 'shared memory' of each progress. I can get that via 'top', but I want ...
7
votes
6answers
2k views
How do you track which packages were installed on Fedora (Linux)?
(This question is very similar to 6338. It was suggested that it be split from it as Fedora and Ubuntu/Debian are different enough to warrant different answers.)
As I use any Fedora setup I ...
6
votes
4answers
2k views
How do I keep my bash history across sessions?
I am working on a x86 target running fedora 9.
Whenever I reboot it, my history returns to some state, and I do not have commands I did in the sessions before the reboot.
What I have to change to ...
6
votes
8answers
1k views
Is dual boot worth-while?
I'm a genetics PhD student. The word-processing and referencing software available for windows is more suitable (and more compatible with computers in the library etc.), but there's some genetics ...
5
votes
3answers
2k views
Limit every user to his own home folder only
i have a linux server which users connect to with SSH.
my users only upload and download content from their /home folder.
Basicly, I want them to be limited to see and use only their home folder.
I ...
5
votes
2answers
2k views
How to make ssh log in as the right user?
I use ssh on a variety of machines, mainly linux. Accounts on these machines vary in naming scheme: if my name is First Last, then I have accounts: first, flast, last_f, lastf, and sometimes I need to ...
4
votes
4answers
2k views
Linux + “nVidia surround” + 3 monitors?
Is it possible to run 3 monitors on 1 nvidia card (600 series, 640/650/660/670) under linux/xorg with the closed source nvidia driver?
At the moment a have a 2 monitors on my linux system in a ...
4
votes
2answers
17k views
apt error: Could not perform immediate configuration on
I have issues running the following command:
root@X100e:~# apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... ...
