When I first started looking at Linux distros I was impressed by the reviews of Zorin OS 9 and so i replaced Win 7 on a laptop with Zorin. Since then I found Linux Lite and have installed it on two computers...yesterday I replaced the fairly heavy Zorin with yet another Linux Lite installation and the old laptop seems to have gained a new life.

Zorin is a good distro but IMO Linux Lite is better.

Thanks

Which choice in the installer will replace Linux Mint with Linux Lite and leave Windows on /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2 & /dev/sda3?  The installer say if you put Lite on it could erase all OS including windows.  I am confused!

Courtesy of http://www.tuxarena.com/intro/cheatsheet.html
Also see attached PDF.

TuxArena | Linux Cheat Sheet

General Purpose Commands

whereis - locate the binary, source and manual page files for a command

whereis searches for binary, source and man pages in standard Linux places. (Location: /usr/bin/whereis /usr/bin/X11/whereis)

which - locate a command

which searches for a command in all directories included in PATH. (Location: /bin/which /usr/bin/which /usr/bin/X11/which)

apropos - search the manual page names and descriptions

apropos searches for a given pattern in manual page names and descriptions, returning a list of matches. (Location: /usr/bin/apropos /usr/bin/X11/apropos)

whatis - display manual page descriptions

whatis displays the name and short description (located in the NAME section of the respective manual page) about a given command. (Location: /usr/bin/whatis /usr/bin/X11/whatis)

whoami - print effective userid

whoami displays the username of the currently logged in user (Location: /usr/bin/whoami /usr/bin/X11/whoami)

id - print real and effective user and group IDs

id displays the current username and the groups it belongs to. (Location: /usr/bin/id /usr/bin/X11/id)

cp - copy files and directories

cp copies files and directories. To copy a directory, use cp -r. (Location: /bin/cp)

dd - convert and copy a file

dd copies a file converting it according to the operands. (Location: /bin/dd)

grep - print lines matching a pattern

grep shows all the lines that match a specific given pattern in its input. (Location: /bin/grep)

gzip - compress or expand files

gzip compresses files given as arguments reducing size drastically. (Location: /bin/gzip)

kill - send a signal to a process

kill sends various signals to processes. The default signal is TERM. (Location: /bin/kill)

less - file perusal filter for crt viewing

less is a pager that displays text in a file. It is similar with more, but it is more powerful. (Location: /bin/less)

ln - make links between files

ln creates hard links and symbolic links between files. (Location: /bin/ln)

tar - the GNU version of the tar archiving utility

tar stores and extracts files from an archive. (Location: /bin/tar)

touch - change file timestamps

touch creates an empty file if it doesn't exist or updates the access and modification time of a file if if already exists. (Location: /bin/touch)

uname - print system information

uname shows information about the system, like the kernel version, current date and time, CPU architecture. (Location: /bin/uname)

file - determine file type

file performs filesystem tests, magic tests and language tests and returns the first match it finds. (Location: /usr/bin/file /usr/bin/X11/file)

df - report file system disk space usage

df displays disk usage for all mounted filesystems on the system, showing total size, used size and free space. To see the sizes in human readable form, use df -h and to see information for a specific file system only, specify it as an argument to df (e.g. df -h /dev/sda1). (Location: /bin/df)

du - estimate file space usage

du shows the total size of all the directories, sub-directories and files in the current location. Use the -h switch to show human readable sizes. (Location: /usr/bin/du /usr/bin/X11/du)

bzip2 - a block-sorting file compressor

bzip2 compresses files offering very good compression sizes. (Location: /bin/bzip2)

chgrp - change group ownership

chgrp changes the group of each given file. (Location: /bin/chgrp)

chmod - change file mode bits

chmod changes file and directory permissions, as well as setting file mode bits like the sticky bit. (Location: /bin/chmod)

chown - change file owner and group

chown changes the user and/or group ownership of each given file. (Location: /bin/chown)

ls - list directory contents

ls lists files and directories as well as information about them. (Location: /bin/ls)

mkdir - make directories

mkdir creates directories if they don't already exist. Use mkdir -p to create directories recursively (e.g. mkdir -p $HOME/mydir/mysubdir). (Location: /bin/mkdir)

mv - move (rename) files

mv moves or renames files. (Location: /bin/mv)

ps - report a snapshot of the current processes

ps shows the running processes in the current shell. (Location: /bin/ps)

pwd - print name of current/working directory

pwd shows the current working directory. (Location: /bin/pwd)

rm - remove files or directories

rm removes files or directories. To remove a directory, use rm -r. (Location: /bin/rm)

mv - move (rename) files

mv moves or renames files. (Location: /bin/mv)

sed - stream editor for filtering and transforming text

sed is a powerful utility for manipulating text. (Location: /bin/sed)

Useful One-Liners

Display the Default Shell of the Current User

echo $SHELL

Or, using the /etc/passwd information:
cat /etc/passwd | grep $USER | cut -d ":" -f 7

See the Most Used Commands in Bash History

history | awk '{print $2}' | awk 'BEGIN {FS="|"}{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n | tail | sort -nr

List All Users Recognized by the System

cat /etc/passwd | cut -d ":" -f 1

Searching for Files

Search Files for a Specific Text

find . -iname "*.txt" -exec grep -l "hello" {} +

This will search and display all the files ending in .txt in the current directory for the text hello.
Find Files Modified in the Last N Days

find . -iname "*" -mtime -2

This will find and display all the files which were modified in the last two days.
Find All Empty Files and Folders

find . -iname "*" -empty

System Administration

Mount an ISO image

sudo mount -o loop /path/to/file.iso /mount/point

Mounts file.iso at /mount/point. The mount directory /mount/point should be empty, otherwise the files that it contains will be hidden while the image is mounted (but not lost, they will reappear as soon as the image is unmounted).

Make a Bootable USB Flash Drive from an ISO Image

sudo dd bs=4096k if=/path/to/image.iso of=/dev/sdc

if stands for input file (the ISO image in this case), while of is the USB device, which in this case is /dev/sdc.

System Configuration

Keyboard Mapping with xev

xev is a small utility which prints contents of X events, so you can assign new key functions to the keyboard using xmodmap. Type xev to see key events and keycodes. Close the X window to close xev when you're done.

Assign New Keyboard Keys

xmodmap -e "keycode 94 = backslash bar"

xmodmap can be used to assign to values to keys, so for example pressing the \ key on UK keyboards will have another effect. The above example will make the key to the right of LShift to be \| on a UK keyboard.

Tools

Encode FLAC/WAV to Ogg

oggenc -b 192 filename.flac

You will need to install the vorbis-tools package first.

Encode WAV to MP3

lame -b 192 filename.wav

You will need to install the lame package first.

Split FLAC/WAV with CUE

cuebreakpoints cue_file.cue | shnsplit audio_file.flac

You will need to install the cuetools and shntool packages first.

Batch Resize JPG Files

for i in *.jpg; do convert $i -resize 528x "${i//./_resized.}"; done

Replace 528x with the desired size in pixels. This specifies the new width, aspect ratio of the original image will be preserved, the original images will be kept and the resized ones will be renamed as origname_resized.jpg. You will need to install the imagemagick package first.

Create ISO Images from Files/Folders

genisoimage -o ouput_file.iso input_directory

You will need to install the genisoimage package first.

Create ISO Images from CDs/DVDs

dd if=/dev/cdrw of=$HOME/output_file.iso

Replace /dev/cdrw with your device file.

Create ISO Images from Audio CDs

cat /dev/cdrw > $HOME/audio_file.iso

Replace /dev/cdrw with your device file.

Basic Notions

The Shell

A shell is a command interpreter that can accept commands from the stdin like the keyboard or from a file, called a script. A shell reads command lines, one by one, performs the necessary substitutions, execute the commands and returns the result to the user.

command [option] [argument]

This is the general form of a command, where:
command is the command to execute, usually a program, script or alias located inside directories such as /bin and /usr/bin
[option] is an option or group of options to pass to the program; options tell the program how to output or interpret various information (e.g. show or don't show hidden files); options may have a short form (e.g. -h) or a long form (e.g. --human-readable) and may be grouped together (e.g. instead of -a -h you may use -ah)
[argument] is the argument given to the program, for example in ls -l /etc, -l is an option and /etc is an argument, telling the ls command to list files inside the /etc directory
Most commands (but not all) may be issued without any options or arguments, in which case the program will use its default behavior. For example ls issued by itself without any parameters will list the file names in the current working directory, whichever that may be.
Filesystem Hierarchy

The following shows the standard filesystem hierarchy on a Linux system, according to the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard:

/bin - essential user command binaries (e.g. bash, bzip2, cat, chmod, chown, cp, date, df, echo, grep, kill, less, ln, ls, nano, pwd, rm, sed, tar, touch, which, uname)
/boot - static files of the boot loader
/dev - device files
/etc - host-specific system configuration
/home - user home directories (optional)
/lib - essential shared libraries and kernel modules
/media - mount point for removable media
/mnt - mount point for a temporarily mounted filesystem
/opt - add-on application software packages
/root - home directory for the root user (optional)
/sbin - system binaries
/srv - data for services provided by this system
/tmp - temporary files
/usr - user commands, include files, libraries, documentation etc
/var - logs, cache data

In addition to these, most distributions may include the following directories:
Permissions

OWNER  GROUP  OTHERS
rwx    r-x    r-x
111    101    101
  7      5      5
File Types

The first bit in permissions can be:
Basic Commands

ls - list directory contents

This command lists information about files in a directory. It may or may not take options and arguments. For example, ls without any arguments will list the file names in the current working directory, while ls -a /etc will list all the files inside the /etc directory, including hidden files (preceded by '.') and virtual files (. and ..).

$ ls -l /etc
total 1244
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  root      4096 iul 15 12:39 acpi
-rw-r--r--  1 root  root      2981 iul 15 12:30 adduser.conf
Options like -a or -l can be nested together, like ls -lh /etc, which will list the files inside /etc using the long listing format (-l) and showing human-readable sizes (-h). Several options include:
-a, --all do not ignore entries starting with . (list all files, including the hidden ones)
-h, --human-readable with -l, print sizes in human readable format
-X sort alphabetically by entry extension
(Location: /bin/ls)
cd - change the shell working directory

This command changes the current working directory. For example cd /etc will change the current working directory to /etc.

$ pwd
/home/embryo
$ cd /etc
$ pwd
/etc
$ cd $HOME
$ pwd
/home/embryo

In the above example you can see a few examples of using cd. After each time the cd command is issued, pwd will print the current working directory to reflect the changes. $HOME is an environment variable which expands to the home directory of the current user (in this case /home/embryo). Without arguments, cd will change the directory to the home directory of the current user. (Location: cd is a Bash builtin)

Bash Tips

Bash Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts are very important since they provide fast editing capabilities. They are of really great help when working with the shell. Here is a list of keyboard shortcuts to use in Bash:

^F (Ctrl+F) move cursor one character to the right
^B (Ctrl+B) move cursor one character to the left
^A (Ctrl+A) move cursor to the start of the line
^E (Ctrl+E) move cursor to the end of the line
^U (Ctrl+U) delete all text to the left of the cursor
^K (Ctrl+K) delete all text to the right of the cursor
^P (Ctrl+P) bring up the previous command in history
^N (Ctrl+N) bring up the next command in history
^H (Ctrl+H) delete one character to the left
^L (Ctrl+L) clear the terminal
^R (Ctrl+R) reverse search
^C (Ctrl+C) end a running program
^Z (Ctrl+Z) suspend a running program
^D (Ctrl+D) exit the current shell
Alt+F move cursor one word to the right
Alt+B move cursor one word to the left
Tab command or filename completion
Start Bash in Debug Mode

bash -x SCRIPT.sh

Bash Builtins

(( expression ))

Evaluate expression value.

.

Execute commands from a file in the current shell. Example:

. $HOME/.bashrc

:

Null command. No effect, the command does nothing.

[

Evaluate conditional expression. This command is the same as the test builtin, but the last argument must be a a ] character to match the opening [. Example:

if [ -f /bin/bash ]; then
  echo "File /bin/bash exists."
fi
[[

Execute conditional command.

alias

Define or display aliases. Example:

alias rmf='rm -f'

history

Display or manipulate the history list.

if

Execute commands based on conditional. Example:

if [ $VAR -gt 10 ]; then
  echo "$VAR is greater than 10."
elif [ $VAR -lt 10 ]; then
  echo "$VAR is less than 10."
else
  echo "$VAR is 10."
fi
jobs

Display status of jobs.

kill

Send a signal to a job. The following commands do the same thing, sending the SIGKILL signal to the process with the PID of 1550:

kill -9 1550
kill -SIGKILL 1550
kill -KILL 1550
let

Evaluate arithmetic expressions.

Other Commands

qdbus: Show Amarok Metadata Info

qdbus org.kde.amarok /Player GetMetadata

qdbus: Change Amarok Volume

qdbus org.kde.amarok /Player VolumeSet 40

qdbus: Play/Pause Amarok

qdbus org.kde.amarok /Player PlayPause

Ubuntu/Mint Useful Tips and One-Liners

APT: Upgrade the System

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

APT: Add a PPA Repository

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:USERNAME/PPA_NAME

APT: Show Package Info

apt-cache show PACKAGE

APT: Clean Up Package Cache

sudo apt-get clean

APT: Clean Up Packages No Longer Available

sudo apt-get autoclean

DPKG: Install a DEB Package

sudo dpkg -i PACKAGE.deb

DPKG: Remove a Manually Installed DEB Package

sudo dpkg -r PACKAGE.deb

DPKG: Forcibly Remove an Installed Package

sudo dpkg --purge --force-all PACKAGE

List Installed Files by a Package

dpkg -L PACKAGE

Get a List of Every Installed Package

dpkg -l | tr -s ' ' '#' | cut -f2 -d"#"

Show Mint Release Info

lsb_release -a

GSettings: Disable Overlay Scrollbars in Ubuntu

gsettings set com.canonical.desktop.interface scrollbar-mode normal

Standard C

malloc()

#include <stdlib.h>

void *malloc (size_t size);
srand()

#include <stdlib.h>

void srand (unsigned int seed);
gettimeofday()

#include <sys/time.h>

int gettimeofday(struct timeval *tv, struct timezone *tz);
fprintf()

#include <stdio.h>

int fprintf (FILE *fd, const char *format, ...);
fscanf()

#include <stdio.h>

int fscanf (FILE *fd, const char *format, ...);
sscanf()

#include <stdio.h>

int sscanf (const char *str, const char *format, ...);
This function reads the input from the string point to by str and formats it according to format.

char str[5] = "1234";
int n;

if (sscanf(str, "%d", &n) != EOF) {
        fprintf(stdout, "%d", n);
}
System Calls

open()

#include <fcntl.h>

int open (const char *name, int flags);
int open (const char *name, int flags, mode_t mode);
This function is used to open a file. The flags argument can be one of O_RDONLY, O_WRONLY or O_RDWR. The flags argument can be bitwise-ORed with one or more of several other values, like O_APPEND, O_TRUNC or O_CREAT. If O_CREAT is specified, the mode argument is also required.

fd = open("filename.txt", O_RDONLY | O_CREAT, 0644);
if (fd < 0) {
  perror("ERROR: open()");
}
close()

#include <unistd.h>

int close (int fd);
select()

#include <sys/time.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int select (int nfds,
            fd_set *read-fds,
            fd_set *write-fds,
            fd_set *except-fds,
            struct timeval *timeout);

FD_ZERO (fd_set *set);
FD_SET (int fd, fd_set *set);
FD_CLR (int fd, fd_set *set);
FD_ISSET (int fd, const fd_set *set);
read()

#include <unistd.h>

ssize_t read (int fd, void *buffer, size_t size);
write()

#include <unistd.h>

ssize_t write (int fd, const void *buffer, size_t size);
perror()

#include <stdio.h>

void perror (const char *message);

Copyright © 2014 Craciun Dan under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.


[attachment deleted by admin, more than 25 days old]

Created this Tribal Moon image about 3-4 weeks ago and finished it today with an effect or two. Gave me some practice duplicating, renaming, and reordering layers. Have some more basics to learn as a precursor to using GAP (Gimp Animation Package)...would like to one day be able to create more stunning visual effects.

I keep getting a box opening up every couple of days informing me that my system needs to be updated and that so many Mb will be installed. I have been following the instructions, but now I am not sure where they are coming from as they are what I would expect from a rolling distro...am I worried for no reason?

I have installed Windows XP in a virtual box in order to access some files i had saved. How do or can I get the Win XP in the virtual to 'see' USB drives?

I'm trying to put LL on a Windows XP computer and I'm not given the option to install LL alongside XP. I have approx. 10GB of free space. The help manual says I may need to partition my hard drive. I've never partitioned a hard drive and I could use some help. If someone could give me step by step instructions, I would appreciate it. Thanks.

AZ

Hello, By default i dont have 1080p resolution so when i try to add it using xrandr i get an error.

I've experimented with --text-info, I've discovered it is possible to view and download images and any other files with it with just drag and drop.
Hrere we go, with this it's easy to quick grab images.
This script opens Scot(0)'s image from imgur.com in zenity dialog
Image can be dragged to the Desktop.
It will copy the image to the Desktop.
--checkbox can be removed here

After cleaning my computer, Lite Cleaner always shows 84K of package cache still to be removed and still some thumbnail cache to be removed.

Otherwise seems to be working it because it apparently removes whatever more than 84k of package cache that was shown and  after Firefox is cleaned, it does not show up immediately afterwards at all.