What is something *new* you have learned about Linux within the past 7 days?

boughtonp · 06-15-2021, 07:33 AM

Well I just learned a new LinuxQuestions Community Bulletin has gone out, apparently mentioning this thread and causing an influx of one-off posts...

How about some of the drive-by posters stick around and interact with some other discussions too?

alex4buba · 06-15-2021, 04:36 PM

I am using KDE Plasma 5.22 and for the past 2 months, there are non stop updates, all the time I am prompted to reboot the machine.

Anyone has any idea why?

Cheers
Alex

FrenchGuy · 06-16-2021, 02:01 AM

Got some pointers on systemd / udev to investigate further and have some automagic execution of a program when a specific USB device is plugged. Just for fun but I find it interesting enough to have a look.

igadoter · 06-16-2021, 03:27 AM

dotglob option for bash, that's tricky one beast - use with caution. Enabling it causing globing for files also to contain dot-files (hidden files).

Edit: Just Eureka! realized how to avoid if-then-else in command line

Code:

$ [ -f foo ] && echo file exists || echo no file 
no file
$ touch foo
$ [ -f foo ] && echo file exists || echo no file 
file exists

Edit: Another thing just learned is set -e option and how it influences script execution.

lex luthier · 06-17-2021, 12:41 AM

In the past week I have learned that much in Linux Mint remains a mystery to me, and that I still have so much to learn.

hazel · 06-17-2021, 04:50 AM

That's why Linux is such fun! You never stop learning.

igadoter · 06-17-2021, 04:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hazel

That's why Linux is such fun! You never stop learning.

And never stop forgetting.

Bonzoo · 06-17-2021, 01:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by igadoter

And never stop forgetting.

You aint old enough yet. I was born in 19......19... Damnit. Lemme go find my drivers license.
I forget where I left it. It's beside my birth certificate.....wherever that is.

Michael Uplawski · 06-18-2021, 02:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by igadoter

And never stop forgetting.

You should not.
I learned and will learn again and again that, when things ran flawlessly for too long, I forget why that is so. Then, the moment that all looks broken, I will learn that years ago, someone had changed the part of the system that I once knew to handle.

Learning is cool. Scraping your memory without leaving a residue is often more important.

igadoter · 06-18-2021, 02:51 AM

You just reminded me "Pianola"'s Kurt Vonuegut.

Guttorm · 06-18-2021, 08:30 AM

I learned about etckeeper some time ago. But I just installed it, and forgot about it. Today I did a little mistake in a config file, and I remembered it. It made a git repo of all files in /etc and it has been committing changes every time I apt installed/removed/upgraded. It has also auto-committed manual changes I made to the config (daily).

Very nice tool - I wish I installed it years ago.

jmgibson1981 · 06-18-2021, 10:15 AM

Recently I had an issue with package versions which was solved at this thread on the Ubuntu forums - https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2463371

I always assumed repositories were bulletproof. I was proved wrong and ended up with a problem. They are better than random downloads, but things can still go wrong.

cjspizz · 06-18-2021, 11:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by igadoter

And never stop forgetting.

True. Once I realized that, I started using Zim (Cherrytree is also a good alternative) to remember for me.

paz9 · 06-18-2021, 04:16 PM

With all the focus on security, I have learned quite a bit about SSH: RSA vs DSA, asymmetric authentication followed by symmetric encryption of subsequent traffic.
The command ssh-copy-id can be used to more easily distribute keys. It used to be you have t copy them manually.

dugan · 06-19-2021, 11:04 AM

I FINALLY got a good idea of what directories are: files where each line is the name of one child of that directory, and its inode.

Yes it took me this long. Don’t laugh.