Software

What is the first thing to know about software with Linux?

Well, quite simply, software with Linux derives from either command prompt or more typically and widely used, software that you point and click with in a GUI (Graphical User Interface) format.

If you are new to Linux, moving from Windows or macOS or simply don't know what a command prompt is - you will want to use the Graphical User Interface running either GNOME or KDE.

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    If you're a Linux enthusiast or a terminal power user, you already appreciate the charm of a command-line interface. The good news is, it can also be playful and vibrant! Today, we're diving into a fun little tool called cbonsai, which lets you generate adorable ASCII art bonsai trees right in your terminal. This not only adds a dash of aesthetic pleasure to your command-line sessions but can also serve as a calming element in your busy workflow. cbonsai is a lightweight, open-source program written in C. It generates intricate ASCII art representations of bonsai trees, each time creating a unique tree with various styles, colors, and orientations.
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    For Linux enthusiasts, the terminal is not just a tool but a canvas, where functionality meets creativity. Today, let's explore an intriguing utility called boxes. Boxes is a nifty command-line utility that allows users to draw ASCII art boxes around their text, beautifying log files, code comments, or simply making the terminal output more visually appealing. Boxes is a command-line filter program that takes a plain text input and decorates it with a box made up of ASCII characters. It's customizable and comes with several predefined box styles, including stars, dashes, and various intricate edges. Furthermore, it can be used in scripts, which makes it a fixture for those who love adding a flair to automated output or reports.
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    If you’re a fan of the classic Unix/Linux terminal and always on the lookout for quirky and interesting ways to enhance its appearance, then you might find pipes.sh an intriguing addition to your toolkit. pipes.sh is a small, fun script that creates a mesmerizing maze of pipes, reminiscent of the classic screensavers found in older operating systems, directly in your terminal. It's a perfect blend of nostalgia and terminal-based aesthetic, adding a moving piece of art to a usually static screen. pipes.sh is a simple bash script that generates an animated pipes screensaver in the terminal.
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    Unleash Your Inner Brony: Jazz Up Your Terminal with Ponysay As Linux enthusiasts, we often spend a significant portion of our day interacting with the Bash terminal. Why not add a little fun to this routine activity? Enter ponysay, a quirky utility that lets you display ASCII art of ponies alongside quotes or any custom message you'd like to show in your terminal. This combination of nostalgia, fun, and the command-line interface can bring a little joy to your daily tasks. Ponysay is a simple, delightful tool that wraps your terminal messages in a bubble and displays them being "spoken" by an ASCII art pony. It's a fork of the famous cowsay but offers more graphical variety, especially for fans of the "My Little Pony" series.
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    For Linux enthusiasts, there's always a little more that can be achieved with the command line than meets the eye. Among the vast arsenal of utilities available in the Linux ecosystem, there's one charming little program guaranteed to bring a smile or drop a nugget of wisdom each time you fire up your terminal: the fortune command. Simple, yet delightful, fortune serves up a random quote or joke whenever you invoke it. Today, I’ll guide you through what fortune is, how to install it on different Linux distributions, and how to incorporate it into your daily command line routine. The fortune command is a classic Unix program that outputs a random quotation from a collection of quotes.
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    Are you ever in a position where sharing your real-time terminal activity could benefit your team, accelerate learning, or simplify support? Whether for educational purposes, demonstration, or debugging, recording your terminal activity is invaluable. One such tool that stands as a game-changer is ttyrec. It's simple, efficient, and incredibly easy to use. Here we will dive into what ttyrec is, how you can install it on different Linux distributions, and how to use it effectively. Ttyrec is a terminal utility that records terminal sessions natively and allows you to replay them whenever needed. It records everything displayed on the terminal, including keystrokes and timing information, allowing an exact replay.
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    Ever wanted to share a complex command-line process with a teammate, or demonstrate software usage in an easily accessible format? The command-line, while powerful and efficient, has often lacked the tools to easily share and demonstrate processes - until now. Enter Asciinema, an open-source tool that allows you to record terminal sessions and share them in a visually-appealing and web-friendly format. Asciinema is a simple yet powerful tool that runs from the command line and records all your terminal activity. It’s different from traditional screen capturing tools because it records the actual ASCII sequences and timing information to a file or streams them directly online.
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    If you've ever worked in the Linux terminal, you're probably familiar with the classic ls command for listing directory contents. But what happens when your fingers slip and you accidentally type sl instead? Thanks to a playful and humorous tool named sl (Steam Locomotive), instead of an error message, you get to watch a charming ASCII train steam across your terminal window. This amusing response not only lightens the mood but also gently nudges you about the typo — turning a small mistake into a brief moment of joy. sl stands for Steam Locomotive, and it's essentially a small program designed to correct and humor those who mistype ls as sl by displaying an animated ASCII art train that travels across your terminal window.
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    Ever wondered about a quick way to display your Linux system information alongside a nifty logo of your Linux distribution? Look no further than screenfetch, a handy Bash script that fetches system/theme information in terminal and displays it along with your distro's logo. In this blog post, we'll delve into what screenfetch can do for you and provide step-by-step installation instructions across various Linux package managers such as apt, dnf, and zypper. Screenfetch is an open-source script written in Bash that automatically displays information about your system next to your distribution's logo in ASCII art format.
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    For Linux enthusiasts and terminal aficionados, the appeal of customizing the command-line experience is undeniable. One of the simplest yet visually striking modifications you can make is displaying your system information plotted alongside a colorful ASCII art logo of your operating system or Linux distro. This is where Neofetch comes into play. Neofetch is a command-line system information tool written in Bash. It gathers information about your system and presents it next to a graphical representation of your operating system's logo rendered in ASCII art, adding a fun flair to the otherwise plain terminal output.
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    If you're a fan of the "The Matrix" movie series, or if you just love cool visual effects, you might find the Linux terminal a bit too static at times. Luckily, with a nifty little tool called CMatrix, you can turn your terminal into a captivating display of the iconic digital rain from "The Matrix." In this blog post, we will guide you through the installation of CMatrix on various Linux distributions and show you how to use it to turn your terminal into a dynamic, matrix-style display. CMatrix is a simple program that runs in a terminal emulator and simulates the "digital rain" effect from "The Matrix." It was specifically designed to be visually appealing and entertaining, providing a cinematic flair to your Linux shell.
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    When it comes to command line tools, Linux offers a plethora of utilities that not only make shell interactions productive but also fun. One such tool is toilet. This nifty utility allows you to create colorful, large ASCII banners from plain text. It’s an upgraded version of the FIGlet utility, which prints text banners in large characters made of ordinary screen characters. Toilet enhances FIGlet by adding support for colorful and custom ASCII art and Unicode support. This tool is perfect for adding some flair to scripts, system messages, or simply to embellish your terminal.
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    In the realm of Linux, versatility and fun often go hand in hand. One such remarkable utility that underscores this blend is figlet. This simple yet powerful tool enables users to create large, impressive ASCII art text out of ordinary string input. It can be of great use in spicing up your scripts, decorating your terminal, or even making headers for printouts. In this blog post, we will explore what figlet is, how you can install it, and how to use it to generate stunning text-based art. Figlet stands for "Frank, Ian and Glenn's Letters", named after its creators. It is a program that generates text banners in a variety of typefaces composed of conglomerations of letters or other characters.
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    If you've spent any significant amount of time in a terminal window, you know it can sometimes be dry. But what if you could make your command line outputs colorful, lively, and fun? Enter Lolcat - a utility that concatenates like the traditional cat command but adds rainbow coloring to its output. This small tool not only makes your terminal more visually appealing but can also make long output streams easier to skim through due to its varied coloring. In this blog post, I'll guide you through the installation of Lolcat for different Linux distributions and show you some fun ways to use it. Lolcat is a Ruby-based program that enables a rainbow coloring effect for your terminal output.
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    In the world of Linux, a bit of fun can go a long way to lightening the mood and providing some enjoyable distraction amidst the sea of commands and scripts. One such charming utility is cowsay, a program that generates ASCII pictures of a cow with a customizable speech bubble. This quirky tool can be used in scripts, shell prompts, and everywhere in between to add a touch of whimsy to your Linux terminal. cowsay is a simple text filter written in Perl that takes any text input and turns it into a conversation with an ASCII art cow (or other creatures, if you prefer). It's largely used to add a humorous touch to scripts or long terminal sessions.
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    Harnessing the Power of Parallel Processing in Bash In the world of computing, time is of the essence. Efficiently managing time when running scripts or commands can drastically improve productivity and performance. This is where parallel, a remarkable shell tool, comes into play, allowing you to run multiple shell commands in parallel, rather than executing them sequentially. In this blog post, we'll explore what parallel is, why you might want to use it, and how to install and utilize it across various Linux distributions. GNU Parallel is a command-line utility that helps users execute jobs in parallel using one or more computers. It's a potent tool for running a series of commands concurrently, speeding up processing time considerably.
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    Harnessing the Power of Dateutils: Advanced Date Handling in Linux Bash When it comes to handling dates and times in Linux, most users turn to the traditional date command. However, those looking for more robust features may find the standard utilities somewhat limiting. This is where dateutils comes into play—an invaluable toolset designed for more complex operations involving dates and times. Dateutils are a batch of tools that provide a rich set of commands to deal with dates and times. These tools allow you to convert dates, calculate differences, adjust dates, and even parse dates from strings. They are particularly useful in scripts where date manipulation is a frequent task.
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    In the world of Linux Bash scripting and terminal commands, some utilities may seem obscure or trivial until their true potential is unveiled. The yes command is one such tool. Known for its simplicity, the yes utility is adept at sending repeated strings to standard output, an ability that can be harnessed in multiple practical scenarios. Today, we will explore how to install and effectively utilize the yes command across different Linux distributions and dive into some of its practical applications. At its core, the yes command is deceptively simple: it outputs a specific string repeatedly until it is interrupted (such as by CTRL+C) or piped into another command. The default output is the string y but can be customised to any text.
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    In the world of Linux, efficiency is key. Whether you're a system administrator, a developer, or a data scientist, manipulating text data quickly and effectively can be crucial. One handy tool that deserves more attention is shuf, a command-line utility that randomly shuffles the lines of a file or input stream. This is particularly useful for tasks such as generating random samples, creating randomised lists, or even setting up conditions for simulations. shuf is a utility in GNU Coreutils, available by default on most Linux distributions. It reads a sequence of lines from a file (or standard input), randomly permutes them, and outputs the result.
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    In the Linux environment, efficiently managing input and output streams is a critical skill. Whether you're scripting or simply trying to capture the output of a terminal command, understanding how to manipulate these streams can greatly enhance your productivity and capabilities. One such powerful tool for handling output redirection is the tee command. In this article, we will dive into how to use tee to redirect output to multiple files and stdout, and also cover installation instructions for different Linux distributions. The tee command reads standard input and then writes it to both standard output (allowing you to see it on your screen) and one or more files.
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    In the realm of Linux, mastering command-line utilities can significantly amplify your productivity and understanding of your system. One such valuable command is wc (word count), a simple yet powerful tool used to count lines, words, and characters in text files, streams, or list outputs. Whether you are a programmer, a system administrator, or simply a Linux enthusiast, understanding how to effectively use the wc command can help you simplify complex tasks involving text processing. In this post, we’ll explore how to use wc, along with installation instructions for various Linux distributions. The wc command in Linux stands for "word count".
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    In the world of Linux, efficiency at the command line can significantly impact your productivity. xargs is a powerful utility that helps users construct complex command lines from standard input. Let's dive into what xargs does, why it's useful, and how you can install and use it on different Linux distributions. xargs is a command-line utility available in most Unix-like operating systems. It reads items from the standard input, delimited by blanks (which can be protected with double or single quotes or a backslash) or newlines, and executes the command one or more times with any initial-arguments followed by items read from standard input. Blank lines on the input are ignored.
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    In the diversified toolbox of Linux command-line utilities, the uniq command stands out for its proficiency in filtering duplicate lines from a sorted stream of data. Whether you are a system administrator or software developer, mastering this command can greatly enhance your scripting tasks by simplifying the process of identifying unique lines in text files or data streams. In this article, we'll explore the basics of the uniq command, its usage scenarios, and provide instructions to install it on various Linux distributions. The uniq command in Linux is a command-line utility that reads from a sorted input and writes out unique or duplicate lines to the output.
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    In the vast toolbox of Linux Bash commands, sort is a powerful utility that helps manage text files by arranging their contents according to a defined set of rules. Whether you're a seasoned sysadmin, a developer, or just a Linux enthusiast, mastering the sort command can greatly enhance your file handling and data processing tasks. In this blog, we will explore the functionality of sort, followed by installation instructions for various Linux package managers including apt, dnf, and zypper. The sort command in Linux is used to sort the contents of text files line by line. It can be employed in a variety of ways to sort data alphabetically, numerically, reverse order, and more.
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    When dealing with text files in Linux, knowing how to extract specific parts of lines can simplify many tasks. One of the powerful text manipulation tools available in Linux is the cut command. Whether you're a developer handling logs, a system administrator managing configurations, or just a curious Linux user, mastering cut can significantly enhance your productivity. In this guide, we'll explore how to use the cut tool, and we'll also cover installation instructions to ensure you have cut ready on your system. The cut command in Linux is used to extract sections of lines from files or input provided to it.