General Q&A about Linux and Unix-like operating systems
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I have a TLS certificate, let's say codidact.pem (downloaded as in https://linux.codidact.com/posts/292251/292257#answer-292257). But when I view it the file it appears to be base64 encoded: $ cat...
What command can be used to download the TLS certificate of a site such as https://wikipedia.org?
How to display details about a site's certificate using CLI tools?
Online, I often see someone tell people to run a command like /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)" (example from https://brew.sh/). The g...
At the most embarrassing time, Firefox on my Ubuntu laptop wouldn't connect to any websites. I've narrowed it down to a DNS issue. I can ping IP addresses, sftp to the computer, etc. The problem af...
A lot of games are made for Windows, and don't have an official Linux version. Can you play these on Linux? Asking specifically about games, not all programs, because games have a lot of additiona...
According to a post on the Nvidia forums, my EGL installation is broken, as eglinfo should say the vendor is Nvidia; on my system it returns: EGL API version: 1.5 EGL vendor string: Mesa Project ...
I use pipewire. When I list devices with pactl, I see some ugly device.name values. Some of these I changed in the past, but forgot how. I want to change some more. How?
Sometimes I work with Git repos that have some changes fetched but not yet merged to the local branch. Occasionally I make commits without noticing this, which necessitates rebase/conflict resoluti...
I'm fond of the one-line tabular-like output of aptitude search, but not all systems have aptitude installed. How do I customize the output of apt search (or apt-cache or whatever default tool is a...
Suppose I have some hypothetical CLI program. It is important that only one instance of this program runs at any given time. When multiple instances run concurrently, bad things happen. Normally, ...
I have a systemd unit that runs hourly, but when the computer has just booted/logged in it will "catch up" on the previous run, so it ends up firing right after I log in. Is there a way to make it...
It seems like systemd labels every boot with some ID. Suppose I have some sporadic issue that happens only on some boots. I want to search logs for only the boots that have the issue, not all boot...
I have a crappy USB hub. I connect some devices to this, like a USB microphone, which don't matter at all until I've booted successfully. Sometimes these devices cause an issue and my boot gets stu...
If I run journalctl --list-boots I get a list of my previous boots. How can I tell which ones of these were resumes from hibernate, and which were booting "from scratch"? I want to do this becaus...
I have a command check_mail that checks my mail. I have it configured to run hourly because I don't want to hammer the server too much. But, sometimes I am really at the edge of my seat for a resp...
How do I find all actual files (not devices, sockets, etc) on my system that are: Not part of a package Not under /home (I assume that packages are supposed to never put files there) on Arch...
I want to download an application from the internet, but the website is listing versions for "bookworm", "bullseye" and "buster". I do not know which version of these to download, as I don't know w...
Currently I set my wallpaper by having a call to feh in my i3 config. This does set the wallpaper, but it seems buggy. Whenever my monitor configuration changes, the wallpaper gets moved partially ...
When I use my computer, one question I commonly want to answer for myself is "how much space is being used by the contents of this folder?". Typical file/window managers, IMX, answer this question ...
After many years of using Arch, and many applications, my home directory is completely cluttered with junk. Of course, much of this is useful and needed for the normal operation of programs. For ex...
When I boot my computer, I want the sound to start out muted, even if it wasn't before. For bonus points: It should also reduce volume to 0% This should also happen when coming out of hibernat...
How do you monitor GPU usage on Linux? I am most interested in a "% GPU usage" and maybe "GPU temp" statistic, not so much very detailed stuff.
Linux Mint comes with "System Monitor", a GNOME utility that - among other things - shows my CPU and RAM usage and network transfer rate. It seems intended as the system's alternative to the Task M...
I've noticed that the default kernel selection for Ubuntu 22.04, for example, is Linux 5.15.0. Ubuntu 22.04 is a LTS release, which is supposed to have standard support until April 2027, and Linux ...
I understand that "mounting" in Linux refers to associating some "device" (usually some storage drive or a partition thereof, but it could be a region of RAM, some memory-mapped hardware, etc.) wit...
I've heard people say that Linux is a misnomer. Supposedly, the operating system is not Linux, Linux is just a part of it called a kernel, and the operating system should be called something else. ...
Suppose you have two Linux distributions installed in a dual boot situation. One issue that can happen is when you need to frequently switch. Rebooting is disruptive if you have a bunch of things ...
I often need to fill out PDF forms, like government paperwork and stuff for banks. How can I do this on Linux? Best I could find was Foxit, but it has strange limitations in the Linux version, lik...
My understanding is that one of the key advantages of Linux is modularity: the actual Linux kernel is quite small, and then what we call Linux is that plus the "rest of the system" - hence "operati...
I want to install additional Linux distributions on my computer, so I can try some new ones and see if they're better than my current ("old") one. I've been using my current distro for a while. I'...
I installed Grub in the normal way and now I have entries in the Grub menu for linux, linux-lts, and the fallback versions of them. I want to add more entries to this. For example, I want to add l...
Ever since systemd was adopted by mainstream distros, there's been many reactive projects aiming to provide a distro without systemd. I've often had the impression that a lot of these were motivat...
If I had a fast drive (SSD) and a slow one (HDD), what parts of my Linux system should go on the fast one?
There is a popular partitioning scheme, described in the Arch wiki as LVM on LUKS. The meat of this is: /boot is its own unencrypted partition The rest of the drive is a giant LUKS partition I...
I wanted to download C++ documentation and found cppreference-doc-en-qch in Debian's archive: Description: C and C++ standard library reference (English, Qt Help variant) A version of online C ...
I have / mounted on a relatively small partition and /home on a larger one taking up most of the rest of the drive (as seems to be common practice). I'd like to move certain other parts of the file...
How can I print the version of a program in the terminal, so that I know which one I have installed?
I have installed the Flatpak version of Lutris from Pop_Shop in PopOS. From within Lutris, I have installed the EA App, which I have then used to download several games from my library. Unfortunate...
Early in boot, after triggering uevents but before the encrypt hook (decrypting drives) my system takes a very long time, over a minute. Actually, I bet it takes 90 seconds which is the typical def...
I have multiple systems, each of which has two different hard drives: one fast SSD and my good old spinning rust. Originally, I had set up the drives to have my root directory / on the SSD and my ...
I have long been in the process of converting my manual steps to create a new backup disks into an automated script. The only part I have left is the initial "creation" of the disk, meaning whateve...
HTTPie complains about TLS certificates ever for sites I know are fine: $ https wikipedia.org https: error: SSLError: HTTPSConnectionPool(host='wikipedia.org', port=443): Max retries exceeded w...
I want /home to be on a different partition than the rest of my files. How can I do this?
If I have an application such as the EA App running from Lutris, after starting the computer from hibernation, it sometimes doesn't render correctly; the window renders some areas fine, while other...
GPG stores keys inside an internal database of some sort. How to export your public key in the familiar -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- format so that it can be imported to other software? E.g...
When I view my document camera's feed in guvcview it is in landscape mode. I want it to capture things in portrait mode, since I usually take photos of documents. Currently, I have to rotate all t...
I saw another post recommend using Fedora if you want cutting edge features. Is Fedora really a "cutting edge" distro? I am not very familiar with Fedora, I know it's a community counterpart to R...
Suppose I have a command that prints to the standard output, like: $ echo hi hi How can I send this to the clipboard instead, as if I selected the output and did Ctrl+C?
I added IdleAction=hibernate IdleActionSec=30min To my bat /etc/systemd/logind.conf. Then I waited 31 min, but nothing happened. It didn't hibernate. Presumably, the config changes are not loa...
