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Posts by Karl Knechtel‭

24 posts
81%
+7 −0
Q&A Find path to an executable

which only tells you about a path that would be found in PATH. Often, people who think they have this question have a more general question - i.e., what will be used when the named command is reque...

posted 3mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭

Answer
77%
+5 −0
Q&A What are the concrete security risks of forcibly terminating a process?

I'm using the Gnome System Monitor in Linux Mint. Whenever I attempt to "End" or "Kill" a process, I am given this warning via a modal dialog (emphasis mine): Killing a process may destroy data,...

2 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Karl Knechtel‭  ·  last activity 7mo ago by Kamil Maciorowski‭

Question security kill
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+5 −0
Q&A What's the "big picture" of how my operating system is put together?

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...

1 answer  ·  posted 5mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭  ·  last activity 5mo ago by matthewsnyder‭

77%
+5 −0
Q&A What is cat abuse/useless use of cat?

Overview A "useless use" or "abuse" of cat occurs when a Unix pipeline (sequence of commands that feed into each other, using the shell | or "pipe" operator) includes a call to cat that is unneces...

posted 8mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭

Answer
71%
+3 −0
Q&A Why/how can distro support lifetimes exceed the lifetime of their dependencies (such as Python)?

Motivating example: my Mint 20.3 distribution offers long-term support until April 2025, which matches the "standard support" offered for the upstream Ubuntu (20.04 "Jammy Jellyfish"). However, the...

2 answers  ·  posted 8mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭  ·  last activity 8mo ago by matthewsnyder‭

71%
+3 −0
Meta Suggestion: Basic Linux skills compendium

I've been persistently advocating for an analogous effort in the Software community, and generally think that any Codidact community could likely benefit from doing something similar. As a practica...

posted 1y ago by Karl Knechtel‭

Answer
71%
+3 −0
Q&A How can I show hidden files and folders (with leading dot in name) on the desktop (actual desktop, not a window)?

I am using Linux Mint 20.3, with Cinnamon as a window manager. I have a folder named .pytest_cache on my Desktop: $ ls -1A | grep '^\.' .pytest_cache I know that if I open a Nemo window, navi...

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Karl Knechtel‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by Mithical‭

Question linux-mint desktop
71%
+3 −0
Q&A Clarifying terminology related to mounting

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...

0 answers  ·  posted 5mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭

Question mount terminology
71%
+3 −0
Q&A Why don't LTS distros consistently use/offer LTS kernels?

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 ...

0 answers  ·  posted 5mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭

71%
+3 −0
Q&A What desktop environment am I running?

By memory If you installed Linux yourself, then you were almost certainly informed about this at some point in the process. Generally, you're either expected to choose a separate installer accordi...

posted 3mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭  ·  edited 3mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭

Answer
66%
+2 −0
Q&A Higher-order functions in Bash?

Say I have some Bash function my-func, that expects a filename and does some processing on the corresponding file. For demonstration purposes, my-func() { cat "$1"; } If I want to apply that fu...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Karl Knechtel‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by Kamil Maciorowski‭

66%
+2 −0
Q&A Can rsync handle moves and renames?

Suppose I have a directory structure like ├── src │   ├── folder_a │   │   ├── file_w │   │   └── file_x │   ├── folder_b │   │   ├── file_y │   │   └── file_z and I back it up using rsyn...

1 answer  ·  posted 10mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭  ·  edited 10mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭

Question filesystem rsync
66%
+2 −0
Q&A Is there a way to automatically normalize paths when extracting RARs?

If all else fails, you could create a wrapper shell function to check the output of unrar l (probably by piping to wc -l) and proceed accordingly.

posted 8mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭

Answer
66%
+2 −0
Q&A How can I get a Flatpak dependency graph?

flatpak uninstall --unused currently tells me that there is Nothing unused to uninstall. This seems wrong to me, based on the list of packages I see vs. the "root" packages I explicitly installed p...

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Karl Knechtel‭

66%
+2 −0
Q&A Best practice for splitting data between a fast and slow drive

First, consider your needs. There's a decent chance that everything you want will fit on the SSD anyway, at least if you aren't an enthusiastic multimedia collector. Nowadays a 1TB SSD can be had c...

posted 5mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭

Answer
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Q&A Efficiently determining disk usage of a folder (without starting from scratch every time)

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 ...

2 answers  ·  posted 5mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭  ·  last activity 4mo ago by GeraldS‭

60%
+1 −0
Q&A Partially moving /home to a new partition, leaving some content behind

I have a partition and directory structure that looks like: small partition: / usr var ... # etc. large partition: /home shared other_stuff large_folder ...

0 answers  ·  posted 21d ago by Karl Knechtel‭

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+1 −0
Q&A Getting a Module Error When Running Pytest Even Though the Module is Installed in the Current Virtual Environment

Although the system package manager was involved for your setup, this is really just a special case of a pure Python issue. When you run a program like Pytest that is itself written in Python, gen...

posted 21d ago by Karl Knechtel‭  ·  edited 21d ago by Karl Knechtel‭

Answer
60%
+1 −0
Q&A Adding mount points to an existing partition that already has one

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...

1 answer  ·  posted 5mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭  ·  last activity 5mo ago by Canina‭

Question filesystem mount
60%
+1 −0
Q&A Moving the filesystem root to a different partition and booting from it

My primary drive is partitioned basically like so (only roughly to scale): / /home junk v v v |xx###############...

1 answer  ·  posted 7mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭  ·  last activity 7mo ago by Iizuki‭

Question boot partitioning
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+1 −0
Q&A Group and users seem to disagree about whether the users are in the group

On my current setup (running Linux Mint 20.3 Cinnamon), I have an administrative user and several ordinary users. I intend for all of these users to be in the same group, which happens to have the ...

0 answers  ·  posted 8mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭

60%
+1 −0
Q&A How does the root user locate executables?

A little while ago I was helping someone with running Python in a virtual environment, as root, for some specific purpose. I determined easily enough that this requires explicitly specifying the pa...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Karl Knechtel‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by r~~‭

Question path which root-user
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Q&A How can I check GPU usage? [duplicate]

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...

0 answers  ·  posted 5mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭  ·  closed as duplicate 5mo ago by Mithical‭

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Q&A If I have /home on a separate partition, how can I move it back to the root partition?

Some Linux users prefer to have /home mounted on a separate partition from the filesystem root, while others prefer a unified partition. I can find plenty of tutorials out there for moving /home on...

1 answer  ·  posted 8d ago by Karl Knechtel‭  ·  last activity 8d ago by GeraldS‭