Why Use the Command Line?

The command line came long before graphical desktop environments appeared. It was the primary way to use and administer Unix, the operating system that Linux is based on.

There are hundreds of commands available on the Linux command line, and many of these have dozens of options. This delivers granularity, power, speed, and flexibility. The trouble is, that blinking cursor in a terminal window isn’t welcoming, and the prospect of learning all of those commands and options can be overwhelming to the newcomer.

Standard Ubuntu installs don’t include the Linux make utility. It’s used mainly by software developers, but even non-coders may need it in some situations. Here’s how to install make on Ubuntu Linux.

ShellGPT is a Python program that lets you access OpenAI’s ChatGPT from the command line of a terminal window. It sends your text prompts and your ChatGPT API key to ChatGPT and prints out ChatGPT’s response.

It’s just like running ChatGPT on your own computer, without any of the hassle, and regardless of the computing power of your computer. You’ll need to have a ChatGPT API key, but it only takes moments to get one, and they’re free.

ChatGPT is probably the most famous of the new-wave of large language model AI chatbots, developed using deep learning techniques and massive data sets.

It’s able to hold convincing and lifelike conversations, and can generate prose and other text format responses on just about any topic you can imagine. Just keep in mind that it’s a simulation of a knowledgeable, intelligent person. It isn’t genuinely intelligent, and it’ll happily make stuff up.

None of the following steps are difficult, and you should be up and running in ten minutes or so.

If your Linux computer can’t boot into its operating system, you’re likely to find yourself staring at a prompt in the GRUB shell. Follow these steps to repair your broken boot processes.

Has your Excel, Word, or Outlook app’s ribbon suddenly disappeared? It’s easy to hide it accidentally, and sometimes the tabs disappear too. In either case, you can bring it back in your Office app on your Windows or Mac machine in a few clicks.

Note: The following guide uses Excel for demonstration. You’ll use the same steps in both Word and Outlook.

Docker’s normally used to containerise background applications and CLI programs. You can also use it to run graphical programs though! You can either use an existing X Server, where the host machine is already running a graphical environment, or you can run a VNC server within the container.

First it’s important to understand what Docker actually does. A Docker “container” is a form of encapsulation which seems to be superficially similar to a virtual machine. Unlike a virtual machine, containers share the same Linux kernel as their host system.

The next component is the X Window System. X Servers such as Xorg provide the fundamental graphical capabilities of Unix systems. GUI applications can’t render without an X Server available. (Alternative windowing systems, such as Wayland, are available – we’re focusing on X in this article.)

Trying to run an X Server in Docker is theoretically possible but rarely used. You’d need to run Docker in privileged mode (--privileged) so it could access your host’s hardware. Starting the server would try to claim your video devices, usually resulting in loss of video output as your host’s original X server gets its devices yanked away.

A better approach is to mount your host’s X Server socket into the Docker container. This allows your container to use the X Server you already have. GUI applications running in the container would then appear on your existing desktop.

If your Arch Linux computer supports Bluetooth but you’re not using it, it’ll just be wasting power. Instead of turning it off whenever you boot your computer, disable the Bluetooth service instead.

If your Steam Deck suffers from SteamOS-related issues—failing to boot, being unresponsive or any other similar problem—you might want to reinstall or reimage SteamOS.

Every network interface has a unique MAC address, set by the manufacturer. It’s how network connections identify connection endpoints. On Linux, you can permanently change a MAC address if you want.

Kubernetes support for stateful applications has considerably matured over the past few years. Now it’s viable to locate your database inside your cluster, allowing it to benefit from the same scalability as your other workloads.

MySQL is one of the most popular relational database engines and it’s now augmented by an official Kubernetes operator. The Oracle-led open-source project provides a simple way to create managed MySQL clusters within Kubernetes.