Linux

The XML Paper Specification is a comparatively open page description language that resembles Postscript to some degree. It’s used somewhat often on various types of Microsoft devices, but you won’t see it very much on Unix systems. Some Linux users turn to Google Drive and Google Docs to edit XPS …

Generally you can expect a USB device to work as soon as you plug it into a machine running any modern distribution of GNU/Linux. Everything from Debian to openSUSE can usually identify any USB device you plug into it and activate it as long as it can find a suitable …

TeamViewer is a popular application for those who want to remotely connect to different workstations in order to exchange data, messages, and conversations with other users. It’s one of the leading programs in the Microsoft Windows segment for this purpose. Some users have found that they can use it successfully …

Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) files are giant files that emulate the use of physical media on VirtualBox and some other virtual x86/x86_64 emulators. This lets you run Windows, OS X, MS-DOS, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, OS/2 or even other versions of Linux inside your Linux distribution. These files don’t let you directly …

You might want to watch an MP4 or AVI video in the GNOME Media Player. Perhaps you prefer listening to music in Audacious, VLC Media Player, Parole or something more exotic. Fortunately, you can change which media player Linux defaults to for each file type individually or as a whole. …

The PATH environment variable specifies a set of directories where your commands go, and if you type a command with nothing else in front of it the Linux shell looks for it in one of these directories. You can always type echo $PATH at the command line to see a …

When the Sony PS3 was released, it was shipped with support for Linux installation on the console. This was later removed in updates, and the idea was scrapped entirely with the PS4. However, there exists a method to get Linux running on the PS4, and you can even play PC …

Linux users who are used to working with music files from the command line might already be using ffmpeg, but it’s difficult to extract just the length of a file using this otherwise powerful tool. There are a few ways to use it, but there are also a few other …

Linux file browsers behave much like File Explorer under Windows or the Finder under OS X in that sorting directories by size doesn’t work quite the way that many users would expect it to. You can sort directories by the number of subdirectories that they contain or the number of …

Most users of Linux on any device that has a keyboard knows the Alt+Tab shortcut. It’s a common one on many types of operating systems today, but it generally only moves applications in a single direction. Some programmers have to sort through their windows in the exact order they appear …

Users who’ve installed fonts but can’t see them in any of their applications may need to update the font cache so they render properly. There might also be a problem with the installation or even the file that contains the font itself. More commonly a program might be attempting to …

You can easily generate a random number at the bash prompt, which you can then use to set said number as a variable. This is useful for everything from writing certain types of scripts to running tabletop roleplaying adventures. Whether you might be writing a D&D campaign or authoring a …

Remembering to always back up a MySQL server can be difficult, but fortunately, there’s a script that can automate the entire process. You won’t even have to write any bash Linux code because skilled programmers already drafted the automysqlbackup script for you. You may even be able to install it …

Error The following packages have unmet dependencies has plagued Ubuntu users for a while now, and there are more and more sightings of the error on various versions of Ubuntu. The APT package management system is easy to use, but in some occasions, such as when you’re mixing in third-party …

It’s very easy to open a terminal window by holding down Ctrl+Alt+T in Linux and FreeBSD, which encourages users to hit this every time they want to run pretty much anything. This has become something of an embarrassment of riches since it encourages people to use the powerful command line …

Like with most things in the GNU/Linux environment, there’s a way to take a screenshot from the command line. There are a few different primary reasons users would like to do this. One is to have further control over how the screenshot is taken, especially when dealing with timing. Another …

You’ll sometimes see an error telling you that ssh couldn’t resolve a hostname when you attempt to use it. If you’re getting this error, then you should first make sure that you’re connected to the network. Users of any type of wireless networking will also want to make sure that …

A decent graphical hardware manager is one of the few things that many mainstream Linux distributions still lack, which can make it difficult to enable and disable a webcam. You might think that Linux refuses to recognize your laptop’s internal webcam when in actuality it’s simply turned off. Almost distributions …

WiFi signal integrity is a major issue for many Linux users, but there’s unfortunately a great deal of static regarding the issue. Some people actually shy away from using any distribution of Linux because they believe they’ll lose the ability to work with wireless Internet if they do so. This …

Actually doing the partitioning work for any U/EFI-based Linux or Windows implementation isn’t much more difficult than writing partition tables for a standard MBR-based operating system. Using the newer GUID Partition Table (GPT) technology can be confusing, though, since it doesn’t support extended or logical partitions. This is counterintuitive to …

UFW actually stands for Uncomplicated Firewall and not Ubuntu firewall like many people believe. This name reflects the fact that it’s surprisingly easy to configure. Most users will only need to set literally three options before they’re relatively safe. Those who want to set some advanced configuration options won’t have …

When installing the apache2 service on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Arch, Scientific Linux, Debian Server, Ubuntu Server or any of the other distributions that support it, you might find that you get an error about the mod_authz_host module that prevents the execution of the service. You’d likely find this error …

The VLC player allows you to install extensions, plugins and skins without the need of the Debian, Ubuntu, Arch or Fedora package managers. You simply install .lua files by copying them into a directory. These .lua files work as extensions on most versions of the VLC media player and some …

If you’re attempting to run any sort of database or macro in a Wine-based environment on any sort of GNU/Linux implementation, then you might experience some sort of error message. At some point during the program flow, you might ultimately see an OLE Error 8004013F box. Your script will then …

Ocassionally the pulseaudio service stops for various reasons. Most commonly it suddenly stops working after playing certain sorts of full-screen games or playing certain videos. If one of these applications were to suddenly stop or if you had to use xkill to force it to stop, then you might need …