Installing Cinnamon on Fedora Cinnamon is a modern, feature-rich desktop environment forked from GNOME. It’s lightweight compared to full GNOME installations and offers a traditional taskbar-based interface. Installing it on Fedora is straightforward. Basic Installation Use dnf (the modern package manager) with group install: sudo dnf groupinstall ‘Cinnamon Desktop’ This installs the complete Cinnamon desktop…
Cropping PDF Margins with GUI Tools on Linux If you need to remove excess white space or trim margins from PDF files, several graphical tools can handle this on Linux. Here are the most practical options. Krop Krop is a straightforward tool specifically designed for PDF cropping. It lets you define crop regions visually and…
Detecting screen Sessions You sometimes need to know whether your shell is running inside screen or tmux. The most straightforward approach is checking the TERM environment variable. Using TERM When screen starts a shell, it sets TERM=screen by default: [user@host ~]$ echo $TERM screen Compare this to a normal terminal session: [user@host ~]$ echo $TERM…
Setting VNC Geometry for GNOME 3 When you start a VNC server with the -geometry flag under GNOME 3, you’ll notice the display resolution doesn’t match what you specified: vncserver -geometry 1024×768 This works fine with GNOME 2 and window managers like twm, but GNOME 3 ignores the setting. The actual resolution will be whatever…
Compiling source files to object files Start by compiling your C source files into object files: gcc -c lib1.c lib2.c This produces lib1.o and lib2.o. You can use any compiler flags here—-Wall, -O2, -fPIC, etc.—that match your build requirements. Position-independent code (-fPIC) isn’t strictly required for static libraries but is good practice if you anticipate…
Installing Java plugin for Chrome on Linux x86-64 Note: Java in web browsers is obsolete. Most websites stopped requiring Java applets years ago, and all major browsers removed plugin support by 2016. If you’re here because a legacy application needs Java, consider running it in a containerized environment or dedicated VM instead. If you absolutely…
Setting environment variables in bash The basic syntax for setting an environment variable is: export VARIABLE=value No spaces around the equals sign. If your value contains spaces, quote it: export PATH_TO_PROJECT=”/home/user/my project” Verify it’s set: echo $VARIABLE Viewing all environment variables Use printenv to list all exported variables: printenv Or filter for a specific variable:…
Setting Environment Variables in csh Use setenv to set an environment variable in csh: setenv VARIABLE value Replace VARIABLE with the name of the variable and value with its value. The variable is immediately available in the current shell and inherited by child processes. Examples Set a simple variable: setenv PATH /usr/local/bin:$PATH setenv EDITOR vim…
Piping stderr to less When you need to page through error output from a command, you’ll run into the issue that less only receives stdout by default. Error messages go to stderr (file descriptor 2), so they’ll still scroll past on your terminal while stdout gets paged. Basic approach: combine stderr with stdout make 2>&1…
Using nm to inspect static library symbols The nm command displays symbolic information from object files, libraries, and executables. It’s the standard tool for inspecting what functions and variables are defined or referenced in a static library (.a file). Basic usage List all symbols in a library: nm lib.a This outputs symbol names, but the…
Mounting Ext4 Partitions in Windows Accessing Linux filesystems from Windows is useful when dual-booting, migrating data, or recovering files. Read-only access is essential to prevent accidental corruption of ext4 metadata and data. Why Read-Only Access Matters Ext4 is designed for Linux environments. Windows drivers lack complete understanding of ext4 journaling, extended attributes, and other advanced…
Remove cookies for a specific site in Chrome You can delete cookies from individual sites without clearing your entire browser cache. Here’s how: Via Settings UI Open chrome://settings/privacy in the address bar (or go to Settings > Privacy and security) Click Cookies and other site data Click All cookies and site data Use the search…
Generating Random Strings in Bash There are several reliable methods to generate random strings of a specific length in bash. The choice depends on your character set requirements and use case. Using tr with /dev/urandom The tr command combined with /dev/urandom is the most portable and straightforward approach: tr -dc “[:alpha:]” < /dev/urandom | head…
Cron and Environment Variables Cron is a minimal execution environment. Unlike your interactive shell, cron runs with a stripped-down environment containing only a few variables like PATH, MAILTO, and SHELL. Any variables you’ve defined in your shell profile won’t be available unless you explicitly source them in your crontab entries. The Problem If your cron…
Resetting the Disqus WordPress Plugin Installation If you’ve deactivated and reactivated the Disqus WordPress plugin but it’s still using the old forum ID and configuration, you need to clear the stored settings from your database. This is the most reliable way to force the plugin to re-initialize and prompt you for fresh configuration. Why This…
Automatically Filling PDF Forms with Batch Data When you need to populate PDF forms with large datasets, manual entry becomes impractical. Scripting this process saves time and eliminates human error. Here’s how to automate PDF form filling using Python. Understanding PDF Form Filling PDF forms contain field names that can be programmatically populated. The process…
Broken Links Checker for Websites Broken links damage SEO, hurt user experience, and undermine site credibility. Checking for them should be part of your regular maintenance routine. Here’s what’s available in 2026. Online Tools W3C Link Checker (http://validator.w3.org/checklink) remains a solid option for checking individual pages. Point it at a URL and it crawls the…
SSH Access on Shared Hosting SSH is essential for serious shared hosting management — it beats FTP by a mile and gives you real shell access for development, deployment, and automation. Most reputable shared hosting providers support SSH, though availability and implementation vary. Major Providers with SSH Support DreamHost DreamHost has long supported SSH on…
Installing WordPress in a Subdirectory While Serving From Root Installing WordPress in a subdirectory keeps your site root cleaner and makes it easier to manage core files separately from content. Here’s how to configure WordPress so the admin and core files live in /wordpress while the site appears at your domain root. Creating the Subdirectory…
Setting up MySQL replication MySQL replication lets you maintain synchronized copies of your database across multiple servers. This is essential for high availability, read scaling, and backups. Here’s how to configure it properly. Prerequisites You need at least two MySQL instances: a primary (source) and one or more replicas. Both should run the same or…