25 Essential Commands for Linux Newbies

The terminal in Linux, and the need to use it, is a widely known fact, and one of the big reasons why Linux has earned the reputation of being harder to used compared to other commercial alternatives out there.

However, in my experience, Linux isn’t any more difficult to use than any other system. It’s just different. Yes, you will need to use the terminal. But, with a little practice, you can become an expert in the Linux terminal. Once you do, I believe you will find that in many ways using Linux is actually easier and faster compared to the other options out there.

What Is Linux?

At its most basic, Linux is an operating system, much like Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS. It was originally created in 1991 by Linus Torvalds when he became interested in UNIX based operating systems but became frustrated with licensing issues surrounding many operating systems of the time. Linux isn’t a port of UNIX per say, as it’s built from the ground up. But it does share many similarities to UNIX, thus coining the term UNIX-like operating system.

Today, Linux can be found in the form of distributions, created by different groups of people and companies. Some of the most popular distributions today are:

• Ubuntu
• Linux Mint
• Red Hat Linux
• Fedora
• openSUSE

Because of its free and open source licensing policies, today tt powers a majority of the world’s servers, especially for the Internet. But it can also be found powering routers, switches, and even our televisions and many more devices.

The Linux Terminal

The Linux Shell, more often referred to as the Linux Terminal, is a text-based application designed to receive commands from the user and show the output of these commands. From here, you can completely control every aspect of your Linux operating system. While you still may have a graphical user interface for day-to-day tasks, chances are you will have to use the Terminal to properly administer your Linux operating system.

Essential Linux Commands

Now that you understand exactly what the Linux Shell or the Linux Terminal actually is, let’s take a look at 25 essential commands that you will need to know when you start using Linux.

1. clear

When you are working in your terminal, the output can fill up your terminal window. By executing the clear command, you can clear your terminal window of all that added output that you don’t need and start with a fresh, empty terminal window.

Discord - voice and text chat for gamers

Hi guys, it is been a long pause on our website due to our exams and stuff but we are now back with more interesting stuff for you guys. Today we are going to meet Discord. If you are into online gaming and MOBA type games then you must have used or heard about Discord. It is one of the most versatile app out there for voice and text based chat. There are other apps like Skype or Teamspeak but Discord is unique in it's own way. Let's get to know more about this app.

• Cross-platform - One of the most important thing about discord is that this app is cross-platform. You can use it in Windows, Linux, Mac, iPhone, Android and even a web version if you dont like to download and install the app. In Linux we used it on Ubuntu and Arch without any problems.

  

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• Stable - This app is seriously stable. It is even more stable then OS sometimes (LOL). It worked smoothly on mobile, on both Ubuntu and Arch. We also used it on windows and it didn't disappoint us there too. Discord consumes very low amount of ram and CPU usage.
• Features - Discord probably have more features compared to skype or teamspeak. Most of all it is completely free of cost. It gives IP & DDoS protection. It also gives browser support, mobile support, in-game overlay, multiple channels, bots for customization and entertainment, friend lists, direct messaging, low latency, etc. 

  

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  android app for discord

• Connectivity, fun & bots - Once you get used to discord and made friend over it, you will start to enjoy it even more. There are lots of customizations to channels, one can make separate channels for different games or can merge them all at one place and categorize them. Another fun part of discord is the bots. There are lots of different bots for discord. They can simply manage and moderate your channels, play music while you are having a voice chat or not, can play various games, can predict future (no, but yes :P ) and do many more stuff. bots work same across all the platform and same commands can be used to manipulate them. You can simply have a concert in discord with hundreds of people listening to it. 

So give this app a try, we are damn sure this won't disappoint you at all. For downloads and more information just head over to http://discord.gg
 

Manjaro 17.0 Gellivara review

Hello guys, there is certain hype with the recent release of Manjaro 17.0 Gellivara. We also tried out the latest release and it just surprised us so we decided to write some good and bad things about it. Let's see what Manajro 17.0 has to offer us.

• The Base - Manjaro 17.0 is based on Arch Linux. But we think, Manjaro is on comp[letely different level from any other Arch-based-easy-to-install type of distribution. Manjaro clearly maintain it's own repositories while giving advantage of utilizing AUR too. Manjaro repositories have some exclusive packages which can't even be found in Arch repositories. 
• Rolling Release - One more interesting thing is Manjaro supports rolling release just like Arch. You don't have to make clean installation every time, you can simply stay updated within the system.
• Look and Feel - Manjaro 17.0 KDE edition is just beautiful. The look and feel is simply eye soothing. While it looks good, it also works in the same manner.The icons, theme, artwork is beautiful.
  
  
  

  

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• Customization - Manjaro 17.0 is highly customizable. You can simply customize deepest part of your Manjaro system. There are various choices of themes to choose from. You can separately customize desktop theme, login screen, cursors, fonts, window manager, etc. To add more fun to this thing, Manjaro team had made it possible to download other themes from online repositories.

  

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• MSM - Manjaro Settings Manager (MSM) is great way to satisfy your kernel needs for system. From MSM you can find a suitable kernel according to your system. You can variety of kernel here raging from 3.10 series to latest 4.10 series. Languages, drivers can also configured within MSM.

  

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• Notification Center - Manjaro 17.0 ships with KDE plasma 5.9. It includes a beautiful notification center to keep you notified of all the things going around your system. It includes KDE connect which easily connects your mobile phone to PC.
  

  

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• Applications and Availability - Manjaro 17.0 includes lots of applications and utilities by default. But there is octopi, a graphical installer for all the applications available in repositories. You can simply search desired package and install it within no time. Manjaro has made very easy for it's users.

  

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So overall, Manjaro 17.0 is quite a good release. It is decently stable  and performance is also on decent level. Tough we experience a very little lag few times but it's negligible and can be ignored. Manjaro 17.0 packs with Linux kernel 4.9.13 LTS which provides support for many hardware and works like a charm. We recommend you to use Manjaro Linux once, it has lot to offer and it is made with love from developer team. There are different flavors in Manjaro, The flagships are Xfce and KDE. Soon, community flavors will be released too. We also explained detailed process of installing Manjaro 17.0 here. So, try it out guys and let us know if you have any problem while installing it or using it in comments :)

How to Install Manjaro 17.0

Hi guys, Manjaro 17.0 is released few hours ago. This release brought lot of changes and improvements to Manjaro. So without wasting much time let's get to know how to install Manjaro 17.0. We have used Manjaro 17.0 KDE edition for this process.
There are few requirements before triggering installation process :

• A USB drive or DVD for making bootable media.
• Iso file of Manjaro Linuxwhich can be found in this post.
• Rufus or any other bootable media creator.
• Basic knowledge of tweaking bios and about installation procces.
• Patience, courage and fear too.

Step 1 - Download and create bootable media of Manajro 17.0. Plug itin your system and boot into live session of Manjaro Linux 17.0. From the live session start up the graphical installer of Manjaro 17.0.

Step 2 - Now you are in installer, you will be greeted with various screens which will ask for various information such as, language, location, keyboards type, etc. It is a basic thing to do in all type of Linux installations.

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Step 3 - This step is most important one. If you mess up here, then you can say goodbye to your data. This step involves some sub-steps, let's check them one by one.

The emerging Linux distribution, Manjaro 17.0 is released

Not long ago Manjaro released the previous version named 'Fringilla' which was a great success. With growing number of users day by day, developer team released latest version named Manjaro 17.0 'Gellivara' few hours ago. Manjaro 17.0 is released in both official flavors i.e. KDE and Xfce.

The KDE flavor of Manjaro ships with plasma desktop 5.9, KDE apps 16.12.3 and framework 5.31. While the flagship flavor of Manjaro which is Xfce also received lot of love from the team. Manjaro 17.0 ships with Xfce 4.12 with an undoubtedly polished and well maintained user interface. The team spent quite a time of enhancing user interface and window manager. Some of the themes are updated as well as new themes are designed for the release.

Manjaro ARM to shut down

Manjaro ARM was built for ARM embedded devices and was doing a great job from over a year ago. Manjaro ARM supported devices like Raspberry Pi, Ocdroid, etc. Today a bad news came from Manjaro-arm team that it is going to shut down all the services. The team has to make this tough decision because of low number of contributors. There were very less people to maintain and work on development of this amazing distribution. The team worked hard and tirelessly for this project to become successful, but there were very few users. According to official announcement, the forums and website will stay alive for sometime while other services will be shut down as per below time frame,

Services shut down timeframe:
All development and Bug fixes -- Already shut down.
Package Building -- Already shut down
Package Adding -- April 1st
Releases -- Already Shut down
Wiki -- April 1st
Bug Tracker -- April 1st
Manjaro-Arm Website -- June 1st
Manjaro-Arm Forums -- June 1st
IRC Channel -- TBD
Software Repo -- May 1st (this is only for the main repo at repo.manjaro-arm.org)

While the project is dying, the team has offered help to anyone who is willing to continue this project. The team will guide through all the process and even teach if needed. If anyone is interested in continuing this project, now is the time. Otherwise we all have to say goodbye to Manjaro-ARM.

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Manjaro Linux 17.0 beta 3 released in KDE flavor

Not long ago Developer team behind Manjaro Linux released second beta of version 17.0 code named 'Gellivara'. Few hours ago Manjaro team released third beta of 17.0. This release comes with many fixes and changes as well as new features.This release is in KDE flavor while Xfce flavor is been also released in beta 3.

According to official sources, Linux kernel is been updated to 4.9 LTS. Xorg-stack is also updated to 1.19. All the themes are updated to work with latest version on Manjaro. EFI installation process is been improved and fixed. KDE Plasma is updated to 5.9.1, KDE Apps are updated to 16.12.2. Manjaro Hello is updated to 0.4.10. Fixed Xorg-server crashes. Meta is still on 13.0.4 as it was on beta 2. Various changes are made in partitions and netinstall process.

So what will be the features of the new release series:

• We updated the stock kernel to linux49 4.9 LTS - Done with Alpha1
• We will update the Xorg-Stack to v1.19 series - Done with Beta1
• We will enhance and improve Luks and LVM support in CAL - Partly done with CAL v3.0
• We will enhance and improve our Manjaro Tools & Profiles - Ongoing within v0.14 branch
• We will enhance and improve our MHWD and MSM - Almost completed for Xorg 1.19
• We will update our themes - Done with Beta3

Changes since Beta2 release:

• Plasma 5.9.1
• KDE Apps 16.12.2
• VLC Nightly added
• Manjaro Hello 0.4.10
• Fixed some crashing issues with Xorg-Server
• [CAL] partition: use always double click to activate a partition tree view item
• [CAL] netinstall: moved module to a tree based UI
• [CAL] welcome: Add fallback check for internet connection
• [CAL] partition: Don't hardcode /dev/sd* as device path.
• [CAL] packages: Make try_{install,remove} more robust.

With the release of third beta, final version of Manjaro 17.0 is coming closer and closer. While many of us would stick to stable releases, there are also some people who want to try out it as early as possible. Try out the latest beta if you want to help developers or experience new features beforehand of final release.

To download click here.

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Manjaro 17.0 alpha 2 is now available for public

If you know Arch Linux, then you must have heard about Manjaro Linux too. A few hours ago Manjaro development team released Manjaro 17.0 alpha2. This release is made in two flavors, the main KDE flavor and Xfce flavor. Community releases are yet to get updated. The new version is named Gellivara. next releases will be codenamed differently rather than older month codenames.

According to the official announcement, Linux kernel 4.9 LTS is used in this release. Xorg-stack will be updated to 1.19.

So what will be the features of the new release series:

• We updated the stock kernel to linux49 4.9 LTS
• We will update the Xorg-Stack to v1.19 series
• We will enhance and improve Luks and LVM support in CAL
• We will enhance and improve our Manjaro Tools & Profiles
• We will enhance and improve our MHWD and MSM
• We will update our themes (work in progress)

There is not much to tell at this point time. However, you can get the latest alpha builds and help Manjaro team in development by suggesting bugs.  You can download latest test builds from here.

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Manjaro Linux receives update for new year.

Manajro Linux recently released a new version of operating system but they also keep their package updated. So some time ago Manjaro team updated some packages and introduced new features to main distribution. According to official announcement new feature called Brisk-menu is introduced in MATE edition of Manajro which is actually developed by Solus team. Thunderbird received some security update, linux48 will soon upgrade to linux49. Broadcom-wl, calamares, fightgear and few Ruby packages are updated.

OpenVPN is also updated to 2.4.0. There is a notice posted in official announcement for OpenVPN update.

OpenVPN 2.4.0 update may require administrative interaction
The upgrade to openvpn 2.4.0 makes changes that are incompatible with
previous configuration. Take special care if you depend on VPN
connectivity for remote access! Administrative interaction is required:
– Configuration is expected in sub directories now. Move your files
from /etc/openvpn/ to /etc/openvpn/server/ or /etc/openvpn/client/.
– The plugin lookup path has changed. Remove extra plugins/ from relative
paths.
– The systemd unit openvpn@.service was replaced with openvpn-client@.service and openvpn-server@.service. Restart and
reenable accordingly.
This does not affect the functionality of networkmanager, connman
or qopenvpn.

So keep your Manajro Linux updated and have  fun with Linux.

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How to install Synapse launcher in Manjaro Linux?

If you are using unity or gnome desktop environment then you already know bash feature, which gives quick assess to lots of things. But on other desktop environments, this function is somewhat missing. To fill this gap we can use a good looking launcher named Synapse. It is not only good looking but also lightweight. It works similar to bash in unity. It is available for Debian-based distro such as Ubuntu, but it is also available for Arch based distro too.
How to use and install Synapse in Manjaro Linux which is based on Arch?

The easiest way to install Synapse in Manjaro is by using octopi. Simply launch octopi and search for Synapse in the search box. You will get a result, right click and select install and let the process complete. There are optional plugins for Synapse too, it will prompt during installation. Voila, you have Synapse in your Manjaro system.

Manjaro Deepin 16.10.3 and various other updates comes in

Not long after cinnamon edition of Manjaro 16.10.3, a community made deepin edition of the same kicks in. There are few changes made and lots of updates are included in this release. Deepin desktop is updated to v15.3. According to official announcement the following changes and updates are included.

• Kernel Linux 4.4.36
• Calamares 2.4.5
• Chromium
• Evolution
• Libreoffice-fresh
• Xarchiver
• Deepin-Movie plus VLC
• Deepin-Game
• Gimp
• Evince
• Galculator
• Xfburn
• Manjaro-Printer
• Xsane
• Pamac
• Lightdm-Deepin-Greeter
• Dconf-Editor
• Gnome-System-Monitor
• Gparted
• Baobab
• Isousb
• Yaourt / Base-devel

Meanwhile, the team behind Manjaro made other changes in distro too. They removed insecure linux47 kernel. They requested users to change kernel version as they will stop developing for the linux47 kernel. There is also a good news, devs included Linux kernel 4.9-rc8 in repos. Python, Haskell, eric, PHP, dbus is updated.As per official announcement the following kernels are supported in Manjaro.

Currently supported kernels

• linux310 3.10.104
• linux312 3.12.68
• linux316 3.16.39
• linux318 3.18.45
• linux41 4.1.36
• linux44 4.4.38
• linux48 4.8.14
• linux49 4.9rc8
• linux-RT-LTS 4.4.32_rt43
• linux-RT 4.8.11_rt7

So guys if you are already on Manjaro then update your system to the latest version. We will be introducing you to a new Linux distribution in coming days. Stay tuned and as always have fun with Linux.

You can download latest Manjaro Deepin from HERE

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