Review of Ubuntu Hacks
Why read Ubuntu Hacks
- If Ubuntu is the entry-level Linux distro, then Ubuntu Hacks is the book that helps the entry-level user take advantage of the great software and tools Linux has to offer.
- I would have saved myself a lot of effort if I owned this book on the day that I install Ubuntu on my machine.
- In many ways, Ubuntu Hacks is an introduction to the software available to all Linux users. So, if you are looking for some “real Ubuntu hacks”, you may be disappointed, but that is ok; that just means that the title of the book is a bit of a misnomer, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the books isn’t valuable.
- Some subjects (like kernel building) aren’t really examined with much detail and refer users to seek help elsewhere.
- The command-line based instructions are great for those new to using the terminal. There are quite a few hacks that provide visual instructions only, but Ubuntu Hacks had far less GUI-based instructions than the other Ubuntu books I perused at the bookstore.
- If you aren’t a techie, but you want to explore Linux and its myriad of software options, Ubuntu Hacks is for you.
- A lot of the hacks in Ubuntu Hacks you can figure out on your own or find on the internet.
- Things that I would like to know about Linux/Ubuntu that weren’t addressed in Ubuntu Hacks:
- File system organization… whys and best practices (i.e. Hack #101 – Get a good visual picture of the linux file system in your head)
- A brief history of Linux, Debian and Ubuntu (i.e. Hack #102 – How to tell friends & family about Ubuntu in a non-freakish way)
NTFS and FAT compatible... finally
My problem
- Had an external hard drive that I used with my MS Windows machine.
- Got a new linux machine.
- External hard drive did not allow linux machine to write to it – because hard drive is NTFS.
How could I write to external hard drive from linux machine without re-formatting the external hard drive?
My solution- Follow this tutorial on How To Use NTFS Drives/Partitions Under Ubuntu Edgy Eft
The only instruction I would add to this tutorial is that you must have properly ejected the external hard drive from your Windows machine in order for Edgy to mount the drive.
UPDATE: I just found these instructions for mounting your Windows partition and making it read/writable.
mac ipod vs. windows ipod on linux
I have discovered that mac ipods (those that have been restored to factory settings on a mac) are read by Ubuntu as read-only, which means you can’t change the music on a mac ipod from a Ubuntu machine [1]. Alternatively, windows ipods (those restored on a windows machine) are read/writable, which means you can upload new music to that ipod.
I figured this out after reading the ipod linux (a version of linux that runs on your ipod) installlation instructions. ipod linux requires that the ipod you want to install ipod linux on is a windows ipod. Since we don’t have a working windows machine at my house, I used a windows machine my husband brought home from work and restored the ipod to its factory settings on it. Thinking that the reason that ipod linux requires that windows ipods be used, I plugged my ipod up to my linux machine and tada, it wasn’t read-only!
1: I didn’t think about this until later, but I am guessing that I could have changed the device’s permissions using sudo. I thought I had tried that, but I guess I didn’t do it correctly.
One-liners
and Frequently used commands I can’t seem to remember the exact syntax of. Nothin’ fancy.
Linux
find . -name \*.* | xargs grep search_string
- navigate to folder you would like to search, enter this command with the search string you would like to find and this command lists all files containing that string
ps x -Ho pid,args
- lists all of the processes running
find / -name gcc- finds all folders named gcc
sed '/$/,/' /home/Desktop/jessirae > /home/Desktop/jessirae2
- places a comma at the end of each line
paste -sd '\0' - /home/Desktop/jessirae2 > /home/Desktop/jessirae3
- The NEWLINE character of every line except the last line in each input file will be replaced with a separator
Ruby
"<a href=\"http://www.oldurl.com\">JessiRae.com</a>".
gsub(/(http?:\/{2})\S+\.(\w+)(\S+)/,"http://www.jessirae.com/blog/")
- global substitution replaces all instances of some expression in a string with some other string or performs some function on that string
require 'open-uri'
....
open(url) {
|page| page_content = page.read()
page_content
}
- returns html from specified webpage
Ubuntu installed
My HP desktop was fried and so I replaced it with a linux box from walmart.com. It came with Linspire installed, but I immediately put Ubuntu on it… just to see what all of the hype was about.
My Ubuntu Newbie Links