On Linux, you sometimes need to work with disks and/or partitions directly from the command line. Often, you actually want to perform actions on the filesystems, but you do so by specifying the partitions where they are stored. On the command line, you refer to these by using their device names (for example, “/dev/sda3”). On … Read more
Cryptojacking is a lucrative venture for malware developers, but it comes with a problem. Cryptojackers take up a lot of the processor’s resources which makes the attack very noticeable for the victim. One strain of cryptojacker has developed a way to avoid detection by masking the tell-tale signs from the user.1 The Arrival of Skidmap … Read more
Sometimes, while copying a large file, like a movie or an operating system image, the cp command takes longer than expected based on the load on your system. Since it doesn’t tell the progress of the operation, it gets difficult to understand what exactly is happening. In scenarios like these, a command like cv could … Read more
Even if it’s one of the faster archiving/compression solutions available, gzip has a tiny problem: it doesn’t support multiple processors/cores. Thus, if you have a relatively new PC, it doesn’t take advantage of its capabilities. Pigz is a multi-threaded implementation of gzip that allows you to compress files to the GNU zip format at a … Read more
In constant development since 2002, Arch Linux isn’t new. It’s built up a large, loyal following of users who love Arch’s “Keep It Simple, Stupid” approach, where minimalism and choice reign supreme. No Arch Linux installation is the same, and that’s the appeal to Arch users. It isn’t the friendliest Linux distro for beginners, but … Read more
Linux Mint is quickly eroding Ubuntu’s position as the easy-to-use Linux desktop. But Mint comes in more than just one flavor, including a lighter version based on Xfce. How does this light version fare against its big brother? Does everything still “just work”, or are there hidden compromises? And how does it stack up against … Read more
If you are a developer or a system admin, you will want to be able to quickly spin up a Linux distro for testing. There are various solutions, like Docker, VMWare, VirtualBox, Vagrant, etc. Multipass is yet another lightweight VM manager that allows you to easily and quickly launch a Ubuntu virtual machine. Here is … Read more
Linux package management has come a long way from the nightmare it used to be. Still, the package managers provided by distributions aren’t always perfect. The Snap and Flatpak formats have made it much easier to install software no matter what distro you’re running. Both Snap and Flatpak files are often available on a given … Read more
Ever copied or moved tens or hundreds of gigabytes of data? If you did, you surely noticed that the system becomes much less responsive during that time. On Linux you can avoid this with the help of the ionice command. What Is I/O Priority? I/O is short for input/output. There are many types of I/O … Read more
RPM-based distributions are great. They offer a different way of doing things compared to Debian-based ones. Still, if you’re using one, you’ll no doubt be aware of its single greatest weakness – package availability. RPMs are just not as abundant as DEB files. It’s a fact. Some users have combated this in a few ways: … Read more