I just learned that ZSH comes with a directory changer called "cdr", which keeps a persistent history of your visited directories and lets you change to directories in that history. It's in the "zshcontrib" manpage, which gives you three lines to set it up.

Now I'm wondering how any of the people who wrote similar projects (fasd, autojump, z, and all their clones and reimplementations) didn't know about this.

2 members found this post helpful.

I just learned how to customize my shell prompt for my user and root today,literally, and I am very happy. Just very basic customization, enough to give to distinguish on root mode from regular. Thanks to this wonderful guide.

I use this prompt:

https://starship.rs/

1 members found this post helpful.

Whoa I looked and that looks good but i think tjat is too advanced for me. Maybe some other time if im already a pro like you sir.

back when i ran an ISP, all the servers, except one, ran Slackware. they never had problems. but, Slackware is a lot of work. now, that i have retired and my eyes are getting bad (i have to use larger fonts everywhere), i have switched to Xubuntu, for less work with still full control.

Slackware is fine for the right people.

i remember getting that once on Solaris ... when my process was only writing to /dev/null.

Hi,

I agree! Slackware can be intimidating to some who do not wish/want to put the time into learning the Slackware Gnu/Linux. Most users want/desire a hold your hand distribution. I have been using PV's Slackware since his first release.
As they say: If you use Slackware then you will learn Gnu/Linux!

BTW, I too use Slackware for my server(s) and my desktop units. The new Slackware64 15.0 Release Candidate (rc1) has been intrroduced today; From Slackware®-Links

After 25 years of using Slackware, I learned how to install a fully encrypted Slackware system. I also learned how to convert a non-encrypted Slackware installation on a UEFI laptop to a fully encrypted one without re-installing (backup everything to an external disk, re-create filesystems following README_CRYPT.TXT guide but instead of running setup, restore the backup to the encrypted filesystem, chroot to it, create and install new initrd.gz).

I doubt that there is any other distribution easier than Slackware.

Two interesting, and tangentially related things:

1 - The ancient 250Gb drive in my laptop had been failing for some time, and my Xubuntu installation in it was automatically keeping it alive and limping along using fsck on boot-up when any other OS would have simply died.
( I've replaced it with a solid state, and I've also discovered they are *fast*, and creepily light compared to platters )

2 - It's possible to have a complete OS squeezed onto a 4GB thumb drive that I can use to actually do my job on for a week. Not only that, but I could have gone still smaller - a full OS for 50Mb with all I need to work with. It's a weird thought.

I was running an update on my Mageia box and noticed that one of the programs being updated was named "marble."

Not knowing what this marble may be, I looked for a man page, but did not find one. So I started the program from the command line, as I use Fluxbox and didn't know about it, so I didn't have it on the menu.

I have now added it to my menu. It's really neat.

I shall use it in preference to Google Maps whenever I can.

1 members found this post helpful.

^ related, I noticed that gnome-maps is nice & easy to use. Powered by Openstreetmap, one can paste geo links straight into the search bar. It does routing, also public transport, and apparently one can even edit Openstreetmap data.

Importantly, it's really easy to use.

Google may be unsurpassed, but there's plenty of open & more privacy-friendly choices for maps & routing.

I like the world-famous XFCE, but in the distro I use most it's an unsupported alt-desktop environment.

I was instantly drawn to XFCE AppFinder.

I install it in my non-XFCE distro.

But lo and behold, I installed a newer version of my regular distro and they've created their own app finder!

So that is my lesson (many other examples)...

Booting other distributions and versions teaches you about what's possible in what you already know.

I don't need the XFCE AppFinder with a native one.

I had an obsolete Debian duel boot partition I stopped using a very long time ago. Even though I wiped the partition completely, it would still show up as an option for me in the GUID Partition Table in my UEFI. If I tried booting into it, I would just get a Grub command line prompt. I finally learned how to get rid of it with 3 simple steps:

1. Run efibootmgr: "sudo efibootmgr -b # -B"
(# being the number associated with the partition intended to be deleted from the output of the "efibootmgr" command)
2. Delete the "/boot/efi/EFI/debian" file
3. Run "sudo update-grub"

How to change every <a href="/exampleFile.html">click me</a> link for a big .html file, with my own one by using:

sed 's+href=+href="newsite"+g' <file>.html > <newfile>.html

When I learn something new in Linux, I keep it to myself, because I assume most LQ members already know it perfectly well. This is based on experience from the last time I tried posting something I learned. It wasn't recent and thus I don't remember offhand what it was; but it promptly earned me an lecture from one of the mods that the information was well known.

So first, let's try...ehh, meta-knowledge about this topic, I guess. That is, I'll share something I figured out about posting knowledge on LQ. In order to usefully post knowledge, you need to first do research and make pretty certain that what you've learned is not widely known. If you don't do that, you're wasting...not everyone's time, but certainly many members' time. Fortunately, this issue doesn't often come up for me, because I don't learn something new in Linux every day anyway. It's simply because the stuff I learn is easy to find with a basic search of the internet. I would have to teach myself something more advanced than that.

Now: here's an example. I did in fact just learn something new: how to add a progress bar, if not a very helpful one, to the output of dd.
If you didn't already know that, the mods, gurus, other senior members, etc. probably did.