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How to Set and List Environment Variables in Linux

It used to be that to use Linux you needed to immediately familiarize yourself with the command line. Desktop environments like GNOME and KDE have made using Linux much easier for beginners. You could use Linux for a long time without knowing a single terminal command. Eventually, though, you’ll want to do something that will require use of the command line, and once you dive in here, you’ll eventually need to know about environment variables. This might seem like an arcane term, but environment variables are easy to understand. Related: 17 Fun Linux Commands to Run in the Terminal… Read more

11 Uses for the ‘ps’ Command in Linux

For system administrators, ps is a frequently-used tool. It’s used to list the currently-running processes on your system with a variety of filter and display modes available through flags and arguments. The syntax of ps can be subtly odd. We will follow the UNIX convention of a single dash preceding a flag since that’s by far the most widely-supported syntax. However, it can also be run with BSD syntax, which drops prefixed dashes and uses a separate flag name syntax. For example, the aux flag replaces the more common -ef flag. Make sure you know which one you’re using. Related: The Beginner’s Guide to pstree… Read more

How to Upgrade Ubuntu from the Command Line

Ubuntu’s Update Manager makes it relatively easy to upgrade your installation to a new major release. The utility’s graphical interface guides you through a step-by-step wizard that should be easy to follow. But there are times when you cannot use a graphical utility – for example, on servers you don’t have access to a graphical interface. In this case you are forced to use the command line to upgrade Ubuntu. However, this is not the only scenario where this is useful. The command line interface usually lets you see more about what is going on. Most command line utilities output a lot of text while… Read more

How to Install and Use wget on Mac

wget is a non-interactive command-line utility for download resources from a specified URL. Because it is non-interactive, wget can work in the background or before the user even logs in. The program was designed especially for poor connections, making it especially robust in otherwise flaky conditions. While wget isn’t shipped with macOS, it can be easily downloaded and installed with Homebrew, the best Mac package manager available. 1. Download and Install Homebrew To install Homebrew, open a Terminal window and execute the following command taken from Homebrew’s website: /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)" You might notice the command called curl, which… Read more