Linux – OS For ExtraOrdinary People

Linux has many extraordinary features which makes it far more better than other OS. There are many blogs comparing Windows with Linux in terms of UI, performance, stability,etc. Unlike those blogs, this post is not for comparing Linux with Windows.

This post is about some extraordinary features of Linux.

• Live USB with persistence :

People who have used Linux are aware of Live Media (Live Session). It is a distinct feature of Linux which allows a user to use OS without installing it. One drawback of Live Session is that the applications installed during Live session  aren’t available for subsequent sessions. This drawback can be overcomed by using persistence.

What is persistence?
Usually, on a live CD or Live USB key, all modifications are discarded when you reboot.

The persistence allows you to keep your preferences and data even after reboot. The data are stored in a special file called casper-rw (for Ubuntu) and overlay-USBLABEL-UUID (for Fedora). This is a completely transparent process for the user. Usually, 300 MB are enough to install some software but you can use more. The size of persistence can be adjusted while creating Live USB Media for linux. The commonly used software for this purpose is Linux Live USB Creator. Here is the complete guide about Linux Live USB Creator.

• How to create an infinite login loop for a specific user.

This can be done by following steps.

1. Open Terminal (Press Ctrl+Alt+T).
2. Execute this command in terminal.

   chown -R root:root /home/Bob/.Xauthority
   

   Replace Bob by username of the user for whom you want to create an infinite login loop. This command with change ownership of .Xauthority directory of Bob user to root user thus not allowing Bob to login.

3. Execute this command in terminal vi /etc/security/limits.conf
   Then press

   'i'

   (without quotes) to go into insert mode and add following at the end of file

   username hard maxlogins 0

   The user will be able to login in tty but will be kicked out immediately

• How to convert Ubuntu Desktop into Ubuntu Server

You can install such server packages on a desktop system using the apt-get tasksel mode (don’t forget the final ^):

• LAMP server (Linux, Apache2, MySQL, PHP) sudo apt-get install lamp-server^
• Mail serversudo apt-get install mail-server^
• OpenSSH serversudo apt-get install openssh-server^

Note that you can check which packages are going to be installed using  apt-get install --dry-run <name of the task>^  before calling the above commands.

How to add startup applications at startup in specific desktop

Add .desktop files to /home/username/.config/autostart and make sure they’re marked as executables.

Here is a default syntax for a .desktop file with some of the most important entries.

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Encoding=UTF-8
Name="NAME OF THE APPLICATION"
Comment="WHAT DOES THE APP DO?"
Exec="EXECUTABLE PATH OF APPLICATION"
Hidden=false
NoDisplay=false
Terminal=false

For example :

To Autostart firefox, execute the following commands in terminal :

gedit ~/.config/autostart/firefox.desktop

and copy the following content in the file (firefox.desktop) and then save it

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Firefox
Comment=Firefox Web Browser
Exec=firefox
Hidden=false
NoDisplay=false
Terminal=false

then mark it as executable by executing following command in terminal :

chmod +x ~/.config/autostart/firefox.desktop

Similarly you can autostart other applications. For applications that have their binaries in /usr/bin , full path isn’t required (like firefox)

Logout and login again to see the changes!

For more info click here