How to Quickly Batch Rename Files on Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux

Windows, Mac OS X, and most Linux desktops have built-in tools for quickly renaming multiple files. Use a batch-rename tool rather than fixing them one by one.

More powerful batch-renaming features may require a third-party tool or the command line. Batch-renaming features are often integrated into third-party file managers, too.

Windows

We’ve already covered the many ways to batch-rename files on Windows. For basic batch-renaming, begin by selecting several files in Windows Explorer or File Explorer. Press Ctrl+A to select a folder full of files, use the mouse cursor to select a group, or hold Ctrl as you click to select and de-select files.

More advanced operations will need Command Prompt commands, PowerShell cmdlets, or third-party bulk-renaming tools. (Be extremely careful when downloading and running such third-party software, as there’s a good chance you could end up with adware or malware.)When you’re ready, right-click a file in the list and select Rename — or just press F2. Type a new “base name” for the files, such as My Vacation, and press Enter. The files will be renamed as My Vacation (1), My Vacation (2), and so on. This will give all those files a much more logical name, grouping them together.

Mac OS X

Mac OS X’s Finder gained its own batch-rename function in version 10.10 Yosemite. These built-in batch renaming features are much more powerful than the built-in Windows ones.

To get started, select the files you want to rename in the Finder, Ctrl-click or right-click them, and select Rename items. You’ll see a Rename dialog where you can choose between three options. Here’s what they do:

• Replace Text: This option lets you perform a search and replace in the selected files’ names. Enter text you want to find and the text you want to replace it with. For example, you could replace the words “My Vacation” with “Paris Trip.” Or you could search for a bit of text and replace it with nothing at all, snipping that bit of text out of every file name.
• Add Text: This option allows you to add some text to each file name. You can add the text either before or after the name.
• Format: This is the most complicated option. You can “format” file names, using a base name and a number. This works similar to the equivalent renaming feature on Windows. You could also use the file’s associated date instead of a number. The number or date can appear before or after the base name.

This may sound a bit complicated, but it’s not too bad. You’ll see a preview of the resulting file name appear below the Rename dialog, so you can see exactly how the files will be named. Feel free to experiment!

Linux

If you’re using a KDE desktop, the standard Dolphin file manager does have this integrated. It works like the batch rename feature on WIndows. Select multiple files, right-click them, and select Rename or press F2. Enter a base name for the files, including the # symbol somewhere in it. The # symbol will be replaced by a sequential number for each file name. For example, if you enter Photo # From My Vacation.jpg, you’ll get files named “Photo 1 From My Vacation.jpg,” “Photo 2 From My Vacation.jpg,” and so on.Some Linux desktop environments come with an integrated batch-renaming tool, and some don’t. The Nautilus file manager used by Ubuntu’s Unity desktop and GNOME doesn’t have this feature built-in.

The Xfce desktop and its Thunar file manager has an easy-to-use, powerful bulk rename tool built into it. To access it, select some files in Thunar, right-click them, and click Rename. This tool can do everything from renaming files based on their audio tags, inserting a date and time, numbering files, performing a search and replace, making text uppercase or lowercase, inserting or deleting characters at a specific position in the file name, and so on.

Thunar’s interface is powerful, but it’s also fairly simple to understand. The preview of how each file’s name will look afterwards helps you experiment safely, so you can see exactly what its functions will do.

On other desktop environments, you can head to your Linux distribution’s software management program and install a bulk-rename tool. We do like Thunar’s Bulk Rename tool, even on GNOME and Unity desktops. Install Thunar on another desktop environment to get a “Bulk Rename” tool you can launch directly from your Linux desktop’s applications menu. Drag-and-drop files from your desktop’s file manager into the Bulk Rename window to start renaming them.

You can even integrate Thunar’s Bulk Rename tool into the Nautilus file manager using the Nautilus Actions tool.

As on other operaitng systems, you can also batch-rename files from the terminal. The Linux terminal is so powerful that you can batch-rename files in all sorts of ways.

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Batch-renaming isn’t something every computer user needs to do regularly, but it is often useful. That batch of oddly named image files from your digital camera’s DCIM folder are prime targets for a good batch-renaming when you import them to your computer.

How to Back Up and Migrate Your Linux Configuration Files

Linux applications store their settings in hidden folders inside each user account’s home folder. This makes application settings much easier to back up and restore than they are on Windows, where settings are scattered across the registry and system folders.

Whether you just want a backup copy of your settings, or if you’re moving to a new Linux distribution or another PC, you can easily create a copy of your application settings and take them with you.

View Your User Account’s Configuration Files

For example, on Ubuntu, open the Nautilus file manager and it will go straight to your home folder by default. Click the View menu and select Show Hidden Files.First, locate your user account’s configuration files. Open your Linux distribution’s file manager to your home folder and activate the “Show Hidden Files” option in your Linux desktop’s file manager.

You’ll see many different files and folders, all of them beginning with a period. That’s how you hide files and folders on Linux — just rename them so that their name starts with a . character. File managers will hide them by default so they don’t get in the way.

Locate an Application’s Settings Folder

Different applications often have their own folder under your home directory. For example, Pidgin stores all its settings, log files, and other data in the .purple directory. Firefox stores its installed extensions, ache, settings, and other data in the .mozilla directory.

Some applications have folders under the .config folder instead. Click around a bit and you should find where an application you want to back up stores its configuration files.

Some applications — particularly GNOME applications — use the older “Gconf” or the newer “Dconf” systems to store settings. Gconf settings are stored in .gconf, while dconf settings are stored in .config/dconf. Copy these entire folders and all the application settings contained in gconf and dconf will come with you to a new PC.

You could migrate an individual application’s settings from Gconf or Dconf using the gconftool or dconf commands. These commands allow you to dump parts of Gconf or Dconf to a file and restore them on another PC.

Back Up and Restore an Application’s Settings

To back up an application’s settings, just copy its configuration folder to a USB drive, external hard drive, cloud storage folder, or any other storage location. You can also right-click a folder in most file managers and create an archive file from it — the archive file can be more easily emailed, uploaded, and moved around.

Be sure to close an application before backing up its configuration settings. This will ensure the application exits and saves its settings properly, leaving a clean settings folder for your new Linux distribution.

Restore an application’s settings by placing its folder in your user account’s home folder on another Linux system. This is ideal when you’re reinstalling Linux and want to restore a crucial application’s settings, or just when you’re moving to a new Linux PC and want to keep your settings.

To be safe, you should delete or rename the existing configuration files before migrating your old ones over. For example, if you wanted to move your Firefox settings to a different Linux distribution, you should first delete the .mozilla directory on that Linux distribution before copying your old .mozilla folder over. This ensures you don’t have a mix of files from two different configuration folders

(If you ever want to erase a Linux application’s settings and start fresh, this is how you do it — head to your home folder, view hidden files, and delete the application’s configuration folder).

You don’t have to back up the files ahead of time, either — if you still have access to a drive with Linux installed on it, you can connect the drive to your new computer, browse to your user account’s home folder, and copy the folder over.

To migrate all your settings to a new Linux system, just copy over every file beginning with a . in your home folder — you can copy over every other file beginning with a . character, too. This will work best if you’re moving to a system running the same Linux distribution — for example, from a computer running Ubuntu 14.04 to a different computer running Ubuntu 14.04.

Easily Back Up All Your Settings

Ubuntu’s built-in Déjà Dup backup tool also backs up your user account’s configuration settings by default. They can then easily be restored to an Ubuntu system in the future. Unlike a backup on Windows that will just restore your files, a Déjà Dup backup will restore all your user account’s settings. They’re all just files in your home folder.

Synchronize Your Settings Online

You can use cloud storage services to synchronize these settings folders over the Internet, sharing them across PCs and having a backup copy online. We previously covered synchronizing your configuration files with Ubuntu One, but Ubuntu One has been shut down. Dropbox and other tools can still be used to synchronize your important configuration files. If you use a cloud storage service that allows you to pick and choose any folder or file on your system to synchronize, this is easy.

Dropbox itself doesn’t let you choose individual folders to synchronize outside the Dropbox folder. You’ll need to create symbolic links that will trick Dropbox into synchronizing these files. We covered this when we looked at how to synchronize your Pidgin settings across all your PCs. If you use a cross-platform program like Pidgin, you can even share the same settings between Linux and Windows PCs.

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We focused on user account configuration files, as they’re what most Linux users will want. System-wide configuration files are often specific to a Linux distribution or hardware setup, so you wouldn’t want to back them all up and restore them on another PC.

If you have specific system-wide configuration files you want to back up and restore — for example, server configuration files — you should be able to just create backup copies and restore them to the same location on another PC. Bear in mind that different Linux distributions may store these configuration files in different places, so you may have to place that configuration file somewhere else.

Should You Use Ubuntu LTS or Upgrade to the Latest Release?

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the recently-released Ubuntu 13.04 is that it isn’t remarkable at all. Ubuntu 13.04 contains the latest versions of software and additional polish, but there are no must-have features that will make you rush to upgrade.

At some point, individual releases of Ubuntu became more of an option for enthusiasts. Ubuntu’s download site pushes Ubuntu 12.04 LTS as the most prominent option, software like Valve’s Steam is designed to support Ubuntu 12.04 LTS first and foremost, and the LTS version is continually updated with support for the latest hardware.

What is Ubuntu LTS?

LTS stands for “long-term support.” LTS releases were originally intended for business users, giving them a stable platform they could install that would be supported with security updates for years.

However, Ubuntu also produces new releases every six months. Traditionally, average users stuck with the every-six-month releases. These were the standard way of getting Ubuntu before LTS releases were released. Even after the first LTS releases, every new release of Ubuntu offered compelling features, important new versions of software, and polish that made them compelling to average users.

Support and Security Patches

LTS releases are designed to be stable platforms that you can stick with for a long time. Ubuntu guarantees LTS releases will receive security updates and other bug fixes as well as hardware support improvements (in other words, new kernel and X server versions) for five years. The current LTS release, Ubuntu 12.04, will be supported until April 2017.

In comparison, a regular release will only be supported for nine months. Considering new versions of Ubuntu are released every six months, you’ll have three months after a new version is released to upgrade to it or you won’t receive security patches anymore. You’ll probably want to upgrade to every LTS version — new LTS versions are released every two years. If you stick with the LTS version, you’ll still get a new Ubuntu release every two years.

LTS versions are designed to be more polished, while the standard releases bring you the latest features that may not be completely finished yet. For example, Ubuntu 13.04 removes the Gwibber social networking client because it’s not stable, but it will likely be back in the next version. When you use the latest release, you’ll end up upgrading every six to nine months. When you use the LTS version, you can upgrade every two years or even hold on for five years.

LTS: Not Just for Businesses Anymore

In its original release, Valve’s Steam for Linux only officially supported the 12.04 LTS version of Ubuntu. Even if you want to play the latest Linux games, the LTS version is good enough — in fact, it is preferred. Ubuntu rolled out updates to the LTS version so that Steam would work better on it. The LTS version is far from stagnant — your software will work just fine on it.

Mark Shuttleworth is even talking about backporting the latest version of the Unity desktop to the LTS release of Ubuntu, demonstrating Ubuntu’s commitment to the LTS release by saying “I really think we should back port unity 7 to 12.04!” In response, a developer noted “We already backported almost all the “safe” speed improvements.”

Developers of the Mythbuntu PVR system based on Ubuntu have standardized on the LTS release and are only releasing versions of Mythbuntu based on Ubuntu LTS. There’s no compelling reason to release a new version of Mythbuntu every six months when the LTS version will receive improvements that allow it to support the latest hardware.

Upgrading to later releases will give you the latest versions of software, but this isn’t as critical as it once was — even if you’re using your Linux PC for gaming or multimedia. If you need the latest version of a critical application, you can always use a third-party PPA to install just that one program without having to upgrade your entire Ubuntu platform.

Why You Might Want to Use the Latest Release

So who is the latest version for? Well, if you want to be on the bleeding edge, have the latest versions of all your software, and use the latest features before they make it to the LTS version of Ubuntu, upgrade to the every-six-month releases. If you’re a developer who needs the latest versions of certain packages, you might want to upgrade if getting them on the LTS version of Ubuntu is too much trouble. If you use Linux because you like tinkering and experimenting with the latest software — and don’t want things getting too boring and predictable — upgrade to the latest release.

However, you’re not missing out much by using the LTS release. You don’t have to upgrade every six months anymore — Ubuntu’s LTS release is well-supported and will run all the software you depend on. It’s regularly updated with new hardware support and performance improvements, so you shouldn’t have to upgrade to make your Wi-Fi work properly or dramatically speed up your desktop.

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Ubuntu 13.04 may be boring and not a hugely compelling upgrade, but that’s really a triumph for Ubuntu and desktop Linux. We don’t have to upgrade every six months anymore because the software we’re already using is so good.

If you use Ubuntu, have you stuck with the LTS release or are you upgrading to every individual release?

How to install Microsoft fonts in Linux office suites

Times New Roman, Calibri, and many other popular fonts are created by Microsoft and can’t be included with Linux. If you open a Word document or another Microsoft Office document in LibreOffice or OpenOffice, you’ll need Microsoft’s fonts installed on your Linux system to see the documents as they were intended to look.

You can also use Microsoft’s fonts to create documents of your own, so you can compose a document in Calibri or Times New Roman and save it as a DOCX or DOC file for maximum compatibility with Office.

Install Microsoft’s TrueType Core fonts

Microsoft released a package of “TrueType core fonts for the web” back in 1996. These fonts were given a very permissive license agreement, so anyone could install them. Microsoft wanted their fonts to be the standard fonts everyone with a web browser had, so they gave them away. Microsoft terminated this project in 2002, but the fonts can still be installed thanks to MIcrosoft’s old license agreement.

This font pack contains Andale Mono, Arial, Arial Black, Comic Sans MS, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Times New Roman, Trebuchet, Verdana, and Webdings. Times New Roman was the default font for Office documents until Calibri debuted in Office 2007.

This package can be easily installed on Ubuntu. Unfortunately, you can’t install it from the Ubuntu Software Center on modern versions of Ubuntu like Ubuntu 14.04. If you try to install this package from the Ubuntu Software Center, the Software Center will freeze—you need to use the terminal so you can accept Microsoft’s License agreement. Don’t worry! This is easy.

First, open a terminal. Click the Ubuntu icon on the dock, search for “Terminal,” and click the terminal shortcut.

Type or copy-and-paste the following command into the terminal and press Enter. This command asks for administrator access (sudo) before launching the package manager (apt-get) and telling it to download and install (install) the ttf-mscorefonts-installer package:

sudo apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer

Type your password when prompted and press Enter again. When the license agreement appears, use the arrow and Page Down/Page Up keys to scroll through it. Press Tab to select the OK button and press Enter to accept Microsoft’s license agreement. The installer will download the fonts onto your system and configure them so they’re immediately available to applications like LibreOffice and OpenOffice.

Other Linux distributions also offer similarly named “corefonts” packages you can easily install. Search your Linux distribution’s package manager for such a package.

Install Microsoft’s ClearType fonts

Microsoft added a group of new “ClearType Fonts” to Windows with Windows Vista and Office 2007. These fonts are named Constantia, Corbel, Calibri, Cambria, Candara, and Consolas. Calibri became the default font on Microsoft Word 2007, and it’s still the default font on Word 2013 today.

Microsoft never released these fonts to everyone like they did with the older core fonts. However, Microsoft does make these fonts available to download as part of their free PowerPoint Viewer 2007 application. If you don’t have a Windows system around, you can use a script that downloads the PowerPoint Viewer 2007 application from Microsoft, extracts the six ClearType fonts, and installs them on your Linux system. This script will install the ClearType fonts for just your user account, while the above script installs the TrueType core fonts for every user account on your system.

The fastest, easiest way to do this is with a few terminal commands. These commands are easy-to-use—rather than walk you through clicking many different things, we can just have you copy-and-paste a few commands.

If you haven’t yet installed the TrueType core fonts, you’ll need to run the sudo apt-get install cabextract command to install the cabextract utility on your system. If you installed the Microsoft core fonts using the command above, this should already be installed.

Next, type mkdir .fonts and press Enter to create the fonts directory the script requires. The script will complain that you don’t have a .fonts directory if you don’t do this first.

Next, copy-and-paste or type the following command into the terminal and press Enter. This command downloads the VistaFonts-Installer script and runs it. The script downloads the fonts from Microsoft and installs them on your system:

wget -qO- http://plasmasturm.org/code/vistafonts-installer/vistafonts-installer | bash

Install Tahoma, Segoe UI, and other fonts

The above two font packages are probably all you’ll need. They’ll give you the standard Microsoft Office fonts, from the older TrueType core fonts like Times New Roman to the newer ClearType Fonts like calibri. These are the standard fonts used in Microsoft Office documents by default.

However, some fonts aren’t included in these packages. Tahoma isn’t included with the TrueType core fonts package, while Segoe UI and other newer Windows fonts aren’t included with the ClearType Fonts package.

If you have a Windows system lying around, these fonts are fairly easy to install. For example, let’s say you’re dual-booting Ubuntu Linux and Windows. You’ll find your Windows partition in Ubuntu’s file manager. Click the Windows drive in the sidebar to access it. Navigate to the Windows\Fonts directory and you’ll see all the fonts installed on your Windows PC, including the fonts that came with it. Double-click a font and click theInstall button to install it for your user account. You can use this trick to quickly install any other Windows fonts you want, including Tahoma and Segoe UI. In fact, you can even use this trick to install fonts like Times New Roman and Calibri if you have a Windows system.

If you have another Windows computer, you can navigate to the Fonts pane in the Control Panel or open the Fonts folder at C:\Windows\Fonts. Select the fonts you want to use, then drag-and-drop them to a removable drive. You’ll get copies of the fonts in .ttf form. Take the removable drive to your Ubuntu system, double-click each .ttf file you want to install, and click the Install button to install it.

Configure LibreOffice or OpenOffice

Whether your Linux distribution uses LibreOffice or OpenOffice, configuring your office suite of choice to work with these fonts is easy. If you’ve installed them using any of the instructions above, they’ll already be available to use. If either office suite was open as you installed the fonts, you may have to first close the office suite and re-open it. The fonts will appear as options in the Fonts dropdown box, so you can use them like any other font.

Open a Microsoft Office document created using these fonts and LibreOffice or OpenOffice will automatically use the appropriate fonts. They’ll display the document as it was intended to look, Microsoft fonts and all.

If you’d like to change your default fonts for new documents, click Tools > Options > LibreOffice Writer or OpenOffice Writer > Basic Fonts (Western). Your office suite of choice will use Microsoft’s fonts as the default fonts in future documents if you choose them here.

Ubuntu and other Linux distributions actually include Red Hat’s “Liberation Fonts” and use them by default in their office suites. These fonts were designed to substitute for Arial, Arial Narrow, Times New Roman, and Courier New. They have the same widths as Microsoft’s popular fonts. If you open a document written with Times New Roman, the appropriate Liberation font will be used instead so the flow of the document won’t be interrupted. However, these fonts don’t look identical to Microsoft’s fonts. The Liberation project also doesn’t provide fonts designed to match the width of Calibri and Microsoft’s other newer ClearType fonts. If you’re a Linux user that wants the best Microsoft Office compatibility possible, you should install Microsoft’s fonts.

5 Ways to Run Linux Software on Windows

Linux users often want to run Windows software on Linux, but Windows users may want to run Linux software, too. Whether you’re looking for a better development environment or powerful command-line tools, you can run Linux software without leaving Windows.

There are many different options for running Linux software on Windows. It’s easier than running Windows software on Linux, as anyone can set up a virtual machine with a free Linux distribution — no need for software licenses.

Virtual Machines

Virtual machines allow you to run any operating system in a window on your desktop. You can install the free VirtualBox or VMware Player, download an ISO file for a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu, and install that Linux distribution inside the virtual machine like you would install it on a standard computer.

When you need to boot up your Linux system, you can do it in a window on your desktop — no need for rebooting and leaving all your Windows programs behind. Everything but demanding games and advanced 3D effects should work just fine, but you likely won’t want to use those, anyway.

If you’re installing Ubuntu in a virtual machine, you may want to try installing an Ubuntu derivative like Xubuntu instead. Ubuntu’s default Unity desktop uses 3D effects and the desktop interface doesn’t perform as smoothly in a virtual machine as past desktops did. Xubuntu uses Xfce, which is much more lightweight.

You could even try using VirtualBox’s seamless mode or VMware’s unity mode to run Linux applications directly on your desktop — they’ll be running in the virtual machine, but their windows will be present on your Windows desktop instead of trapped in a single virtual machine window.

Cygwin

Cygwin is a collection of tools that offer a Linux-like environment on Windows. It’s not a way to run existing Linux software on Windows — the software will have to be recompiled. However, much software has already been recompiled. Cygwin will give you a Linux-like terminal and command-line environment with many of the command-line programs you may already be used to.

We’ve previously covered installing and using Cygwin. You can even use Cygwin to install an OpenSSH server and get SSH access to a Windows system.

This solution is ideal for users missing crucial Linux utilities on Windows — it’s not a way to run a full Linux desktop.

Install Ubuntu via Wubi

This method is technically installing Linux, not running Linux software on Windows. You’ll have to reboot each time you want to use your Linux system just as if you had installed it in a standard dual-boot configuration.

However, Wubi doesn’t install Ubuntu in the normal way. Instead, it creates a special file on your Windows partition and uses that file as your Ubuntu drive. This means that you can install Ubuntu and use it without any partitioning and you can uninstall Ubuntu from the Windows Control Panel when you’re done.

If the partitioning aspects are what’s holding you back, give Wubi a try. Performance won’t be quite as good as a normally installed Linux system when it comes to disk read and write times, but it should be faster than a virtual machine.

Ported and Compiled Programs

Many common Linux programs have already been ported to Windows and compiled versions have been made available online. If you really miss Emacs, you’ll find versions of Emacs for Windows. If you want to run a specific program on Windows, perform a Google search for the name of that program and “Windows” — there’s a good chance you’ll find a version of the program that ‘s been ported to Windows.

coLinux-based Distributions

coLinux stands for Cooperative Linux. It’s a way to natively run Linux alongside the Windows kernel in a way that offers much faster performance than simply running Linux in a virtual machine.

This is a great idea, but there’s a problem. coLinux doesn’t yet support 64-bit versions of Windows, so you’ll need to be running a 32-bit version of Windows on your machine to do this — that’s increasingly rare. coLinux hasn’t released a new version in over two years, so development seems to be either stalled or moving very slowly.

If you want to try this out, you may want to try out Portable Ubuntu Remix. This coLinux-based distribution was last updated in 2011, so it’s a bit old — but other options like and Linux are even more out of date. andLinux, which we’ve covered in the past, was last updated in 2009.

coLinux-based distributions would be a great option, but they seem to be getting left behind. If you don’t mind using years-old Linux software and a 32-bit version of Windows, this option may work for you anyway.

How to Turn Your Ubuntu Laptop into a Wireless Access Point

If you have a single wired Internet connection – say, in a hotel room – you can create an ad-hoc wireless network with Ubuntu and share the Internet connection among multiple devices. Ubuntu includes an easy, graphical setup tool.

Unfortunately, there are some limitations. Some devices may not support ad-hoc wireless networks and Ubuntu can only create wireless hotspots with weak WEP encryption, not strong WPA encryption.

Setup

To get started, click the gear icon on the panel and select System Settings.

Select the Network control panel in Ubuntu’s System Settings window. You can also set up a wireless hotspot by clicking the network menu and selecting Edit Network Connections, but that setup process is more complicated.

If you want to share an Internet connection wirelessly, you’ll have to connect to it with a wired connection. You can’t share a Wi-Fi network – when you create a Wi-Fi hotspot, you’ll be disconnected from your current wireless network.

To create a hotspot, select the Wireless network option and click the Use as Hotspot button at the bottom of the window.

You’ll be disconnected from your existing network. You can disable the hotspot later by clicking the Stop Hotspot button in this window or by selecting another wireless network from the network menu on Ubuntu’s panel.

After you click Create Hotspot, you’ll see an notification pop up that indicates your laptop’s wireless radio is now being used as an ad-hoc access point. You should be able to connect from other devices using the default network name – “ubuntu” – and the security key displayed in the Network window. However, you can also click the Options button to customize your wireless hotspot.

From the wireless tab, you can set a custom name for your wireless network using the SSID field. You can also modify other wireless settings from here. The Connect Automatically check box should allow you to use the hotspot as your default wireless network – when you start your computer, Ubuntu will create the hotspot instead of connecting to an existing wireless network.

From the Wireless Security tab, you can change your security key and method. Unfortunately, WPA encryption does not appear to be an option here, so you’ll have to stick with the weaker WEP encryption.

The “Shared to other computers” option on the IPv4 Settings tab tells Ubuntu to share your Internet connection with other computers connected to the hotspot.

Even if you don’t have a wireless Internet connection available to share, you can network computers together and communicate between them – for example, to share files.

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We’ve previously written about turning computers running Windows 7 and Windows 8 into wireless hotspots.

How to Restore Your Ubuntu Linux System to its Previous State

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to try a new version of Ubuntu while knowing you can return to the previous version if you don’t like it? We’ll show you a tool that allows you to take a snapshot of your system at any time.

TimeShift is a free tool that is similar to the System Restore feature in Windows. It allows you to initially take a snapshot of your system and then to take incremental snapshots at regular intervals. TimeShift protects only system files and settings, not user files such as documents, pictures, and music. You can use a tool like Back In Time to backup your user files.

NOTE: When we say to type something in this article and there are quotes around the text, DO NOT type the quotes, unless we specify otherwise.

sudo apt-add-repository –y ppa:teejee2008/ppaRecently, we showed you how to back up your applications and PPAs using a tool called Aptik, which is included in the same PPA as TimeShift. First, press Ctrl + Alt + T to open a Terminal window. If you haven’t installed Aptik, type the following two commands (separately) at the prompt, pressing Enter after each command, to add the PPA and update it. For more information, see our article about Aptik.

sudo apt-get update

If you have installed Aptik, you are ready to install TimeShift and do not need to enter the previous commands. Type the following text at the prompt and press Enter.

sudo apt-get install timeshift

Type your password when prompted and press Enter.

Once the installation is finished, close the Terminal window by typing “exit” at the prompt and pressing Enter or by clicking the “X” button in the upper-left corner of the window.

To open TimeShift, click the “Search” button at the top of the Unity Launcher bar.

Type “timeshift” in the search box. Results of the search display as you type. When the icon for TimeShift displays, click on it to open the application.

A dialog box displays asking for your password. Enter your password in the edit box and click “OK.”

The main TimeShift window displays and the system size is estimated. The “Backup Device” drop-down list allows you to select a different drive or partition to be backed up, if you have more than one.

The amount of space needed for the snapshot is listed on the bottom status bar. Snapshots are saved on the selected device so be sure you have enough space to store the snapshot. To back up the selected “Backup Device,” click “Backup” on the toolbar.

While the snapshot is being created, a “Synching files…” message displays in the bottom status bar.

When the snapshot is finished, it is listed with the date and time and the name and version of the system. The status bar states how much space is free on the system after the snapshot is taken and states when the last snapshot was taken.

Moving the mouse over the “Backup Device” drop-down list shows you the path where the snapshots are saved on the selected device.

The “timeshift” directory contains the various snapshots taken using TimeShift, including scheduled snapshots, which we will discuss later in this article.

The “snapshots” folder contains snapshots taken manually. We recommend that you copy the folder for your snapshot to a USB flash drive, network drive, or a cloud service, such as Dropbox or Google Drive, in case it gets corrupted or deleted.

You can see what’s in the snapshot by clicking the “Browse” button.

The snapshot directory is opened in a Files Manager window and the directories and files from your system (no user files) are listed.

There are various settings you can customize, such as setting up automatic backups and choosing when older snapshots will be automatically removed. To access the settings, click “Settings” on the toolbar.

The “Schedule” tab allows you to specify times when snapshots will be performed. Click or slide the ON/OFF slider button to turn on the “Scheduled Snapshots”. Select the check boxes in the “Enable” column to specify the time interval for the snapshots.

The “Auto-Remove” tab allows you to automatically remove older snapshots so you don’t run out of space on your hard drive. There is a “Rule” for each type of snapshot. Enter a “Limit” for each type to tell TimeShift to remove snapshots older than the specified limit, including a limit for when free space is less than a certain amount.

The “Advanced” tab allows you to exclude specific files, directories, and directory contents from and include specific files and directories in the snapshots.

When you’ve finished customizing the settings, click “Save.”

When you want to restore a snapshot, open TimeShift, select a snapshot and click “Restore.”

NOTE: Depending on the state of your system, you might have to install TimeShift again.

The “Target” tab on the “Restore” dialog box allows you to specify the device to which you will restore the selected snapshot. Moving the mouse over the device in the list reveals more information about the device for restoring the snapshot. Select the “Device for Restoring Snapshot” and the “Device for Bootloader Installation.”

Use the “Exclude” tab to select applications for which you want to keep the current settings and not restore the previous settings.

The “Advanced” tab allows you to exclude specific files, directories, and directory contents from and include specific files and directories in the restored system.

To close TimeShift, click the “X” button in the upper-left corner of the main window.

TimeShift is a useful tool if you like experimenting with upgrades to your system or if something goes wrong with your system. Just like System Restore in Windows, you can simply restore your system to a previous working state rather than reinstalling your system.