How to Tell What Distro and Version of Linux You Are Running

If you’re using Linux as your desktop operating system, you probably are very aware of what version you are running, but what if you need to connect to somebody’s server and do some work? It’s really useful to know exactly what you are dealing with, and luckily it’s also pretty easy.

As with everything in Linux there are multiple ways to get things done, so we’re going to show you a few different tricks and you can pick the one that you like the best.

How to See the Pretty Linux Version

The easiest and simplest way to see the Linux distribution name and the version number is also the one that works on almost every type of Linux. Just open up a terminal and type in the following:

cat /etc/issue

You’ll be presented with output similar to the screenshot at the beginning of this article, which will look something like this:

Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS

If you need more information you can use a different command, although it may not work on every distro out there, but it definitely works on the major ones. Just like before, open a terminal and type in the following:

cat /etc/*release

This will give you something more like this next screenshot, and you can see that not only do you have the release information, but you also get to see the codename and even the URL. What’s actually happening here is that on Ubuntu there is a /etc/os-release file, but on some other versions there might be something like /etc/redhat-release or another name entirely. By using the * in the command we’re just outputting the contents of any of them to the console.

The easiest method is still the cat /etc/issue command, but this is a nice extra.

How to See the Kernel Version

The version of the distribution you are running is actually a completely different thing than the version of the Linux kernel. You can easily see that version number by opening a terminal and typing in the following:

uname -r

This will give you output like the following, in which we can see that we’re using the 3.15.4 kernel version.

How to Tell Whether You Are Using a 64-bit Kernel

You could probably already tell in the last screenshot that we’re using the 64 bit kernel with the x86_64 text, but the easiest thing to do is use this command from the terminal, which is the same command as before, but with -a for “all” instead of -r for “kernel release.”

uname -a

In this screenshot you can tell that we’re running the x86_64 version of Linux, which means 64-bit. If you were running 32-bit Linux, which you really shouldn’t be doing on a server, it would say “i386″ or “i686″ instead.

The more strict-minded types will probably note that you can use uname -i to show whether you are using 32-bit or 64-bit (useful in a script), but it’s better to just get used to using -a to show you everything at once

How to Record Your Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, or iOS Screen

Screenshots are great, but sometimes you need to create a video recording to really get your point across. You can record your computer’s desktop, your smartphone’s screen, or your tablet’s display.

This process gives you a video file, which you can do whatever you like with. Upload it to YouTube or email it to a friend. Put together a video tutorial or just capture a problem you’re having so you an demonstrate it later.

Windows

Windows doesn’t include a built-in tool for creating desktop recordings. There are many tools for doing this, but make sure you avoid the junkware bundled into their installers if you go hunting for them. You can actually use VLC to record your desktop, and that’s a convenient option. There’s a good chance you already have VLC installed, and it’s a Swiss army knife that will allow you to quickly record your desktop without installing anything else.

For more advanced screencasts, we recommend OBS (Open Broadcaster Software). It’s very powerful, free, open-source tool that allows you to do more. Insert watermarks, embed a video of your webcam while capturing your desktop, choose specific desktop windows, and so on. OBS is widely used for video-game-streaming on Twitch.tv because it’s so powerful, but it works just as well for creating a professional-looking video of your desktop.

Mac OS X

To record your Mac’s screen, open the QuickTime application — press Command + Space to open Spotlight search, type QuickTime, and press Enter to do so. Click the File menu on the menu bar, select New Screen Recording. You can then click the little menu to the right of the Record button and choose whether you want to capture audio from your microphone in the video, too. This will allow you to narrate along with your actions. Click the Record button to start when you’re ready.Mac OS X offers a convenient, built-in screen-recording tool. It’s one of the many useful functions hidden in QuickTime, which is more than just the simple media player it looks like on the surface.

QuickTime will minimize itself to a small icon on the right side of your menu bar and start recording. Click Stop when you’re done, and you’ll be able to preview and save your video. QuickTime can also edit the video, trimming out any unnecessary bits.

For something more powerful, you may want to try Open Broadcaster Siftware (OBS). It’s not just for Windows — it works on Mac, too.

Linux

There are quite a few open-source screen-recording applications for Linux, and you’ll probably find many of them if you pull up your Linux distribution’s package manager and do a quick search. There’s even a way to do this with ffmpeg and other commands from the terminal, if you’re into that sort of thing.

One of the most popular and longest-standing open-source tools for this is recordMyDesktop, which you can install from the Ubuntu Software Center or your Linux distribution’s package management interface of choice.

Launch recordMyDesktop and use its options to choose video and audio quality levels. This tool can record your entire desktop or just a small portion of it. recordMyDesktop works well, provides a simple interface, and offers the most important desktop-recording options.

If you want something more powerful, try Open Broadcaster Software (OBS). It’s available for Linux as well as Windows and Mac OS X.

Android

Connect your Android device to a Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux PC with a USB cable and use the “adb shell screenrecord” command to start recording its display. If you have a rooted device, you can also initiate a screen recording with an app on your device — but that app needs root permissions.Android allows you to capture a video of your device’s display and save it as an mp4 file. This feature was added in Android 4.4, and it still works on Android 5. To do this, you’ll need to connect your Android device to a PC and use the adb command. Apps on your phone can’t start recording your display on their own — this prevents apps from initiating a recording to capture you entering sensitive data.

iOS

If you have a Mac and an iPhone or iPad, you can connect your iPhone or iPad to it and use the QuickTime application to capture its screen. Just select “New Movie Recording” instead of New Screen Recording, click the menu button, and select the connected iOS device instead of your Mac’s built-in webcam.Apple now offers a convenient, official way to record an iOS device’s screen. This requires a Mac running OS X Yosemite and an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch running iOS 8 or newer. Unfortunately, this feature is only available for Mac users. It’s intended for developers to capture their apps in action, and iOS developers will need to have Macs anyway.

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You can live-stream your desktop instead of recording it, too. On a desktop PC or laptop, OBS works very well for live-streaming. You can even live-stream your desktop straight from VLC!

10 Ways to Generate a Random Password from the Command Line

One of the great things about Linux is that you can do the same thing hundreds of different ways—even something as simple as generating a random password can be accomplished with dozens of different commands. Here’s 10 ways you can do it.

We gathered all of these commands from Command-Line Fu and tested them out on our own Linux PC to make sure they work. You should be able to use at least some of these on Windows with Cygwin installed, though we didn’t test all of them—the last one definitely works though.

Generate a Random Password

For any of these random password commands, you can either modify them to output a different password length, or you can just use the first x characters of the generated password if you don’t want such a long password. Hopefully you’re using a password manager like LastPass anyway so you don’t need to memorize them.

This method uses SHA to hash the date, runs through base64, and then outputs the top 32 characters.

date +%s | sha256sum | base64 | head -c 32 ; echo

This method used the built-in /dev/urandom feature, and filters out only characters that you would normally use in a password. Then it outputs the top 32.

< /dev/urandom tr -dc _A-Z-a-z-0-9 | head -c${1:-32};echo;

This one uses openssl’s rand function, which may not be installed on your system. Good thing there’s lots of other examples, right?

openssl rand -base64 32

This one works a lot like the other urandom one, but just does the work in reverse. Bash is very powerful!

tr -cd '[:alnum:]' < /dev/urandom | fold -w30 | head -n1

Here’s another example that filters using the strings command, which outputs printable strings from a file, which in this case is the urandom feature.

strings /dev/urandom | grep -o '[[:alnum:]]' | head -n 30 | tr -d '\n'; echo

Here’s an even simpler version of the urandom one.

< /dev/urandom tr -dc _A-Z-a-z-0-9 | head -c6

This one manages to use the very useful dd command.

dd if=/dev/urandom bs=1 count=32 2>/dev/null | base64 -w 0 | rev | cut -b 2- | rev

You can even create a random left-hand password, which would let you type your password with one hand.

</dev/urandom tr -dc '12345!@#$%qwertQWERTasdfgASDFGzxcvbZXCVB' | head -c8; echo ""

If you’re going to be using this all the time, it’s probably a better idea to put it into a function. In this case, once you run the command once, you’ll be able to use randpw anytime you want to generate a random password. You’d probably want to put this into your ~/.bashrc file.

randpw(){ < /dev/urandom tr -dc _A-Z-a-z-0-9 | head -c${1:-16};echo;}

You can use this same syntax to make any of these into a function—just replace everything inside the { }

And here’s the easiest way to make a password from the command line, which works in Linux, Windows with Cygwin, and probably Mac OS X. I’m sure that some people will complain that it’s not as random as some of the other options, but honestly, it’s random enough if you’re going to be using the whole thing.

date | md5sum

Yeah, that’s even easy enough to remember.

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There’s loads of other ways that you can create a random password from the command line in Linux—for instance, the mkpasswd command, which can actually assign the password to a Linux user account. So what’s your favorite way?

Speed Up Any PC, Smartphone, or Tablet By Disabling Animations

Animations on a desktop PC, smartphone, or tablet are nice — the first few times. Eventually, you just wish they would hurry up and stop wasting your time.

Disabling (or just reducing) animations can speed up almost any interface. Sure, the animations are pretty fast already, but waiting for them over and over each day can start to feel silly.

Windows

The Windows desktop has long offered convenient options for disabling animations. These settings work across every version of Windows, from Windows XP to Windows 7 all the way up to Windows 8 and the Windows 10 Technical Preview.

To access the animation options, open the Control Panel, click System & Security, and click System. Click the “Advanced system settings” option in the sidebar. Click Settings under Performance and use the check boxes here to control which animations Windows displays. Choosing “Adjust for best performance” is a quick way to disable all of them.

On a modern Windows system, these animations won’t really hurt your performance much — but they will make the system seem faster as menus snap into view and windows minimize and restore instantly. These options allow you to eliminate Windows 8’s Start screen animations, too.

Android

First, you’ll need to enable the Developer Options menu. Open the Settings app, scroll down to the bottom, and tap About phone or About tablet. Locate the “Build number” field and tap it seven times. You’ll see a notification saying you’re now a developer.Android’s hidden Developer Options menu allows you to dramatically accelerate the animations or disable them completely. We’ve covered this before, and the process is basically the same on both Android 4.x and Android 5.0.

Tap the back button and tap the Developer options item that’s now appeared near the bottom of the Settings menu. Activate the Developer options slider, scroll down, and modify the “Window animation scale,” “Transition animation scale,” and “Animator duration scale” options. You can select “Animation off” to disable them or “Animation scale .5x” to make them twice as fast as normal.

iPhone & iPad

Apple fielded a lot of user complaints for the speed of animations in iOS 7. They’ve sped them up since then, but there’s still a way to reduce the interface’s animations.

To do so, open the Settings app, tap General, and tap Accessibility. Tap the Reduce Motion option and activate the switch. This won’t eliminate the animations entirely, but it replaces the motion animations with a fade that feels cleaner — and maybe faster.

Mac OS X

The slowest animations on a Mac are the window minimize and restore animations. They can be controlled from the Dock’s preferences pane. To access it, click the Apple menu, select System Preferences, and click Dock.

There’s no option to disable this animation entirely, but you can choose the “Scale” animation instead of the default “Genie” animation. Scale feels a bit faster and less distracting than Genie, so you’ll have a faster experience the next time you minimize and restore an application.

Unfortunately, there aren’t yet many other options for disabling animations as of OS X Yosemite. There is an option for disabling the bounce animation when applications launch in the Dock pane, though. Hopefully Apple will add more options for controlling the various animations.

Linux

On Ubuntu’s default Unity desktop, these options are a bit hard to get to. You’ll have to install the CompizConfig Settings Manager and use it to tweak the hidden graphical settings you’re normally not supposed to modify. From here, you can speed up or eliminate these animations by disabling them or changing their duration. Be careful when using this tool, as it’s rather complicated and isn’t intended for typical desktop users!Your Linux desktop environment probably has its own options for controlling its various desktop animations, too. You’ll usually find options for controlling animations that appear when windows open, close, minimize, or are restored.

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Practically every graphical interface offers some option to reduce animations. Some operating systems offer more complete options than others — the Windows desktop and Android are particularly configurable — but every operating system offers some. Across every graphical interface, eliminating, reducing, or just speeding up animations will make your interface feel faster. This is another tip that will probably serve you well on whatever interface you’re using ten years from now.

When Microsoft added new, extremely slow animations to the Windows 10 Technical Preview, some people asked Microsoft for an option to disable them. Others just went straight to the Performance settings dialog in Windows and disabled them on their own using standard options that have existed in Windows for a long time.

The Best Alternative File Managers for Windows, Mac, and Linux

Most people use their operating system’s included file manager, but many geeks prefer third-party file managers. After all, Windows Explorer doesn’t offer tabs, a dual-pane interface, batch file-renaming tools, and more advanced features.

If you’re happy with your default file manager, that’s fine. These alternatives are really only useful if you’re craving a particular feature not found in your current file manager.

Windows

For as long as Windows Explorer has existed, Windows geeks have yearned for more features. There are many, many Windows Explorer alternatives out there. When installing them, be sure ot watch out for the junkware packed into their installers. The Windows software ecosystem is sick, and  — in general — we hate recommending Windows software downloads for just this reason.

FreeCommander is a good option if you’re looking for tabs, a dual-pane interface, and all the other powerful features a Windows Explorer replacement can offer. Unlike many of the other available applications, it’s available entirely for free — although it isn’t open-source. You’re free to use it all you like, even for commercial purposes. No features are restricted to some sort of professional edition you have to pay for. Multi Commander is similar and also free.

Explorer++ is free and open-source, so it also won’t try to nag you for money or install junk onto your system. It includes tabs, a customizable user interface, file-filtering features, and can even run as a portable app without any installation. It offers a cleaner interview than Free Commander, but without the dual-pane view and some other powerful features. If all you want is a tabbed interface and a few other things, this is a great option

Other file manager replacements include Xplorer2, XYplorer, Directory Opus, and Total Commander. All of these programs offer paid editions they want you to purchase. There are free versions available for most of them — Xplorer2 Lite, XYplorer Free, and Directory Opus Light. They often lack many of the more powerful features found in the paid versions, but they’ll provide you with many of the features found in the paid versions.

Mac OS X

The Finder app included with Mac OS X does the basics, but it can certainly leave you wanting. As usual on Mac OS X, many of the alternative file-manager options available to you are generally paid software. You’ll have to shell out a few bucks to use them. On the bright side, this means that they see more development than many alternative Windows file managers, and their business model is selling software instead of trying to load your computer with crapware in their installers.

Cocoatech’s Path Finder is probably the most popular Finder replacement for Mac OS X, and we covered it as one of the best options if you want to merge folders on your Mac. It also includes a dual-pane interface and other powerful features. Developers in particular can get a lot of use out of its intergrated Git and Subeersion support, as well as easy access to a terminal.

Path Finder costs $40, but you can use the free 30-day trial to determine if you actually need all those fancy features.

If you want some of these advanced features — like a dual-pane interface — but don’t want to spend money on this type of program, try XtraFinder. It’a free application that adds features to the Finder, including a dual-pane interface, a copy queue, global hotkeys, and many new menu options. It doesn’t include nearly as many advanced features as Path Finder does, but most people don’t need all those bonus features. This could hit a good sweet spot for many people.

Linux

For example, GNOME and Ubuntu’s Unity desktop include the Nautilus file manager. KDE includes the Dolphin file manager, Xfce includes the Thunar file manager, and LXDE includes PCManFM. Each file manager has its own unique features — for example, Xfce’s Thunar file manager includes an integrated Bulk Rename tool for quickly batch-renaming files.It’s hard to talk about alternative file managers for Linux, as every desktop environment tends to include its own unique file manager. These file managers also tend to see more development and often include advanced features you’d only find in alternative file managers on other operating systems. But, thanks to the modularity of the Linux desktop, you could actually run a different desktop environment’s file manager on your current desktop.

Every file manager tends to match its desktop environment in philosophy. For example, GNOME’s Nautilus file manager is shedding features with every release, chasing GNOME’s goal of simplicity and minimalism. Dolphin is more feature-heavy and uses the Qt toolkit instead of GNOME and Xfce’s GTK toolkit. Thunar, like Xfce itself, is a more minimal, barebones file manager that still has everything you need and gets the job done. Like LXDE itself, the PCManFM file manager offers a fairly minimal, lightweight interface.

Perform a search for “file manager” or something similar in your Linux distribution’s package management interface and you’ll find a lot of options.

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So, do we think everyone needs to hunt down an alternative file manager? Not at all. We’ve usually been happy with the integrated file managers, which are there and get the job done if you don’t need anything special.

But lots of geeks do love their alternative file managers, and for good reason. They offer powerful features that can save you a lot of time if you need them.

Drive Icons Missing From Your Mac’s Desktop?

Screen shot courtesy of Coyote Moon, Inc.

Question: Drive Icons Missing From Your Mac’s Desktop?

My Mac doesn’t display any drive icons on the desktop. I know it’s supposed to, because I’ve seen hard drive icons displayed on my friend’s Mac or at the Apple Store, where I bought my Mac.

How do I get my Mac to display the hard drive icons?

Answer:

It's the Finder's job to display the desktop and all of its icons, including those for hard drives. The problem is that a default install of OS X renders the desktop without the drive icons.

Luckily, this is easy to correct. In fact, you can specify which desktop icons you would like to have visible simply by setting the preferences in the Finder.

Setting Which Desktop Icons Display

1. Click on the desktop or open a Finder window, to ensure the Finder is currently the front most application.


2. From the menu bar, select Finder, Preferences.


3. In the Finder Preferences window that opens, click the General tab.


4. Place a check mark next to the items you wish to display on the desktop. The options include Hard disks, External disks, CDs, DVDs, iPods, and Connected Servers.


5. Close the Finder Preferences window.

The selected items will now display on the Desktop.

The Five Best Free Start Menu Replacements for Windows 8

By now, everyone who cares will likely know that Windows 8 doesn't have a Start menu. It's undoubtedly the number one talking point since the operating system's release in 2012. If you aren't interested in learning the ins and outs of the new Start screen, you have options.

Bringing a Start menu back into Windows 8 isn't difficult. You can make one of your own which has most of the functionality of Windows 7's Start menu, but it won't look very good and it takes a bit of time to set up. If you're willing to part with a small amount of system resources, you can download one of many free applications available to do the job for you.

With the number of consumers clamoring for this missing feature, there is a huge number of applications available looking to offer a solution. Some are innovative, including interesting new features and interface elements; others stay as close as they can to the look and feel of Windows 7 Start menu. I've taken the time to test out the available options and I've come up with a list of the best free Start menu replacements available.

While the most obvious boon offered by these programs is their Start menu, they all also offer the optional ability to turn off other annoyances. Every option here allows you to bypass the Start screen and boot directly to the desktop. You'll also be able to disable the hot corners including the App Switcher in the top left and the Charms bar hint in the top or bottom right.

Image courtesy of Lee Soft. Robert Kingsley

1.  ViStart

The first option on the list is about as close as you’re likely to get to putting the Windows 7 Start menu in Windows 8. The interface is almost perfect and you won’t need even a moment to figure out how to use it once it’s installed. You’ll be pinning and launching programs in no time.

While many users will consider the similarity to its subject a great feature, that’s about the only feature it offers. While it does have a couple of skins to choose from and the option to change what your Start button looks like, you’ll find nothing of value above and beyond what the Windows 7 Start menu offered.More »

Image courtesy of OrdinarySoft. Robert Kingsley

2.  Start Menu 8

This next option is also very close to the Start menu from Windows 7. All of the interface elements you'd expect are there. You'll have quick access to your programs and the ability to pin apps like you could in Windows 7.

One major difference that you'll find with Start Menu 8 is a subtle nod to Windows 8. There is a MetroApps menu that you can click to access all of the Windows Store apps on your computer. This allows you to seamlessly launch these apps right from the desktop as easily as you could any other program. Unfortunately though, you can't pin modern apps to the Start menu.

Start Menu 8 is highly customizable. There are multiple themes you can choose, you can change the Start button style, change the font and even the size of the menu itself. More »

Image courtesy of Classic Shell. Robert Kingsley

3.  Classic Shell

Classic Shell is a program that certainly gives you your start menu, but it doesn't stop there. The menu offered here, like those in the previously covered offerings, is close enough to the Windows 7 Start menu that you won't likely skip a beat. All of the links and buttons are there, perhaps the only discernible difference is that you have to drag applications from the Programs menu to the Start menu to pin them rather than right-clicking as you're used to.

Like Start Menu 8, Classic Shell offers you a second menu to access your Windows Store apps. It also allows you to pin these apps to the menu as you can desktop programs. This is a small feature but it certainly is useful.

While the menu is certainly the star of the show, Classic Shell has a lot more to offer. It comes with a very detailed settings page that allows you to change almost every aspect of the menu to suit your preferences. It also allows you to tweak the File Explorer and Internet Explorer 9 to make their interfaces more comfortable for you. More »

Image courtesy of SweetLabs, Inc. Robert Kingsley

4.  Pokki

This next option, unlike the first three, looks nothing like the classic Start menu you're used to. While that may sound like a negative, it isn't. Pokki strives to give you the simple access to your programs that you miss, while also improving the interface and offering new features.

Pokki is much larger than most Start menu replacements. It consists of a pane on the left side of the window that contains most of the links you'd expect in a Start menu including Computer, Libraries and Devices and Printers. Above those links, you'll find options for what displays on the larger right pane.

The all apps button shows you your programs. While there is no separate menu for Windows Store apps, they are buried in a folder inside this view, so they're still accessible from the desktop environment.

The next option is a Control Panel view. This places all of the computer configuration and settings tools right in the Start menu for easy access. This makes life much easier for system admins and power users.

Finally, you have the My Favorites view. This view offers a series of tiles you can configure to link to any programs or apps you have on your computer. Here is where Pokki really shines because you can also link to apps you download from Pokki's own app store.

Pokki's apps aren't highly sophisticated; in fact, many are simply web sites or web apps contained within their own window. Having stand-alone apps for Gmail, Pandora, Google Calendar and others may seem simple, but they're really useful to have around. More »

Image Courtesy of Reviversoft. Robert Kingsley

5.  Start Menu Reviver

The Start Menu Reviver, like Pokki, doesn’t try to recreate a classic Start menu; instead it reinvents the idea and updates it to fit in with Windows 8. This application combines the tiles of the Start screen with the ease of the Start menu to create something that feels right at home in this modern operating system.

Start Menu Reviver is comprised of a bar of links and a series of customizable tiles. You can drag any desktop or Windows store app into the menu to customize the tiles to your liking. This is just like pinning a program to the Start menu of old.

The link bar on the left provides easy access to commonly used tools like Network, Search and Run. You’ll also find the Apps button in this bar.

When you click the Apps button, a new pane opens to the right to display your desktop applications. At the top of this pane you’ll find a drop-down list that you can use to change the view to show Windows Store apps, Documents, all Applications or any other folder you choose. This feature gives you easy and organized access to anything you want