Linux (KDE Neon)

Contents

Installing Software

You can use either of the graphical package managers. Depending on the configuration of your Debian-based Linux system, there may be muon, plasma-discover, synaptic or any other GUI tool installed. On the command-line you can use apt - the advanced package tool. In order to be able to change the system, you need to run the command as root user. In order to do so, preprend your installation commands with sudo.

If you want to install all the mentioned GUI package managers with a shell command, type

sudo apt install muon plasma-discover synaptic

To install an excellent integrated development environment as well as its Python language support, run

sudo apt install kdevelop kdevelop-python

Installing a Python package with the python installer pip (pip installs python)

sudo pip3 install packagename

Selected Shell Commands

Command Explanation
cat concatenate files and print on the standard output
cd [dir] change the current directory to dir (defaults to $HOME)
cd - change to previous directory
clear clear the terminal screen
cp copy files and directories
chmod change permissions of a file
date print or set the system date and time
echo display a line of text
df -h report file system disk space usage
du -h estimate file space usage
dolphin file manager
grep -rin print lines matching a pattern
hostname show or set the system's host name
konsole terminal emulator
less opposite of more; read text files
ln -s make (soft) links between files
ls -lahR list directory contents
man an interface to the on-line reference manuals
mkdir [dir] make directories
mv move (rename) files
pwd print name of current/working directory
rm -r (recursively) remove files or directories
tar zcf archive.tar.gz [file...] create gzip compressed archive
whatis display one-line manual page descriptions
whoami print effective userid

An excellent tool for explaining complex linux commands is explainshell.com.

Shell Variables

Examples include $HOME, $HOSTNAME and $USER.

Shortcuts

Global

Shortcut Action
Ctrl+Alt+t open konsole (terminal emulator)

Dolphin File Manager

Shortcut Action
F4 show konsole (terminal emulator)
Shift+F4 open konsole (terminal emulator)

Shell

Shortcut Action
↑ move up in history
↓ move down in history
Ctrl+d end of input
Ctrl+l clear the terminal screen
Ctrl+r reverse incremental search through history
Esc-., Alt+. recall the last argument of the previous command

Configuration

To define an alias use the alias command. For example, to create an alias called i that runs the ipython3 shell, run

alias i=ipython3

In order to persist this change, put it into your ~/.profile which is executed upon login. Alternatively, you could add that line to your ~/.bashrc which is executed when a new bash new shell is started. To add the line to your ~/.profile, edit it with your favorite text editor, for example with

kate ~/.profile

To make the change available without logging in, you need to source the file via

. ~/.profile

Python

Create an empty python file

touch filename.py

Edit the file with kate

kate filename.py

Make Python Program Executable

Insert

#!/usr/bin/env python3

to the top of th file. Then run

chmod u+x filename.py

Execute the file via

./filename.py

Run Script from Anywhere

In order to be able to run your scripts from anywhere in the file system, make sure to have a ~/bin directory.

mkdir -p ~/bin

In case the directory did not exist, you will have add it to your executabe $PATH.

PATH=~/bin:"${PATH}"

Then, create a link to your script

cd ~/bin
ln -s /path/to/your/script/filename.py

Finally, you'll be able to run your script as executable program from anywhere in your filesystem.

Video Tutorial

Finally, there exists a (somewhat outdated) video tutorial covering most of the content of this session: Introduction to Linux for Beginning Software Development.