Posts
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Debian releases and deciding to upgrade
Debian Stable, or just “stable”, is the default release for new Debian installs, with “testing” and “unstable” being the next releases along the development pipeline.
Debian Stable is the rock-solid release with few major changes going in and slightly older supported packages, while many downstream distributions like Ubuntu pull from Debian Testing, which gets more action throughout the year.
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Creating Git aliases
A few months ago a friend introduced me to Git aliases, and I’ve come to enjoy using them enough to set them up on every workspace I use.
Aliases are customizable shortcuts for full or partial commands, allowing the user to enter something like “git ci” instead of “git commit -m”.
git ci 'User can edit display name'git commit -m 'User can edit display name' -
(Debian) Setting environment variables
In this post we’ll set up environment variables for Debian, using Golang as an example.
I’d like to be able to run Go programs easily from terminal, and also have Golang environment variables accessible from applications such as Sublime Text Editor.
Environment variables can be set globally (/etc) or for individual users (~ is a shortcut to the current user’s home directory). I’ll set up these environment variables for my user.
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(LXDE) Monitoring battery life
I’ve noticed that my battery’s lifetime decreases by quite a bit when I run Debian. I’ll look into improving this in a couple days, but for now I’ve installed fdpowermon as a graphical battery life monitor.
In this post I’ll show how to set up .desktop files for processes such as fdpowermon, and how to update your system to run fdpowermon on session start using the new fdpowermon.desktop file.
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(LXDE) Customizing key bindings
A few key bindings are helpful to save time, especially for tasks such as changing volume or screen brightness settings. These key bindings did not work out of the box for me, so this was one of the first things I wanted to set up.
I’ve verified these steps on Debian GNU/Linux 8.3 (jessie) using the LXDE desktop. Other desktops may have their own locations for key bindings.
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(LXDE) Customizing the log in background
For this next post I’ll update the background image for the log in screen. I’m using Debian LXDE, so the instructions may differ if you are using another distribution or desktop. I have verified these steps on Debian GNU/Linux 8.3 (jessie) using the LXDE desktop.
For my log in screen background I’ll use the following image of the Orion Nebula:
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Adding a new sudo user
Now that we’ve installed Debian, we’ll want to add our main user to the sudo group.
“sudo” is Debian’s super user group, and its members can temporarily act as if they are system administrators by using the “sudo” keyword before a given command and confirming their password.
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Starting out on Debian
I recently installed Debian alongside Windows 10 to replace Lubuntu, and will be trying it out for the next month or so to see how well it fits into my use cases as a student and software developer in training.
Why Debian?
I’ve been itching to try Arch Linux, but since I’m still a relative beginner to Linux I opted for a distribution that would be easier to set up and integrate into my workflow right away. For this round I was looking for something fairly stable that I could set up quickly and customize over time.
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