Language Selection

English French German Italian Portuguese Spanish

Linux made workable, productive, and easy!

Filed under
Linux
HowTos

Linux made workable, productive, and easy!

By TGodfrey

So....you have downloaded and installed your first Linux distribution. Everything looks good and works even better, but you want to administer the computer easier, install some business applications, install a web browser, install an anti-virus program, firewall, share a folder using SAMBA, and mount a jumpdrive.....all in under an hour. After the packages have been downloaded of course.

I get these questions from people who want to fully utilize their new Linux installation, be protected, and want to be productive. We will walk through some popular applications on what they are used for and how to install them. I've tried these how-to's on SuSe, Red Hat, and Mandrake installations on various types of hardware and found the instructions below to work with little or no extra effort.

Let's get started...


Request: I want to administer my system without having to memorize a lot command-string items or I get confused when administering different Linux flavors.

Answer: Webmin is an easy to use browser-based administration tool that seems to work on SuSe-Red Hat-Mandrake that I have used. It comes with so many tools that will help the system administrator regardless of their knowledge level.

To install Webmin (a graphical way to administer):

Note: You may want to bookmark this site


Request: I want to exchange documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and other typical business documents.

Answer: OpenOffice is a fantastic office suite developed by Sun that has a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation package, drawing application, math, and a simple database. I've found I can exchange documents with others using Office 2003 and below with little to no differences.

To install the latest OpenOffice (business productivity suite):


Request: I would like to install a web browser called 'Firefox' that I've heard quite a bit about. It is supposed to be quicker and has a built-in pop-up blocker and some other nice features.

Answer: Just follow along below.

To install the latest Firefox (internet web browser):


Request: Do I need an anti-virus or firewall program for Linux? I've heard it is so secure that I really don't need one.

Answer: Yes, you do. Any operating system that does not have its service and security patches updated, unnecessary services running, or out-of-the-box installations not updated is called an unprotected system. There is no silver bullet when protecting your system. The best approach is called a layered approach (think skins of an onion). Any task you do to protect your system and the data on it is time well spent. We will at least need an anti-virus and firewall to start with on the machine itself.

To load BitDefender (an antivirus program):

To load Firestarter (a better firewall than the RedHat default):

7. Open a TERMINAL session and type in --> firestarter [ENTER]. Walk through the configuration and see how easy it is to configure. After you get done then click on [SAVE]. The firewall will start immediately and display traffic on your segment. This firewall is made to be in between your network and the outside world and run all the time. Once it is stopped, you have no protection. You may want to consider enabling the Redhat firewall again – it all depends on your requirements.

8. Firestarter can also be accessed (on a Red Hat system) by selecting [REDHAT] – [SYSTEM TOOLS] – [MORE SYSTEM TOOLS] – [FIRESTARTER FIREWALL TOOL].


Request: I would like to share files on my Linux system with other users, regardless if they are Linux or Windows (even Solaris users).

Answer: SAMBA is the quickest, easiest, and most secure way to do this with little effort and has the ability to share with other operating systems.

An easy way to setup a shared folder:


Request: I would like to copy files from my USB drive ('jumpdrive', 'thumbdrive', etc), but Linux does not see it. What do I do?

Answer: This usually depends on the Linux flavor and what has been compiled in the kernel. An out of the box install of Red Hat 9 does not see a USB drive, but SuSe 9 Enterprise or Professional does. This is not a big deal and can be delt with quickly.

What if I wish to use my jumpdrive?

Note: With newer Linux distributions, this does not seem to be an issue. It is with my older version of Redhat 9, but not with Fedora 3 or 4. My SuSE Linux boxes see it automatically as well as Mandrake 10, but 9 does not.


These are the most common requests for 'how to's' that I come across. Remember that Linux is not hard or only for the 'YaYa Brotherhood or Sisterhood of Geekdom'. It is just a different way of thinking and utilizing the potential of your computer. I hope the above helps you configure your new Linux installation to be productive and easy to administer.

Open Source + Open Mind = Endless Possibilities

More in Tux Machines

digiKam 7.7.0 is released

After three months of active maintenance and another bug triage, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.7.0 of its open source digital photo manager. See below the list of most important features coming with this release. Read more

Dilution and Misuse of the "Linux" Brand

Samsung, Red Hat to Work on Linux Drivers for Future Tech

The metaverse is expected to uproot system design as we know it, and Samsung is one of many hardware vendors re-imagining data center infrastructure in preparation for a parallel 3D world. Samsung is working on new memory technologies that provide faster bandwidth inside hardware for data to travel between CPUs, storage and other computing resources. The company also announced it was partnering with Red Hat to ensure these technologies have Linux compatibility. Read more

today's howtos

  • How to install go1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04 – NextGenTips

    In this tutorial, we are going to explore how to install go on Ubuntu 22.04 Golang is an open-source programming language that is easy to learn and use. It is built-in concurrency and has a robust standard library. It is reliable, builds fast, and efficient software that scales fast. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel-type systems enable flexible and modular program constructions. Go compiles quickly to machine code and has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. In this guide, we are going to learn how to install golang 1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04. Go 1.19beta1 is not yet released. There is so much work in progress with all the documentation.

  • molecule test: failed to connect to bus in systemd container - openQA bites

    Ansible Molecule is a project to help you test your ansible roles. I’m using molecule for automatically testing the ansible roles of geekoops.

  • How To Install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9 - idroot

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, MongoDB is a high-performance, highly scalable document-oriented NoSQL database. Unlike in SQL databases where data is stored in rows and columns inside tables, in MongoDB, data is structured in JSON-like format inside records which are referred to as documents. The open-source attribute of MongoDB as a database software makes it an ideal candidate for almost any database-related project. This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the MongoDB NoSQL database on AlmaLinux 9. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.

  • An introduction (and how-to) to Plugin Loader for the Steam Deck. - Invidious
  • Self-host a Ghost Blog With Traefik

    Ghost is a very popular open-source content management system. Started as an alternative to WordPress and it went on to become an alternative to Substack by focusing on membership and newsletter. The creators of Ghost offer managed Pro hosting but it may not fit everyone's budget. Alternatively, you can self-host it on your own cloud servers. On Linux handbook, we already have a guide on deploying Ghost with Docker in a reverse proxy setup. Instead of Ngnix reverse proxy, you can also use another software called Traefik with Docker. It is a popular open-source cloud-native application proxy, API Gateway, Edge-router, and more. I use Traefik to secure my websites using an SSL certificate obtained from Let's Encrypt. Once deployed, Traefik can automatically manage your certificates and their renewals. In this tutorial, I'll share the necessary steps for deploying a Ghost blog with Docker and Traefik.