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  • Book Overview & Buying Linux Mint Essentials
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Linux Mint Essentials

Linux Mint Essentials

By : Jay LaCroix
4.2 (10)
Buy this Book
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Linux Mint Essentials

Linux Mint Essentials

4.2 (10)
By: Jay LaCroix
Buy this Book

Overview of this book

A task-oriented look at Linux Mint, using actual real-world examples to stimulate learning. Each topic is presented in an easy-to-follow order, with hands-on activities to reinforce the content. If you are starting out with Linux from a different platform or are well versed with Linux Mint and want a guide that shows you how to exploit certain functionality, this book is for you. No previous Linux experience is assumed.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
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Preface
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Preface
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What this book covers
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What you need for this book
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Who this book is for
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Conventions
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Reader feedback
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Customer support
Free Chapter
1
1. Meet Linux Mint
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1. Meet Linux Mint
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Why choose Linux?
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What is a distribution?
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Is Linux hard to learn?
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What Mint does differently
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Releases and support
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Mint-specific tools
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Interacting with the Linux Mint community
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Creating community and forum accounts
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Meet the community
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Summary
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2. Creating Boot Media and Installing Linux Mint
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2. Creating Boot Media and Installing Linux Mint
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Which version to download
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The different methods of installing Linux Mint
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Creating a bootable DVD
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Creating a bootable USB flash drive
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Testing your live media
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Planning your partitioning scheme
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The installation process
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To encrypt or not to encrypt
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Summary
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3. Getting Acquainted with Cinnamon
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3. Getting Acquainted with Cinnamon
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Getting familiar with Cinnamon
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Logging in to Cinnamon
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Launching programs
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Monitoring tasks
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Utilizing workspaces
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Notifications
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Creating launchers
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Bundled applications
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File management with Nemo
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Configuring the settings of Cinnamon
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Changing the default search engine in Firefox
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Changing themes
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Summary
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4. An Introduction to the Terminal
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4. An Introduction to the Terminal
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Why should we use the terminal?
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Accessing the shell
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Executing commands
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Navigating the filesystem
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Managing files
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The nano text editor
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Reading manual pages with the man command
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Searching for files
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Using the watch command
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Introduction to scripting
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Summary
5
5. Utilizing Storage and Media
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5. Utilizing Storage and Media
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Accessing removable media
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Formatting flash drives
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Mounting and unmounting volumes
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Automatically mounting volumes at boot time
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Analyzing disk usage
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Understanding gibibytes versus gigabytes and mebibytes versus megabytes
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Burning CDs and DVDs
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Using the USB Image Writer
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Understanding how Universally Unique Identifiers work
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Summary
6
6. Installing and Removing Software
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6. Installing and Removing Software
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Managing packages in Linux Mint
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Using the Mint Software Manager
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Installing new applications
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Removing applications
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Using the Synaptic Package Manager
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Configuring software sources
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Advanced package management
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Keeping your system up to date
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Summary
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7. Enjoying Multimedia on Mint
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7. Enjoying Multimedia on Mint
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Understanding issues concerning codecs
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Playing music files
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Ripping an audio CD
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Editing MP3 tags
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Playing video files
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Playing a DVD
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Viewing photos
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Editing photos with GIMP
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Accessing your webcam
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Recording your desktop
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Summary
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8. Managing Users and Permissions
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8. Managing Users and Permissions
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Creating new users
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Changing passwords
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Revoking access temporarily
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Removing user accounts
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Running commands or programs as other users
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Administrative access via sudo and visudo
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Understanding file and directory permissions
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Modifying file and directory permissions
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Summary
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9. Connecting to Networks
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9. Connecting to Networks
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Connecting to a wired network
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Setting up a static IP
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Connecting to a wireless network
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An introduction to SSH
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Accessing your system via SSH
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Accessing FTP servers
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Sharing files with Samba
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Sharing files with NFS
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Summary
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10. Securing Linux Mint
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10. Securing Linux Mint
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Choosing secure passwords
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Encrypting your home folder
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Configuring and testing the iptables firewall
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Installing and configuring ClamAV
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Blocking access to specific websites
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Backing up and restoring important data
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Creating and restoring snapshots
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Hardening your system
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Summary
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11. Advanced Administration Techniques
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11. Advanced Administration Techniques
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Creating command aliases
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Making aliases persistent
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Killing processes
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Setting up cron jobs
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Preparing to move to a new release
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Exporting and importing package lists
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Using variables and conditional statements in Bash
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Monitoring resource usage
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Monitoring CPU temperatures
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Sending system reports via e-mail
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Summary
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12. Troubleshooting Linux Mint
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12. Troubleshooting Linux Mint
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Performing the initial triage
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Troubleshooting in Software Rendering Mode
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Diagnosing boot issues
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Recovering data
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Perusing system logs
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Reinstalling GRUB
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Testing the RAM
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Pinpointing audio issues
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Solving problems with networking
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Solving slow frame rates in games
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Getting help from the community
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Summary
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A. Reinstalling Mint while Retaining Data
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A. Reinstalling Mint while Retaining Data
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Considering LTS releases
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Why an upgrade utility isn't included
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Preparing for the migration
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Installing Linux Mint while retaining /home
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Importing a list of packages for reinstallation
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Summary
14
B. Using the MATE Edition of Linux Mint
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B. Using the MATE Edition of Linux Mint
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Introducing MATE
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Understanding the differences between MATE and Cinnamon
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Launching applications
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Customizing MATE
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Summary
15
C. Using the KDE Edition of Linux Mint
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C. Using the KDE Edition of Linux Mint
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Understanding the KDE desktop
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Using Dolphin – KDE's file manager
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Adding Plasmoids to the desktop
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Discovering Mint KDE's default applications
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Utilizing Activities and Virtual Desktops
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Configuring network connections
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Summary
16
Index
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Index

Running commands or programs as other users

There may come a time where you need to impersonate another user on your system. In some of our examples so far, we've used the sudo command, which essentially runs commands as the root user. On a Linux system, the root account is the account that has access to basically everything. If Linux was a game of chess, think of the root account as the queen—it can go wherever it wants and delete whatever it wants.

Note

In Linux Mint (as well as most Ubuntu derivatives), the root account is disabled by default. Although the root account is disabled, you can still run commands as the root. Technically, the sudo command impersonates the root and works even if the root account is disabled. You can enable the root account with the sudo passwd command and disable it once again with the sudo passwd -l root command.

While we'll go over the technical details of the sudo command in the next section, it's important to understand how to run commands as a different user...

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