Quick and dirty hardware summary where lshw is not available. Requires util-linux, procps, pciutils, usbutils and net-tools, which should be preinstalled on most systems.

This “sysload” alias converts the load average to percentages and divides them by the number of CPUs/cores. It may provide a more intuitive guesstimate of how much work the server is doing. Show Sample Output

This command first determines whether a second screen is connected. If this is the case, it sets the screen's RGB gamma via xrandr. Useful for cheap or slightly defective monitors with a tint. In this example a yellowing/champagne color deviation is compensated for by decreasing the red and the green portion of the image.

This shell function displays a list of binaries contained in an installed package; works on Debian based Linux distributions. Show Sample Output

Tries to switch all audio devices to the A2DP profile for optimal sound quality. Useful for bluetooth speakers and headphones that always power up in HSP/HFP mode. Note however that this command is only a shorthand for the GUI, so it cannot fix stubborn BT controllers that leave your device stuck in HSP mode until a manual re-coupling.

A function for retrieving and displaying a list of synonyms for a German word or phrase. Show Sample Output

On laptops featuring hybrid graphics and using the free X drivers, the DRI_PRIME variable indicates which GPU to run on. This alias allows to utilize the faster discrete GPU without installing proprietary drivers. Show Sample Output

This shell calculator uses POSIX features only and is therefore portable. By default the number of significant figures is limited to 8 with trailing zeros stripped, resembling the display of a basic pocket calculator. You might want to increase this to 12 to emulate a scientific calculator. Show Sample Output

Checks whether IPv6 is enabled system-wide by reading from procfs. Show Sample Output

Displays live hosts on the same network as the local machine with their hostnames and IP addresses. This command is IPv6 and multiple network adapter safe and does not rely on awk or sed, however it requires the "nmap" package installed. Might not work on OSX. Example alias for shell startup file: alias livehosts='nmap -sP "$(ip -4 -o route get 1 | cut -d " " -f 7)"/24 | grep report | cut -d " " -f 5-' Show Sample Output

Put this one-line function somewhere in your shell init, re-login and try whatinstalled <command> This is an elaborate wrapper around "dpkg -S", with numerous safeguards. Symlinks and command aliases are resolved. If the searched command is not an existing executable file or was installed by some other means than dpkg/apt, nothing is printed to stdout, otherwise the package name. Show Sample Output

An easy alias for opening a manpage, nicely HTML formatted, in your set internet browser. If you get a "command exited with status 3" error you need to install groff.

Returns the current price of a troy ounce of gold, in USD. Requires the "jq" JSON parser. Show Sample Output

Downloads Bluetack's level 1 IP blocklist in .p2p format, suitable for various Bittorrent clients.

Where $1 = author and $2 = mod name You need to be running a daily build of Minetest (for example from the 'minetestdevs/daily-builds' PPA), or some bleeding edge mods will not work or crash the game. Update a mod by entering its subdirectory under ~/.minetest/mods and doing git pull && git submodule update --recursive --remote --init

If AppArmor is installed with all profiles enforced, Chromium may refuse to start, printing a "failed to launch zygote process" error on stderr. This command switches the Chromium profile from enforce to complain mode, effectively un-sandboxing the browser, but depending on the system setup it may be a smaller deal than a nonfunctional application. Show Sample Output

This has been my "sysupgrade" alias since ca. 2006, first used on Debian Sid, then Sabayon, and it still does its duty on Mint nowadays without breaking stuff.

This can help with serious GUI lockups in KDE. It will only restart Plasma + widgets, not your session, so all your programs will stay running.

List images between 800 and 16384 pixels wide that can be displayed sized and trimmed on a widescreen display. Requires the "wallpaper" utility. Show Sample Output

Returns the global weighted BTC rate in EUR. Requires the "jq" JSON parser. Show Sample Output

Press ^Z, do what you need to do on the shell, then input % to resurrect the suspended job.

Some shell newbies don't know this very handy file management related command so I decided to include it here. You need to have the "file" package installed. Show Sample Output