Text mode editors

It is safer to use text-mode text editors and basic utilities to manipulate system files.

Set SUDO_EDITOR in your .bashrc file:

export SUDO_EDITOR=rnano

nano is an easy-to-understand text-mode text editor. (I actually recommend vim and SUDO_EDITOR=rvim, however vim is very advanced and is probably confusing.)

rnano and rvim launch the respective programs in safe mode, loading default configurations only and blocking scripts. This is a safety precaution for when making changes to the root folders.

systemd

systemctl status|start|stop|restart SERVICE

https://github.com/twlinux/club/wiki/systemd

Disabling unnecessary services can improve security by minimizing your attack surface. Disabling a critical system service can cause serious issues (though it’s usually easy to fix).

The Freedesktop Specification

The desktop environment (DE) reads .desktop files for metadata and launch configurations for desktop applications. The package manager installs these files to /usr/share/applications/.

Changing files owned by the package manager is dangerous, changes are overwritten by software upgrades.

User overrides to the .desktop files and custom launches can be made in ~/.local/share/applications.

Static HTTP file servers

Comes preinstalled on most Linux distros:

python3 -m http.server

Youi’ll need to know your private IP address: ip addr show

Alternatively, you can use http-server (based on node.js)

Install npm from your distro’s repositories, then install http-server: npm install -g http-server

http-server