 No matter how long you've been using Linux there are always things that you can do better and I think that this is true Pretty much across the board. There are always things that you can do to improve your workflow on Linux No matter what you use Linux for whether you're just a casual user and all you do mostly is browse the web do Email and play some games or if you're a developer or whatever it really doesn't matter What your skill level is there are some things that you can do to improve your workflow on Linux And I know that that is true for me for sure that there are things that I just don't know that if I did know them I could be a better Linux user So what I thought I would do today is talk about five things you can do to make your Linux experience more awesome now there's a good chance that you probably know some of these and That's great. Maybe you'll get lucky and you'll not know some of the other ones. So let's go ahead and jump in so the first one is pretty simple and I don't think that it is something that most people probably don't know but I wanted to put it on the list because I do think it's really important and That is to learn how to install fonts now I could go through and tell you how to install fonts But the problem is that there are several different ways of doing it and really it does matter what desktop environment or window manager that you're using because how you install fonts is going to differ between those things sometimes you're Kind of on your own and you have to install them manually like in the terminal or something or install a tool to do it If you're using a desktop environment chances Are you'll be able to use the settings application to install fonts in some way if you? Don't like that particular way of installing fonts. There are other ways so the reason why I think that this is important is because if you do any type of writing or design work or even coding on Linux having a good font is important for readability and All sorts of things so if you can learn how to install fonts That's going to be a boon to your workflow even though it might not seem like it would be so That's number one on the list or number five. However, you want to put it. It doesn't really matter the next one is You should learn how to delete unnecessary files because this is something that happens a lot on Linux and pretty much every Operating system as you use your system more and more it accumulates temporary and cache files that Often times need to be deleted and there are other files too So dependencies that are no longer needed. They're called orphan dependencies these things pile up over time And well, they don't really hurt anything for the most part They can take up a lot of disk space So if you download something through from like a you are something there's a cache file of Pretty much every version of everything that you've ever downloaded in a file somewhere And that thing can take up a lot of disk space And if you are limited on disk space like most people are deleting that file Can save you some room now how you do this is going to depend on what distribution You're on and what package manager you use Specifically if you're trying to delete or orphaned packages So if you use something like Ubuntu you'll use an apt command if you're on arch to use pac-man and so on and so forth The best way to learn how to uninstall those orphan packages is to use the man page for your package manager because that's going to be able to Tell you exactly What commands you need to use in order to delete those packages now one thing of note while you can pretty much Delete caches without any problem at all you can delete those without worrying that you're going to break anything for the most part You do want to make sure when you uninstall orphan packages that they're actually orphaned Now I don't know if you've ever watched the Linus tech tips Linux challenge But one of the reasons why his experiment with Papa West failed was because he did pseudo apt auto remove and it removed Some packages that weren't actually orphaned. So when you do something like that Make sure you read the output of the command before you do any confirmation Just to make sure that you kind of know what you're deleting. So just a cautionary tale also Highly recommend before you do any of that kind of stuff have a backup no matter what you do on Linux This is just like an extra tip, but really this is kind of applies across all computing Always always have a backup before you delete anything just do that and you'll be much happier if something goes wrong The next one on the list is that everyone should learn how to use cron jobs Now this doesn't really sound like something everyone would probably need to do and you probably could use Linux your entire life without ever having to Use cron, but it is such an amazing tool to do certain things So what is cron and what is a cron job? Well cron is a service that runs on your computer that performs tasks Automatically on a certain schedule. So for example, let's just say you wanted to set up cron to backup your computer every Friday night at midnight you could do that if you wanted to have it run a Script that updates your system every week at a certain time You can do that or maybe it just checks for updates and tells you how often or how many updates you have pretty much the sky's the limit as long as you can script it cron can do it and I have a video on how to use cron So I'll link that in the video description and more of the cards up there somewhere So you can learn in-depth how to use cron But the amazing thing about it is that it allows you to automate pretty much anything on Linux that you can script So the reason why I say it's script because for the most part cron is a terminal based Application there are gooey front-ends for it. I've just never used them So I don't know how good they are So that should be something that you might want to research if you're not comfortable using the terminal But it does allow you to automate a lot of stuff And that means that you can always have a backup on hand So you don't lose anything and you don't actually have to remember To do a backup which is cool. The next one on the list is kind of broad and I Really didn't think I wanted to put this on the list because I've talked about it many times before And I know that a lot of people are people who disagree with this and there are a lot of people who agree with it It's kind of a controversial topic and that is everyone should learn the terminal I'm just going to put that out there. Yes, you can use Linux never touching the terminal That is 100 possible anyone who says that you can't do that is wrong It just is not the most efficient way of using Linux There are certain things that you can do on Linux that are Easier or maybe not easier but more efficient to do in the terminal. So renaming files moving files around those things Are easier or again more efficient to do in the terminal Also using things like git and curl and wget to do certain things in the terminal just kind of work better In the terminal you can have front ends for those things There are applications that do similar things, but they're primarily terminal tools And while those might not necessarily be things that appeal to everyone There are a ton of examples like that that just kind of work really well in the terminal where they do have GUI alternatives, but they're not quite as efficient So I highly recommend learning how to use the terminal. It doesn't mean you have to use it all the time You don't have to become super nerd in order to use Linux. That's not what I'm saying here Just if you learn the basics, you'll find yourself using it more and more often as you use Linux more And you'll find that you actually probably like it better than using the GUI now That's not going to be true for everybody, but for a lot of people that probably be true Now the last one on the list is One that I'm working on a tutorial for I've been working on this tutorial now for at least two months It's been a while. I'm trying to get it right because it's one of those things where you really want to not spread False information and what I'm talking about here is that I think that using butterfs will truly make your experience on Linux better Now it's not going to make your system faster It's not going to make you work on your Linux system faster None of that stuff. No The best thing about butterfs is that it creates snapshots or it can create snapshots It doesn't do it automatically and it creates sub volumes. So the very layman's explanation of what butterfs is now first of all Let's talk about the name. That's before we explain what it is. Let's talk about the name I call it butterfs. A lot of people call it betterfs. Some people just btrfs Whatever the hell the name is even the developers don't really know what the hell the name is So I'm just going to call it butterfs because that's what I've always called it So moving on to the name past the name. What is butterfs? It's a file system It's basically an alternative to something like ext4 or ntfs on windows You don't use ntfs on linux ever really but That's what that is. It's a file system And once you have that knowledge, then you need to know what it actually does and why it's good And what you know like why would you use it over ext4? Which is kind of the standard? Well, it allows you to take snapshots of your system And what a snapshot basically is is a frozen moment in time of your system So that if anything goes wrong you can revert to that snapshot and your computer will be up and running again That's really as simple as it is now. Obviously snapshots aren't 100 full proof No backup system is but it does give you that added layer of security in case an update or Something like that fries your computer on probably that's probably not a great way of putting it if an update corrupt something in the root file system and You have to use a snapshot to get back to your other thing That's a situation where a snapshot would be useful, right? There are tools to use with butterfests that allow you to do Snapshotting automatically whether it's When you do an update or through a cron job something like that one of those tools is a tool called timeshift It's amazing and really astonishingly simple to use Now most linux distributions outside of ubuntu will allow you to use butterfests as the default A lot of distributions actually use it as the default already So if you're using something like fedora or open suza You'll know what butterfests is because that's what they use as default arch linux And basically every arch based distribution will allow you to use butterfests as an option You usually are set to ext4 as standard, but you can easily switch to butterfests with ubuntu You kind of have to manually partition so it's not as easy. They've chosen to use a different standard I believe it's called xfs. I'm maybe it's zfs I think it's zfs I don't know why I called it zfs because i'm not british But whatever it doesn't really matter the point is is that ubuntu uses something different You can still use butterfests if you want to you just have to manually partition And again, I'm working on a tutorial on how to do Or how to use butterfests that should be up sometime in the next month. Hopefully Like I said, I'm working on it. It's just proving to be a little difficult not that butterfests itself is difficult It's just I'm having a hard time explaining it So those are the five things I think that will make your linux experience much better And like I said, you probably know a few of those things if you've been using linux frame on a time But maybe there are one or two on there that you didn't know about so that is it for this video You can follow me on twitter at the linux cast. You can follow me on masted on any of those other social media networks You can find those links in the video description You can support me on patreon at patreon.com slash linux cast just like all of these fine people Thanks for to everyone who's on this list who supports me on patreon and youtube. I truly do appreciate it I can't ever truly find the words to say how grateful I am That so many people have chosen to Support me on youtube and patreon. It just Constantly blows my mind. So thanks everybody who supports me there. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time