 Linux is awesome but it doesn't matter how awesome I think Linux is if I couldn't get work done on it and for many years the biggest problem Linux had was that it didn't have applications and while it was cool and it was neat technology and it had all this stuff and it was really hard to actually be productive on it because there weren't a lot of applications that you could actually use that's no longer a problem it's not an issue at all whether it's productivity apps it's created creativity apps it's gaming whatever Linux has all the games and apps and stuff that you could ever want now that that problem has been solved and we have all these applications and stuff the question becomes how do you be productive on Linux how can you get more productive on Linux so today I'm going to be taking you through five ways you can be more productive on your Linux system let's go ahead and jump in the first way you can be more productive on Linux is to learn the command line the command line can be very scary for a lot of new users and beyond that there seems to be the idea that using the terminal aka the command line is somehow antiquated like you're expected to do things like you would have done in an MS-DOS back in the day but neither of those things is really true the command line is your friend on Linux transferring and moving files around between directories is so much easier in the command line connecting to remote computers using get taking notes and coding are all much easier and more efficient in the terminal for example let's just take a small simple example if you want to move every PNG file out of one folder and into another folder in a traditional file manager like you do in Windows or Mac you'd have to go through and sort by that file extension then select them all and then open up another instance or tab of that finder or Windows Explorer and then drag and drop those files you might miss some is not necessarily the most efficient way of doing it with a terminal command it's as simple as one thing so let's go ahead and show you this so let's go into my pictures folder and then let's just say walls it doesn't matter I have all these things and let's just say I wanted to move everything that had a .jpg file extension to a new directory so let's just make a directory called JPEGs and we'll do that and then I can go through and do see MV for move star .jpg and then we're gonna move that into the folder JPEGs and I'm not going to actually do this because I don't want to actually have to undo it but just doing that command would move every single one of those JPEGs files to the new folder that's all you'd have to do and that's why the command line is so powerful and that's just one example it's not even close to the only command line that can make your life easier you can append text to a text file using cat so let's just say I wanted I have a text file named text so T so I'm going to create a text file called text dot txt okay and let's just say I wanted to say put in the word the phrase hello world to the end of that thing now I could open up that in vim and put the text that I want in that file very easily but let's just say I wanted to do that right from the command line I could do that by doing echo hello world and then just put that in text dot txt now if we've been into text dot txt hello world is here now you could also so let's just say you had a another text file let's let's create another one called text to that txt and I could go through and do this I could do cat text dot txt into text to dot txt and now that's because I spelled that wrong that's not quite a work there we go not worked spell that's one thing you'll learn in Linux in an everyday life spelling is the most important thing you could possibly learn and if you fail to do so when you're like in a elementary school you're ruined for the rest of your life okay anyways now if we've been into text that text to that txt we'll see this also has our hello world in there so those are things that you are really very powerful and obviously this is just a very simplistic example but it's something that you could do and it's very cool because let's just say you're moving you've just distro hopped and you want to go through and set up your bash dot your bash RC file and you want to keep the standard bash RC file but you have a whole bunch of aliases that you have to have if you have all of your aliases in a text file you could go through and cat that alias dot txt into the end of your brand new bash RC file and then your bash RC file is all ready to go other things you can do is search through your documents and pictures using commands called find and locate you can install and uninstall programs much easier in the terminal than you can ever do a G in a GUI and there's just so much more I'm a big command line nerd and I'm not even the biggest one out there there's just so much you can do and I think that it's one of the main things you can do to be more productive on Linux so moving on to number two number two is use workspaces this is one area that I was really bad at before I started using tiling window managers when I was a KDE user I just had all my windows piled on my two monitors and I never used the workspace ever they existed but you know I just didn't use them but you don't have to use a tiling window manager or a window manager at all to utilize workspaces every single desktop environment that I know of has workspace functionality so first the question is what is a workspace so if you're taking a look at the screen here we're on workspace number five now technically this is DWM they call them tags and there's a reason for that you can look that up if you're interested but the basic functionality is the same so I'm on workspace five tag five if I move to six you can see I have audacity here if I move seven I'm on a blank workspace and basically what this allows me to do is have different applications and stuff assigned to different workspaces so that I always know where things are so basically what this means is you have ten workspaces most of the time ten is the default in desktop environments you might have four in window managers usually it's nine or ten that means you have ten desktops and each one of them can have different apps windows and so on opened on them and then you can just switch between them like so very easy I ran a poll a while back asking how many people how many workspaces people use and over 70% answered that they use between two to ten workspaces every single day and I think that's about normal but I think that changes as you get into Linux more when your new Linux user or even a new computer user chances are you even there don't know this functionality exists or you don't just don't use it so I think that this is something that can change the way a lot of people use their computers because it allows you to be more organized and you work it also allows you to segment your work you can put your browser on one workspace and then try to ignore it as much as possible that will try to keep you away from the cat videos on YouTube but really the key point here is organization because if you're on a desktop environment and it's off all your windows are floating all way all around and stuff and you have them piled on top of each other it can often times be very hard to find the things that you want to actually use and that you become a professional using alt tab if every type of app has its own workspace in this case like especially if you're using a tile window manager you'll be able to feel more organized and that makes you more app-defined that the program that you're looking for and that causes you to be more productive you're not constantly searching for the app like oh my goodness where did I find that one where's that where I put that one apple my goodness it's gone or you know accidentally closed it or you know I keep all tabbing through stuff and keep missing the tab because I've gone too far you know use workspaces it'll make you more organized number three is more of a general tip than productivity but I do feel that this is very important find your perfect desktop environment window manager when you first start using Linux feel free to hop between desktop environments and window managers as much as you want it's a good thing it's not a bad thing kind of got contrary to what a lot of people on YouTube think use everything you possibly can because what you're doing is searching for the one that's perfect for you or the one that you can at least customize to be perfect to you but part of being productive no matter what operating system or distro or distro that you're using is being comfortable in your working environment if that isn't the case it can cause distraction pain and dissatisfaction one of the great things about Linux is that there are so many options when it comes to desktop environments window managers and you can use them all it doesn't matter what distribution you're on chances are you can go through and just install whatever desktop environment window manager that you like that means if one suits your workflow better than any others you can easily make that change so find which desktop environment window manager works best for you because that comfort that you get from being satisfied with your environment will make you more productive at the end it also will keep you from having to tweak things over and over again so one of the problems I have with productivity is I like to rice things and there's nothing wrong with it but it oftentimes takes up a lot of time that is not necessary and what I've found is that once I've found my perfect desktop environment window manager in this case I'm using DWM I tend to rice it less when I'm happy with the way that window manager works so find one that you can customize and then be happy with instead of having to change it all the time and having to tweak things you know all the time because that stuff can really become time-consuming the next one is learn key bindings now this is not one that will apply to everyone because not everyone can be productive with a keyboard-centric workflow it's also one that will take a lot of time for you to develop because key bindings take muscle memory you've been trained probably since a very young age at least if you're between 30 and 40 or younger you know you've been trained for a long time to use a mouse and a keyboard you've been trained to use them both you use your mouse as a pointing you know device and your keyboard is tech-centric so that muscle memory is very hard-coded in your brain so using just a keyboard-centric workflow will take some time so this is not for everybody key bindings are available in almost every application imaginable and they are also included in most every desktop environment window manager and they're almost always customizable in some way so you can go through and create them change or you can go through and change them as much as you want to suit your needs the reason why these can be so good is that if you end up typing a lot for your work or school and you manage to use as many key bindings as possible then your hands never leave the keyboard this is helpful and that it saves time but it also helps prevent risk strain from moving back and forth between your mouse and your keyboard you'll be surprised at how much quicker your workflow becomes when you don't have to switch between the two different input devices applications like Firefox and Chrome have extensions that you can download to enable more key bindings things like Vim Vixen or Vim there's another Vim one that I can't remember what the name is this is great if you know and use them a lot since it brings the Vim bindings to the browser and there are a lot of different extensions for different applications that do the same thing and finally organize your files and don't bloat your system so this is one that is a little out there because it doesn't always necessarily translate to more productivity and it's hard to do especially if you've been using your computer for a long time the longer you use your computer the more stuff you'll accumulate on it files images text documents and so on all managed to be put all over the place unless you're very careful in your organization if you can make sure everything has its place you'll be so much more productive if you know exactly where the thing you're looking for resides it also helps that if you can't find something as long as you know the general area of it you can actually use things like find and locate in the terminal to find those things more quickly if you're just searching a directory then if you're searching your entire file system apps are another area that can sometimes cause you problems especially startup apps programs that start up with your computer can often slow your computer down significantly and that can cost your productivity so make sure you eliminate things in your system that you don't need running and it also bears to mention that the more applications you have the harder it is to remember that you have them installed and well that necessarily wouldn't cause you to lose productivity it may force you to have to always sift through hundreds of applications to find the one that you want so if you're not going to use something uninstall it they'll make you at least a little bit more productive it'll save you a little bit of time so those are five ways you can be more productive in Linux now I think those probably also apply to things like Mac OS and Windows but specifically for Linux the command line I think is probably the biggest one if you want to be productive on Linux and you want to be more efficient on Linux use the command line as much as possible now like I said this is not something that everybody can do a lot of people are very trained to use GUIs all the time and I feel sorry for those people because you know well you can be very you can be productive and efficient in a GUI it always has felt to me that it's just so much better in the command line so I implore you to give it a try learn as much about it as you can and while you may waste a little time if you choose to go back to just using GUIs I think you'll be happy if you use command line as much as possible so thanks for watching you can follow me on Twitter at Linuxcast you can follow me on patreon at patreon.com slash Linuxcast top tier supporters will be getting early access to some of my videos again starting next week real life has been absolutely bonkers lately so early access has not been something that I've been able to focus on this last couple weeks but it's coming back before I go I would like to take a moment thank our current patrons Devon Marcus, Meglin, Donnie's, Fenmerich, Camp and Mitchell thanks everybody for watching I'll see you next time