Aliases are custom commands which can replace a longer command or a group of commands, thus making it faster and easier to execute particular tasks by only typing a few characters. For example, one can only type upgrade instead of typing sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get upgrade and upgrade his Debian-based system. Aliases are very useful time-savers.

In this tutorial I’ll show how to get some nicely colored man pages by adding several lines inside the .bashrc file, explaining what the code means and how it works.

I've recently seen a screencast by gotbletu about setting up hot corners for the Compiz Grid plugin which is not hard to set up but it requires a lot of copying and pasting so I though I'd make a script to do everything automatically so to achieve exactly what you see in the video, all you have to do is run the script I've created.

This is the second article in this series, and brings eight additional tips for working faster with the shell. Here is the first article of the series, containing 10 tips.

Here are 10 Bash tips which should make working in a terminal faster and more productive.

In my search for a clean Desktop (because I got tired of cleaning it manually), I came across "Directory cleaner and files organizer", a script (with Zenity for a GUI) that automatically cleans any directory (and thus the Desktop folder) by moving the files to various folders such as all the pictures into ~/Pictures, the archives into ~/Archives, documents into ~/Documents and so on.

Here is a cool bash alias which you can place you your ~/.bashrc file to be able to copy and paste from the command line:

If you tried Gnome Shell, you probably noticed how cool it is to quickly add / delete workspaces using the + / - buttons.

The script currently comes in multiple languages: English, Spanish*, French*, Czech* and Portuguese (but you can translate it into your language if you want - there are only 10 short lines to translate) and you can choose between 5 different compression levels: Screen-view only

Bruce Ingalls sent us a new and much improved version of his Java Update script for Ubuntu. The script uses Zenity for a GUI so it's very easy to use.

A new version of "What to do after installing Ubuntu? Run this script!" has been released. The script now has an actual name: "Ubuntu 10.04 Start".

The main purpose of this script is to speed up configuring Ubuntu 10.04 immediately after you've just installed it. This includes both installing popular applications and codecs as well as fixing some annoyances in Ubuntu 10.04.

A script which automatically determines all the NTFS drives on your computer and sets them to mount on each startup.

Here's what the script does:

WebUpd8 reader Remy sent us a tip with a bash script which uses Zenity and ffmpeg for easily converting various audio files. It can convert from / to flac, mp3, wav and ogg.

I was reading an article on tux-planet.fr about xdotool when I realized I can use this to create a script to focus (activate) the Pidgin conversation window using a shortcut key - something I have been searching for a long time.

I really like the two new Ubuntu themes (Ambiance and Radiance) and I for once can't decide which one to use. So to use them both, I've modified the script created for New Wave Chronos to use the Radiance theme from 6 A.M. to 5 P.M. and Ambiance from 5 P.M. to 6 A.M.