Ask Lemmy

Actually use Home and End keys to get to the start and end of text.

Ctrl + F for searching text. Very useful.

Alt + Tab for window switching.

Linux + USB drive to switch away from Windows.

Control Backspace deletes whole words. Misspelled control? Faster to delete and retype than move my cursor around when I'm on a roll.

when my computer pisses me off i like to smash it

Linux is the easier to install, less headache to run, less configuration needed, better to game on platform compared to windows.

That's my life hack. Get over the Stockholm syndrome.

Not too sure if you can do this in windows, but I've enjoyed mapping alt+tab and alt+shift+tab to windows+mouse scroll

Ctrl + shift + esc brings up the Windows task manager directly instead of the menu you get when you press ctrl + alt + del

Oh kid, I do this for over forty years now.

Linux Mint stand-in for Ctrl+Alt+Del on Windows, for when you can't open system monitor:

Get an interactive top you like > When PC freezes go to tty, open top, works like a task manager

if you're concerned about how much you need to move your hand, then you'll probably love (neo)vim

1. Shift + Tab (also works on Linux)

2. If you have a mouse with side buttons, you can use the side buttons to go back or go to the next page on browsers

3. Pressing Alt + F4 on the desktop opens up a dialog asking if you want to shut down, restart, log out, etc. (I think this works on Linux as well)

My main one is to learn shortcuts on your most used programs. Using the mouse for everything is a waste of time, but that has been said multiple times.

My second is to create scripts to do a bunch of repetitive tasks. For example, I have a script I run on my work PC after I log on to the VPN that starts my "always on" programs (like notepad++), unlocks the hosts file, etc. I have some sendto scripts for converting files with pandoc, fetching multiple git repos in one go, etc. It just speeds up things and avoids errors versus me doing them manually.

On Windows I use PowerShell and on Linux I use bash, meaning they work without additional software installed.

Not most used, but I recently discovered a lot of new options in COSMIC's launcher, and I use them all the time.

Just type ? and you'll see what I mean.

Ctrl+r on bash and zsh (possibly others) for quickly recalling anything you've typed before

Dunno if Emacs Lisp counts as a life hack, but I've been slowly learning it, and it's very nice to be able to setup custom workflows with such a high degree of customization (and a substantial amount of flycheck yelling at me)

Recently had to help a relative who still uses windows, so here's a freebie from Linux:

You can use super + number to launch any pinned program on the taskbar. For example let's say you have your browser right of the start button and file explorer on the next spot right, pressing super+1 launches the browser and super+2 the explorer

Edit: super = windows logo key

My favorite windows shortcut is 'Windows+shift+left/right' to move an application between monitors. Very helpful for moving games around or snapping without have to use a mouse.

To navigate to the previous folder

cd -

To reissue the previous command with a prefix. For example:

cat /root/.ssh/authorized_keys # Will fail without privilege

sudo !!

To use the argument of the previous command. For example:

tac ~/.ssh/authorized_keys # oops, misspelled cat

cat !$

Win + E to open a file browser window

Microsoft has never fixed the sticky keys replacement cheese to unlock a PC you have physical access to. Ive done it up to W10, never tested it on W11.

1. Get a Windows recovery USB.

2. Boot into the recovery menu and open the command prompt.

3. Navagate to system32 and make a copy of the cmd.exe file (for a backup)

4. Copy the sticky_keys.exe and have it overwrite cmd.exe, then reboot.

5. On the login screen, smash the shift key until the command prompt appears and for some reason (because no user has logged in yet) it has admin permissions, so you can reset local passwords.

6. Once your logged in as a local admin, copy the backup of cmd.exe back so noone is none the wiser (except the security software that knows you messed with something)

Shift + del: skips the trash and actually deletes things

Use a tiling window manager like sway.

Get some big HDDs and self host your own file storage on zfs. Same for media servers like jellyfin. You can also host qBitTorrent web client so it's accessible from anywhere.

Set up a VM in Hetzner cloud and host vaultwarden.

Expose your services over wireguard.

Set up three WireGuard network interfaces on a VPS then accept traffic from your end devices to route through the three double hop VPN tunnels to a country with better privacy laws. Install an ad and tracking blocking DNS server to block all nefarious hostnames as well as more granular blockers for your browsers.

Windows+L every time I leave my desk.