Friday, April 26, 2019
How to Reboot or Shut Down Linux Using the Command Line
Feel like starting over? This tutorial will show you how to cleanly and safely reboot or shut down your Linux or macOS computer from the command line.
We’re Going Down
Sometimes you just have to go for the reboot or the total shutdown. If you’re working on a GUI-less server or you’re on an SSH session to a remote computer, the command line is your only option. Linux and Unix-like systems such as macOS provide several commands to shutdown or reboot your system right from the command line.
The commands you can use are:
- shutdown
- reboot
- halt
- poweroff
Looking through the man pages for these commands can be confusing. Depending on which command line options you choose, all of these commands can perform shutdowns, reboots, and system halts. In fact, the man pages for reboot, halt, and poweroff contain exactly the same information.
What’s Behind This?
The answer lies in the systemd bootstrap system which replaced the venerable System V init system. In the Linux world, Fedora started to use systemd in 2011. Since then it has been adopted by a great many distributions. Debian and Ubuntu swapped to systemd in 2015.
On systemd-based distributions the shutdown, reboot, halt, and poweroff commands are effectively shortcuts that point to the systemctl command. Retaining these commands provides a degree of compatibility with System V init-based distributions. It means shell scripts (and hard-core System V system administrators) don’t keel over if they are moved to a computer with a systemd distribution running on it.
Using Shutdown
Shutting down or rebooting a multi-user system means you have to plan ahead. You need to decide when you’re going to go for the shutdown or reboot, and warn the other system users the shutdown is coming, and when. If it is your own computer and you’re the only one who uses it, life is much simpler.
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Geek Trivia: Nintendo’s Only Foray Into Breakfast Cereal Featured Which Characters?
Nintendo’s Only Foray Into Breakfast Cereal Featured Which Characters? |
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Thursday, April 25, 2019
Windows 10 Now Requires 12-16 GB More Storage
Microsoft has raised Windows 10’s minimum storage requirement to 32 GB. Previously, it was either 16 GB or 20 GB. This change affects Windows 10’s upcoming May 2019 Update, also known as version 1903 or 19H1.
These details come from Microsoft’s minimum hardware requirements web page. They were first spotted by Pureinfotech and brought to our attention by Thurrott.
Before this update, 32-bit versions of Windows required a minimum of 16 GB of storage on your device, while 64-bit versions of Windows required 20 GB. Now, both will require 32 GB.
It’s unclear exactly why Microsoft made this change. The May 2019 Update now reserves about 7 GB of your PC’s storage for updates, so it may just take more space in general.
Let’s be honest, though: You always wanted more than 16 GB of space for Windows 10. Microsoft wanted Windows 10, like Windows 8 before it, to function on tablets and lightweight laptops with a small amount of storage. Those lightweight devices often had a compressed operating system and had trouble upgrading to Windows 10.
While this seems like a big change, it really isn’t. You should have avoided devices with this paltry amount of storage because they wouldn’t have functioned well with Windows 10. Now, Microsoft is making it official. Microsoft’s PC partners can’t try to sell laptops and tablets with less than 32 GB of built-in storage anymore. That’s good news for shoppers.
If you have an existing PC with less than 32 GB of storage running Windows 10, we’re not sure what happens to your device. It may never receive an update to the May 2019 Update (version 1903.) That’s up to Microsoft.
How to Use Google Translate Directly in Google Sheets
Google Translate lets you translate words or phrases from one language to another, but did you know that there’s a formula you can use to translate a batch of words directly in Google Sheets? Here’s how to do it.
Translating Text in Google Sheets
Integrating Google Translate with Google Sheets was a good call. Now you no longer have to switch back and forth between tabs to translate text. Translating text in Sheets is as simple as inputting a formula. Here’s the structure of the formula:
=GOOGLETRANSLATE(“text”, “source language”, “target language”)
When entering the text to be translated, you can either type the actual word in the formula itself, or you can input a cell containing the word to be translated.
In this example, we want to translate the English words in column A (which we’ve named “English”) into their Chinese equivalents in column B (which we’ve named “Chinese”). Since we have the words already in the sheet, we can just call the cells that contain them. Here, we’re calling cell A2, which contains the word “Cake.”
Note: If you input the text directly in the formula, you must include quotation marks around the word. If you enter the cell in which the word is residing, you must leave off the quotation marks.
Next in our formula comes the source language. When entering the source language, you need to enter the two-letter language code. If you’re unsure of what the source language is, you can enter in “auto” and Google will auto-detect the language. We know “cake” is an English word, so we’ll use “en” here. Note that you must include the quotation marks around the two-letter language code.