How to enable the UEFI in VirtualBox for a Windows 10 virtual machine running on Linux

This is for those who missed checking the UEFI checkbox in the settings prior to installing Windows 10 in VirtualBox. Do the below at your own risk, take appropriate backup, First, check and confirm if BIOS Mode is Legacy, which means MBR is the partition and not GPT. To do this, press Windows+R and run:msinfo32.msc … Continue reading How to enable the UEFI in VirtualBox for a Windows 10 virtual machine running on Linux

How to install Spotify on Linux Mint, Ubuntu or Debian desktop

Spotify also has a desktop application that works on Linux Mint, Debian or Ubuntu Linux. To install it, open a terminal window and enter the following: $ curl -sS https://download.spotify.com/debian/pubkey_7A3A762FAFD4A51F.gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor --yes -o /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/spotify.gpg <enter> $ echo "deb http://repository.spotify.com stable non-free" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/spotify.list <enter> $ sudo apt-get update <enter> $ … Continue reading How to install Spotify on Linux Mint, Ubuntu or Debian desktop

How to shred a file on Linux leaving no remnants

Sometimes we have files on our hard disks that we would like to remove for good. If you have set up full disk encryption when you installed Linux on your computer, you will have an encrypted hard disk which is pretty much useless to anyone without the password that only you know. However, sometimes, to … Continue reading How to shred a file on Linux leaving no remnants

How to verify files copied with hashes computed using hashdeep on Linux

Linux is very meticulous about maintaining the integrity of files and the file system when copying files across folders. However, there are occassions when the copies of files need to be verified with those of the original. To do this, hashdeep is a good tool to compute hashes of files copied and compare them with … Continue reading How to verify files copied with hashes computed using hashdeep on Linux

Fix NTFS USB drive in linux

At times, there are errors with mounting NTFS formatted volumes from a USB drive. This can cause pain. Below is the method of how to fix the error, and even though it worked for me, there is no guarantee it will work for anyone else. Try it at your own risk. Open a terminal window … Continue reading Fix NTFS USB drive in linux

Thunar file manager does not show archiving options in the menu upon right click

Thunar File Manager on Xubuntu did not display the options of Extract or Extract Here... when right clicking on an archive file. This was because the thunar-archive-plugin is not installed. To get the option to extract archive files, open a terminal window and install the thunar-archive-plugin as below: $ sudo apt-get install thunar-archive-plugin <enter>

How to hash files in Windows 10 into a file

Getting the MD5 hash of a file on Linux is very easy. However, in Windows, there are several utilities, but using Windows internally inbuilt command certutil, it can be done as follows in the Windows shell: C:>for /r %%f in(x) do (certutil -hashfile "%%f" MD5) >> output.txt output.txt will contain the files with their MD5 … Continue reading How to hash files in Windows 10 into a file

How to speed up starting of Ubuntu 19.04 or Debian 12 not using plymouth

Open a terminal windows in linux and enter the following commands: $ sudo systemd-analyze blame <enter> It was found the plymouth-quit-wait.service takes very long time in boot. To eliminate the problem, enter following commands: $ sudo vi /etc/default/grub <enter> Insert below line in the file and save the file: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="noplymouth video=SVIDEO-1:d" <esc>:wq Now, run update … Continue reading How to speed up starting of Ubuntu 19.04 or Debian 12 not using plymouth