Get the startup time of your Linux machine with systemd.

The systemd-analyze command will print the time taken for the system to boot up. This separates the time for the kernel and the userspace environment. root@darkstar:~# systemd-analyze Startup finished in 4.728s (kernel) + 28.339s (userspace) = 33.068sroot@darkstar:~# systemd-analyze Startup finished in 4.728s (kernel) + 28.339s (userspace) = 33.068s This command will get the date and … Read more

How to mount the Ubuntu filesystem read-write when you have mounted the filesystem in recovery mode.

If you have appended this to the end of the grub command line to change a lost password: init=/bin/bash Ubuntu and you get this error. root@USB-h55-PC:~# passwd jason Enter new UNIX password: Retype new UNIX password: passwd: Authentication token manipulation error passwd: password unchangedroot@USB-h55-PC:~# passwd jason Enter new UNIX password: Retype new UNIX password: passwd: … Read more

How to disable fast boot on Windows 8.1 that prevents mounting the partition from Linux.

The fast boot feature of Windows 8.1 allows a user to load Windows faster than ever before; but this can interfere with the mounting of the Windows partition from Linux. This forces the user to mount the partition read-only. But if you use this command in a command prompt on Windows, this problem will go … Read more

How to get to safe mode in Windows 8 Pro final release.

This is not really applicable to Linux, but I am running Windows 8 Pro dual booted with Linux Mint 14 and I encountered a bug that stopped Windows 8 from fully starting up. I found out that if you press the F5 key just after booting Windows 8 you will see the test “Please Wait” … Read more

Fedora 18 to support UEFI secure boot and to ship with the MATE desktop.

The Fedora 18 Linux distribution will have support for UEFI secure boot uopn release as well as the Linux Mint MATE desktop available for installation. I prefer XFce4 now; but the MATE desktop still is very good for those of us who want a retro looking Linux desktop that is very attractive at the same … Read more

Very good deals on Solid State Drives and how to optimise your SSD when running Debian.

This 128 Gigabyte SSD drive is only AU$99.00. This is an awesome deal for the price that is asked; Since Debian can boot very fast anyway; having an SSD drive as your boot drive would make your computer boot up very fast indeed. Solid State Drives use microchips to store data instead of using platters … Read more

How to boot an Ubuntu ISO without a thumb drive or a CD. Read more to find out.

I was wanting to try out an older version of Ubuntu on my netbook; but I did not want to write the ISO image to a thumb drive to boot it; therefore I copied the ISO image to a subfolder of my /boot folder; /boot/iso and then I added this section to my /etc/grub.d/40_custom file … Read more

Re-installing the Grand Unified Boot loader (GRUB2) in Linux Mint 13.

I recently installed Ubuntu 11.10 on my computer, triple-booting with Linux Mint 12 and Linux Mint 13, this overwrote my boot-loader for my Linux Mint 13 installation. Therefore, after booting into my Linux Mint 13 distribution I re-installed the boot-loader using the command-line. Using the grub-install command to re-install the proper boot-loader to the boot … Read more

Setting up the Linux Mint grub menu. How to use a *.png wallpaper to spice up your boot menu.

Setting up the Linux Mint grub menu, set a png file as the background This is my copy of the /etc/grub.d/06_mint_theme file I found on my system, I have uncommented quite a lot of the code and I got it working. I then copied a png format image to my /boot/grub folder and then ran … Read more