Posts tagged: linux

All posts with the tag "linux"

46 posts latest post 2025-07-11
Publishing rhythm
Jul 2025 | 2 posts

Stow is a great tool for managing dotfiles. My usage looks like cloning my dotfiles to my home directory, setting some environment variables via a script, then stowing relevant packages and boom my config is good to go…

cd ~
git clone <my dotfiles repo>
cd dotfiles
# env variable stuff ignored here
stow zsh  # This will symlink my .zshrc file which is in ~/dotfiles/zsh to ~/.zshrc

By default stow will stow packages up one directory from the root directory. In this example the root directory is ~/dotfiles and the package is zsh. So the files in the zsh package will symlinked into ~/.

stow makes it easy to share dotfiles across machines, or safely experiment with config changes while always being protected by git since your dotfiles are in a git repo! …They are in a git repo… right?

Check out stow for a brief introduction to stow

What if I want to stow a package somewhere else? Boom, that’s where -t comes in…

Maybe I don’t like having my dotfiles repo at $HOME and instead I want it in ~/git or ~/personal just to stay organized… Well then I could have the same workflow except the stow command looks like this:

stow zsh -t ~/
#or
stow zsh -t $HOME

Sometimes I need to manually set a static IP of a Linux machine. I generally run the latest version of Ubuntu server in my VMs at home.

In Ubuntu 20 I’m able to change up /etc/netplan/<something>.yml

network:
  version: 2
  ethernets:
    enp0s4:
      addresses: [192.168.1.{Static IP}/24]
      gateway4: 192.168.1.1
      nameservers:
        addresses: [192.168.1.1, 1.1.1.1]

gateway4 is your router address nameservers is a list of desired DNS servers for that machine to use. I usually use my router which is configured to use my pi-hole as my primary DNS, then set 1.1.1.1 (CloudFlare) as a backup

Hit it with the sudo netplan apply and you should be good to go!