A Running List of useful Linux utilities

This will be a place where I’ll track a running list of useful Linux utilities.

Convert Image Files from one format to another (in particular, convert annoying HEIC formats to JPG/PNG etc) – Requires ImageMagick to be installed:

convert <input_image> <output_image>

convert (<input_image1> <input_image2>|<wildcard glob>) <output_pdf>

Compress a PDF file – needed when uploading a scanned file or concatenated PDF output to online portals/tools that limit file size. Requires GhostScript to be installed:

ps2pdf <input_pdf> <output_pdf>

Set Mouse scroll speed. Requires imwheel to be installed. Put the following in $HOME/.imwheelrc and run imwheel -kill

".*"
None, Up, Button4, 5
None, Down, Button5, 5

Converting a JSON array of strings into one element in each line without quotes – so for example, go from an input file of ["a", "b", "c"] to output file of a\nb\nc

cat <input_file> | tr ',' '\n' | tr -d '\[\"\] '

Reboot to BIOS from the OS
- Linux: systemctl reboot --firmware-setup
- Windows: shutdown /r /fw /f /t 0
Remotely access Linux Desktop
- Install xrdp, systemctl start xrdp, connect using krdc
Run a GUI program as another user over xrdp or remote session
- export XAUTHORITY=~/.Xauthority; su <user> <program>