This neat little tip was dropped off in our inbox by a reader called Darren – so thanks goes to him.

Become a lazy geek

“Fed up with typing ‘sudo apt-get install blahblah’, ‘apt-cache search blahblah’ and ‘sudo apt-get purge blahblah’?“ asks Darren.

Add the following ‘aliases’ to the ‘bashrc’ file in your home folder. You can locate this by pressing CTRL + H when in your home folder and seeking out ‘.bashrc’ (note the period)

alias install=’sudo apt-get -y install’
alias search=’apt-cache search’
alias purge=’sudo apt-get purge’

Now you can use the following simple commands in the terminal, using ‘sudo’ where applicable.

  • To search for a package: search rhythmbox
  • To install a package: install rhythmbox
  • To purge a package: purge rhythmbox
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