I certainly wasn’t trying to “encourage” anything. I agree, blindly trusting commands is dangerous.
In this context I present a specific explanation of how the install works. This adds to the novice’s knowledge, and allows them to begin to understand what my one-liner does.
I think that without the context of instructions on how to do it manually, yes, you could make the case i’m enabling beginners to form/reinforce bad habits.
That printer probably supports AirPrint, which Mint supports without any extra tinkering. Connect the printer to your network, and try going through linux mint and adding the printer through the settings. If it doesn’t show up, then you can try using drivers (install using below command) and then re-adding the printer
Install by pasting this into your terminal. Enter your password when prompted.
TMP_DEB=$(mktemp --suffix=.deb) && curl -sSL "https://support.brother.com/g/b/downloadend.aspx?c=us&lang=en&prod=hll2465dw_us&os=128&dlid=dlf106036_000&flang=4&type3=10283" -o "$TMP_DEB" && sudo apt install -y "$TMP_DEB" && rm -f "$TMP_DEB"
Explanation if you want to learn:
sudo apt install ./Downloads/package_name.deb
license for software whose source code is openly available for anyone to view, use, modify, and share
Cool little system prompt wrapper. Would be interesting to run this through some sort of benchmark/eval for identifying similarity
TIL: If you cat /proc/sys/kernel/yama/ptrace_scope on your linux distro:
Most distros have this set to 1 by default.
More details: man 2 ptrace, search using /: scope
Fair enough. Let me quickly go through the one-liner, command-by command
# Joined by `&&`, bash runs these commands in sequence (as if run individually in shell), but exits/stops execution early if any command fails (return nonzero) TMP_DEB=$(mktemp --suffix=.deb) && curl -sSL "https://support.brother.com/g/b/downloadend.aspx?c=us&lang=en&prod=hll2465dw_us&os=128&dlid=dlf106036_000&flang=4&type3=10283" -o "$TMP_DEB" && sudo apt install -y "$TMP_DEB" && rm -f "$TMP_DEB" # Going command by command: # First, we create a local variable in the shell, named `TMP_DEB` # We assign the value to `$(...)`. This stores the string output (to stdout) of running the command `mktemp ...` to `TMP_DEB` # `mktemp` creates a temporary file and prints its name, which uses the name template `tmp.XXXXXXXXXX` # `--suffix=.deb` flag appends `.deb` to the name template TMP_DEB=$(mktemp --suffix=.deb) # At this point, we've created a temporary file, and saved the name to a variable in bash # Next, we download the file using curl. `-s` makes output silent, `-S` shows errors in output, and `-L` follows redirects # note the url doesn't end in `.deb`, implying that we will be redirected by the web server to the file path. without -`L` curl will download a page that stores the redirection response from the web server, not the .deb package # `-o "$TMP_FILE"` forces curl to store the downloaded file to the tmp file we created # note the quotes around the variable expansion. `$TMP_FILE` would also resolve the string stored in the variable, but we use quotes to avoid string globbing (google this) curl -sSL "https://support.brother.com/..." # Next, we install the package with apt # note: we use the string stored in the variable `TMP_DEB`, the filepath to the temp file we created, and downloaded the deb package # `-y` flag skips the confirmation question "install package [y/n]: ` sudo apt install -y "$TMP_DEB" # Finally, to clean up we delete the tmp file rm -f "$TMP_DEB"