how to use ‘dpkg’ to get a list of installed applications. It was a pretty simple command.

Now, you could try this:

[code]cat Documents/installed_apps.txt | grep ii | wc -l[/code]

cat‘ stands for concatenate. It has been around since pretty much Unix v. 1. It basically reads a file and spits out the content. The man page describes it as thus:

See? Pretty simple.

[code]dpkg -l | grep ii | wc -l[/code]

pipe. You’ll see it fairly often. It’s used to take the commands from one command and use them in another. It goes back to the philosophy of ‘hiding the internals’, with the goal being simplicity and clarity. But, you never have to make the text file to perform this counting exercise.

 

shoulder-surfing won’t be able to see the number of characters in your password. This is how to get some feedback when you enter your password in the terminal.

[code]sudo nano /etc/sudoers[/code]

Enter your password and hit enter, of course. (This will be the last time you enter your password in the terminal without some sort of visual feedback!)

Now it gets a little tricky. 

Use the down arrow until your at the start of the line that says:

[code]Defaults            mail_badpass[/code]

Press the ENTER button. This should move that line down and leave a blank line above it. Use the arrow button to move up to that blank line and enter:

[code]Defaults[/code]

Then press the TAB button on your keyboard. This will move the cursor to the right location. Add this text:

[code]pwfeedback[/code]

The entire line should look something like:

[code]Defaults            pwfeedback[/code]

Press CTRL + X, then Y, and then ENTER.

[code]sudo apt update[/code]