For example, I normally open mousepad (xfce equivalent of gedit) from the applications menu. However, I know that you can also do this in a terminal by typing mousepad
.
Following this example, what I want is whenever I open mousepad via GUI, a new line is written in a log file stating something like Sep 5 15:35:11 lucho@lucho:~$ mousepad
. More in general, what I want is to log all GUI activities that are potentially do-able via command-line (like opening programs, changing permissions, modifying a system settings, etc) but written in its alternative command-line execution format. I want this in order to improve my knowledge of how to use the command-line (without going through the man
pages). There are many things I do through the GUI which I don't do via command-line (some potentially automatable via a script or via keyboard shortcuts) and having this log file would be a good way to learn them.
I'm aware of the existence of the syslog file in /var/log
but that is not what I need. The Activity Log Manager app from Ubuntu repositories does not show command-line format, so far as I know. I need something like the .bash_history file that exist in my home folder but recording my GUI-based activities.
unity-control-center background
orgnome-control-center background
(depending on your desktop, Unity or XFCE or GNOME). But the outside world probably only will seegnome-control-center