Change your hostname

The hostname of a Linux system is used to identify the device on a network, thus highlighting which system you’re interacting with. In the end, everything drills down into ip addresses, but those can change frequently, for instance, hostnames give us a way to know which device we’re working with, either on the network or physically, without having to remember the mentioned ip addresses.

Checking your current hostname

Run the following command:

$ hostname

Here is the output:

$ android10-xps-arch

If you want more detailed information, you could also use:

$ hostnamectl

Which displays:

 Static hostname: android10-xps-arch
       Icon name: computer-laptop
         Chassis: laptop
      Machine ID: ...
         Boot ID: ...
Operating System: Arch Linux                      
          Kernel: Linux 5.15.7-zen1-1-zen
    Architecture: x86-64
 Hardware Vendor: Dell Inc.
  Hardware Model: XPS 13 9310

As we can see, our hostname is android10-xps-arch according to both commands above.

Modifying your hostname

Now we are going to change our hostname to android10-linux by running the following command:

$ sudo hostnamectl set-hostname android10-linux

We can double check our changes by running again:

$ hostnamectl

 Static hostname: android10-linux
       Icon name: computer-laptop
         Chassis: laptop
      Machine ID: ...
         Boot ID: ...
Operating System: Arch Linux                      
          Kernel: Linux 5.15.7-zen1-1-zen
    Architecture: x86-64
 Hardware Vendor: Dell Inc.
  Hardware Model: XPS 13 9310