One of my essential tools for working with code and data files is meld. It’s a graphical diff tool, so if you’ve ever used diff and struggled to make sense of the output, meld is here to help. This is a brilliant description from the project’s website: Meld is a visual diff and merge tool ...
Last week I covered terminal multiplexer byobu, and this week’s tool is quite similar. Terminator is a single-window split-screen terminal multiplexer that allows you to send identical keystrokes to all terminals at once. This means you can SSH into any number of machines, and run the same commands...
Byobu is a text-based window manager and terminal multiplexer. If you’ve ever used screen, it’s similar but more modern and more intuitive. If you SSH’d into a Pi or server, ran sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade for example, and lost your internet connection while it was running, your command...
Today I’m sharing three tools for checking your internet and LAN speed: speedtest, fast and iperf. speedtest speedtest is an old favourite. It’s implemented in Python, packaged in apt and also available with pip. You can use it as a command line tool, or within a Python script. Install it...
Have you ever used pastebin websites like pastebin.com to share snippets of code, data or text? Did you know you can publish a file from your computer or a Raspberry Pi to a pastebin site with a single command? Install pastebinit: sudo apt install pastebinit Mac users can install with...
I use SSH constantly. Every day I find myself logged in to multiple servers and Pis (both in the same room as me and over the internet). I have many devices I need access to, and different requirements for gaining access, so as well as using various SSH/SCP command options I have to maintain a...
I was recently introduced to ranger by Dave Jones. It’s an incredibly handy terminal based file navigator that’s written in Python and is available in Debian, Raspbian and Ubuntu. Ranger allows you to navigate your filesystem using the arrow keys on your keyboard: up/down to select files in the...
The Raspberry Pi computer can be used in all kinds of settings and for a variety of purposes. It obviously has a place in education for helping students with learning programming and maker skills in the classroom and the hackspace, and it has plenty of industrial applications in the workplace and...
Over the last four years, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has put a great deal of effort into optimizing Raspbian, its port of Debian, for Pi hardware, including creating new educational software, programming tools, and a nicer looking desktop. In September, we released an update that introduced PIXEL...
Back in February at the Raspberry Jamboree, my colleagues Carrie Anne, Clive and I were interviewed by the Linux Voice team about Raspberry Pi's views on computing education. Linux Voice is a fantastic new free software magazine which was funded by a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo at the end of...
Today I saw fixubuntu.com featured on Hacker News. I assumed it was to be yet another rant about why you should use distro X instead of Ubuntu, and how Canonical are ruining it. I was half-right. I clicked the link to see what it was about and found a large box containing a list of Linux commands,...
I’ve now hosted four Raspberry Jams in Manchester. I posted about the first and second, here’s a summary of what went on at III & IV. The August Manchester Raspberry Jam kicked off when Kat opened up the Madlab and I gave an opening talk about what had been going on in the news in the Raspberry Pi...
Like a lot of other Ubuntu users, when I installed Ubuntu 10.10 I hated the new desktop environment Unity. I wanted to get back to the Gnome desktop with the Applications | Places | System menu where I knew where things were, I didn't feel comfortable with the silly oversized icons on the left, and...
I’ve now run two Raspberry Pi events in Manchester, affectionately known as the Raspberry Jam. The first in June, which was the first Raspberry Jam in the UK, and which featured on the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s website where we gained recognition for getting people together to share ideas,...