The Flipper Zero is a Swiss Army knife of a pen-testing tool, combining a radio, an RFID interface, an infrared transceiver, and Bluetooth in a small, handheld package. Using one is relatively easy for the technically minded, but its user interface has a small screen and buttons that require multiple steps for operation. A new project called V3SP3R (Vesper) aims to change that by using an AI model and an Android app for easily and quickly controlling the Flipper.

The Vesper app installs on an Android device and uses OpenRouter to connect to any of the service's AI models. The bot then becomes a go-between between the user and the Flipper, controlling all of its subsystems. Users can then ask questions and issue commands to their hacking tool, ranging from asking the battery percentage, to analyzing an IR capture, up to creating entire scripts to interface with other devices.

V3SP3R's input is multimodal, meaning users can talk to the bot via text chat, voice commands, and even by sending pictures using the phone's camera. As an added bonus, Vesper integrates with Mentra smart glasses, allowing for full hands-free operation and picture-taking. Any dreams of Hollywood "hack the firewall" scenarios may well come true (at least to some extent).

Readers are probably concerned about security and auditing, and rightly so, given the fact that AI agents don't have the greatest reputation for staying on task. Vesper classifies each of its operation types from low to high risk, and asks the user for approval as necessary. System-level operations like firmware access and some settings are blocked outright. The app keeps a history log of the interactions with the bot for auditing.

Installation and usage seems to be fairly straightforward for a tool of this time: build and install the Vesper APK on your phone, set up an OpenRouter account and configure its credentials there in, and connect to the Flipper Zero. The project page contains suggestions about the best models to use, weighing cost, speed, and effectiveness.

The Flipper itself has been in the news oftentimes for facilitating malicious hacking, usually as part of arguably misguided bans targeting commonly used security researching tools, but the color of the hat you put on when using Vesper and a Flipper is ultimately your responsibility. Enterprising security experts and general hackers can get going with Vesper by watching a Youtube demo. If you're not into hacking, you can use the Flipper to just play some games, too.

AMD’s Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) and Curve Optimizer (CO) are two powerful tools that can help squeeze additional performance out of Ryzen desktop processors. Primarily a feature that removes power limits but is classified as overclocking, PBO can increase power, current, and voltage limits to boost clock speeds for improved performance. Since it works in real-time, it allows the CPU to run faster during heavy workloads without requiring manual overclocking. If you want more detail on manual overclocking or on stress testing approaches, head to our How to Overclock your CPU article, but for the basics of using AMD's Ryzen Master for PBO and CO, you are in the right place.

CO is a feature available within PBO that can be used to adjust the voltage-frequency curve of all or individual cores. As modern desktop processors ship with slightly higher stock voltages to ensure stability, reducing the voltage leads to less power consumption and lower heat generation while sustaining their rated clock speeds.

Given the right conditions, this improved efficiency allows the CPU to maintain higher boost clock speeds for longer periods since it is less likely to hit the thermal or power limits. The result is quieter operation, lower temperatures, and in some cases, better real-world performance.

Having said that, undervolting comes with potential drawbacks. Excessive voltage reduction can lead to system instability, random freezes, crashes, or blue screens (BSOD), especially under heavy workloads. Finding the right settings for stable operations can also be time-consuming, often requiring hours of stress testing to identify the right balance between voltage and performance.

In certain cases, lowering the voltage can reduce performance, as the CPU may struggle to maintain its intended clock speeds, resulting in slower processing. Results may also vary due to the silicon lottery, meaning some chips can handle more aggressive voltage reductions and remain stable compared to others.

While undervolting can be achieved through your motherboard’s BIOS, AMD’s Ryzen Master software offers all the necessary tools to fine-tune your CPU, including Precision Boost Overdrive and Curve Optimizer. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to use them:

Download and install AMD Ryzen Master

Head over to the official AMD website and visit the Ryzen Master download page. Click on the download button for Ryzen Master and grab the latest version that is compatible with your operating system and CPU generation. Once the installation file is downloaded, locate the file and double-click on it to start the installation process. Follow the setup wizard to install Ryzen Master on your system.

After the setup finishes, the installer may ask you to restart your system. Once you boot into Windows, launch the Ryzen Master software. Heed the warning that appears each time you open the software; overclocking voids your warranty, and all forms of PBO are strictly classified as overclocking.

The software will open in Basic View with limited controls and a dashboard showing key system information, including your processor model, clock speeds, temperature, voltage, and various overclocking profiles.

To access performance tuning features such as Precision Boost Overdrive and Curve Optimizer, switch to Advanced View by clicking the button at the bottom of the interface.

Enable Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO)

Enabling Advanced View gives access to a wide range of controls along with system monitoring tools. On the top left are multiple performance profiles, including Creator Mode, Game Mode, and two additional options, all of which can be tweaked.

You can also adjust additional parameters, including PPT (Package Power Tracking), EDC (Electrical Design Current), and TDC (Thermal Design Current) with the different PBO modes.

Under Control Mode, you can select Precision Boost Overdrive, which has basic automated EDC, TDC, and PPT values. These values are automatically set to motherboard limits, as the motherboard firmware automatically determines safe values based on its power delivery capabilities.

For more granular control, you can choose Auto Overclocking mode, which allows you to define a Boost Override CPU value that increases the clock speed of the processor beyond the rated boost clock, but this maxes out at +200 MHz. This also unlocks the PBO Scalar option, which increases the amount of time the processor runs at a higher boost clock.

Once you select your desired options, hit Apply and Test at the bottom. The Ryzen Master software will now apply your settings and run a quick test to check for system stability.

Once PBO is active, the CPU should begin using any additional headroom to boost more aggressively during heavy workloads.

Using Curve Optimizer (CO)

With Precision Boost Overdrive enabled, you can now fine-tune the processor using Curve Optimizer. As mentioned earlier, this feature allows you to adjust the voltage-frequency curve of the CPU cores, or in simpler terms, reduce the voltage required for a given clock speed.

Select the Curve Optimizer section from the menu on the left. You can choose between applying a curve adjustment to all cores at the same time or tuning each core individually. We recommend applying the same voltage offset to all cores as it is less tedious and make sure that Eco Mode is disabled.

Since our goal is to apply a negative curve offset, begin by selecting All Cores to reveal a new section called CO All Core Value. Next, enter a negative value. A good starting point would be –10 before gradually working your way to a lower value, as we don’t want to push the processor beyond its stability limits.

After entering the value, click on Start Optimizing. The Ryzen Master software will run a short validation test to check for stability issues. If the system remains stable, you can save the configuration as a profile.

Testing system stability

While Ryzen Master runs a quick validation test, it is best to perform a long stress test to confirm that the undervolt is truly stable, as real-world workloads can behave differently from short synthetic tests. You can test for system stability by running a CPU-demanding game or a benchmark like Cinebench R23 or Prime 95.

Validate your results by running the benchmark before applying a negative voltage offset and comparing the results after applying the offset. Ideally, the benchmark score after undervolting the CPU should improve by a small margin.

Make sure that you also monitor the CPU temperatures, thermal throttling, clock speeds, and system stability during testing. In the event of a system crash, freezing, or hardware error, the curve offset might be too aggressive. Reduce the negative offset slightly and repeat the testing process until you find a stable configuration.

With the right settings dialed in, Precision Boost Overdrive and Curve Optimizer can help unlock additional performance and reduce temperatures on your Ryzen processor. By carefully offsetting the voltage, you are allowing the CPU to sustain higher boost clocks for longer during demanding workloads.

Remember, patience is key. Every processor behaves differently, and the ideal settings for one system may not work for another. Take your time to make gradual adjustments and test for stability before settling on a final configuration.

In this how-to, I’ll show you some quick, easy, and free ways to get more use from the memory already installed in your system. There is no escaping the rising costs of computing. Pandemics, chip shortages, and Artificial Intelligence have all played a part in raising the costs for the humble PC user. The price of your GPU has skyrocketed, and now it's memory's turn. If you don’t game, then sure, you can get by with a lower spec GPU, but every system needs RAM, and modern-day operating systems need lots of it. Or do they?

We’re not going to delve into “Linux has better memory management” territory of OS wars, but Microsoft Windows can use a sizable chunk of your RAM, so how do we reduce the hit? We need to be clever and, more importantly, frugal with how we compute. With today's incredibly inflated memory pricing, finding deals on memory is hard, so squeezing out every ounce of performance from your system is key. Let's get started!

Clean up your Startup Apps

When Windows starts up, there are a plethora of applications that automatically load. Anti-virus, Bluetooth, driver update tools, and then we have the user-installed applications that sit ready to be called (Steam, GoG Galaxy, Slack, etc.) Can we clean this up? Of course we can, and here’s how!

1. Click on the Windows logo / Start menu and search for Startup Apps, and click on Open.

2. Click on “Sort by” and select “Start-up impact”. This will sort the list (which can be huge) by the impact that the app has on your startup.

3. Turn off unnecessary applications that are causing the biggest impact. Before turning any off, check that they are not needed. If unsure, search online for the application, and if still unsure, leave the application.

4. Reboot, and your system should boot a little quicker.

Check for running processes/programs

Underneath the calm waters of the Windows desktop, there are many processes and applications vying for access to your system resources. Do we need them all? No, can we trim the fat and have a leaner setup? Yes, here’s how.

1. Click on the Windows logo / Start menu and search for Task Manager, and click on Open.

2. Click on the Memory column to sort the processes by RAM usage, from high to low.

3. Right-click on a process and select End Task to stop it. Only do this on processes that you know of. Don’t turn off random processes. Close Task Manager when done.

Stop Unnecessary Services

Services, those support applications that run in the background and fulfill specific tasks without bothering the user, are always running in Windows. There are services for Windows update, anti-virus, and even a time service that ensures your system clock is precise. There are also some services that hang around and provide nothing, so let's delve into Windows services and learn how to save precious resources.

1. Click on the Windows logo / Start menu and search for services.msc and click Open.

2. Scroll down the list for running services that you do not need! You can click on the Status column to sort the running services.

3. Right-click on the chosen service and select Stop to kill the service. Only do this for services that you know can be safely ended. Do not just end random services; you may break your OS.

Scan for Malware

Sometimes it can be a nasty virus or malware, lurking in the background of your Windows install, that is stealing all of your precious resources. Make sure that you have good antivirus software, and regularly scan your system.

1. Click on the Windows Logo (Start Menu) and search for Windows Security. Click on Open.

2. Select Virus & threat protection.

3. Click on Scan Options.

4. Select a Full scan and then click Scan now. The process can take a very long time; you can use the PC while the scan is running, but the best practice is to leave the PC to run the scan and go and do something else.

5. With the scan complete, take any recommended action to remove malware or viruses.

Disable Visual Effects

Yes, the bells and whistles of a UI make things look fun and interesting, but after a few days, do you really miss them? Thought not! So how do we turn them off and save some system resources?

1. Click on the Windows logo / Start menu and type sysdm.cpl into the search bar. Click on Open.

2. Click on Advanced and under Performance, click on Settings.

3. Tick “Adjust for best performance” and then click Apply and OK to make the changes. I tweaked my setup so that image thumbnails still appear; otherwise, I just had a sea of icons, hindering my search for images to use in my work.

Turn off Windows’ Memory-hungry Features

Behind the scenes, Windows has a lot going on. These “features” provide extra functionality for game recording, showing recent apps, etc. So let's tweak them and save some RAM!

1. Click on the Windows logo / Start menu and click on Settings.

2. To disable Widgets, click on Personalization.

3. In the Personalization section, click on Start and then turn off “Show recently added apps”.

4. Click on the back arrow in the top left of the window to go back to the settings menu.

5. To tweak Gaming settings, click on the Gaming link in the main settings window.

6. Click on Captures and turn off “Record what happened.” Gamers should keep this setting on so that they can share their gaming sessions with friends.

7. Close the Settings window.

These quick and easy steps should save you a few more Megabytes of memory and help your system remain responsive, hopefully until the RAM-pocalypse subsides, or you can grab a great deal on the best RAM for gaming.

You need a webcam in a hurry, and you can’t get to the store or wait for Amazon to get the best webcam, so that old Android smartphone that is now lying in a desk drawer, waiting to be recycled, could just save your skin! Yes, that old smartphone that you keep in case of emergencies or to keep your child amused while grocery shopping, now it can be brought back into service as a webcam!

In this how-to, we’ll look at Camo Studio, a free tool that turns your old Android phone into a wireless webcam. This would be useful for general webcam duties and for streamers who need an additional angle in a shot. We’ll show you how to set up your Camo camera and then how to use it in OBS.

Camo is easy to install, and all you will need is a spare Android smartphone and a PC running Windows 11 or 10. The process works over Wi-Fi, but if you intend to use the setup for some time, it would be prudent to externally power the smartphone, as the process can drain your smartphone battery.

So let's get started!

Installing Camo Studio for Windows

Installing Camo Studio for Windows is really simple, and it provides us with the user interface that we will use to control the webcam.

1. Download the Camo Studio app from the website.

2. Navigate to the Downloads folder and double-click to install the downloaded exe file. The installation process will use the Microsoft Store to install the application.

3. Follow the prompts as the installation progresses.

4. Open Camo.

The Camo Studio User Interface

The user interface is broken down into four key areas.

1. Device: Here, we can select the device that we wish to use as a webcam,

2. Device Settings: Tweak the settings of the selected device, set the resolution, focus, and light modes. We can switch between the front and rear cameras

3. The main output: See what the camera sees, including any filters.

4. Filters and templates: Tweak the look and feel of the video stream using predefined filters and templates.

Camo can be used with normal USB / laptop webcams and our Android smartphone. But, for the latter, we need to install an app on our Android device.

Installing Camo on your Android device

1. Open the Google Play Store.

2. Search for Camo Camera and install the application.

Connecting Your Smartphone to Camo Studio

With both the Camo Studio and Camo Camera app installed, we can now connect the two together.

1. In the Camo Studio Windows app, click on Device >> Pair a device. In the graphic, look for 1 to spot where this is.

2. Open the Camo Camera app on your smartphone and click on the Wi-Fi+ icon. Your PC and Smartphone must be on the same network.

3. Scan the QR code displayed in the Camo Studio app using the Camo Camera app on your Smartphone. The phone and your computer should connect in a few seconds. If it fails, restart the process from step 1.

4. You should now see a live video stream from your smartphone. You won’t have to do the full process every time. In the future, your smartphone will be listed in the dropdown.

Tweaking Your Webcam Settings

The basic camera settings are fine, but we can easily tweak them to get the best possible output.

1. Click on the dropdown under Lens, and swap between the front-facing and rear cameras.

2. Under Background, try blurring the background.

3. Under Effects, try out some of the effects; Sketch and 8-bit are great fun. Emoji Face is very “Black Mirror.”

4. The Adjustments section is where we can alter the temperature, tint, contrast, etc. of the video stream.

Templates to Tweak Your Scene

On the right of the screen (4), we can see a selection of templates for our video stream. By default, Watermark is active. Clicking on any of the other templates will trigger the template to apply to our output. Let's tweak our scene to “Meet & Greet”.

1. From the templates, click on Meet & Greet.

2. Click on the Layers icon.

3.Select a text element from the list.

4. Click on the text dropdown and select Variables. You’ll find this dropdown on the right side of the UI.

5. Tweak the variables to meet your requirements and then close the dialog box. The changes have been made to the template.

This same process applies to all of the templates.

Using Camo with OBS

Open Broadcaster System (OBS) is like having a full TV production and mixing suite on your desktop. With Camo and OBS, we can coordinate the Camo webcam along with our usual webcam and create a multi-camera setup for use on streams and YouTube videos.

1. With your Camo setup running, open OBS.

2. Under Scenes, click on + to create a new scene called “Camera2” and click OK.

3. With the Camera2 scene selected, under Sources, click on +.

4. Select “Video Capture Device” from the list.

5. Create a new source called Camo and click OK.

6. From the list of devices, select Camo and click OK.

7. The Camo video source should now be displayed in the Camera2 scene.

8. Click on the Camera2 and another scene to swap between the Scenes in OBS, giving you multiple camera angles for your next stream.

In this how-to, I will show you how to create a Plex server on a spare computer running Debian Linux, in my case, a Raspberry Pi 4, but you could easily replace it with an old laptop, spare PC, or a dedicated mini PC.

There are a myriad of streaming services available, and all of them want your money. That’s not a bad thing. Some content is only available via streaming, or the best possible version is streaming. But I like physical media. I like knowing I have every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and The X-Files. Those were the shows that I watched as a teenager, and they bring me comfort.

I don’t want to buy my media again, heck, I’ve owned Deep Space Nine on VHS and DVD, and my copies of Star Wars stretch back to Betamax! I want my media ready to watch at a moment's notice, and this is where DIY services such as Plex and Jellyfin come into their own.

The best source of media for this project are DVDs and Blu-rays that you already own. Check your local laws before doing so, but you should be able to rip your discs using a tool such as Handbrake. We also have a full guide on how to rip your discs to digital files.

So let's build our own media server!

Setting Up Your Media Drive

For this, you will need a USB drive formatted as NTFS, along with your media sorted into folders. I tend to organize my media into the following:

• Movies
  • A-Z list of movies
• Series
  • Series name
    • Season

With the media already on the USB drive, let's get it connected to what will become our Plex server.

1. Insert the drive into a spare USB 3 port on the machine. The OS should auto-mount the drive.

2. Locate the drive’s name, label and UUID using blkid. In my case, the device name was /dev/sda1, its label was “Files,” and the UUID was “2EB36FFA4908D959.” Make a note of these details.

blkid

3. Navigate to the mounted drive and list the contents to prove that the system can see the files. On my Raspberry Pi the drive was /media/pi/Files.

cd /media/pi/Files

4. Set the permissions for the folder so that it is accessible to anyone. Yes, this is bad security practice for production servers, but for a small home media server, we can mitigate the risk. Remember to change the path to match the location of your media files.

sudo chmod 777 /media/pi/Files

5. Unmount the drive and then remount using NTFS to test that the process works. Remember to replace the device name and the mount point with values that match yours.

sudo umount /dev/sda1sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/pi/

6. To automatically mount the drive on boot, edit fstab and add this line to the end so that it detects the drive as the system boots. Remember to change the UUID and /media/pi/Files mount to match the results from Step 2.

UUID=2EB36FFA4908D959  /media/pi/Files  ntfs-3g  defaults,uid=pi,gid=pi,umask=002  0  0

7. Save by pressing CTRL + O, ENTER then CTRL + X.

8. Reboot the Raspberry Pi for the changes to take effect.

How to install Plex Server

1. On the Raspberry Pi, open a browser and visit the Plex Media Server download page.

2. Click on the dropdown and select the version you want to download, in this case, Linux. Click Choose Distribution, then select the correct version for your Linux distribution. I’m using the latest version of Raspberry Pi OS, so I chose the Armv8 download. If you are adapting this how-to to run on an Intel- or AMD-based machine, select the 32- or 64-bit version for your architecture.

3. Open a terminal and install the downloaded Plex package, which will be in your Downloads folder. Wait for the installation to complete.

sudo dpkg -i <>

4. Add the user plex to the Pi user group. This will give Plex access to drives and other devices.

sudo usermod -aG pi plex

5. Get the IP address of your Raspberry Pi via the terminal. The -I is a capital i.

hostname -I

6. On another device, on the same network, open a web browser and go to the IP address of your Plex server, followed by port 32400 and then /web. Here is what my URL looked like.

http://192.168.0.192:32400/web/

7. Start the Plex setup process and then name your server. I used PlexServer.

8. Create a library of movies, this will point to the location of the USB drive that has all of your media.

9. Click Done to finish the installation.

The Plex User Interface

Plex’s user interface is familiar to anyone who has used a streaming service. It is designed to get the media to us without any issues. In the free version that we are using, it also gets the advertisements right to your eyeballs. There are plenty of free streams to watch, but we’re really here for our content. Let's take a look around the user interface and get to know Plex.

1. Main menu: Here we can look through our watchlist, live TV shows, movies & shows. Just above is the “hamburger menu” to go in depth on your configuration.

2. Filters: Filter the content to show trending, what friends are watching, and activity.

3. Settings: Advanced settings for your Plex server. This includes user accounts, libraries, and we can even cast our Plex viewing to a compatible device.

4. Libraries: The mounted USB disk full of our movies is linked to from here. Clicking the link will open the drive and our content library.

5. Content: This section changes as the user navigates the content. Here we can see the advertised content.

If we click on the library (4), then the screen changes to show the content on the drive hosting the library. As you can see, my library is pretty light, as this is a test setup.

Wrapping Up

You’ve just made your own streaming service, one that will share your DVD and media library to devices across your home. You can use the web interface to watch your movies, or use one of the many Plex client apps for Smart TVs, phones, consoles, and Amazon’s Alexa.

How can you connect your new gaming controller to a Windows 11 or 10 PC, and what can you do with it? Let us show you how to get your game on as quickly and simply as possible.

Years ago, gaming on PCs was restricted to the arrow keys, or W,A,S,D and a mouse. Over the years, game controllers made their way to the PC. Some connected via serial interfaces, others via your sound card’s MIDI/game port. This is when we usually ended up in driver hell, which often ate into our gaming time. The advent of USB eliminated this issue, and modern Windows operating systems now detect and configure the controller automatically. Here's the fastest way to complete this process.

Using a Wired Connection for your Controller

The simplest way to connect your controller to a Windows 11 PC is via a USB cable.

1. Using the correct cable, connect the cable to the controller. Older Xbox controllers use Micro USB. The newer Series X/S pads use USB Type-C. Remember to purchase a good, quality data cable, as some cables are only for charging.

2. Connect the controller to the PC. Windows will detect and configure it ready for use.

3. Press the Xbox button to launch the Xbox Game Bar, proving that your controller is connected.

5. Start playing games!

Connecting Your Controller Via Bluetooth

1. Press the Xbox button until it turns on and starts flashing slowly.

2. Press and hold the connect button until the Xbox button starts flashing faster. This signifies that the controller is going into pairing mode.

3. On your Windows PC, go to the system tray and click on the Bluetooth icon, select Add a Bluetooth device.

4. Make sure that Bluetooth is on, and then click Add device.

5. Select Bluetooth.

6. Select Xbox Wireless Controller and wait until it is connected.

7. Click Done.

8. Press the Xbox button to launch the Xbox Game Bar, proving that your controller is connected.

9. Start playing games!

The Xbox Game Bar

Windows 11 and 10 both have a Game Bar mode that provides quick access, inside and out of games, to

Launch a game.

Record your gameplay/desktop.

Take screenshots.

Control audio.

View performance statistics (FPs, GPU, CPU, etc).

Open in-game social features.

Open the Xbox app or Game Pass (if you are subscribed).

Long-press to switch Steam into Big Picture mode.

Press the Xbox button to launch the Xbox Game Bar, and you will see the following.

1. Home: Access game capture, Co-Pilot “chat,” gallery of images and video captures, and general settings.

2. Quick-launch: Launch your most played games without opening Steam, etc.

3. Game Libraries: Open your many game libraries to play your games.

4. Settings: Access gaming-focused settings without delving through the Control Panel / Settings menus.

Press A to select the appropriate option. Pressing the Xbox button or ESC will close the Game Bar.

The Xbox Game Bar is a useful addition to the Windows operating system, and by using an Xbox controlle,r we get fast and convenient access to features critical to our gaming success.

Choosing the right CPU is critical when you’re building a new PC. If you’re wondering which CPU to buy, our CPU benchmark hierarchy goes in-depth on our latest benchmark results, and our roundup of the best CPUs for gaming offers our current recommendations, taking into account pricing, performance, and efficiency. Even with those resources, choosing the right CPU is a complex topic with a lot of moving parts.

AMD and Intel both make excellent processors, and there are reasons to pick up something as weak as the Core i3-14100F all the way up to the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, depending on your purpose. Here, we’ll walk you through how to make that decision, as well as give you some broad pointers on how to parse CPU naming conventions and specs.

AMD and Intel are currently winding down their respective generations. AMD has built out a broad lineup of Ryzen 9000 CPUs based on the Zen 5 architecture, and Intel has confirmed that it will reuse its current-gen Arrow Lake architecture with a refresh of CPUs dubbed Core Ultra 300-S. Intel has also confirmed it will move beyond Arrow Lake to the new Nova Lake architecture in late 2026, and AMD is working on its next-gen Zen 6 architecture, but without a firm timeline.

How to choose a CPU – the TL;DR

When you’re shopping or choosing between different CPUs, there are some broad ideas to keep in mind.

• Budget for your build and purpose – A CPU does nothing on its own, so define your budget in the context of a full system and what you intend to use that system for. That might mean settling on a slightly less powerful (but cheaper) CPU for a gaming system and reallocating that money toward a more powerful GPU, for example. If you’re on a tight budget, our ranking of the best budget CPUs can help.
• Performance only tells part of the story – Performance benchmarks are critical, but they need context. Efficiency, temperatures, overclocking headroom, and architectural features play a role in the CPU you should buy, which we dig into in our individual CPU reviews. Further, certain benchmarks aren’t relevant to every buyer. The Core i9-14900K may blow away the Ryzen 7 9800X3D in video transcoding, for example, but if you’re not transcoding any videos, that performance vector hardly matters.
• AMD and Intel are both good – Some enthusiasts prefer one brand over the other, but there are plenty of reasons to buy an Intel CPU over an AMD one or vice versa. Our Intel vs AMD faceoff will get you up to speed on where the brands currently stand, but there’s no reason to play favorites for the sake of doing so.
• Trust data, not lineups – AMD and Intel segment their CPU lineups so it’s easy to spot a more powerful CPU over a weaker one. These gaps aren’t made equally, however. For instance, the Core Ultra 7 265K offers 98% of the gaming performance of the Core Ultra 9 285K (functionally identical), despite the Core Ultra 9 costing around $200 more. Performance doesn’t scale linearly across a lineup.
• Architecture informs specs, not the other way around – Specs are important, but they start to fall apart when comparing CPUs from distant generations. The Ryzen 9 3950X and Ryzen 9 9950X both have 16 cores and 32 threads, and the Ryzen 9 9950X has a 21% faster clock speed. The Ryzen 9 9950X isn’t just 21% faster, though; it’s often twice as fast or even faster in productivity applications.

We’ll walk you through how to understand CPU names, specs, and prices, as well as how to put them all together to choose a CPU for your specific purpose. We’ll also take a look at the motherboard chipsets available this generation, as well as overclocking and how it plays into a buying decision.

How much you should spend on a CPU

Ignoring the secondhand market, you can spend anywhere from $50 to over $700 on a consumer CPU. You can spend even more with something like AMD’s Threadripper range, with a chip like the Threadripper 9980X selling for $5,000. It’s important to define the purpose of your CPU so you know how much you should spend.

There are exceptions to any rule, but CPU prices break down into a few broad categories.

• Basic use ($50 to $100) – For basic PC use, including browsing the internet and running lightweight office applications. CPUs in this bracket include the AMD Ryzen 5 5500 and Intel Core i3-14100F.
• Budget ($100 to $200) – More performance to power light gaming and slightly more intensive productivity apps. CPUs in this bracket include the Core i5-12400F and Ryzen 5 7600.
• Midrange ($200 to $350) – The sweet spot for gaming PCs, with enough power to run content creation apps. CPUs in this bracket include the Core Ultra 7 265K and Ryzen 7 9700X.
• High-end ($350 to $500) – Plenty of power for gaming, but a stronger emphasis on accelerating productivity and content creation apps with high core counts. You’ll find specialty chips like the Ryzen 7 9800X3D in this bracket, as well as previous-gen flagships like the Core i9-14900K.
• Flagship ($500+) – The fastest processors in a given generation. You won’t see much of a boost in gaming performance, with flagships focusing almost solely on accelerating productivity applications with the highest core counts, clock speeds, and power consumption. CPUs in this bracket include the Core Ultra 9 285K and Ryzen 9 9950X.

That should give you an idea of how much you should spend on a CPU. If you want to build a gaming PC, you’re probably focused in the midrange or high-end brackets. If you will regularly edit and transcode videos, however, you’re probably focused on the high-end to flagship range.

Understanding CPU names

AMD and Intel use slightly different naming conventions, but they follow the same template. Here’s how that broadly breaks down for desktop CPUs:

• Segment – Ryzen 5, Core Ultra 5
• Series – First number in model name, i.e. Core Ultra 5 245K, Ryzen 5 9600X
• Model – Numbers following the series number, i.e. Core Ultra 7 265K, Ryzen 7 9700X
• Modifier (Suffix) – Letter following model number, i.e. Core Ultra 5 245KF, Ryzen 7 9800X3D

that The segment and model numbers speak for themselves; a higher number is better. A Ryzen 9 sits above a Ryzen 5, and the Core Ultra 5 245K sits above the Core Ultra 5 225. The two tricky parts are the series and modifier, which is where a slight misunderstanding could lead to a vastly different CPU.

First, series: You may read that the first number in the model string refers to the architecture, but that isn’t the case. It’s just a series or generation. AMD and Intel reuse architectures. For instance, Ryzen 7000 ‘Raphael’ and Ryzen 8000 ‘Phoenix’ chips both use the Zen 4 architecture. Similarly, the Core i5-13400F has two versions, one that uses 12th-gen Alder Lake and another that uses 13th-gen Raptor Lake, though thankfully without any notable performance differences.

On desktop, Intel and AMD mostly keep the lines straight. Ryzen 8000 wasn’t a proper generation, for instance; it’s a lineup of APUs that don’t mingle with the main Ryzen 7000 lineup. However, we’ve seen willingness, especially from AMD, to blur the lines between generation and architecture significantly on mobile. It’s good to get the naming convention straight in the event the same happens on desktop.

Suffixes give you a lot of information, but they vary between Intel and AMD. For AMD, here are suffixes you should know:

• X or XT – X-series processors are the main lineup of chips within a particular generation from AMD. The XT designation is used for rereleases of X-series chips with higher clock speeds. On the other end, chips without the X suffix are rereleases with lower power consumption and clock speeds.
• G – CPUs with a G suffix note integrated graphics, particularly for a lightweight gaming APU like the Ryzen 7 8700G. From Ryzen 7000 onward, AMD has included integrated graphics in its main lineup, though they’re significantly weaker than the iGPUs featured in G-series chips.
• F – AMD seldom uses the F suffix, but it notes processors that lack integrated graphics that they’d otherwise have. The Ryzen 5 8400F lacks the integrated graphics that are otherwise available this generation. The Ryzen 7 5800X, however, doesn’t have the F suffix but still lacks integrated graphics.
• X3D – X3D is used to note CPUs with AMD’s gaming-focused 3D V-Cache. Notably, it doesn’t say what generation of 3D V-Cache a chip uses. Ryzen 7000X3D and Ryzen 9000X3D chips, for example, use a different 3D V-Cache design.

Intel has a longer, more rigid lineup of suffixes that it has maintained for decades, making models much easier to parse compared to AMD:

• K – Unlocked for overclocking.
• F – Lacks integrated graphics.
• S – Special edition release.
• T – Low-power design, meant for compact systems.

Thankfully, Intel’s suffixes don’t require much explanation because of how rigid they are. If a processor lacks the K suffix, you can’t overclock it, pure and simple. Intel will combine suffixes when necessary, however. The Core Ultra 5 245KF is unlocked for overclocking but lacks integrated graphics, for example, while the Core i9-14900KS is a special edition of the unlocked Core i9-14900K.

Critical CPU specs to know, and what they mean

CPU specs are only useful if you understand what they mean – and, more importantly, what they don’t. Unlike generations past, where big clock speed boosts and core count jumps were common, AMD and Intel have much more conservative spec bumps each generation, if there's a spec bump at all.

Specs are still important for neighboring comparisons, but it's important to understand what they mean in the broader context of a CPU's architecture.

Cores/Threads

A CPU with more cores can execute more instructions in parallel, but how that manifests in real applications varies widely. Rendering applications like Blender and transcoding applications like Handbrake scale well with high core counts, for example. Games, on the other hand, don’t see large performance jumps past eight cores, and many games don’t even see a marked improvement beyond six cores.

AMD’s modern CPU cores are designed with simultaneous multi-threading, or SMT. This doubles the number of logical processes running on a physical CPU core. So, the 16-core Ryzen 9 9950X has 32 threads. Intel originally introduced SMT – Intel calls it Hyper-Threading – but its current-gen Arrow Lake CPUs don’t use Hyper-Threading. Each physical CPU core only has a single thread.

Traditionally, CPUs use a homogeneous architecture; each core has the same design. Intel has pushed toward heterogeneous architectures in the past several generations, however, mixing together high-performance P-cores with high-efficiency E-cores within a single CPU. These designs can boost overall core count by leveraging weaker cores instead of high-performance cores across the entire die.

From a shopping perspective, it’s important to keep the heterogeneous architecture in mind for Intel chips. The Core i9-14900K has 24 cores compared to the Ryzen 9 9950X’s 16. However, both chips have 32 threads – the E-cores on the Core i9-14900K lack Hyper-Threading.

Clock Speed (Base/Boost)

Synchronizing the disparate components of a CPU architecture is a clock. Clock speed is a frequency – how many cycles are completed each second – and there are two numbers for a CPU. There’s a base and boost clock speed. In modern CPUs, the boost clock speed generally refers to the maximum clock speed on one or two cores, not the maximum clock speed for all cores operating at the same time. Often, one or two preferred cores will boost to higher speeds and handle heavy-duty calculations while the other cores operate at a lower frequency with less intensive work.

Clock speed is important, but it says less about how powerful a CPU is than it previously did. Critically, clock speed doesn’t say anything about how many instructions are executed per cycle. You can think about clock speed like the speed of a conveyor belt. You can increase the speed of the belt, but it might get too hot and break. Alternatively, you can keep the speed the same and widen the belt, or stack things on top of each other, to move more stuff at the same speed.

Rather than the belt speed, a better number to use would be how many items you're able to move. For CPUs, that number is instructions per clock, or IPC; you’ll also see it referred to as instructions per cycle. There are physical limitations of how high the clock speed can go, but if you're able to get more done with each clock cycle, the CPU runs faster.

IPC is a good indicator of architectural improvements from one generation to another, but you won’t find it listed on a spec sheet.

Cache and cache levels

CPUs execute a lot of instructions very quickly, so it’s important that the data needed for those instructions are close to the cores executing them. That’s your CPU’s cache. It’s a small amount of SRAM located on the package of the CPU. Without cache, your CPU would need to use your system’s DRAM for everything, which is considerably slower and would cause a significant bottleneck in your system. Decades ago, CPUs didn't need cache because the system memory could keep up with the pace of instruction execution. With a modern CPU, constantly going out to system memory would make your PC feel unusable.

Cache is organized into levels, with the lowest-number level being the fastest and smallest. L1 is the smallest and fastest, L2 cache is slightly larger, and L3 cache is larger still. CPU cores generally have dedicated L1 and L2 cache, while the L3 cache is much larger and shared across the cores. More cache is generally better, but there are limitations to how much cache can go on-package. Not only is SRAM expensive, it also takes up precious die space and contributes to heat. That’s why packaging technology like AMD’s 3D V-Cache have been such a breakthrough.

Although cache is important, more cache doesn’t lead to universally higher performance. It contributes to higher performance in applications where new data is flowing through memory frequently, such as in games.

Power and Operating Temperature

Power is a messy topic rife with misunderstandings in the world of CPUs. Generally, you’ll see power consumption shared as the Thermal Design Power, or TDP, of a CPU. However, TDP isn’t a power limit, and it doesn’t refer to power consumption. Rather, TDP refers to how much heat the CPU cooler needs to dissipate under maximum load. More power leads to more heat, so TDP is measured in power instead of temperature.

In use, your CPU will often consume less power than the TDP, and it can consume more power for brief periods of time as long as it stays within its thermal limit. To measure peak power consumption, AMD uses PPT, or Package Power Tracking, to note how much power the CPU socket can draw. Intel uses power levels, noted like PL1 and PL2. PL1 is synonymous with TDP, while higher level power limits show maximum power for transient spikes. For high-end, unlocked SKUs, Intel applies a power profile where PL1 = PL2. That means the CPU can sustain higher power consumption for longer than the specified window, assuming it has adequate access to cooling.

Finally, there’s a maximum safe operating temperature, often referred to as TJMax. Once your CPU hits its maximum operating temperature, it will reduce speeds in order to bring the temperature down. In the event the temperatures can’t drop, built-in safety mechanisms will shut down the PC.

Power is a complex topic, and specs don’t share the full picture of power consumption and operating temperatures. Here at Tom’s Hardware, we run a full suite of power and thermal tests for our CPU reviews, which provide a more accurate insight into what you can expect out of a chip. You should use power and temperature specifications to inform your cooler, case, and fan choices, not as hard and fast rules about power consumption.

Chipsets and sockets

Desktop CPUs are socketed, not soldered, so you’ll need to pick up a motherboard with the socket that matches your CPU. AMD is currently on Socket AM5 while Intel is on LGA 1851. Both are Land Grid Array (LGA) sockets, where the CPU features contact pads that press into spring-loaded pins in the motherboard socket. AMD previously used a PGA, or Pin Grid Array, socket where the pins were on the CPU itself. AMD abandoned this design with the release of Ryzen 7000 CPUs and sunsetting of Socket AM4.

The socket only defines physical compatibility between a CPU and motherboard; the chipset defines full compatibility. Here are the chipsets from AMD and Intel with the latest socket, and the CPUs they support:

AMD, especially, supports its sockets for several generations even with evolving chipsets. Pairing a newer CPU with an older chipset will generally require a BIOS update. Intel moves from socket to socket faster, but the same rule applies when the same socket is carried across multiple generations of chipsets.

There are a ton of differences between chipsets, but generally, you need a B-series chipset for AMD and a Z-series chipset for Intel. Those are the ranges that offer both memory and CPU overclocking – short of B840, which AMD oddly removed CPU overclocking capabilities from. A/H-series chipsets are for budget builds with limited capabilities, while higher-end chipsets pack features like additional PCIe lanes, and better USB and Wi-Fi capabilities.

The best course of action is to look at the individual motherboard you’re interested in once you’ve settled on a CPU. Chipset specifications aren’t rigid across the board, so you can only know the full capabilities of your motherboard once you have one in mind.

Overclocking and undervolting

Enthusiasts looking to squeeze the most performance out of their CPU need to keep overclocking (and undervolting) in mind. If you want to overclock your CPU, you’ll need to buy a specific type of CPU and motherboard.

AMD is more friendly to overclocking in that it’s available on nearly all desktop CPUs. There are rare exceptions like the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, but the vast majority of AMD CPUs have direct multiplier-based overclocking. In addition, AMD supports CPU and memory overclocking on both B- and X-series chipsets, short of the B840 chipset.

Intel charges a premium for overclocking capabilities. You need a K-series processor and a Z-series chipset for CPU overclocking.

Regardless of the brand, you can overclock the traditional way through your BIOS, or you can use one-click overclocking features. AMD offers Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO), which you can configure through the Ryzen Master software. Intel has its Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU) that offers easy-to-use dials and a one-click overclocking feature.

Should you overclock your CPU?

When core counts were low and applications were designed for only a handful of threads, there were direct, immediate performance benefits from even a minor overclock. Today, things are different. You can still see a performance boost, but it depends on the application you're using and the CPU you’re overclocking.

A stable, day-to-day overclock is best to bridge small gaps in performance. For example, the Core i7-14700K and Core i9-14900K both come with eight P-cores, but the Core i9 has a higher boost clock speed and four additional E-cores. In applications that care mostly about those eight P-cores, you can get close to the stock performance of the Core i9-14900K with a moderate overclock on the Core i7-14700K on a couple of preferred P-cores.

The benefits of overclocking are dynamic, changing from generation to generation and across different applications, so there are no hard and fast rules on if you should overclock or not. Even if you plan to overclock, you shouldn’t expect lineup-breaking performance differences with modern CPU architectures.

Putting it all together

A CPU is one of the most important components of your PC, but it’s only one component. Once you’ve settled on a processor, make sure to check out our guides on the best SSDs, best RAM, best graphics cards, and best power supplies to pick your other components. Our roundup of the best PC cases can help, too, with modern designs that look as good as they feel to build in.

• MORE: CPU reviews, analysis, and buying guides
• MORE: How to check CPU temperatures
• MORE: How to choose a motherboard
• MORE: CPU price index
• MORE: AMD vs Intel

In this guide we will take a look at some simple command prompt commands and then delve into PowerShell and learn how it handles the same tasks, providing you a guide to the top ten powershell commands you need to know to get started.

In the 1990s I had a 486 PC with just enough RAM to run Star Wars X-Wing or Windows 3.1. I learnt the MS-DOS prompt and I was soon navigating the filesystem and tweaking config files like a sys admin with a deadline. These days I spend more time in the Linux terminal than Windows Command Prompt, but it did have me wondering how the command prompt and its “successor” PowerShell behaved in 2025. And so, here we are!

Microsoft’s PowerShell is a command line shell and scripting language that is more powerful than the command prompt, and offers automation and system administration tools for the Windows sys admin who wants to automate parts of their role. The scripting side of things has advanced logic such as loops, variables, functions etc and that makes it ideal for boring jobs like user creation, system configuration and software deployment.

PowerShell uses cmdlets (command-lets) that are small, single-function commands and has a get and set syntax to get the information that we need, and then we can set the configuration to how we want things to work.

• PowerShell is a scripting tool commonly used to automate tasks.
• You can use PowerShell to administrate a Windows PC, or other PCs over a network.
• Scripts are written using standard programming logic, making PowerShell easy to learn and use.

The basic commands that we should all know

Those of us with a little grey in our hair will probably be familiar with MSDOS commands, and most of these commands still work with PowerShell. Let's take a quick look at a few of the old commands.

The top ten PowerShell commands

Lets now take a look at how PowerShell does things with these ten commands.

1. Get-Help

The Get-Help command is your key to unlocking the built-in help files that PowerShell has hidden away. It can display information on cmdlets and their syntax.

get-help get-process

The help files can be updated by running this command.

update-help

2. Get-Command

Not sure what commands you can run in PowerShell? This command lists all of the available commands and functions at your disposal.

get-command

3. List and Control Services

In the background on our Windows machines, services run to perform tasks and await user input. These services can range from DHCP for our network to Google Chrome updates to print services like Bonjour. We can list all running and stopped services with this command.

get-service

We can then stop a running service by running this command and passing the name of the service. For example, here I am stopping the Bonjour print service.

stop-service Bonjour Service

If I need to restart a service, I just use this command and pass the name of the service.

start-service Bonjour Service

4. List all the running processes

Much like services, these commands can list the running processes on your PC. They could be the multiple Chrome processes that prevent all of your windows and tabs from disappearing when a crash occurs. Once we know which processes are running, we can stop a process that is consuming too much of our resources.

To list the processes.

get-process

To stop a process.

stop-process

5. List files and directories

There are a few ways to list the contents of a directory. We can use dir or ls to list the contents of the current directory, or another location by passing the location as an argument. We can also use get-childitem to perform the same task.

dir<>ls<>get-childitem

6. Copy-Item

Essentially, this is the same command as copy but in PowerShell. Of course, you can still use copy in PowerShell, it acts like an alias for this command. Here I am copying a file IMG_20251105_111626.jpg into the same directory, but I am changing the destination files name to testpic.jpg.

Copy-Item .\IMG_20251105_111626.jpg testpic.jpg

7. Move-Item

The move-item command works just like move, changing a file’s location to a new directory. Here I am moving the testpic.jpg to a new directory inside the current working directory. I use dir, passing the directory as an argument.

Move-Item .\testpic.jpg .\extras\

8. Remove-Item

This is basically the same as using the del command to delete a file. Here I change directory to extras, and then I use Get-ChildItem to list the contents of the directory. Then I use Remove-Item to delete testpic.jpg before I then list the contents of the extras directory to show that the deletion has occurred.

Remove-Item .\testpic.jpg

9. Get, set and append content

Have you ever needed to take a peek inside a text file, but don’t need to open a text editor? I’ve done this many times on Linux (less / more / cat) and there came a time where I needed to in Windows PowerShell, so I used this. Here I am reading the contents of textfile.txt which I created in Notepad++. The output of the file is dumped to the PowerShell terminal, just like Linux would send output to the terminal.

Get-Content textfile.txt

If you need or want to create a file in PowerShell, you can use this command to create a new file. Note that the command will interactively ask for input [value0[, [value1] etc. When you have entered all your text, press Enter on a blank line to signal to the command that you are done. This command will overwrite the contents of the file, so only use it on new files or if you are really sure.

Set-Content textfile.txt

If you want to append to a file, you’ll need to use this command. It has the same [value0], [value1] workflow as Set-Content.

Add-Content .\textfile.txt

10. Test-Connection

This is effectively the same command as ping. It contacts a remote host and checks that your machine, and the remote machine can communicate with each other. This is often used to check that your PC can get online, especially when trying to determine network connectivity issues. The command takes an IP address or URL as an argument, here I am using the IP address for Google’s main DNS server.

Test-Connection 8.8.8.8

Here is the same command, using google.com as the target.

Test-Connection google.com

Final Thoughts

So there we go, we’ve taken our first steps into PowerShell commands, comparing them to command prompt commands and explaining how to use them. Some are useful, others are quirky, and their “DOS” aliases make much more sense for daily use, but there will come a time when we need to know these commands, say for a script or configuration file, so keep them in mind.

In this how-to, I will show you how to set up, configure, and tweak DOSBox Pure Unleashed to play DOS and Windows-era games.

In the early 1990s, I moved from my beloved Commodore Amiga setup to a 486 DX 33 build. I loved that machine, but the march of progress soon saw Intel’s Pentium and Microsoft Windows 95 make my 486 look like a joke. But for a brief moment, I was content with a slew of classic games that my 486 DX 33 with 4MB of RAM could handle. Star Wars: X-Wing, The Secret of Monkey Island, and Star Trek: 25th Anniversary, these games entertained teenage me, and I wish that I could go back in time and play them.

Well, now I can, and best of all, I don’t need to create any virtual machines, nor do I need to find drivers for antique hardware. DOSBox Pure Unleashed makes retro PC gaming as easy as console gaming. All you need is a modern-day PC and access to your favorite games.

• DOSBox Pure Unleashed makes retro PC gaming easy by using console-style workflows that contain games in ZIP, ISO, and other disk image formats.
• DOSBox Pure Unleashed can play MS-DOS and Windows games with little or no configuration.
• Windows 95, 98, and XP can be installed in a custom virtual machine to create your own portable retro-gaming rig.
• Game states can be saved and reused to tackle tricky quests and missions. Save, try, die, and repeat until you beat that boss.

What games can I play with DOSBox Pure Unleashed?

If you love PC games from the 1980s and 1990s, then you have found paradise. DOSBox Pure Unleashed is made for those of us who spent hours escorting Rebel fleets and protecting them from Imperial inspection, shooting demons back to hell, or rescuing a princess before the sand timer ran out. The games that we loved on our 386, 486, and early Pentium machines are now as easily playable as our console games.

But, where do we get the games from? The first thing I have to say is that most older games are still under copyright. They may be listed as abandonware on many sites across the Internet, but somebody, somewhere, will hold a license and may just enforce it. If you want a legal means to get old games, your choices are eBay, yard sales, or GoG.

I chose GoG for my games, downloading the game files using the GoG app, and then telling DOSBox Pure Unleashed where to find them. Of course, GoG also uses DOSBox to run older games on modern PCs, making it the ideal means to illustrate how DOSBox Pure Unleashed works.

Setting up DOSBox Pure Unleashed

Setup is really easy, essentially just a single download, followed by running the executable.

1. Open a browser window and visit the DOSBox Pure Unleashed releases page to download the latest version for your OS. At the time of writing, this was a preview of the upcoming release, but this should be final by the time you read this.
2. Extract the downloaded file to a directory on your system.
3. Double-click on the extracted executable file to launch DOSBox Pure Unleashed.

Loading a game via DOSBox Pure Unleashed

1. Drag and drop a supported file onto the DOSBox Pure Unleashed interface. Supported files are ZIP archives, CD images (ISO and CUE), hard disk images (IMG/IMA/VHD/JRC/TC), DOS executable files (EXE/BAT/COM), or files and folders directly.
2. Click on the game file when it appears to launch the game.
3. Start playing the game. To exit the game, close the DOSBox window.

DOSBox Pure Unleashed Hotkeys

Hotkeys provide quick access to essential features, some buried deep within DOSBox Pure Unleashed.

To use a hotkey, press CTRL and then the following keys

Using Save States

We’ve all been there. We attempted something in-game that seemed like a great idea but turned out to be a disaster. From leaping chasms to running into a room full of gun-toting goons eager for your demise! In the old days, it would be game over, but now we can just save before going in and reload the save state to give us another chance!

1. Load up your chosen game and start playing.
2. Press CTRL + F5 to create a save state. Now go and make a complete mess of some ridiculous leap of faith/room clearance, or attempt to overtake a race car. I chose Prince of Persia and decided to take a look at a room on the right. There was a guard with a sword, and all it took was one hit to end my game.

3. Press CTRL + F9 to load the save state, and this time try not to die/lose.

DOSBox Pure Unleashed User Interface

The main user interface has two key areas

1. Start Menu: Here is where your games/applications are run from. We drag the files onto here and then select the executable to run the application.
2. Configuration: By default, the Start Menu is highlighted, but there are two more menus for mapping controllers and tweaking your DOSBox system. The L and R options change the highlight between the three choices (Start Menu, Controller Mapper, and System)

The Configuration menu has more menus within each of the two options.

For the Controller Mapper, there are presets for generic keyboards, Mice, generic controllers, brand-specific controllers (Gravis and Thrustmaster, for example), along with custom mapping. You can map mouse and keyboard commands to a USB controller to play your old DOS games from the comfort of your sofa and a modern gaming controller, such as those for Xbox and PlayStation. All of the presets can be tweaked to your liking.

The System menu hides a plethora of things that we can tweak for our emulated DOS system.

General: Modify hotkeys, control game speeds, tweak FPS, and use configuration files.

Input: Keyboard, mouse, and controller settings can be tweaked. Mouse sensitivity, analog joystick deadzones, automatic gamepad mapping, and more can be tweaked here.

Performance: Set the raw performance, limit the CPU performance for sensitive games (Wing Commander is known to be sensitive), and show performance statistics.

Video: Tweak the emulated GPU (CGA/EGA/VGA/SVGA and more), add more graphics memory. Emulate a 3DFX Voodoo card, add a CRT filter, scaling, and more.

System: Change the emulated machine's RAM, CPU type (386/486/Pentium), CPU cores, and OS specific options.

Audio: Change the soundcard from a range of Soundblaster compatible cards, enable MIDI, Adlib. Gravis Ultrasound

Am I limited to just DOS games?

No! You can install a period-specific version of Windows and run Windows-based games, too! DOSBox Pure Unleashed also supports 3dfx Voodoo cards, so you can play older 3D games with full 3D acceleration. During this era, I had a Voodoo 2 12MB, and I was blown away by games such as G-Police and Incoming. Then I played Tomb Raider to death!

To run Windows games with DOSBox Pure Unleashed, you will need a copy of Windows 95 to XP, and of course, the CD key. Then follow these steps, and you will soon have a retro-gaming PC setup.

1. Open DOSBox Pure Unleashed and drag an ISO for the operating system onto the user interface.

2. Select Boot and Install New Operating System.

3. Create a hard disk image for the installation. I chose an 8GB disk image as I was using Windows 98 Second Edition. If your plan is to create an older hard disk image, say for DOS, then choose an appropriate capacity. Note that the disk image (IMG file) location is at the top of the screen. You can copy this image to another device running DOSBox Pure Unleashed.

4. Follow the installation instructions for your chosen OS. My Windows 98 install brought back a lot of memories from a time when I was learning HTML from some encyclopedic tomes of reference books.

5. To reuse the installed OS, click on Run Installed Operating System and select it from the list.

+ F12 to open the DOSBox Pure menu.

6. Press CTRL

7. Drag and drop a game file. If asked to reset DOS, select OK.

8. Select to boot from the Installed Operating System.

9. Select the operating system from the list.

10. Click on My Computer and then locate D:, inside that drive are the contents of the game, which can be installed/started as per its requirements.

What have we achieved?

We’ve created a retro gaming setup to play DOS and Windows games without the need for real hardware. The setup is simple, enabling us to get straight to the fun of gaming, without the need for tweaking configuration files. Now go and enjoy “the golden years” of PC gaming.

I’ve been using Linux for well over a quarter of a century (oh my god, I am old!), and I’ve used a fair few different means to install and manage software. But most, if not all, of these tools require some level of Linux knowledge or know-how to understand how to use them. In this how-to to I’ll show you how to install Discover on Raspberry Pi OS “Trixie,” which is based on the latest version of Debian. But the process is the same for most Linux distros.

• Synaptic Package Manager
• YaST
• APT
• RPM
• Flatpak
• Snap
• Building from source
• Appimage

The beginner-friendly Raspberry Pi also has this issue. Sure, it has the means to install recommended software, but if it wasn’t on that list, you had to go digging in the terminal.

Our smartphones have app stores that make app installations a breeze, so why can’t our Linux machines? To that end, I’ll be installing Discover, part of KDE’s Discover software store. This easy-to-use front-end groups applications into categories for easier browsing, and we can also search for specific applications.

• Installing software on Linux can be achieved in many different ways, but using Discover is the simplest for beginners.
• Discover breaks down software into categories for easier browsing and searching.
• Discover can update all the software on your machine and remove applications you no longer use.
• Aimed largely at beginners and casual Linux users, Discover is a simple tool that provides all of the features that we expect.

Installing Discover

To install Discover, we need to do a little terminal work, which is hypocritical considering the goal of this how-to, but it is the only means available.

1. Open a terminal by clicking on the terminal icon or by pressing CTRL + ALT + T.

2. Using sudo, update the list of software repositories on your machine, using a list from a remote machine.

sudo apt update

3. Install Plasma Discover. The download is around 470MB, so expect the process to take a few minutes. Why is it so large? Because it also has to install a few KDE-specific dependencies in order for it to work.

sudo apt install plasma-discover

4. Reboot for the change to take effect. I found that doing this forced Discover to update. Before doing this it showed no new applications to install.

Using Discover

Discover is installed, so let's understand how to use it. First, you will need to click on the menu and scroll down to System Tools and select Discover.

The Discover user interface has three key areas.

1. Choose between listing the installed software, updating software, seeing the home page, checking settings, or learning more about the software.
2. Software categories, broken down into broad categories that can be clicked to drill down to specific ones.
3. Output pane, this is where the choices in 1 and 3 are shown to the end user. Here we can also install software.

Let's install some software using Discover.

1. Click on the Graphics application category (2). Note how (3) updates to show a selection of applications.

2. Click on Painting and Editing and then select Krita.

3. Click on Install from Debian GNU/Linux (top right) and when prompted, enter your password. Wait for the installation to complete.

4. Launch Krita using the launch icon in the top right corner. The app can also be found under the Graphics category of the main applications menu.

Installed applications, found under the Installed category, can be removed using the trash can icon next to the listed application.

Take care when removing applications. If you are unsure, don’t do it!

Using Discover to update applications is easy.

1. Click on Update (1). If there are updates, an exclamation point icon will appear.
2. Click on Refresh, and then Update All. Why refresh before the update? To ensure that you have the latest updates for your machine.

Managing apps with Discover is much easier and friendlier than using the terminal, and for new users, this should be the way to go. Does it replace the mighty terminal for power users? No. Discover cannot match the flexibility and power of the terminal and a package manager like APT. What it does achieve is introducing how Linux software management works in a friendly manner. Start with this, and as your skills improve, move on to the “proper” tools that will get the job done.

One of the best tools for preserving your physical media is Handbrake, a free toolkit for video conversion, DVD, and Blu-ray ripping. Handbrake works with Windows, macOS, and Linux, and this guide will show you how to rip a DVD simply and easily. We’ll be using a Windows 11 PC for this how-to.

The humble Digital Versatile Disc, DVD, has been with us since the 1990s, and while it may not offer the clarity of Blu-ray, it is cheap and plentiful. Go into any thrift store, dollar store, yard sale, or charity shop, and you will find a plethora of DVDs, often at bargain prices. In the age of streaming, where your favorite series or movie can move from one service to another, or even cease to exist, ripping DVDs is the best way to archive what you want to watch. Not what an algorithm thinks you want to watch.

Backing up your DVD collection is also useful, given that “bit rot” — where the aluminum layer of the discs flakes away — is common in older discs. If your discs are not stored in a temperature-controlled environment (your loft/attic gets warm in the summer and cold in the winter) or you just happen to have a bad disc, your collection will disintegrate inside its cases.

• Ripping DVDs with Handbrake is a simple process that lets you watch your DVD collection on all your digital devices and archive them on a NAS or file server.
• Preserving your DVD library is essential as bit rot damages countless discs, making them unreadable.
• Our favorite shows are at the mercy of streaming services, which can remove underperforming shows or those for which it no longer holds a license with little notice.

Before we can rip any DVDs in Handbrake, we first need to install libdvdcss. Libdvdcss provides a library for accessing DVDs as if they were a block device. I remember installing libdvdcss on many Linux machines, but I’ve never had to do so on Windows until today.

1. Download and install Handbrake for Windows.
2. Download libdvdcss for Handbrake
3. Copy the .dll to your Handbrake installation. For me, this was C:\Program Files\HandBrake
4. Open Handbrake.

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The structure of a DVD disc

Essentially, a DVD is really just a video disc full of video files. It is organized into a hierarchy that uses terms such as “title” and “chapter,” but what are they?

The term “title” refers to a major video file, usually the movie, trailer, or bonus features, such as a documentary.

This leads us to “chapters,” which are divisions of a title, usually created to navigate around the movie. An example would be Star Wars’ Tantive IV blockade runner and Imperial Star Destroyer scene that appears just after the opening crawl. If you don’t want to read the crawl, then you would skip to the next chapter.

Handbrake traverses the disc’s hierarchy to identify the structure and titles that could contain content the user wants to rip. Handbrake will show a list of what it has found, and it can even generate a preview to really make sure.

Keep the terms “title” and “chapters” in mind while using Handbrake.

How to rip a DVD with Handbrake

This process has been tested with a handful of DVDs, which include my box set of The X-Files, The Abyss, and Hackers movies. The process can vary in time based on the length and number of video files. Ripping speeds are determined by your DVD drive, but encoding speeds can be tweaked and vastly improved if you have a compatible GPU, such as AMD Radeon RX6000, RX7000, and RX9000, or better GPUs. Nvidia RTX 2060, 3060, 4060, and 5060 or better GPUs. Intel 9th-Gen CPUs with Intel HD, Iris Xe, or Arc graphics are also compatible.

So let's start preserving our DVD collection!

1. Insert the disc into your drive.

2. Open a media player and play the disc for a few seconds. I used VLC for this step. This is necessary for Handbrake to recognize the disc. If you skip this step, Handbrake will fail during title scanning.

3. Open Handbrake.

4. Select the drive as the source and let Handbrake search for the titles on the disc. This can take a while, depending on how many titles there are on the disc.

5. Using the dropdown, select the correct title that you wish to rip.

6. Set the preset to SuperHQ 480p for NTSC, SuperHQ 576P for PAL DVDs.

7. Click on the Video tab and then set the Video Encoder to your preferred choice. If you have a compatible GPU, in my case an Nvidia RTX 4070, you can select a hardware encoder such as NVEnc. This greatly speeds up the encoding process, but ripping the DVD depends on the speed of your DVD drive.

8. Set the framerate to Constant Framerate and check that it matches the source framerate. If we change the framerate, then the resulting file will look odd when played back on modern screens.

9. Check that the save location and file name are correct, and then click Start Encode to start the ripping process. The ripping process will take some time; encoding with a GPU should take next to no time.

If you plan to rip TV series episodes, the episodes can be “queued,” and Handbrake will automatically move on after each is done.

10. Follow steps 1 to 8, but instead of clicking Start Encode, click on Add to Queue. Notice that the Queue counter increments to show that there are multiple files to be ripped.

11. Click on Start Queue, and Handbrake will start ripping all the titles in the queue.

12. Check the files using your preferred media player. I opened all of the episodes in VLC and moved around the timeline to check that everything was fine.

You’ve successfully ripped your DVDs to files on your computer; now you can take your movie collection with you for your work commute, flights, or family car journeys.

Thinking of moving on from Windows 10 to Windows 11, or just want to play Battlefield 6? Then you’ll need to ensure your system is secure and meets Microsoft's requirements. One of the Windows 11 requirements is Secure Boot. Here we'll show you how to enable Secure Boot as fast and easily as possible.

What is UEFI Secure Boot?

Secure Boot’s goal is to ensure that your computer boots securely. Introduced in 2011 via version 2.3.1 of the UEFI specification, Secure Boot is there to keep the nasties out during the boot process; think rootkits and other malicious software. We first saw Secure Boot in Windows 8, and it has become the norm for it to be present in your motherboard's UEFI. The thing is, Secure Boot is often turned off. Mine was, until IT told me that I had to turn it on. Why did I have it turned off? I dual-boot Linux distros, and sometimes my Linux distro of choice won’t boot with it on.

Having Secure Boot enabled is slowly becoming the norm. Windows 11 is pushing for more security-focused features, such as TPM and, of course, Secure Boot. Even games are using TPM and Secure Boot for anti-cheats. If you want to play Battlefield 6, then you will need both TPM and Secure Boot enabled.

So let's get Secure Boot enabled on your Windows PC.

• Windows 11 officially requires TPM and Secure Boot in order to be installed.
• Secure Boot reduces the risk of rootkits or malware damaging your system during boot.
• Many games with anti-cheat functionality require TPM and Secure Boot to run.

Check if Secure Boot is enabled in Windows

1. Press Win + R and type msinfo32, then press Enter.

2. Look for “Secure Boot State” and check that the value is On. If the Secure Boot is on, then all is good, and you can carry on with life.

If you prefer to use PowerShell.

1. Run PowerShell as an administrator.

2. In the PowerShell prompt, run this command, Confirm-SecureBootUEFI and then press Enter.

3. Check the output. If True is returned, Secure Boot is enabled. If disabled, False is returned.

How to enable Secure Boot

To enable Secure Boot, we need to delve into the UEFI BIOS, and this process is a little different for every motherboard (instructions here), but the general gist is the same.

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1. Reboot your machine and go into the UEFI BIOS.

2. Look for Secure Boot in your UEFI. For my MSI motherboard, it was under Settings >> Advanced >> Windows OS Configuration >> Secure Boot

3. Enable Secure Boot, save, and then reboot the computer.

Final Thoughts

With Secure Boot enabled, your Windows PC now has an extra level of security during the boot process, and you can finally play Battlefield 6 or the latest Call of Duty. If you plan to dual-boot with a Linux distro, check that your chosen distro works with Secure Boot before attempting to install.

Microsoft has offered a reprieve for those who don’t want to upgrade to Windows 11. The Windows 10 Extended Security Updates (ESU) provides Windows 10 users with an additional year of updates to keep their Windows 10 PC safe from malware and cybersecurity attacks. Here's how to unlock the free Windows 10 updates.

• Windows 10 support ended on October 14, 2025.
• Microsoft wants users to move over to Windows 11.
• Windows 10 ESU provides a year of updates for up to 10 machines.
• Windows 10 ESU costs $30, or 1000 Microsoft Rewards points, or free if using Windows Backup.

Do I qualify for Windows 10 ESU?

In order to qualify for Windows 10 ESU, your Windows 10 PC(s) will need to be running at least version 22H2 of Home, Professional, Pro Education, or Workstation editions. You will also need to have the latest Windows update installed. The Microsoft account for your system(s) must also be an administrator account, as the ESU license will be linked to the Microsoft account used for enrollment. As such, the account cannot be held by a minor.

If you have multiple Windows 10 PCs, you can use your ESU license on up to 10 devices, but all devices must meet the eligibility criteria. Note that corporate or commercial licenses are not covered by the ESU, as it is only for consumers.

How much is Windows 10 ESU?

There are three ways to “pay” for Windows 10 ESU.

• Syncing your PC settings by backing up to the cloud with Windows Backup.
• Redeem 1000 Microsoft Rewards points.
• One-time purchase of $30.

There is a fourth option, but it applies only to European Economic Area countries (countries that are part of a single market), where residents can enrol for free after consumer defence organizations challenged Microsoft’s decision to gate the ESU process.

EEA countries are as follows

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden.

• Grab Windows 11 for free!

How to get Windows 10 ESU

As long as you meet the eligibility requirements for Windows 10 detailed above, the enrolment process is built into Windows 10 and extremely easy to use.

1. Click on Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update. If your PC meets Microsoft’s requirements, there will be a link to enrol in the ESU.

2. Click on Enroll Now, and on the next screen, click on Next to start the process.

3. Click on Enroll to start the enrolment process. In my case, the ESU was free of charge as I am backing up my Windows settings.

4. Click on Done to complete the process.

Final thoughts

Your Windows 10 PC will now receive updates until October 2026. If you are required to back up your settings to the cloud on a regular basis, failure to comply will result in possibly losing free updates.

If you're looking to finally update to Windows 11, check out our Windows 11 Free or Cheap article for details on how to score the operating system for free or at a deep discount.

Recently, I built a PC toolkit that had all the tools that I would need to repair a broken computer. Using Ventoy, it even included a USB flash drive with multiple Linux distros, rescue ISOs, and even a copy of Windows 11 ready to install. What it didn’t have were the apps that I typically use to overcome issues and solve problems.

Sure, I can install these every time I move to a new computer. Or I can work smarter and install them on a portable device and run the apps directly from it. That’s where PortableApps comes in. PortableApps is a website that collates portable versions of common open source/freeware applications that can be downloaded and run from your PC without installation. Best of all, there is a portable launcher that we can install on a USB flash drive and use that to manage software that is installed onto the flash drive.

In this how-to to we will go through the steps to set up your own portable apps flash drive, and show how it can be used between multiple devices.

All you will need for this how-to is a USB flash drive. Preferably USB 3 for the best possible performance. I chose a spare 8GB drive, but even an old 1GB drive would be useful if you only need a handful of apps or a collection of smaller applications.

Setting up the PortableApps USB flash drive

1. Insert a blank, formatted USB flash drive.
2. Open a browser window and visit the Portable Apps website, and click on Download from PortableApps.com. This will download a 7MB .paf file containing the PortableApps Platform application.

3. Double-click on the downloaded file to run the installer.
4. Using the dropdown menu, set your language and click OK.

5. Select Next to move on.

6. Click “I Agree” after reading the license agreement.

7. Select New Install and click Next. This will start the installation process on either your PC or a chosen USB storage device/cloud storage service.

8. Select Portable to install to a USB drive. You could also choose a cloud or local installation.

9. Select your USB flash drive and click Next.

10. Click Install to copy the files to the USB flash drive. If the destination is incorrect, click Back and choose the correct destination.

11. Ensure that Run PortableApps.com Platform is checked, and click Finish to close the installer and run the platform from the USB flash drive.

12. After closing the About pop-up and once the application updates itself, two icons will appear in the bottom right corner of the screen. The first icon, a grey circle with a white arrow, is the PortableApps Menu (Start Menu). The second icon, a blue circle with a grey arrow, is an application installer. Click on the second icon to show a list of installable applications.

13. Scroll down the list and check the applications that you wish to install, and then click Install to start the process. I grabbed a few applications that I always need. Notepad++, GIMP, Inkscape, KiCAD, Krita, etc.

14. Wait for the downloads to complete.

15. Click Finish to end the installation process.

16. Click on the PortableApps Menu icon to launch the applications menu.

17. From the categories, select the application that you wish to run, and click on it to start.

The PortableApps Menu

The PortableApps menu is where we launch our portable applications, but it can do much more than that.

1. Installed Applications: All of your installed applications are listed here. They are broken down into categories for ease of use. You can also use the search bar at the top of the menu.
2. Quick Links to USB: Here are quick links to folders on your PortableApps USB flash drive. The Explore option will open a general File Explorer window to view the drive as a whole.
3. App Management: These links can back up and restore applications, check for app updates, and install new apps. The options link configures how the PortableApps menu integrates with your OS.
4. Eject and Close: These buttons are used to eject the PortableApps USB flash drive and to close the menu.
5. Disk Usage: Used to keep a close eye on available disk space on your PortableApps USB flash drive.

Are the applications truly portable?

I wanted to test this, so I fired up my Lenovo X390, running Windows 11.

I inserted the PortableApps USB flash drive and double-clicked on the Start file. The menu appeared, and I was soon able to launch Notepad++ directly from the USB flash drive.

This led me to the crazy question of “How portable are these apps? Could I make them work in Linux?” The short answer was yes, I could. I needed to install Wine in order to run the Start.exe file from the flash drive. It worked though!

But let's temper this success with a caveat. Some apps crashed! I tried the Krita image editor, and it loaded fine, and then crashed. GIMP was a little slow, but it worked.

PortableApps is a powerful tool for those of us who are nomadic and just want to get working as quickly as possible. It's free, easy to use, and very useful. All you need is a spare USB flash drive, something that all of us have in abundance. So there is no excuse not to test it out.

• Upgrading to Windows 11 is easier than you think.
• Windows 10 has a built-in tool to migrate users to Windows 11.
• A fresh install takes more time, but it provides a clean-slate for your rig.

The big day has arrived, and whether you like it or not, you need to take action! What am I talking about? Windows 11, of course. October 14, 2025, is when support for Windows 10 will end, unless you purchase an Extended Security Update (ESU), of course.

Windows 11 is where Microsoft wants users to go, and it is where I have been forced to go! Windows 10 has been nagging me for months, but today is the day that I have to take action. So let's go through the steps you need to take to upgrade your copy of Windows 10 to the latest version of Windows 11.

Before taking any action, ensure that you have backups for all of your important software, files, images, and other data. As with any major upgrade, moving from Windows 10 to 11 carries at least a small risk of data loss.

For those eager to tweak their Windows 11 install, for privacy, AI or system performance requirements, we've got a guide covering how to set Windows 11 to your exact requirements. This guide will work on upgraded and fresh installs of Windows 11.

Below, we outline how to update from Windows 10 to Windows 11 by either using the built-in updating utility, or just starting from scratch with a completely new installation.

How to Upgrade From Windows 10 to Windows 11

• Upgrading to Windows 11 took only 75 minutes.
• The process is entirely inside of Windows 10.
• There was no data loss.

1. From the start menu, click on Settings.

2. Select Update and Security

3. Click on the Windows 11 “Download and Install” button. This is the banner that has been nagging me for many months.

4. Accept and Install the software license terms.

5. Sit back with a beverage and wait for the download and install to complete. This took around 1 hour 15 minutes for me and there were multiple restarts.

How to do a fresh install of Windows 11

• Fresh installs provide a blank canvas to build your system.
• You will need to reinstall any applications and drivers.
• A fresh install takes longer than upgrading.

You may wish to perform a fresh install of Windows 11. For this, you will need a copy of the Windows 11 ISO image and a spare 8GB USB flash drive.

If you wish, you can use the Windows 11 Installation Assistant to check that your PC meets the requirements for Windows 11. If not, you can easily bypass them. My preferred means is to download a fresh Windows 11 ISO and boot directly from that.

Ensure that you have backed up before moving forward. This will completely erase the data on your SSD / HDD.

1. Download and install a copy of Rufus, a tool to write bootable USB sticks.

2. Go to the official Windows 11 page and in the Download Windows 11 Disk Image section, select Windows 11 (multi-edition for x64 device) from the dropdown menu.

3. Select your preferred language.

4. Click on Download and wait for the process to finish. The disk image is around 7.2GB in size.

5. Insert the USB flashdrive and then open Rufus.

6. Select the USB flash drive.

7. Select the Windows 11 ISO image.

8. Click on Start to write the image.

9. If prompted to tweak the install (no TPM, RAM requirement check, local account) decide on what you would like to tweak and then click OK.

10. Wait for Rufus to write the image to the USB flash drive.

11. Click Close and then eject the flash drive.

12. Reboot your PC and select the USB flash drive as the boot device. The process to do this will be different for every user.

13. Follow the Windows 11 install process and in a short while you will have Windows 11 on your PC.

Windows 10 is set to go end-of-life (EOL) on October 14, and while you can purchase an extended service license to keep your machine updated for a little longer, some will ultimately choose to upgrade to Windows 11. But what if your machine doesn’t meet Microsoft’s requirements? You can get around them quite easily with Rufus or the focus of this how-to, Flyoobe.

Originally known as Flyby11, Flyoobe touts itself as “A better way to set up Windows,” and it has an expansive set of features that should make Windows 11 a much better experience on more modest hardware.

• Upgrade a Windows 10 machine to Windows 11
• Remove AI components
• Slim down Windows 11
• Enhance the Windows 11 experience
• Install commonly used applications

In this how-to, I’ll be updating a laptop that is over a decade old to run Windows 11. This process can be applied to any machine running Windows 10. For those already running Windows 11, skip the upgrade and go right to the tweaks.

No matter what, though, you will need to install Flyoobe.

Download and Install Flyoobe

1. Download the latest Flyoobe release from the official GitHub repository. At the time of writing this was 1.10.

2. Extract the files to a folder on your desktop.

3. Double click on the Flyoobe application.

Upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 11

On my test machine, an ancient Lenovo X220 with a paltry 2nd-Gen Intel Core i5, I have Windows 10, freshly installed and ready for this how-to. But I want to install Windows 11. I could use Rufus to make an installation USB drive, but I wanted to use Flyoobe, which will download the latest Windows 11 ISO and install it using a Windows Server variant of the setup tools to skip hardware checks for TPM 2.0, Secure Boot, and, of course, the 2nd-Gen i5, which is most certainly not supported.

I’ll assume that you have an older machine running Windows 10, a machine that does not meet Microsoft’s Windows 11 requirements.

1. Open Flyoobe.

2. Click on Get Windows 11.

3. Click on Download ISO from Microsoft website, this will trigger a browser to open.

4. Download the Windows 11 multi-edition ISO and set your preferred language. Click Confirm to move on.

5. Click on the generated link to download the Windows 11 ISO.

6. Drag the downloaded ISO from the file manager into Flyoobe, this will trigger the installer to start.

7. Follow the instructions to run the install. When prompted to keep files, settings, apps or just personal files, make the choice most relevant to your requirements.

8. When ready, click on Install to install Windows 11 over the Windows 10 installation. The installer will reboot automatically and run the Windows 11 post installation setup script.

Tweaking Windows 11 with Flyoobe

We’ve got Windows 11 on an unsupported machine, so now lets spend a little time tweaking it for better performance. The first task is to remove the AI features. I don’t need them, nor do I want them. So let's use Flyoobe to remove them all.

1. In the Flyoobe app, select the AI tab.

2. Click on Check to search for all of the possible AI components.

3. Select all of the components that you wish to turn off.

4. Click on “Turn off selected”. This will trigger Windows Powershell to run a script to deactivate the AI elements.

5. Reboot for the changes to take effect.

Install Updates and Driver with Flyoobe

My old Lenovo X220 worked out of the box with Windows 11, but the trackpad scroll button did not work and I love scrolling with that! So I needed to install the correct drivers and updates.

1. Right click on the Flyoobe app and select Run as Administrator. We need to do this so that we can install the drivers / updates. I tried without, and the process just hung.

2. Select the Updates tab and click on “Check for Updates”.

3. Select all of the relevant updates and click on “Install Updates”.

4. Wait for the process to finish. You may see some errors, these can be ignored.

5. Reboot for the changes to take effect.

Improve the Windows 11 Experience with Flyoobe

Windows 11 is a different experience from Windows 10. For one thing, the Start menu is now in the center, and my muscle memory reminds me of this every time I use it. I wanted to improve my Windows 11 experience, and so I turned to Flyoobe, which has a quick list of changes that I can make to speed up and improve the overall features of Windows 11.

1. Open Flyoobe and go to the Experience tab.

2. Using the dropdown menu, select “Use quick settings”

3. Click on “Toggle All” and click Apply to action.

4. Wait for the process to finish. You may see some errors, these can be ignored.

5. Reboot for the changes to take effect.

Remove Unwanted Apps with Flyoobe

Windows 11, like other Windows before it, comes with a plethora of applications. Some useful, some not so. I wanted a clean start and for that I turned to Flyoobe to remove all of the unwanted applications.

1. Open Flyoobe and go to the Apps tab.

2. Using the dropdown menu, select “Minimal Windows” Of course you can change this to meet your needs. The “Balanced” option provides all of the essential apps and that is why it is recommended.

3. Click on “Remove Selected Apps” to start the uninstall process.

4. Wait for the process to finish. You may see some errors, these can be ignored.

5. Reboot for the changes to take effect.

Install Apps with Flyoobe

The complete opposite now! Whenever I install any OS, there are always a number of applications that I want / need to install. Flyoobe has an Installer tab that I can use to install a few of these, making it a little easier to get started.

1. Open Flyoobe and go to the Installer tab.

2. Scroll down the list and select the apps that you want to install.

3. Click on “Install Apps” to start the install process.

4. Wait for the process to finish. You may see some errors, these can be ignored.

5. Go to the start menu and your new apps are ready to use.

Flyoobe Extensions

This section covers extensions, written for Flyoobe, and designed to further improve your experience. There are extensions for

• Post-setup cleanup
• Restoring deleted apps
• View telemetry settings
• Tweak the File Explorer

and many more.

I’m going to show you how to run Disk Cleanup via Flyoobe, but the process is the same for the other extensions.

1. Open Flyoobe and go to the Extensions tab.

2. Scroll down the list and select the Post-setup cleanup option.

3. Click on “Run” to start the cleanup process.

4.Wait for the process to finish. You may see some errors, these can be ignored.

5. The disk cleanup dropdown has other options for cleaning up the system. Choose any that are relevant to your needs and setup. Just remember to take backups before clicking the button.

The Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, BASIC, is where I started my coding journey. Sat, aged four or five in front of a Commodore 16, I typed in lines of words and numbers which made up an application or sound effect. Sometimes they worked, often they did not. The words that I typed, along with “syntax error,” meant nothing to a five-year-old child who wanted sugar-coated cereal and Transformers cartoons, but I persevered.

Fast forward to the 21st century, and I still use BASIC from time to time. I write BASIC on a Commodore 64 and a ZX Spectrum that I recently renovated. I’ve even written BASIC on a Raspberry Pi Pico to control a series of NeoPixels.

Recently, Microsoft open-sourced its MOS,6502 BASIC from 1978, and that got me thinking about writing BASIC on a PC. Sure, I remember QBasic and the gorillas.bas game. I loved tweaking that game on my 486 DX33 back in the 1990s, but I wanted to write BASIC on my Windows 10 PC in 2025.

I can’t use MOS6502 BASIC without spending a lot of time getting it to work on my PC, so what can I use instead? It turns out that there is, and it is called QB64 Phoenix Edition, and it looks and feels just like QBasic, but with many more features.

• Realtime input error checking
• Online and offline help system
• Syntax highlighting
• Automatic source formatting
• Debugging
• Compiles native binaries for Windows, macOS and Linux

QB64 Phoenix Edition (QB64 PE) is a fresh offshoot of the original QB64 project, which seemed to die out in the early 2020s. The project’s goal is to keep the spirit of the old application alive and to provide more people with access to running BASIC on their computers. QB64 PE is cross-platform and it has compatibility with QBasic and QuickBasic 4.5 code. But QB64 PE also gives us an extended BASIC and OpenGL, meaning that we can create applications/games with graphics and sound.

So let's take a look at QB64 PE and create our own BASIC project.

Getting Started with QB64 PE

It really couldn’t be any simpler to get started with QB64 PE.

1. Go to the QB4 PE project page and download the package for your operating system.

2. Extract the file to a directory.

3. Navigate to that directory and double left click on the qb64pe.exe application.

The QB64 PE user interface is very much like QBasic. We have the menu at the top, the coding area in the middle, and a status/output/debugging area at the bottom. Our project will see us working with the File and Run menu.

On first boot, QB64 PE will tell us that the application and any executables made by it can be falsely identified by your anti-virus package. You can optionally whitelist the directory, but I have not had any issues in my testing.

QB64 PE is an awesome application, and I urge you to dig into the gloriously in-depth documentation (which is where I found how to show images) and learn more about QB64 PE.

A short history of BASIC

The BASIC language has been with us since 1964, and it was developed as a high-level (easy-to-read) language by John G Kemeny, chairman of the Dartmouth College Math Department. The name BASIC came from Thomas Kurtz.

The structure of BASIC is meant to be over-simplified on purpose. Each line of BASIC is read by the compiler and turned into bytecode, which the machine can then run. But BASIC can be compiled or interpreted, depending on the version you are using. For example, on the Commodore 64, we see Commodore 64 BASIC V2, a version of Microsoft BASIC, which has a limited number of keywords.

The Project Goal: To Make A Simple Game

Learning BASIC, or any coding language, really, is best done by creating a project. I could sit here and teach you about core programming concepts, or we could have some fun and make a simple game. The game in question is inspired by Usborne’s 1980s BASIC coding books, specifically Computer Space Games, which I adored as a child.

The game is “Escape from planet LXF329,” and the goal of the game is to take off and escape a group of aliens who are trying to capture the spaceship. Essentially, this is a number-guessing game, but with a sci-fi theme.

• Learn the BASIC syntax
• Learn how to display images
• Use conditional statements
• Create variables for integers and strings
• Get user input

You may have spotted “Learn how to display images,” and yes, I will show you how to display a static image on the screen using QB64 PE. In the interest of full disclosure, the images used in the game were generated using Adobe Firefly, an AI service. Why? I could’ve used stock images or spent some time in GIMP and Inkscape, but I didn’t have the time, nor the talent, so Adobe Firefly did the work for me.

We’ll start by creating the starting screen, an image that advertises the game and sets the scene.

1. Create a new blank document and click on File >> Save and save the project as space.bas. Remember to save often.

2. Create a new screen object, setting the screen to 1024 x 1024 pixels and 32-bit color, then set the window title to ESCAPE FROM PLANET LXF329”.

Screen _NewImage(1024, 1024, 32)_Title "ESCAPE FROM PLANET LXF329"

3. Create a variable, myImage& and store your image.

myImage& = _LoadImage("title.png")

4. Create an error handler to check that the image has been loaded correctly. This is basically a conditional check that checks for the loaded file in the variable. If there is nothing there, 0, then it will print an error message.

If myImage& = 0 Then    Print "Error loading image!"    EndEnd If

5. Put the image onto the screen at position 0,0 (top left) then pause the code, waiting for the user to press a key.

_PutImage (0, 0), myImage&Sleep

6. Save the code, and click on Run >> run Only (no EXE) to start the code. Click OK in the dialog to start. You should see the image appear on the screen. Press any key to close the window.

7. Create a label, START: Labels enable us to write code that can jump around to different sections by using a Go To command. You may be familiar with using numbers and jumping to a numbered line. Here ,we are not using numbers, so labels will do the same job.

START:

8. To begin the game code, clear the screen (CLS) and then use a series of print statements to print a narrative to get the reader up to speed on the game mechanics and story.

ClsPrint "ESCAPE FROM PLANET LXF329"Print "Your vessel, the USS TOMSHARDWARE has landed on LXF329"Print "on a routine survey mission"PrintPrint "But the evil aliens, led by HOAL are after your blood!"PrintPrint "Calculate the thrust necessary to take-off and escape"Print "the planet's gravity!"PrintPrint "You only have ten seconds until the aliens burst into"Print "the starship and lay waste to your crew!"

9. Ensure that the game uses pseudo-random numbers. If we don’t do this then the game will pick the same numbers each time.

Randomize Timer

10. Create two variables, g (gravity) and w (weight), which are random integers, multiplied by 20 and 40, respectively. BASIC uses LET to create variables.

Let g = Int(Rnd * 20)Let w = Int(Rnd * 40)

11. Create a third variable to store the correct thrust to leave the planet.

Let r = g * w

12. For debug purposes, print the answer to the screen. Later, comment this out using the REM (remark) keyword.

Print r

Change to this for the final game

REM Print r

13. Print the planet’s gravity and then ask the user to make their thrust calculation.

Print "Planet Gravity = "; gPrint "Type in thrust to escape: "

14. Using a for loop, we give the player ten guesses before the aliens enter the ship.

For c = 1 To 10

15. Stored the player’s guess in a variable, f. That value is compared to the answer, r. If the thrust is too high or low, the for loop repeats until the player runs out of guesses. If the guess is correct, then the game goes to the ENDGAME label.

For c = 1 To 10    Input f    If f > r Then Print "Thrust too high";    If f < r Then Print "Thrust too low";    If f = r Then GoTo ENDGAMENext c

16. Print “the bad ending” to the screen. This section runs if the player fails to make the correct calculations, and then the for loop ends, throwing the user into this nightmare scenario.

PrintPrint "The aliens have entered the starship and you and your"Print "crew are now their prisoners!"Print

17. Add a graphic to show your ship losing against the alien onslaught. You will need to create a PNG file, stored in the same directory as the game file. This is the same code as used for the start screen. Sleeping for 5 is important; otherwise, there is a bug where the screen automatically closes and ends the game.

Screen _NewImage(1024, 1024, 32)_Title "YOU DIED!"myImage& = _LoadImage("die.png")If myImage& = 0 Then    Print "Error loading image!"    EndEnd If_PutImage (0, 0), myImage&Sleep 5

18. Using a GoTo, send the player to the REPLAY section of code.

GoTo REPLAY

19. Print a message to the user to say that they have won. Then show an image on the screen. The ENDGAME label is where the successful player is sent. They are rewarded with a message and an escape image showing them blasting off into space!

Print "You have successfully taken off!"Print "The aliens burn in the wake of your engines"Screen _NewImage(1024, 1024, 32)_Title "YOU WON!"myImage& = _LoadImage("escape.png")If myImage& = 0 Then    Print "Error loading image!"    EndEnd If_PutImage (0, 0), myImage&Sleep 5

20. Create a means to ask the player if they would like to try again. The player’s input is stored as a variable, a. But note that the variable contains a string ($) which can be y or n. If it is y, the game goes back to the START label. Otherwise, the game stops. We use the REPLAY label to identify what the code is for and to direct the player through the game.

REPLAY:Print "Would you like to try again? Press y or n"Input a$If a$ = "y" Then    GoTo STARTElse    StopEnd If

21. Save the code, and click on Run >> run Only (no EXE) to start the code. Click OK in the dialog to start.

22. Run the game a few times, win and lose. Remember that the answer is printed to the screen, so make sure to comment that out when letting your friends have a go.

Complete Code Listing

Screen _NewImage(1024, 1024, 32)_Title "ESCAPE FROM PLANET LXF329"myImage& = _LoadImage("title.png")If myImage& = 0 Then    Print "Error loading image!"    EndEnd If_PutImage (0, 0), myImage&SleepSTART:ClsPrint "ESCAPE FROM PLANET LXF329"Print "Your vessel, the USS TOMSHARDWARE has landed on LXF329"Print "on a routine survey mission"PrintPrint "But the evil aliens, led by HOAL are after your blood!"PrintPrint "Calculate the thrust necessary to take-off and escape"Print "the planet's gravity!"PrintPrint "You only have ten seconds until the aliens burst into"Print "the starship and lay waste to your crew!"Randomize TimerLet g = Int(Rnd * 20)Let w = Int(Rnd * 40)Let r = g * wPrint rPrint "Planet Gravity = "; gPrint "Type in thrust to escape: "For c = 1 To 10    Input f    If f > r Then Print "Thrust too high";    If f < r Then Print "Thrust too low";    If f = r Then GoTo ENDGAMENext cPrintPrint "The aliens have entered the starship and you and your"Print "crew are now their prisoners!"PrintScreen _NewImage(1024, 1024, 32)_Title "YOU WON!"myImage& = _LoadImage("die.png")If myImage& = 0 Then    Print "Error loading image!"    EndEnd If_PutImage (0, 0), myImage&Sleep 5GoTo REPLAYENDGAME:Print "You have successfully taken off!"Print "The aliens burn in the wake of your engines"Screen _NewImage(1024, 1024, 32)_Title "YOU WON!"myImage& = _LoadImage("escape.png")If myImage& = 0 Then    Print "Error loading image!"    EndEnd If_PutImage (0, 0), myImage&Sleep 5REPLAY:Print "Would you like to try again? Press y or n"Input a$If a$ = "y" Then    GoTo STARTElse    StopEnd If

Sharing your work!

If you want to share the game with your friends, then you can! Just bear in mind that the resulting executable is bound to the OS it was created with. Additionally, as QB64 PE notes, your executable may be flagged as a false positive by your antivirus.

1. Click on Run >> Make EXE Only. You can also click on Run >> Start to compile and run the code. This way you get both the executable, and the code will run in the editor.

2. Click OK to compile the executable into the qb64pe folder, the same folder where QB64 PE is being run.

3. Wait for the code to compile. Check the status bar at the bottom of the screen to monitor the progress. On modern systems this will take seconds.

4. Navigate to the folder with the compiled game code. I scanned my compiled code using Microsoft Defender and Malwarebytes, and nothing nasty was found.

5. Double click on the executable to run the game.

Linux users, new and old, have all hit this issue at some point in their careers: We’ve got a terminal session open and it's doing some long and incredibly important task, but we need to do something else. So we just open another terminal, right? Sure, you can do that, even over SSH, but there is a smarter way to do it, and that involves Tmux (Terminal Multiplexer).

Tmux is a tool that enables you to run, manage, and organize many terminal sessions from one terminal window. We can detach from a running session, leaving it to perform a long task. For example, I am migrating lots of photos from one drive to another on my 3D printed server. So I am using Tmux to run the copy session, then detaching so that I can log off my PC / sleep / not break the copy process.

Tmux uses a Session >> Window >> Pane process to provide a workspace (Session) in which we can have multiple terminal tabs open (Windows), and those windows can be further split into subdivided regions (Panes).

So how do you get started with Tmux, and what can you do with it?

Creating Your First Tmux Session

In this first section, we will create a Tmux session in which we can work. But before we can use Tmux, we need to install it.

1. Open a terminal and update your software repositories, and then install Tmux.

sudo apt update && sudo apt install tmux

2. Run the Tmux command to start a new named session called Test_Session.

tmux new -s Test_Session

3. Use a sleep command to force the terminal to pause for 30 seconds. We’ll use this command to tie up the Tmux session, simulating it doing a complex, time-consuming task.

sleep 30

4. Press CTRL + B and then d to detach from the session. You will return to the original terminal window.

5. Attach back to the Tmux session.

tmux attach -t Test_Session

6. Detach from the session by pressing CTRL + B and then d

7. Create another session called Another_Session. We should now have two sessions running, one we are attached to (Another_Session) and the previous session (Test_Session)

tmux new -s Another_Session

8. List all of the sessions. The attached (current active) session is clearly identified.

tmux ls

9. Switch to the original Test_Session.

tmux switch -t Test_Session

10. List the sessions and you will see that the attached session is now Test_Session.

tmux ls

11. Kill Another_Session.

tmux kill-session -t Another_Session

Using Tmux Windows

Each Tmux window is essentially its own shell, and we can use them to switch between tasks in our overall Tmux session. For example, we could have one window for a long-running session, and another for checking logs.

Let's start using Windows in our Tmux session.

1. Attach back to the Tmux session. If it has been killed, use Step 2 in the Session section to re-create it.

tmux attach -t Test_Session

2. Press CTRL + B and then c to create a new Window. The name of the new Window is the same as the first, bash.

3. Rename the current window to Logs by pressing CTRL + B and then Press Enter when the filename has been changed. Note that the bottom left Window list has now been updated to show the new name.

4. List all of the Windows by pressing CTRL + B then w. We can select any window using the arrow keys, press Enter to change to that window. Alternatively you can cycle through the windows by pressing CTRL + B and n (next window) or p for the previous.

5. Close the current window by pressing CTRL + B and then &. Here I am closing the Logs window as I no longer require it.

Using Tmux Panes to split Windows

We can split any window into multiple panes. So if we need to keep an eye on some logs while doing other terminal work, we can!

1. Attach back to the Tmux session. If it has been killed, use Step 2 in the Session section to re-create it.

tmux attach -t Test_Session

2. Press CTRL + B then % to split the window vertically, giving us two equally sized columns.

3. Press CTRL + B then “ to split the current pane horizontally. This could be useful for a long command where you need to keep an eye on the output. An rsync file transfer for example.

4. Press CTRL + B then o to switch between the panes. Alternatively press CTRL + B then ; to toggle between the last two panes.

5. Press CTRL + B then x to close the currently selected pane. You will need to confirm the closure by pressing Y and Enter.

6. Press CTRL + B then q followed by the number of the pane that you wish to jump to. You need to be quick!

7. Press CTRL+B then press the arrow keys to resize the currently selected pane. You will need to repeatedly press the keys to tweak the size.

As a writer who has been working professionally on PCs and Apple devices since the mid-1990s, I’ve been through a lot of keyboards. However, a fondness for one, which was actually released back in 1990, has stuck with me to the present day. I’m referring to the Apple Extended II mechanical keyboard, also known as the AEKII model M3501. The model you see in the photos is the third I have personally owned.

AEKII details

This substantial 3.75 pounds (1.70 kg) input device is a fulsome sized mechanical keyboard, with F-keys up to F15, a comprehensive set of navigation keys, and a numpad. There’s even a power key to the upper right. Other notable features are its twin quick-keys hanger pegs, which let you overlay shortcut reference sheets around the F-key area. There are two ADB ports (Apple Desktop Bus, a proprietary DIN interface introduced on the Apple IIGS), left and right (so you could plug an ADB mouse either side), and there’s a large elevation slider to its rear, which adjusts the tilt of the keyboard deck by raising an almost full-width rubber tipped foot.

The majority of keycaps are PBT, but the tell-tale touch-smoothed and yellowed space bar uses ABS plastic. These mechanical keyboards came with a variety of Alps switches, which are no longer in production, and are distinctly different from modern alternatives like Cherry MX switches. Modern keyboard aficionados seem to suggest the nearest equivalent switches are made by Matias.

The sample I am currently typing this article on has what I think are the cream/ivory damped switches. Lifting a keycap to see the color stems shows they are kind of off-white, but I can’t be 100% sure if they have darkened from simply being so very old.

DIY is better

For some reason, I sold my previous AEKII, which was in perfect working condition with a genuine ADB cable, and a commercial solution to adapt it to USB. That adaptor was the Griffin Technology iMate Universal ADB to USB Adaptor, complete with its original packaging. Getting just £38 (~$50) for this keyboard, cable, and adaptor bundle in 2017 was a tragedy, as I now see the iMate alone is selling for $90 to $200.

However, the iMate wasn’t as good as the DIY solution that I will take you through. That commercial plug-it-and-forget-it dongle didn’t offer the online configurator you will be able to use if you go ahead and make this homebrew converter yoruself.

Get all the parts together

Before duplicating this project, you will need the following things:

• An Apple ADB keyboard
• A Pro Micro 5V (Arduino compatible), ATmega32U4. Make sure the listing confirms it runs at 5V and 16 MHz.
• An Apple ADB cable, or an SVHS S-Video 4-pin lead, like I used.
• A 1 Kilohm resistor (Brown-Black-Red, we've got a cheat sheet to help.)
• Soldering equipment
• A multimeter

I was lucky enough to get the keyboard you see in an “untested” condition for under £20 posted (~$27), the ATmega32U4 was £7.35 ($9.90), and the SVHS cable was £3.25 ($4.38), delivered. I already had a box of hundreds of different resistors, soldering bits and pieces, and a multimeter.

If you are in the market for some soldering equipment, please check out our extensive best soldering irons buying guide, where we have tested many different models.

Software for firmware and flashing

Getting the software set up and successfully flashed as firmware is my recommended first step. The firmware can be verified after it is flashed, so you know this side of the equation is correct. Then, you can plug in your DIY adaptor to confirm that you’ve soldered everything correctly.

I pondered over a few firmware choices before going with TMK converter firmware, which was successful. Rather than distract you with tales that led down a blind alley, or just veered off in the wrong direction (for me), I'll keep things simple and share what did actually work for my setup.

The winning choice, in my case, for this ADB to USB converter is known as the TMK converter firmware. This firmware seemed more focused on my retro keyboard converter needs than others, and thus felt like a better fit for the project. Some of the notes on the updates in the forum caught my eye, such as “ISO keys should be correctly supported.” TMK offered an online configurator and flasher, too.

One worrying thing about the TMK firmware, for my build, was that the project originator warns against using microcontrollers like the one I had already purchased. "Please don't ask help for problem specific to Pro Micro here," writes TMK project founder Hasu on the above-linked forum.

Nevertheless, after a brief visit to the online TMK Keymap Editor and a couple of mouse prods to adjust key positions, I downloaded my tweaked TMK firmware file (default named unimap.hex, and just 68KB in size) moments later.

Subsequently, I’ve only edited (then reflashed) my TMK firmware once - to change the power key into a shortcut key that launches a calculator. Maybe I'll repurpose some lesser-used keys for media keys later, or add a 'layer' full of such functionality.

Testing the web-based flashing ‘Flash on Web’ for TMK, I haven’t got it to work in any browser. But as I already had the QMK Toolbox, from earlier experimentation, which works very nicely with the ATmega32U4 hardware, that's what I used.

Flashing firmware with QMK Toolbox

QMK Toolbox (run in Administrator mode) can be used to flash new firmware to the ATmega32U4. This connects via Micro-USB, and once you plug it into the PC, you will see a red light as evidence that it is powered up. If this is your first use of the microcontroller, you should be prompted by QMK Toolbox to install the necessary drivers to communicate with the tiny developer board.

Once you see your MCU recognized in the toolbox, go and select your *.HEX file from wherever you saved it. The 'unimap.hex' we saved earlier from TMK’s online configurator will have been saved, by default, in the Downloads folder.

Next, click the Auto-Flash checkbox in the Toolbox UI. You are about to reset your ATmega32U4, so it will be receptive to uploading the selected firmware. While it is still powered and connected to the USB, get a small conductive instrument, perhaps the end of a blade screwdriver, to bridge the PCB holes marked GND and RST.

A brief touch of those two holes, simultaneously, will reset the board and, in the QMK Toolbox window, you will see text scrolling by saying things like “Attempting to flash… Flash complete.” On my PC, this process took just a few seconds.

Using this software, you can also confirm your current firmware by selecting Tools > HID Console from the top menu. This is a good way to check your current firmware is actually what you think it is.

Windows Device Manager also confirms the freshly flashed ATmega32U4 is now recognized as a new keyboard. You will see the extra keyboard entry appear and disappear as you plug and unplug the microcontroller. To be clear, even if you don't have the actual Apple ADB keyboard plugged in at this point, it is still listed as an HID Keyboard Device.

Your ATmega32U4 is now ready for wiring up, another process with plenty of potential wrong turns, pitfalls, and issues. Hopefully we can keep you on the straight and narrow.

Preparing the hardware

Successful wiring of the cut-in-half SVHS lead to the ATmega32U4 took me three attempts. There are several guides out there on blogs, and in forum posts - but the most common pitfall is wiring the Data (labeled ‘3’ on this microcontroller's PCB), 5V (VCC), and Ground (GND) wires in a mirror image to what you actually need. I fell victim to this error, too.

So, I went from rev.1 wiring – just wrong, to rev.2 wiring – unintentionally mirrored, to rev.3 wiring – bingo. Sorry, but my soldering got worse over subsequent revisions – just in case I had to change it all again. But I’m from the school of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” so as rev.3 was functional, without any flakiness, it wasn’t finessed.

Please follow these steps closely if you are using an SVHS lead chopped in two like I did. This will remove any doubts about whether you should be looking at the Male or Female ADB pinout (mirrors of each other) for wiring guidance.

Switch your multimeter into continuity mode (probes touched together will make a beep sound). We are going to connect up the stripped and tinned wires in a mirror of what is suggested in the ‘Build Converter Yourself’ section of the TMK forum, linked above. Instead, follow the diagram below.

So, following my ‘Male’ connector example, and checking your multimeter in continuity mode to confirm which wire is which, your success should be guaranteed. Again, this is as long as you use the same cabling choice and microcontroller as I did.

As a first microcontroller-side soldering step, I tinned the stripped wires to get them ready for soldering. Next, I decided to thread the 1K resistor across the Data (labeled ‘3’ on the PCB) and VCC holes, around the back. A bit of solder got the resistor nicely seated. Then I fluxed and tinned the resistor legs, poking upwards, ready to accept the wires from the cable.

Next, it was a cinch to solder the SVHS cable wires to the Data and VCC points. Lastly, the GND you found on the SVHS cable connects to the GND on the ATmega32U4 PCB to create a common reference to ground. Perhaps check your soldering again now, using your multimeter's continuity function, to make sure all is connected correctly.

If all has gone as planned (and hopefully anyone following this will feel the benefit of my many mistakes) you should be able to use your gloriously vintage AEKII (or other Apple ADB keyboard) with this adaptor on your modern computer.

Now, you are familiar with fiddling with TMK’s online configurator and QMK’s Toolbox for flashing, any subsequent tweaks should be very easy. You can even go and set up oodles of keyboard layers, packing multitudes of media control keys, web navigation keys -- there are lots of other options.

A box for the ugly dongle

Last but not least, somewhat envious of my colleagues with the best budget 3D printers at home, I decided to make a simple wooden receptacle for the ADB to USB adaptor I’d put together.

What you see in the gallery is just a sawn-off bit of old pine that was lying around the garage. I drilled an appropriately sized hole to hide the ATmega32U4 inside. Then, the piece was sanded, stained, and polished.

When it comes to making GUI (Graphical User Interface) applications with Python, we are truly spoilt for choice. We have Tkinter, PyGame, GUIZero, and my personal favourite, EasyGUI.

EasyGUI is old; I was using it to teach Python back in 2015! But, as the name suggests, it's easy to use, and that is why I am still using it over a decade later. It just works across multiple operating systems, and I don’t need to get bogged down in the details of specifying the size and position of a dialog. I just tell EasyGUI that I want a specific type of dialog, and it creates it using the title, message, and interface that I specify. You may be heading to the comments to tell me that PyGame, GUIZero, or some other GUI toolkit is better. If so, please do share your knowledge. We learn by sharing, and I would love to hear your preference.

I also like it because it has a lot of different dialog options, many of which are common across the many applications that we take for granted!

I’ve taken a few screenshots to illustrate.

To see all of the options, we first need to install EasyGUI. For this how to you will need Python installed on your computer. We’ve got a guide for Windows machines, but Linux users should already have it installed.

1. Open a Command Prompt / Terminal. Windows users can find this via the Start menu.

2. Use pip to install EasyGUI. Pip is Python’s built-in package manager.

pip.exe install easygui

3. Start the Python interpreter.

python -i

4. Import the EasyGUI module. I shortened the name of EasyGUI to eg when I imported the module. It makes it easier to use.

import easygui as eg

5. Call the demo function to see all of the different dialog options. Close the dialog window to end the demo.

eg.egdemo()

To create a dialog, first specify the type of dialog, then pass the parameters. Take, for example, this simple button box which has a title, msg, and choice. The title refers to the dialog’s title, the msg is the message to the user, and the choices are a Python list of options, which become buttons. Clicking on a choice will print the choice to the Python shell, or we can save it to a variable for later use.

The Project: A To-Do list in Python

Our goal is simple: create a to-do app that will keep us on track. The app will be written in Python, and use a GUI to make it easier for the end user. The to-do list will be saved to an external file using JSON. Python can easily work with JSON, thanks to the JSON module.

So what are we going to do?

• Download and install the EasyGUI Python module.
• Write Python code in a text editor.
• Import the EasyGUI Python module, along with modules to write the tasks to a file using JSON format.
• Create functions to handle viewing, creating and deleting tasks.
• Test that the app works.

I’m going to assume that you have Python and the EasyGUI module installed, so let's open a text editor and start writing code. I’ll be using Notepad++ on my Windows 10 PC.

1. Open a text editor and create a new blank file. Save the file as to-do.py and remember to save often. I’m using Notepad++, but any text editor will do the job.

2. Import the easygui module and then the modules for using JSON and working with the underlying OS. Remember to rename EasyGUI as you import it for an easier means of calling the module.

import easygui as egimport jsonimport os

3. Create a variable called “filename” to store the name of the JSON file that contains the to-do list. This can be a file anywhere on your system, but in this case it is a file in the same directory as the to-do.py file.

filename = "todo_list.json"

4. Create a function to load the to-do tasks saved in the JSON file. If the file exists (os.path.exists), then the function will return the contents. If there is no file, then it will return a blank list ( [ ] ).

def load_tasks():    if os.path.exists(filename):        with open(filename, "r") as f:            return json.load(f)    else:        return []

5. Create a function to save the to-do tasks into the JSON file. We open the file and overwrite the existing contents with the new list, which is formatted into a JSON structure.

def save_tasks(tasks):    with open(filename, "w") as f:        json.dump(tasks, f)

6. Call the load_tasks function and store the output (what the Python function returns) into a variable called tasks. The load_tasks function will either return the existing to-dos stored in the JSON file, or create a blank Python list.

tasks = load_tasks()

7. Create a while True loop to run the code until the user exits.

while True:

8. Using EasyGUI, create a variable called “choice” and in there we store the user’s response to a button box. The first line is the text that is displayed to the user, note the \n which is Python for new line. The second line is the title of the dialog box. Image can be any GIF image that you choose. Finally, the choices are stored in a Python list, and they become clickable buttons that return the chosen value, stored in the variable “choice.”

  choice = eg.buttonbox(        msg="What would you like to do?\nSelect an option below",        title="To-Do List",        image="clipboard.gif",        choices=["View Tasks", "Add Task", "Remove Task", "Exit"]    )

9. Create a conditional test, based on the user’s response to the button box. If their choice was to view the current tasks and there are tasks in the JSON file, display them using an EasyGUI textbox. Else, tell the user that there are no tasks to display, again using a textbox.

    if choice == "View Tasks":        if tasks:            eg.textbox("Your Tasks:", "To-Do List", "\n".join(tasks))        else:            eg.msgbox("No tasks yet!", "To-Do List")

10. Create the second choice in the conditional test which activates if the user selects “Add Task” from the button box. This creates a variable, task, that stores the user’s input via an EasyGUI enterbox. Then it appends the tasks object (a list) and calls the save_tasks functions to write the list into the JSON file. Finally, a message box confirms that the tasks have been added.

   elif choice == "Add Task":        task = eg.enterbox("Enter a new task:", "Add Task")        if task:            tasks.append(task)            save_tasks(tasks)            eg.msgbox("Task added!", "To-Do List")

11. Create the next choice, which activates when a user selects to “Remove Task”. If there are tasks to remove, an EasyGUI choicebox will advise the user to select a task for removal. Then a nested if condition will remove the task from the task list (a Python list of the tasks), and then tell the user that the task has been removed. If there are no tasks to remove, then an EasyGUI message box will tell the user.

   elif choice == "Add Task":        task = eg.enterbox("Enter a new task:", "Add Task")        if task:            tasks.append(task)            save_tasks(tasks)            eg.msgbox("Task added!", "To-Do List")

12. Using an else condition, create a break in the code to exit the app. This is effectively our quit / exit button.

   else:        break

13. Save the code.

14. Open a Command Prompt window and navigate to the location of the to-do app.

15. Run the to-do app using Python and test out the functions of the app. You’ve just built a graphical application using EasyGUI and Python.

python to-do.py

If you want to make a true GUI application, one that has its own icon and doesn’t need the Command Prompt to run, then follow this guide and use your to-do.py file instead of the example code.

Complete Code Listing

import easygui as egimport jsonimport osfilename = "todo_list.json"def load_tasks():    if os.path.exists(filename):        with open(filename, "r") as f:            return json.load(f)    else:        return []def save_tasks(tasks):    with open(filename, "w") as f:        json.dump(tasks, f)tasks = load_tasks()while True:    choice = eg.buttonbox(        msg="What would you like to do?\nSelect an option below",        title="To-Do List",        image="clipboard.gif",        choices=["View Tasks", "Add Task", "Remove Task", "Exit"]    )    if choice == "View Tasks":        if tasks:            print(tasks)            eg.textbox("Your Tasks:", "To-Do List", "\n".join(tasks))        else:            eg.msgbox("No tasks yet!", "To-Do List")    elif choice == "Add Task":        task = eg.enterbox("Enter a new task:", "Add Task")        if task:            tasks.append(task)            save_tasks(tasks)            eg.msgbox("Task added!", "To-Do List")    elif choice == "Remove Task":        if tasks:            task_to_remove = eg.choicebox(                "Select a task to remove:",                "Remove Task",                tasks            )            if task_to_remove:                tasks.remove(task_to_remove)                save_tasks(tasks)                eg.msgbox("Task removed!", "To-Do List")        else:            eg.msgbox("No tasks to remove!", "To-Do List")    else:        break

Transferring files is something that we take for granted thanks to super-cheap USB storage and fast network connections. Every single reader has had an occasion where they needed to transfer files, and I bet most of us have just reached for a USB flash drive (perhaps one of the best flash drives).

That tried-and-trusted method is just one way to transfer files, but what if there were alternatives? I’m not talking about Iomega Zip drives (I miss those!) or floppy disks (those too!) I’m talking about direct file transfer between machines on the same network.

Lets start with one of the most useful and simple methods. Luckily, it's baked directly into Python, which you can run on your OS of choice – but we’ll be focusing on Windows for this tutorial.

Running a Python File Server

• Transferring files without a USB flash drive is possible using Python.
• A Python web server can be run in any directory on your PC and files can be downloaded on the destination PC.
• This is useful for quickly transferring files, to multiple users across a network.

Yes, Python has its own web / file server baked into the standard Python library. Best of all, it is really easy to use.

You will need to have Python installed on your computer. Linux users will have this by default, and Windows users should follow our guide on how to install Python.

1. Find your IP address by first going to Settings >> Network & Internet, and click on Properties.

2. Scroll down to the Properties section and make a note of your IP address.

3. Click on the Windows logo and search for Command prompt and press Enter to open.

4. Navigate to the directory from which you wish to share files. I’ve put a load of test files in the folder.

5. Run the command to start the server. Rather than starting an interactive Python session, this will start the Python interpreter and run the web server module from the standard Python library.

python -m http.server

6. When prompted, allow access through your firewall.

7. On another device, open a web browser and visit the IP address, add :8000 to the end. You will see the files in the directory, and the Command Prompt will update to show the HTTP requests made as files are downloaded.

8. To end the session, on the “server” press CTRL+C to stop the running command.

Host a server using Copyparty

• Copyparty can be used to quickly and easily share files across a network or the Internet.
• Copyparty has a browser-based interface that can be used as a basic file server.
• Need a quick media server? Copyparty can do that. Videos and audio can be played directly in your browser; no extra steps are required.

Created by 9001, Copyparty is a rather wonderful tool that turns almost any device capable of running Python into a file server. I’m not just talking about a simple file server here (though it does that too); it can also serve video to your devices directly from the browser, shrink downloads into ZIPs, create RSS feeds to track folder changes, and become an FTP or TFTP server. All you need is one file to make it happen, but Copyparty can be tweaked with an external config file should you want to perform more advanced tasks.

You will need to have Python installed on your computer. Linux users will have this by default, and Windows users should follow our guide on how to install Python.

Getting started with Copyparty

We’ll start with the most basic Copyparty setup: dropping one Python file in the directory that we want to share, and then running the file.

1. Download copyparty-sfx.py [direct download] from the Github repository.

2. Copy the file to the directory that you wish to share.

3. Open a Command Prompt / Terminal and run the Python file using the Python interpreter.

python copyparty-sfx.py

4. Check the output for the IP address of the server, and make a note of it and the port number, typically 3923.

5. On another computer, open a web browser and enter the IP address and port number for the Copyparty server. Mobile users can use the QR code to quickly open the Copyparty interface.

The Copyparty Web Interface

Copyparty, at its most basic level, is accessed from any web browser (even Netscape 4.0, it claims!) and it provides a list of the files and directories inside the directory that you are sharing. You cannot go into any directories that are outside of the shared directory.

Lets take a look at the interface.

1. Toolbar submenu: Here, we can see the icons for

• Unpost: Delete / abort uploads.
• Up2k Uploads: Upload tool that supports resuming.
• Bup: Basic Uploader that supports Netscape 4.0.
• Mkdir: Make a new directory.
• New-md: Make a new markdown file.
• Msg: Send a message to the server log. (I love the pager icon!)
• Media Player Options: Yes, Copyparty can play media in the browser, more on that later.
• Configuration Options: Clicking on this opens a tool to change how Copyparty is displayed, how files are downloaded and configuration for resumable uploads.

2. Directory Tree: Show the directory structure where the Copyparty server is running from.

3. File Manager: Shows the files and directories hosted by the Copyparty server. Note that column C refers to the filetype. Directories appear as Zip archives in the file manager.

Downloading from the Copyparty Server

To open a file, simply click on it. This mostly triggers the browser to download the file, but for PDF, Images etc, the file will open in the browser. To directly download the file, right click and select Save As.

Media files can be played / previewed directly in the browser. So if you want to watch a movie or listen to music without installing any players, Copyparty will handle serving the media, and your browser will do the rest.

Uploading to the Copyparty Server

You’ll have full read/write permissions for the Copyparty server, and that means you can upload directly to the server from the browser.

1. Using your OS file manager, locate the files/directories that you wish to upload and drag them into the Copyparty browser window.

2. Drop the files/directories onto Upload, and click OK to confirm.

Stopping the Copyparty Server

1. On the machine running Copyparty, press CTRL + C to end the running command. Alternatively, closing the terminal window will stop the server.

Taking Copyparty Further

Copyparty is insanely useful and powerful. It could easily be used as the basis of a simple home server or used externally via a service such as Cloudflare.
With Copyparty you can build the following servers.

• FTP
• TFTP
• SMB/CIFS
• Webdav

You just need an old, beat-up laptop (or any system) and some USB storage to make your own server. To take advantage of these features, you’ll need to delve into the extensive, well-written Copyparty documentation and follow the path for the server that you wish to create.

If the organizing consultant Marie Kondo were assimilated by Star Trek’s Borg, you would get me. I am by no means a fully neat and tidy person (I vacuum, I clear tables, wash the dishes, etc), but I like order in the chaos that is life. I like to know where things are. I like First Order Retrievability, a concept made popular by Mythbusters host Adam Savage, where one should maximize efficiency by ensuring frequently used tools/items are immediately available. I know that I can reach into a drawer and pull out the screwdriver that I need to fix something, the microSD cards for a Raspberry Pi, or one of the myriad cables that I refuse to get rid of.

My love of organization led me to Bento3D, a website to create custom, 3D printable trays and boxes. On the site, I can design a tray to exacting specifications, and should I need or want it, I will also design a box with a hinge to store that tray. My goal for this how-to is to show you how I determined the dimensions and created a simple tray, which will form the basis of a PC First Aid Kit that I have put together. That kit guide is another how-to, enabling us to concentrate on creating the organizing tray.

I’m using one of the best budget 3D printers to print my tray, the Elegoo Centauri Carbon. I am also using PETG filament, specifically Elegoo’s Rapid PETG, which isn’t on our list of best 3D filaments for 3D printing, but it really should be!

Your tray can be for anything; all you need is an idea, some simple measurements, and, of course, a 3D printer!

So let's get organized!

For this project, you will need:

• Calipers / Ruler / Tape Measure
• An idea of what you want to organize
• A 3D printer
• 3D printer filament

Getting the dimensions

Before we can design anything, we need to work out the dimensions of the 3D printed tray. You’ll need to measure where the 3D print will be housed. You can use calipers or a ruler. Don’t forget to measure the height of the container. In the case of IKEA furniture, the dimensions are printed on the respective product page.

1. Measure in millimeters where the 3D print will be placed. Take measurements of the depth, width, and height, and keep a note of these measurements.

2. Double-check the measurements and then take 2mm off for the depth and width. This will rule out any tolerance issues on your 3D printer and help the tray's friction fit into place.

3. Open Bento3D and enter the measurements. You can slide the values to match your requirements, or type them directly into the fields. Note that Bento3D has a quirk where it reports that it cannot update negative sizes; this is caused when you delete the value. Just select and overtype instead of deleting.

We’ve got the dimensions and our tray/box is before us, so now let's add dividers.

4. Click on Grid.

5. To add a row, click on the bottom +, to add a column, click on the right +.

6. To delete a cell, click on the trash icon for that cell.

7. Split the left column into two rows.

Cells will automatically take up an equally divisible area in the overall dimensions. So the two cells above take up half the depth (longest edge) on the left side. Adding another cell will see the cells take a third of the depth.

What I want is for one cell to be smaller than the other. The smaller cell will be used for microSD cards and USB gadgets. The larger cell will hold screwdriver bits and larger tools.

8. Hover the mouse over the top cell, and blue lines with drop-down menus will appear. Click on the left-hand side menu and select fill (1 / 2). This will reduce the size of the cell so that it takes half of what it did previously. This does not affect the column width; to do that, we must click on the other drop-down menu.

9. Click on the Settings slider to tweak the wall thickness, stackability, and fillet (rounded corners). I set mine to a thickness of 1 and a fillet of 5. This gave me thin walls and rounded corners that enable a friction fit, but with an easy means to remove the tray.

10. Click on Download to view the model. Use the mouse to move the object, zoom in with the scroll wheel.

11. Click on Tray to download the STL file to your PC.

12. Open your preferred slicer software and prepare the tray for printing. On my Elegoo Centauri Carbon it will take under an hour to print using Elegoo’s Rapid PETG filament.

Your freshly printed tray is ready to organize your life!

Updating my Linux install can be a chore, but I've found a great way to make it simple. Sure, there are some great apps to maintain my system software via package managers (think app stores, but way more complex), but sometimes I want a terminal app that just gets the job done.

My systems have multiple means to install and manage software, like Ubuntu, which uses .deb, snap, and Flatpak, and I also use programming languages such as Python, which has its own package manager, so I want a tool that does it all and with no fuss. This is where Topgrade comes in.

Topgrade is a terminal tool that automatically updates all of the software on my system, no matter how it was installed. I have software installed via system package managers, language-specific package managers, dev tools, app managers (Flatpak, snap), or even Docker and firmware images, but Topgrade can handle them all, and it is really easy to use.

Written in Rust, Topgrade has been around for a few years, which only solidifies its usefulness. I’m running it on AnduinOS, a fork of Ubuntu, but it works on Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, Windows, macOS, Manjaro, and many other Linux distributions

So let's dig in, and I'll show you how I use Topgrade to keep my system updated.

How to install Topgrade

Installing Topgrade is simple, but there is a caveat. The source for the Debian package (.deb) file is outside the official Ubuntu repositories. So take care with installing it on any mission-critical hardware. If in doubt, check the source code. Everything runs well, and I did not encounter any issues, but your mileage may vary.

1. On your Ubuntu PC, go to the Topgrade Github releases page and download the release for your system. I chose the latest release for 64-bit Intel/AMD CPUs.

2. Open a terminal and navigate to the directory where the download is located. In my case, it was /home/les/Downloads.

3. Install topgrade using the apt package manager. Typically, we would use apt to install a package from a remote repository, but by specifying the downloaded file, it will install Topgrade and all of its dependencies.

sudo apt install ./topgrade_16.0.4-1_amd64.deb

How to use Topgrade

Topgrade is simple to use, but underneath the simplicity lies a lot of power. Let's get used to updating our system before moving on to tweaking Topgrade’s configuration.

1. First, perform a dry run of Topgrade to check that when we use Topgrade, everything runs as expected. Using -n or –dry-run will print what will be done when Topgrade runs for real, but no changes are made to the OS.

topgrade -n

2. Update and upgrade the software on your machine using Topgrade. When prompted enter your sudo password and the process will start.

3. When prompted to continue, select Y. This will start the upgrade process, installing new software using all of the package managers on your system. You can automate this process by using topgrade -y.

Tweaking Topgrade

What if you don’t want Topgrade to update a specific part of your system? We can either update a configuration file to tell Topgrade to ignore certain sources or pass the instruction directly when running the topgrade command from the terminal. First I’ll show you how to edit the configuration file, then show you two steps to do the same thing, right from the terminal.

1. In a text editor, open ~/.config/topgrade.toml. This file contains the Topgrade configuration details. If you cannot see the file in your text editor, press CTRL + H to see hidden files.

2. To disable updating flatpak, scroll down to a line that states “Disable specific steps”. Remove the the # and alter the text inside the [ ] to “flatpak”.

3. Save the file.

4. Open a terminal and perform a dry run. You should see the updates scroll up the screen, but there will be no mention of Flatpak.

topgrade -n

5. Run the update for real. There should still be no mention of Flatpak.

topgrade

6. Optional steps. Go back to Step 1 and repeat the steps, this time remove the line disable = [“flatpak”]. I want to update Flatpak at the same time as the other packages so I removed the line entirely. If you wish to keep the line, but deactivate it, put a # at the start of the line.

To perform the same actions from the terminal

1. To only update certain sources, override the configuration file using this command. Here I only want to update flatpak packages.

topgrade –only flatpak

2. Inversely to only disable Flatpak updates, and perform other updates, run this command.

topgrade –disable flatpak

3. If you get stuck, or want to learn more about Topgrade, this command will print all of the available options and explain their uses.

topgrade –help

If you’re a Mac user, you’re probably familiar with Time Machine, which is Apple’s automated backup solution. Time Machine automatically backs up everyone on your system, including user accounts, system settings, apps, music, photos, emails, and documents. Depending on available resources and network speed, Time Machine usually creates a backup once an hour.

Typically, most users back up their Mac via an external storage device like a USB hard drive. The only drawback to this solution is that your Mac must be connected to external storage for a Time Machine backup to occur. If you have a desktop-based Mac, that’s not an issue. However, if you have a MacBook, chances are that you’re not always tethered to your desk, let alone an external storage device. So, in that case, a network-based Time Machine volume is an excellent wireless solution for keeping up-to-date backups of your system.

Several router manufacturers include built-in support for enabling Time Machine backups with their hardware, including Asus and TP-Link. In this guide, I’ll walk you through enabling a Time Machine backup volume with a TP-Link router, specifically, with a Deco BE63.

Initial external storage setup

The first thing that you’ll need before even getting to the router portion of setup is an external hard drive. Any hard drive will do, but Apple suggests that you use an external HDD that is twice the size of your Mac’s internal storage. In my case, I have a 14-inch MacBook Pro with a 512GB SSD, and I just so happened to have a 1TB Seagate Backup Plus Portable Drive sitting in my desk drawer.

You’ll want to take whatever external HDD you have and plug it into your Mac. I use an Ivanky Fusion Dock Max 1 Thunderbolt 4 dock when I use my MacBook Pro at my desk, so I plugged the Seagate HDD into a free USB-A port.

Next, open Disk Utility, select your external HDD from the left pane, and then click Erase from the top menu. You’ll then want to name the volume (I chose Seagate) and choose what filesystem you want (I chose FAT32). After a few seconds, the format should be complete. Next, click Unmount to remove the HDD from your Mac safely.

Setting up the Time Machine backup with your TP-Link router

I have a TP-Link Deco BE63 Wi-Fi 7 mesh router that I use for my home network, and each node has a USB 3.0 (Type-A) port. I plugged the Seagate HDD into the USB 3.0 port on my main router, and it spun up, as expected.

My Deco BE63 is only configurable via the TP-Link Deco app, so I opened the app and tapped on the More tab at the bottom of the homepage. Next, tap Advanced, then USB Sharing. You should see the storage device listed. My Seagate HDD showed up with 931GB free to use. At the top of the page, tap Time Machine, then tap the enable button.

TP-Link will provide you with a default username and password that you’ll need for accessing the Time Machine volume on your Mac, or you can choose one of your liking. If you prefer, you can limit how much of your available storage Time Machine will consume. Since I don’t plan on using the storage for anything else, I left the default settings. Tap Save at the top of the page.

Accessing the Time Machine backup from your Mac

With all the background legwork complete, you should now be able to see and initiate a Time Machine with your Mac, as long as the Mac is connected to your home network (either via Wi-Fi or by a wired connection). Go to System Settings → General → Time Machine. Click the + button, and you should see your new Time Machine volume. In my case, it was named BackupTM on “BE63_BAA4.local.” Click Setup Disk, and macOS will mount the new Time Machine Volume. At this time, you’ll be asked to enter the username and password that were provided during the initial setup.

macOS will then mount the drive, and you can choose whether or not to protect your backups with a password. Once you proceed, macOS will perform your first Time Machine backup. You can also take the time to explore the Options button, where you’ll be able to specify if you want to back up while on battery power. Now you can enjoy the peace of mind of wireless backups from your MacBook as long as you’re on your home network.

AnduinOS is a custom Ubuntu-based Linux distro with one goal: to smoothly transition Windows users to Linux. It achieves this by mimicking the workflows and look of Windows 11.

I’ve recently been examining various Linux distributions that aim to provide a soft landing for those escaping Windows 11, but none have been so bold as to claim that as their sole intention. Ideally, AnduinOS is meant for developers moving from Windows to Linux, but the firm Ubuntu foundation makes it also viable for general consumers.

AnduinOS is the creation of Anduin Xue, a software engineer at Microsoft. Yes, the same Microsoft that makes Windows 11. Xue’s work on AnduinOS is completed in their spare time, and runs as a non-profit project funded by donations.

AnduinOS is relatively new to the scene, and I thought it would be interesting to take it for a test drive on my trusty Lenovo X390, equipped with an Intel Core i5-8265U and 8GB of LPDDR4 RAM. This is the exact same machine that I used to test three other Linux distros which offered an escape route from Windows.

AnduinOS is based on Ubuntu. The version I tested, v1.3, is based on Ubuntu 25.04 and will receive updates until January 2026. Should you need a long-term supported version, v1.1 is based on Ubuntu 24.04 and will be supported until April 2029.

How will I test AnduinOS?

I’m going to use the exact same criteria as my alternative Linux for Windows users live blog.

The criteria being

• Ease of installation
  • Creating the USB stick.
  • Installation process.
• Hardware compatibility
  • Does Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Webcam, and Sound work?
• Ease of use
  • I don’t want to use the terminal; everything has to be in a GUI.
• Can I install these applications?
  • Google Chrome.
  • Slack.
  • GIMP.
  • Inkscape.

The ease of installation category refers to how easily I can write the ISO image to a USB flash drive. Most of the time it is pretty easy, but sometimes a Linux distro will take issue and refuse to write.

The remaining criteria are fairly self-explanatory. My focus is using AnduinOS, as if I have no knowledge of Linux (despite 25 years of experience). So no terminals, hacks, tricks, or tweaks. Everything has to be achieved using the provided GUI applications.

So let's get started!

Installing AnduinOS

The installation process for AnduinOS is similar to that of Linux Mint or ZorinOS. To begin, download the ISO image, flash it to a USB drive using Rufus, and then power up the computer and boot from the USB drive.

Follow the onscreen instructions, answer the questions, and in 10 minutes you will have AndruinOS ready for use. I encountered one issue during the installation, and it seems to be just bad luck that I ran into it. The issue was that a remote server was not responding, and an optional part of the installation process failed to happen. I tried again the next day, and all was well.

The installation completed, and I was able to boot AnduinOS for the first time.

AnduinOS — First Impressions

Yes, it does look like Windows 11! The “app” menu is located in the center, a weather app in the bottom left corner, and quick access to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and much more via the bottom right. If I were to change a few icons, you could fool someone into thinking this is Windows 11, albeit only briefly. I love the ease with which I can swap between light and dark themes. I’ll be honest, I prefer light mode. Feel free to tell me that I am wrong in the comments.

To press the point, it really does look like Windows 11, to the extent that I could put this in front of my parents / partner and they would happily use it. But looks are only part of AnduinOS; remember that AnduinOS also claims to mirror the workflows found in Windows. So let's put that to the test.

Ease of Use

I am pleased to say that everything just worked: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, webcam, and sound. No driver installations, no tweaking - it all just worked. Was I surprised to learn this? Not really. It is Ubuntu 25.04 under the hood, and for many years now, Ubuntu has enjoyed great hardware compatibility.

I threw a few more things at AnduinOS. My Lenovo USB-C dongle with Ethernet, SD card reader, USB 3.0, and HDMI. It all worked. Digging around, I found an obscure LogiLink USB-to-Ethernet adapter that also worked.
In the wild, there will be some edge cases where a device will not work, but these are becoming increasingly rare to see.

Ease of Use

AnduinOS is very easy to use, and I reiterate, it feels just like Windows 11, but there are a few differences. The first is that there are no annoying notifications/adverts. Sure, the weather app is in the bottom left, but it doesn’t intrude on the interface.

Next are apps. The big names are there, but Photoshop is not, nor is Illustrator or DaVinci Resolve (there is a hack to get it working, though). We need to use alternatives, or web services, to replace these common apps. GIMP for Photoshop, Inkscape for Illustrator, and OpenShot / Kdenlive for DaVinci Resolve.

Where people will notice the biggest difference is the Linux filesystem. It is very different from the C:\ setup of Windows (and MS-DOS). That said, most of the time you will be in your home directory, rather than the underlying operating system. I’ve got a full guide to the Linux Filesystem, which covers what the many different directories are there for.

The most important thing to remember is that the user's home directory is where all of your work, downloads, music, videos, etc, are stored.

Aiding the ease of use is performance. That may sound weird, but a performant machine feels easier to use. I’ve used older machines with newer Linux distros and Windows; sometimes, they can crawl along, and leave you hanging. My Lenovo X390 has only 8GB of RAM and an Intel i5 8265U CPU. I can’t upgrade it, so I have to manage my expectations. Windows 11 will run on my X390, and yes, it just makes the grade for continued Windows 11 support, but it can be excruciatingly slow to use, forcing me to debloat Windows 11 so that I can get work done. Hence, the last five years have seen me use some version of Ubuntu residing on the 1TB NVMe SSD.

Installing Applications

Being based on Ubuntu means that we have access to a plethora of applications from the official repositories, Snaps and Flatpaks (containerized applications that run in their own sandbox). Using the Software tool, I was able to update all of the installed software and install key applications for my workflow, chiefly Google Chrome, GIMP, Slack, and Inkscape.

After the software was installed, the apps were placed in the main menu, but to see them, I needed to click on All Apps. By default, the Pinned apps are shown, but after finding my chosen apps, I was able to pin them to the pinned apps section. I was also able to unpin apps from here, tailoring the selection to meet my current needs.

The software app seemed to favor Flatpak as the source of my three test applications. Checking the AnduinOS website and it seems that this is a choice made by the developers. Using Flatpak for the GUI applications means that they are sandboxed from the underlying OS. So they do not interact with the OS, unless I were to alter their permissions.
That said, I was able to change the software sources for two other applications, Endeavour and Evince, so that they favored the AnduinOS sources, which are essentially Ubuntu.

AnduinOS versus ZorinOS — Who would win?

It has been just a week since I started using ZorinOS, another Linux distribution that aims to help those transitioning from Windows to Linux. I really like ZorinOS, and it has found a home in my spare laptop, but could AnduinOS claim its spot after a week?
For me personally, no. ZorinOS feels more performant on the same laptop, and it works in a similar fashion to AnduinOS. Sure, AnduinOS looks more “Windows 11”, but that can be a good and bad thing.

Overall, AnduinOS is great. It works, and there is no confusion for those of us moving from Windows. We can get the apps that we know and love (ok, maybe not all the apps) and get to work without being nagged by Windows to read another advert.
Give AnduinOS a try if your computer is no longer supported by Microsoft; heck, give it a try anyway. It runs much quicker than Windows 11 did on my six-year-old laptop.

If you need to tweak your Windows 11 or 10 install, then Winaero Tweaker is for you (heck, this program even works as far back as Windows 7). A freeware app created by Sergey Tkachenko, Winaero Tweaker is a simple to use, all-in-one app that can tweak and tune your Windows installation without getting your hands dirty in the registry or command line.

If you want to protect your privacy, freeze a test rig for benchmarking, or get Windows working exactly how you want it, Winaero Tweaker is for you, and in this how-to, I’ll show you how to install and use it.

Installing Winaero Tweaker

1. Download Winaero Tweaker from the website.

2. Extract the contents of the ZIP download to a folder.

3. Run the installer. I chose “Portable Mode,” but you can choose whatever suits your needs. If you choose “Portable Mode,” make a note of the install location.

4. Run Winaero Tweaker. If you installed the app, it will be in your Start Menu. For those who chose Portable Mode, navigate to the installation folder and double-click the executable.

Winaero Tweaker User Interface

The user interface is simple, although it may be a bit daunting for new users. So let's take a look at it together.

1. Main Menu: Here, we can Import/Export Settings, reset tweaks, navigate the list, and more. We can also use the search box to go directly to a tweak.

2. Tweak List: A hierarchical list of all of the available tweaks. This list will alter depending on the OS in use. Here we see it running on my Windows 10 setup.

3. Tweak Details: Selecting a tweak from the list will alter this section of the UI according to your selection. We can then make adjustments to the OS.

Remove Advertisements from Windows

Windows is full of advertisements these days. They are deeply embedded in the OS and can be tricky to remove, but not with Winaero Tweaker.

1. Scroll down to Advanced Appearance Settings and select Behavior.

2. Click on Disable Ads. All of the boxes should be automatically checked; however, you can tailor this to meet your specific needs.

3. Reboot the computer for the changes to take effect. You can either reboot as you make each change, or save all of your changes for one big reboot. There are pros and cons to both approaches.

Remove Telemetry from Windows

Touted as a means to gather diagnostic and usage data to improve the OS, telemetry also reveals serial numbers, volume numbers, partitions etc. While not overtly sensitive, this is your private data, so it only seems right to keep it that way and Winaero Tweaker has a simple means to do it.

1. Scroll down to Privacy and select “Disable Telemetry”.

2. Check the box to disable telemetry.

3. Reboot, or remember to reboot later.

Disable Driver Updates — Freeze your machine state for benchmarking

If you are building a benchmarking system, the next two sections are for you. They will disable driver updates and Windows updates, keeping your test bench frozen at a reliable constant for precision benchmarking.

1. Using the search box, look for “driver” and double-click on the returned result.

2. Check the box to disable driver updates.

3. Reboot, or remember to reboot later.

Disable Windows Update

1. Using the search box, look for “update” and double-click on the returned result to disable Windows Updates.

2. Check the box to disable Windows updates. There is no need to reboot for this to take effect.

Disable UAC — Be careful with this!

When a command or application has the possibility of making system-wide changes, the UAC (User Account Control) asks you to confirm or deny the request. We’ve all seen it: the little shield appears, the screen darkens, and then we get cross and click Confirm/OK just to get things done. With WinAeroTracker, we can disable that. No more annoying nagging screens. However, take heed: UAC is there to keep you safe, so only turn it off if you are absolutely certain you’re willing to accept the responsibility of increased risk.

1. Using the search box, look for “uac” and double-click on the returned result to disable UAC.

2. Click on Disable UAC to turn off the “annoying” UAC prompt. Remember that UAC is there to protect you from harmful code execution, which could damage your system. Only do this if you are really certain!

3. Reboot, or remember to reboot later.

Disable Microsoft’s AI Copilot

If you don’t want AI running on your Windows system, then Microsoft makes it hard to remove its Copilot assistant. Winaero Tweaker comes to the rescue, again! A couple of clicks and a quick reboot later, Copilot is gone!

1. Using the search box, look for “driver” and double-click on the returned result to disable Copilot.

2. Check the box(es) to disable Copilot and/or its taskbar button.

3. Reboot, or remember to reboot later.

One for the old school PC fans — The return of the desktop shutdown button!

Who remembers using Windows 95? Now could be a good time to schedule that colonoscopy. Joking aside, Windows 95 introduced a shortcut icon on your desktop that would shut down your system. I miss thi,s and so I am delighted that Winaero Tweaker has introduced a quick means for a hit of nostalgia.

1. Scroll down to Shortcuts and select Classic Shutdown Shortcut.

2. Check the settings, correct as necessary, and then click Create Shutdown Shortcut.

3. Check your desktop (or other specified location) for the new Shutdown icon.

• You can send a fax for free via online services, but they should not be used for private / medical or financial information.
• For sensitive information, use a paid for service to send and receive faxes.
• If you have a fax modem installed in your PC, you can send a fax directly from Windows.

Ok, it's the 21st Century and here I am, writing a “how to send and receive a fax” article. Short for facsimile, the fax machine was a marvellous invention that enabled the transmission of documents long before email became the standard. I am old enough to have used a fax machine, but it has been some time since I last used one.

The humble fax may have fallen out of fashion, replaced with cloud services and electronic signatures, but there are times when you need to send a fax for official purposes. For legal, tax, or medical applications, the fax remains the de facto standard in most countries.

The problem we have in the 21st Century is that the vast majority of us connect to the Internet via the best routers and not a fax modem. So we should all rush out and buy a fax modem, right? Nope!

I’ve scoured the internet, looking at fax service providers, and found one that is both affordable and easy to use. Yes, there are free services to send a fax, and I’ll cover that, but receiving a fax typically means spending a little cash.

Disclaimer before we get too far into the how-to: Sending private/medical or financial information via a free service is not recommended. A paid-for service should offer greater security.

How to send a fax for free

• Free web services can be used to send non-sensitive faxes.
• The services add a watermark to the fax, or a page advertising the service.
• You cannot receive a fax using this service.

Sending a fax for free is really simple, thanks to a number of web-based services. From my research, and yes, I searched around for many “free” fax services in the last few days, I found FaxZero to be the best of the bunch. So let's use that to send a fax, for free!

1. Open a browser and visit FaxZero. There are many other free fax services available. But FaxZero “just worked” in our tests, and it didn’t spam the screen with annoying “adverts” for dubious services.

2. In the sender information fields, enter your details. Ensure that you use a real email address, as FaxZero will send a confirmation message and update on the status of the fax via email.

3. In the receiver information, enter the details of the intended recipient. I’m using Faxtoy as a means to receive a test fax; this provides me with the toll-free number 1-855-330-1239.

4. Attach up to three documents that you wish to fax. Read the page guidance before moving on. The maximum number of pages that can be sent is 25. Documents should be in DOC, DOCX, or PDF. I attached a testfax.pdf file, which was an openclipart image of a fax machine.

5. Create a cover page for the fax, then enter the confirmation code. The cover page’s purpose is to inform the recipient as to the identity of the sender and the purpose of the fax.

6. Click on Send Free Fax Now to send the fax message to the recipient’s fax machine.

7. Check your email for a message from FaxZero; you will need to click on a link in the message to finally send the fax.

8. After a few minutes, you should receive an email stating the delivery status of the fax. If you are using Faxtoy to test the receipt, refresh the page to see your fax appear.

How to send a fax using a paid service

• Paid services offer better privacy features and can be used for sensitive information.
• You will be issued a fax number to receive replies.
• The service offers a free 30-day trial before your card is charged.

1. Sign up for an account at HelloFax. The $9.99 “Home Office” plan is ample for our needs.

2. Follow the process to select your desired phone number, location, and then add your payment details.

3. Check your email for account verification.

4. Sign in to your account and click on Send Faxes.

5. Select the file(s) to upload. This will form the main body of the fax.

6. Enter the fax number for the recipient and click Send Document to begin the fax. I’m using Faxtoy’s number, 1-855-330-1239 to test that I can send the fax correctly.

7. Wait for the fax to send. It can take a while, but the status will be shown in the dashboard, and you will receive an email confirming that it has been sent.

You’ve just sent a fax from your computer, but how do we receive a fax?

How to receive a fax using a paid service

This is the simplest part of this how to. We already have a HelloFax account and that means we have a fax number, which people can send a fax to.

1. Sign in to your HelloFax account and click on Faxes.

2. Make a note of your fax number, located in the bottom left corner of the page.

3. Go to FaxZero and send a free fax to your HelloFax account to test that you can receive on that number. Follow the guidance for sending a free fax using FaxZero as it proves that you are contactable from an external account.

4. The dashboard will display all of the received faxes in date order.

5. Check your linked email address, a copy of any received faxes will also be present.

You can now send and receive a fax, directly from any computer, no fax modem required!

How does Microsoft suggest using fax services with Windows?

Hidden deep inside Microsoft Windows, there is a fax application that can be used to send and receive faxes. There is one snag though: you need a fax modem. You can pick one up on Amazon for around $40. Of course, you will need a phone line set up for use with it.

So, how does Microsoft suggest sending and receiving faxes?

1. Open the Control Panel and go to Program,s and click on Programs and Features.

2. Click on Turn Windows Features on or off.

3. Inside the Windows Features dialog box, look for Print and Document Services, select Windows Fax and Scan.

4. Click OK and close the dialog boxes.

5. From the start menu, search for Fax, you should see Windows Fax and Scan.

6. Setup your fax modem using the wizard. (I cannot go any further than this, as I do not have a fax modem.)

I’ve never needed to upgrade a Wi-Fi card on a laptop before, but I figured it was something I wanted to at least attempt. With the best Wi-Fi 7 routers becoming more prevalent and prices coming down to a more reasonable level, it stands to reason that laptop owners might want to upgrade to Wi-Fi 7 to replace their older internal Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 6E cards (if they’re M.2 based).

Using the Asus ROG Strix G16 (2025) as a Testbed

I recently reviewed the Asus ROG Strix G16, which comes from the factory with a MediaTek Wi-Fi 6E (MT7922) M.2 card installed. Since I don’t plan on returning the review unit to Asus until next week, I figured that I’d use it as a guinea pig to attempt swapping out the M.2 Wi-Fi card. But before I removed the card, I ran some iPerf3 tests to get baseline numbers using Wi-Fi 6E.

Next, I shutdown the system and removed the bottom cover (which is affixed with 11 screws). I then removed the plastic shield covering the MT7922, removed the two antenna leads, and removed the single screw holding it in place.

Dissecting the Gigabyte Aorus GC-WIFI7

To continue the endeavor, I grabbed a Gigabyte Aorus GC-WIFI7 card that I had lying around from my best Wi-Fi adapter testing. The GC-WIFI is a Wi-Fi 7 card using the Qualcomm QCNCM865 chipset. Why would you opt for a desktop-based PCIe card? For starters, that’s all that I had on hand. And second, desktop wireless cards use M.2-based cards (that are typically destined for laptops) that slot into a full-size PCIe adapter.

Getting to the bare M.2 card took some time, patience, and a few handy tools. First, I removed the metal shield covering the QCNCM865 M.2 card with my trusty Stanley screwdriver. I then removed one small screw that holds the QCNCM865 M.2 card in place along with a plastic clip that sits over the antenna lead connectors (to prevent the connectors from popping off if shocked).

I then gently pulled the antenna leads and removed the QCNCM865 from the M.2 slot. The whole process took around three minutes, which included the time it took to run upstairs and grab my screwdriver.

To make my life easier, I downloaded the Aorus GC-WIFI7 drivers from Gigabyte’s support and installed them prior to installation.

Installing the Qualcomm QCNCM865 M.2 card into the Asus ROG Strix G16 (2025)

The process of installing the QCNCM865 into the ROG Strix G16 required the use of an additional tool. As I’m in my mid-40s, my up-close vision has recently taken a nosedive, requiring me to use reading glasses for up-close text. But even my reading glasses couldn’t help me, so I reached for my YOCTOSUN LED Head Magnifier with the 3.5x lens attached. Although I inserted the QCNCM865 and screwed it in without assistance, I needed the magnifier to attach the tiny metal connectors for the antennas.

I tried repeatedly to connect the antennas without the magnifier, but my stubbornness didn’t last long. I next reattached the plastic shield over the QCNCM865 and then reattached the bottom panel.

Benchmark Results

After booting the ROG Strix G16 with its new Wi-Fi 7 transplant, I noticed that the card was already recognized in Device Manager (thanks to the drivers being installed beforehand) and was able to connect to my test network using a TP-Link Archer BE9700 tri-band Wi-Fi 7 router.

I ran some abbreviated iPerf3 benchmarks, which I use when reviewing Wi-Fi routers, to chart the performance impact of upgrading from Wi-Fi 6E to Wi-Fi 7. Tests were conducted with the ROG Strix G16 first using the default MediaTek MT7922 and then the Qualcomm QCNCM865 at six-foot and 25-foot distances.

The most noticeable performance difference was undoubtedly observed during 6 GHz testing, where the QCNCM865 delivered a 50 percent improvement in maximum throughput at a distance of six feet. At 25 feet, the advantage shrank to 42 percent.

Moving to the 5 GHz band, the QCNCM865 Wi-Fi 7 card had a 26 percent improvement at six feet and a 31 percent uplift at 25 feet. The MT7922 and QCNCM865 were evenly matched when tested on the 2.4 GHz band at distances of six feet and 25 feet.

Bottom Line

Upgrading the Wi-Fi card in your laptop isn’t all that difficult, and is only slightly more involved than replacing RAM or an M.2 SSD. If you have good vision, you can even skip the head-mounted magnifier that I needed during the process.

With the Qualcomm QCNCM865 installed, I observed up to a 50% improvement in throughput on the 6 GHz band and up to 31% on the 5 GHz band. Whether those gains are worth chasing comes down to personal preference. You can grab a bare Intel BE200 Wi-Fi 7 M.2 card for around $27. Bare QCNCM865 cards are harder to find, although you can grab a Gigabyte Aorus GC-WIFI7 for $54 and dissect it.

One additional note: if you’re running an AMD-based laptop (such as the ROG Strix G16), you cannot use an Intel-based BE2xx Wi-Fi 7 card, as they're incompatible. The QCNCM865 is the only upgrade path for those systems.

Valve’s Steam Deck handheld gaming PC made waves when it was released. Those waves may have lost their power after a plethora of other gaming handhelds were released, but there is no denying that the Steam Deck is still the poster child for handheld gaming. The problem is, you can only play your Steam games, right?

Wrong!

You can play much more than Steam games on your Steam Deck, but you will need to do a little work to make it happen. The Heroic Games Launcher, which I used in a recent Linux gaming PC project, enables access to your GoG, Amazon, and Epic games libraries. The same libraries that often give away free games, that we hoard and never play (it's not just me, right?). Well, now you can, and they will all fit in your hands as you commute to work, laze in bed, or game with friends.

The end goal for my project is to integrate the Heroic Games Launcher into my Steam Library, so that I can enjoy all of my games from the comfort of my sofa!

I start by installing the Heroic Games Launcher onto my Steam Deck.

1. Press the Steam button and under Power, select “Switch to Desktop”.

2. From the desktop, click on the Discover icon (fourth icon from the left). Discover is the app store / software center for managing software on your Steam Deck.

3. In Discover, search for Heroic.

4. Select Heroic Games Launcher and click on the install icon. The install process will take a few minutes.

5. Close Discover and open Heroic, it can be found in the main menu under Games.

6. Close any pop-ups from the Heroic Games Launcher. These will be update notes and readme files.

7. Set up your first gaming account by following the prompts. I chose to set up Epic gaming as I love playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. Adding subsequent game libraries is possible by clicking on the Stores link on the left side of the Heroic Games Launcher.

8. Choose a game.

9. Scroll down to Show Wine settings and select Proton Experimental from the dropdown. This will be the latest version of Proton available, it can be buggy but generally it runs great.

10. Install the game. This could take some time. Shredder’s Revenge took mere moments, but when I tested Cyberpunk 2077 with GoG, it took 40 minutes to download and install.

11. Play the game. Yes, give it a test and see how it plays. Anecdotally, my experience was great, only hampered by the capture equipment confusing the screen resolution when I played Deathloop. But take that out of the equation, and everything went well.

Heroic Games Launcher should now be installed and running on your Steam desktop. I could just leave it there, but I will not! Why? Because we can integrate the Heroic Games Launcher into the Steam library for a much better experience.

1. From the Steam desktop, click on the main menu, navigate to Games and right click the Heroic Games Launcher entry.

2. Select “Add to Steam”.

That is it. The Heroic Games Launcher is now in your Steam library.

But wait! I can do better! With a little steamgriddb magic I can give Heroic Games Launcher its own artwork so that it looks like a “real” game in the library.

1. Open a web browser to the steamgriddb website and search for Heroic Games Launcher.. This is a resource of free to use images and artwork for your Steam library.

2. Choose the artwork, click on the Download icon.

3. Save the artwork to your Steam Deck’s download folder, make sure to give it a relevant name.

4. Open Steam via the icon on the desktop. This opens the traditional, desktop version of Steam where we can easily tweak out setup.

5. Right click on the Heroic Games Launcher and select Set Custom Artwork.

6. Navigate to the downloaded artwork and select. The launcher will change in your library.

7. Repeat steps 2 to 7 for the Heroic Games Launcher page’s background image (right click on the background) and the logo (again, right click on the logo). You don’t have to do this, but I think the extra work makes it look much better.

8. Double click the “Return to Gaming Mode” icon to use the default Steam interface.

Now whenever you power up your Steam Deck, Heroic Games Launcher is just a mere button press away. Ready to provide you with even more games to play!

After a short series of Beta testing, Steam’s new in-game overlay performance monitor is now publicly available, enabling users to see the real FPS, including with DLSS and FSR frame generation, and today I’ll show you how to install and configure it.

On my Steam Deck and recent Linux gaming PC experiment, I use MangoHud to display live performance stats while I play; in fact, a version of it comes ready to go on Steam Deck. But there is a new means to monitor your performance, and it comes directly from Valve.

First, what fresh features does this new monitor bring to the table? As you would expect, it reports the same as every other performance monitor:

• FPS
• CPU and GPU performance (including graph)
• System and GPU RAM usages
• System temperatures

But with Steam’s new in-game performance monitor, we can also see when DLSS / FSR frame generation has been enabled. Yes, the new Steam performance monitor can detect frame generation technologies and provide us with both the DLSS/FSR framegen-enhanced FPS and the baseline FPS in one-second intervals. With this, we can see, at a glance, the FPS boost provided by frame generation. If we are not using any form for frame generation, then we only see one set of FPS values. If frame generation is in use, we get both sets of FPS counters.

Does the new performance monitor work in Linux? Yes, it does! I just tested it with my Bazzite setup, currently in the lounge, ready for a quick gaming session. So, how can you get this working with your setup? I’ve detailed all the steps that you will need to do to get this working on your Windows and Linux gaming PC.

Your version of Steam should be up to date. Steam automatically updates when the application is opened.

How to install the new Steam in-game performance monitor

1. Click on Steam and Settings.

2. Scroll down to “In Game” and the right side of the window will update.

3. Scroll down the In Game section to Overlay Performance Monitor and select Show performance monitor. Change the drop down value to your requirement. I chose the top left of the screen.

4. Under Performance detail level, select your required level of detail. I chose to show everything!

5. Unless you are blessed with excellent eyesight. Change the text scaling level and the background opacity. The further up the scale, the larger the text, the darker the background.

6. Close the window and start your chosen game. The new performance overlay will appear.

Why did I mention changing the text scaling level? Because on my first go, the text was incredibly hard to read!

You’ve taken a look at the best soldering irons and soldering stations, and you are ready to put some fresh solder into a project. But what are the “hot soldering tips” that you need before you get started? We’ve got them right here for you!

Safety First

Before you start soldering, you need to be safe. So let's make sure that you are! I know that this will read as a downer, you want to get soldering! But it is best to follow these safety steps first, rather than risk injury or accidents.

1. Don’t hold the hot end! We’ve all seen the meme. Heck, I parody it in the lead image. Seriously, soldering irons get hot. Don’t touch the hot end, even if you drop the soldering iron, don’t try and catch it. I have a scar between my fingers that proves soldering irons are hot!

2. A clear workspace is a must. Move everything that you don’t need. Clutter can be distracting, especially when you are trying to work around it. Give yourself space to work.

3. Put your equipment within easy reach. Think about it. You’ve got a 350 °C soldering iron in your hand, and you need to grab something. Put the tools within easy reach and make sure that your dominant/soldering hand is near the soldering iron holster and that the wire is not across your body/lap/desk. Any tools should be out of the soldering area, but easily reachable. Use a silicone soldering mat to denote the soldering area, and protect your bench.

4. Solder fumes are bad! Soldering with lead or lead free solder means there are fumes. These fumes are typically made from the flux, used to flow the solder. The flux cleans and prepares the surface to receive solder and burns off as we apply heat. Get some good extraction, or at least open a window and solder near it!

5. Eye safety, because new eyeballs are expensive! Don’t do “the safety squint” (yes, I used to do that.) Get some safety glasses to protect your eyes! A splash of hot solder to your hand hurts, to your eyes it will be agony and require a trip to the ER.

The Right Tool for the Right Job!

As spoken by Chief Engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, you need the right tools for the job at hand. Just like 3D printing needs tools, so does soldering. With the right tools you’ll have a pleasant experience building a project. The wrong kit will make it difficult and miserable, yes I have done that and learnt the hard way!

1. Pick a soldering iron that is up to the task. That 8W USB soldering iron is not going to solder any heavy duty cable, and a soldering gun is not a precision instrument. Personally, I favor a soldering station with a hot air wand, like the Yihua 938BD+. It covers 90% of the tasks that I need, but it isn’t portable, so what I am soldering has to be on the bench. If you need portability, iFixit’s portable soldering station is a capable piece of kit, but you’ll pay for it!

Smart soldering irons such as the Frnirsi HS-01 and HS-02 are a great balance of power and portability. I prefer the HS-01 as it feels much better in the hand, but both are viable. Pinecil v2 is a great soldering iron too, as is the Miniware TS101 which has both USB Type C and DC power inputs.

2. Pick the right soldering tip. If you want to lay down the heat, then you’ll need the power to do so, and the right tip. The go-to conical tip is great for most jobs, hence it comes as standard, but if you need precision then a sharp pointed tip is a must. The problem though is that there is very little surface area and that means it’ll take longer to heat up. Chisel tips are a good compromise. I use a 34 degree chisel tip that gives me surface area to lay down the heat, but the angle means I have a level of precision. The best thing you can do is buy a selection of soldering tips for your soldering iron.

3. Good flush cutters are a must. You’ve just soldered something beautiful, but it has ugly component legs that need to be cropped. Do you just buy a cheap pair of flush cutters? You can, and they will work, but a good pair of cutters will make your hard work look better. I use a set of Engineer NS-04 Micro Nippers and they produce clean cuts every time!

4. Components get hot, keep your hands safe. The human body is fragile and we don’t react to heat very well. You need some tweezers to hold components in place, because your fingers will get burnt. This is especially important when soldering surface mount components.

5. Keep your tip clean. Your soldering iron tip should be clean and free of debris. Any crud on the tip will ruin your soldering. Most soldering stations come with a sponge, add a little water and use that to keep the tip clean. I prefer a brass tip cleaner as it keeps the tip clean and removes any water from my bench. You should also periodically clean the tip, preparing it for the next soldering session. I use a tip tinner to remove crud and oxidation from the tip.

6. Choose the right solder. Solder comes in many different combinations, but it boils down to leaded or lead-free. Lead-free is perfectly useful, it melts and joins components together. It is a little trickier to work with, but you will adjust your soldering temperature and timings accordingly. The benefit of lead-free solder is that you can sell products that use it, unlike lead solder. Yes, lead solder does contain lead, and that is classed as a hazardous material, but if used safely and correctly, you will be fine. Ventilation is key, mainly for the flux fumes. In the UK you cannot sell products that use lead solder.

7. Get some isopropyl alcohol. Isopropyl alcohol is a wondrous thing. I use it to clean boards after a soldering session, it removes flux residue and makes the board shine. Pour a little into a cup and use a fresh toothbrush to scrub it onto the PCB. It also works really well on sticky residue and for general cleaning. Get a high strength bottle, it will last ages!

8. Buy lots of soldering kits. Nobody is instantly great at soldering. You need to learn, so go on Aliexpress / Temu / eBay and buy lots of cheap soldering kits. Sometimes known as “suites” these kits are a cheap way to learn soldering without risking the expensive stuff. Buy a load of through hole kits, and some surface mount (SMD) practice kits and have fun. The LED dice kit is a great way to learn soldering and have a useful tool at the end.

Soldering Time!

You’ve followed all the rules and now you are ready for soldering! So let's get you started and talk you through the key points on soldering components to a board.

1. Set your temperature. The working temperature of your soldering iron is a personal choice. I work at 350C as it gives me plenty of heat, and time to apply it. For larger joints I will boost up to 400C, but 99% of the time I am at 350C. However you set the temperature for your soldering iron, do it and let the tip stabilize before you put it to work.

2. Tin the tip. Bring a little solder to the soldering iron tip and let it melt. This will “tin” the iron and ready it for soldering. Wipe the excess from the tip.

3. Bring the soldering iron tip to where you want the heat. It should be touching the points of contact. For example the leg of an LED and the pad on the PCB.

4. Heat it for a second or so, then bring the solder to the points of contact. It will melt into place and flow around making a nice joint. Move the soldering iron and solder away from the joint and have a good look.

5. Check the solder joint. Does it flow around the joint? Are there gaps? Is the joint “hovering” above the point of contact? If so, bring the soldering iron back to the joint and reflow, add some more solder if you need to. In the pic you can see 40 solder joints for a Raspberry Pi Pico, all neat and tidy. Ok, bottom row, six in from the right is a bit ropey, but I fixed it.

6. Check it again, use a magnifying glass if you want.

7. Use your flush cutters to trim the component legs.

8. Personal preference, return the soldering iron to the joint and heat it up. This will smooth the freshly cut area and it looks nice.

Follow these tips and you will have a safe and fun soldering experience. Happy hacking!

We take graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for granted. They generally “just work” and we can largely go about our business without even thinking. The Linux networking GUI is very much now in this camp. We were there when networking with Linux was a chore, heck we remember setting up PPP to connect to the Internet via a modem, in Linux!

What happens when things go wrong? The GUI breaks down, or were left with just a Linux terminal? Perhaps we are installing Linux on a server with no GUI? In these circumstances we need to understand how to make, break and configure connections using the nmcli command.

The nmcli command is one of many command-line tools to manage your network connections, and in this how to we will use it to check the connections on a system, bring connections down (off) and up (on) and finally we shall create a static IP address.

Working with an Interface

Interfaces are our points of connection. They can be physical, for example Ethernet, or they can be radio based, Wi-Fi for example. Each interface has a unique name, to identify whether it is Ethernet or Wi-Fi. In the past these names were generic, eth0 for the first Ethernet connection and wlan0 for Wi-Fi. In more recent years, these interface names have changed to be more specific.

Our first task is to identify the available interfaces.

1. Open a terminal and list all of the available connection / interfaces. The nmcli command can be used on its own, but passing the -p option will produce a "prettier" output.

nmcli -p

2. The output for the previous command will show all of the connections / interfaces. To return just the active interface connections use this command. Again, using the -p option provides a clearer view of the output.

nmcli -p dev status

3. Use this command to get the details of a specific connection. Remember to change the name of the connection to match the output of the previous command. There is a lot of output, and you can pipe the output of the command using grep to pick out specific details.

nmcli -p con show 

4. Use this command to determine the default gateway for your connection. The default gateway is typically our home router, the hardware that enables us to connect to the Internet. The output should show the ipv4 and ipv6 gateway details.

nmcli -p con show  | grep GATEWAY

5. To bring a connection down (disable / disconnect) use this command. This will disconnect your Linux device from the network. Remember to replace the connection name with your connection name.

nmcli -p con down 

6. List the connections, this will show that your device is no longer connected to the network.

nmcli -p dev status

7. Bring the connection up using this command. Remember to change the connection name.

nmcli -p con up 

Setting a static IP address

For many of us, a dynamically assigned IP address from our router is all we need to get online. What if we want to create a server? A server will need a static IP address to enable connecting devices to find it.

We're going to use nmcli to modify the connection so that we have a specific IP address.

We’re using an Ubuntu LTS, but the instructions will also work on a Raspberry Pi running Raspberry Pi OS, or any other Debian / Ubuntu based machine.

1. Open a terminal and using nmcli set the connection details. The connection name is as we have used above. The required IP address is as per your requirements, but it should be within the range offered by the device. The gateway is typically the IP address of the router. The DNS server can be your router

nmcli connection modify "CONNECTION NAME" \ipv4.addresses REQUIRED IP ADDRESS/24 \ipv4.gateway YOUR GATEWAY \ipv4.dns YOUR DNS SERVER \ipv4.method manual

2. Bring the connection down. Remember to use your connection name.

nmcli -p con down 

3. Now bring the connection back up. Remember to use your connection name.

nmcli -p con up 

4. Check that the connection has been made correctly. The State column should show "connected".

nmcli -p dev status

6. Check your IP address. Using the connection show command we pipe the output through grep, looking for "ipv4.addresses".

nmcli -p con show <> | grep ipv4.addresses

7. Finally ping an IP address to ensure that your server can reach the outside world. You should see pings being sent within a few milliseconds, if there is a problem then the command will error. Press CTRL + C to end the ping command. We typically use Google’s DNS server IP address 8.8.8.8, but you can also use CloudFlare’s 1.1.1.1 or OpenDNS 208.67.222.123. Alternatively, you can ping a URL such as google.com.

ping 8.8.8.8

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Deleting directories and files is one of the most basic, but important functions in any operating system. In Linux, if you have a windowed environment running, you can locate and delete files using a file manager application. Perhaps you’re logging in remotely via SSH, your Linux computer doesn’t have a GUI installed or you want to have more control over what you’re deleting. As with anything in Linux, there are many reasons why it might be necessary or preferable to delete directories or files via the command line.

In this how-to, we’ll look at the rm command which removes directories and files. We’ll look at the basics of the command and how it can be used to remove both files and directories and we’ll also look at a few other enhancements to get the most out of this command. If you want to change your file’s location instead, you should check out our article on how to move and rename files in Linux.

Of course, as this how-to is about deleting directories and files, you should take extra care to ensure you are carefully following the instructions, and whilst you become accustomed to these commands it’s good to work with example empty files and directories.

All the commands in this how-to will work on most Linux machines. We’ve used an Ubuntu LTS install but you could run this how-to on a Raspberry Pi. All of the how-to is performed via the Terminal. You can open a terminal window on most Linux machines by pressing ctrl, alt, and t or via the Applications menu.

How to Delete a File in Linux

Let’s start simply by removing a single file. The command syntax is structured as follows.

rm 

1. Create a new file called test1.txt

 touch test1.txt

2. List the contents of the directory to make sure if the file has been created. You should now see the file test1.txt.

 ls

3. Delete the test file. Deleting a file or folder is permanent. There is no recycle bin which can save us from an erroneous keystroke.

 rm test1.txt

4. Re list the contents of the directory to check the file has been removed. You should see that test1.txt is no longer listed.

 ls

How to Delete a Directory in Linux

Let’s run through a similar example to show that rm can be used to delete a directory containing files. For these examples, we will use two extra arguments -r and -i.

1. Create an empty directory. From your home directory create an empty directory.

 mkdir test_directory

2. Move into the new directory.

 cd test_directory

3. Create two test files within the directory

 touch test1.txt test2.txt

4. List the directory contents to check the files are created. You should see the files test1.txt and test2.txt are now listed.

 ls

5. Move back to the home directory

 cd ~

6. Delete the directory. To delete this directory we need to use the -r argument. The -r argument acts recursively to enter the directory and check for and delete any files within. Once empty the command returns to delete the directory it has just cleared.

 rm -r test_directory

7. Check the directory has been removed. You should see that test_directory has been removed from the list.

 ls

8. Repeat the above steps 1 to 5 to create the test directory and files.

9. Repeat the -r argument but add -i argument to interactively delete the files and directory. It can be hard to imagine what the -r argument is doing. The -i argument forces the deletion process to ask for confirmation (interactive) of each deletion.Type “y” and click enter to confirm each step.

 rm -ri test_directory

How to Delete a Write-Protected File in Linux

Occasionally you may need to delete files in Linux that are write protected. If you use the standard rm command it will ask you to confirm if you want to remove each protected file. For this we can use the -f force argument to help. This essentially forces the rm command to force-ably delete any directories and files so you need to be extra careful when using these commands as it won’t ask for any confirmation.

1. Create a test file called test1.txt

 touch test1.txt

2. Change the file permissions so that only the user and the group they belong to can delete the file.

 chmod u-w test1.txt chmod g-w test1.txt

3. Try to delete the file using the standard rm command. When you use the standard rm command you should be prompted to confirm if you want to delete the test1.txt file. Click n for “no” this time. If you had a directory with hundreds of protected files you would have to confirm each one with a y which would be incredibly time wasting.

 rm test1.txt

4. Delete the file using the -f argument. Running this command with -f argument forces the command to delete the file and does not ask for confirmation. Use with care!

 rm -f test1.txt

These commands are incredibly powerful, simple to use and can make deletion tasks really straightforward to achieve. You may have seen jokes online about extremely dangerous versions of this command such as sudo rm -rf / and you may have new insight via this article of why that might be so dangerous.

You can spot that we are giving the command root privileges and using the force and recursive arguments to essentially send the command to remove all the files on a system!

Chromebooks have come a long way and, in certain circumstances, they are now competent productivity machines out of the box. However, sometimes you need a more full-featured operating system than Chrome OS – Linux, for example – to do your work and run offline software.

In the past, there were many hacks to run Linux on your Chromebook, Crostini is an early example of such. But now Chrome OS has a built-in means to run Linux virtual machines with little configuration needed by the end user. Best of all, we can even run Linux GUI apps such as GIMP, Inkscape and LibreOffice.

In this how to, we shall learn how to install Linux on a Chromebook that’s running the latest version of Chrome OS. We will also learn how to search for, and install software using the package manager. Lastly we shall learn how to share files and directories between Chrome OS and the Linux virtual machine.

Note that some lower spec Chromebooks may struggle with Linux, chiefly because we are running a Linux OS inside of a container on top of the Chrome OS install. It does work, I tested it on my Lenovo Chromebook with just 4GB of RAM, but don't expect stellar performance.

Updating Your Chromebook

Making sure that your Chromebook is up to date is the first part of the process. Typically Chromebooks will keep themselves updated, but it is always best practice to update before undertaking any major tasks.

1. Click on the settings menu cog found via the bottom right menu.

2. Using the search field, search for update.

3. Select “Check for update”.

4. Click on Check for updates. Your Chromebook will either start an update process or tell us that our machine is up-to-date.

To start the Linux install process

1. Click on the settings menu cog found via the bottom right menu.

2. Search for Linux and under Linux development environment, click on Turn On to start the install process.

3. Click on Next to set up the environment.

4. Create a user account, and set the disk size. Click on Install and wait for the installation to complete. We stuck to the default 10GB disk image.

Using the Linux Development Environment

The Linux development environment is essentially a virtual machine running a Debian-based Linux distribution. This means that we can manage the installation of applications using the APT package manager.

To make sure that our Linux development environment is up-to-date we shall update the software repositories and upgrade the installation.

1. Update the list of available repositories. This is the list of available software, and the update will compare the lists on our Chromebook with those on the remote server. If the remote server has a newer list, then our list will be updated.

sudo apt update

2. Upgrade the software on your Linux development environment. This may return that there are no updates, but if there are it will download and install the packages.

sudo apt upgrade -y

To install software we again use APT.

1. Use search to search for an application or tool. In this case we are going to search for the GIMP image editor.

sudo apt search gimp

2. Scroll through the list of returned applications and you should see GIMP. This means that we can install the application.

3. Use the install command to install GIMP. This will take a few moments to install.

sudo apt install gimp

4. Start GIMP from the terminal.

gimp

Running Linux Apps in Chrome

When a Linux app is installed, Chrome will add it to the “Linux Apps” group. We can also access the Linux terminal via this group. Essentially, when an application is selected, it will start the Linux virtual machine and then start the application.

To start a Linux app

1. Access the apps menu. We can access this via the search button on our keyboard, or by swiping from the bottom to the top of the screen.

2. Scroll to the end of the installed applications.

3. Click on Linux Apps, a group of applications that are installed in the Linux development environment.

4. Click on GNU Image to launch GIMP.

Sometimes there is a file / directory that we want to share between the two operating systems and for this we have two ways to work with files and directories across both.

To share an individual file

1. Open the Files application.

2. Locate the file that you wish to share and drag it to the Linux Files directory. This directory was created when we installed Linux.

3. Open the Linux Terminal and use ls to list the contents of the directory. By default, the files shared via Linux Files are stored in our home directory.

To share a directory

1. Open the Files application.

2. Navigate to My Files.

3. Create a new folder, Linux Stuff.

4. Right click and select Share with Linux. This will make the directory available as a shared folder with Linux.

5. Open the Linux Terminal.

6. Navigate to the shared directory. The directory is mounted inside /mnt/Chrome OS/MyFiles/Linux Stuff. Use the TAB key to auto-complete the path.

cd /mnt/Chrome OS/MyFiles/Linux Stuff

Any files created in Linux or Chrome OS will be available and updated here.

Creating GUI (Graphical User Interfaces) with any operating system boils down to Ncurses / Whiptail type GUIs for the terminal, or full blown GUIs on the desktop. We will be building the latter, but using the terminal to run commands. Zenity, a tool to display GTK dialog boxes from the terminal and shell scripts is a great tool and it is very easy to use.

In this how-to, we will create a simple application launcher using a Bash script. Selecting an application will trigger the terminal command and open the application. Leaving our app launcher ready to run another application.

Zenity is a fantastic tool for creating GUI applications via the terminal and the Zenity project has a full manual on how to use it.
There are alternatives, in the form of Yad (Yet Another Dialog). We tested Yad ahead of this how to, but found that Zenity provided a more robust means to create menu. The syntax between the two is very similar and you are free to try out both to find your favorite.

For this project you will need any computer running a Linux operating system. We’ve chosen Ubuntu 24.04, but it will also work on Debian, Fedora or many other Linux distributions. We tested it on CrunchbangPlusPlus Linux and Zenity worked as expected.

Creating the custom application launcher

Our first step is to create the custom application launcher, and for this we will be using a text editor and writing Bash shell scripts. Bash is a great programming language to learn and it can expand what your operating system can do.

1. Open a terminal and first update the software repository list, and then install zenity.

sudo apt update && sudo apt install zenity

2. Open a text editor to write the code. We’re using Geany, but you are free to use any text editor. Ubuntu 24.04 uses the Gnome “Text Editor” by default, but you can also install Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code editor.
3. Start the code by pointing the code to the Bash interpreter.

#!/bin/bash

4. Create a loop that will repeat until the user closes the application.

while true; do

5. Create a list of applications in the Zenity app. The application window should have a title (App menu) and be formatted into a column. Add as many application names as you need. The height and width can be tweaked later to match your requirements

    CHOICE=$(zenity --list --title="App menu" \        --column="Apps" \        "Chrome" \        "Geany" \        "Thonny" \        "Inkscape" \        "GIMP" \        --height=400 --width=300)

6. Add an if conditional check that will activate if the user exits the dialog.

    if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then        break    fi

7. Create a case statement (used to simplify long conditionals) as a long list to check the user’s input, stored in the CHOICE variable. If the choice matches an entry on the list, then the corresponding command is launched. If there are no matches (unlikely, but we use this just in case) then the error message is displayed.

    case $CHOICE in        "Chrome")            google-chrome &            ;;        "Geany")            geany &            ;;        "Thonny")            thonny &            ;;        "Inkscape")            inkscape &            ;;        "GIMP")            gimp &            ;;        *)            zenity --error --text="Invalid option, please try again."            ;;    esac

8. Close the main loop.

done

9. Save the code as menu.sh to your home directory.
10. Open a terminal window and set the file as executable. You can also make it executable via the File Manager. Right click >> Properties and set the Permissions to “Executable as a Program”.

chmod +x menu.sh

11. Run the code in the terminal to test that it works.

./menu.sh

Complete Code Listing

#!/bin/bashwhile true; do    CHOICE=$(zenity --list --title="App menu" \        --column="Apps" \        "Chrome" \        "Geany" \        "Thonny" \        "Inkscape" \        "GIMP" \        --height=400 --width=300)    if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then        break    fi    case $CHOICE in        "Chrome")            google-chrome &            ;;        "Geany")            geany &            ;;        "Thonny")            thonny &            ;;        "Inkscape")            inkscape &            ;;        "GIMP")            gimp &            ;;        *)            zenity --error --text="Invalid option, please try again."            ;;    esacdone

Run the code when Ubuntu Starts

Our code is written, but we have to manually start it when we need it. But we can set the menu to launch when the desktop loads, all we need to do is tell the OS where to find the file.

1. Press the Windows / Super key and search for “startup app”. Select Startup Applications.

2. Click on Add.

3. Set the application name to App Launcher, and point the command to where menu.sh is (your home directory). Add a comment to identify what the command does. Click Add to save.

4. Reboot and login, the app launcher should auto run and be ready for use.

Moving and renaming files in the Linux terminal is quick and painless, but first you need to understand how to do it. Whether you are sat at the machine, or remotely connected via SSH, these are the commands that will move files around your machine.

In this how-to we’ll learn the basics of mv, a command that moves, and renames files. We will also learn a few advanced arguments for this command, arguments which will enhance its use and make our lives easier.

These commands will work on most Linux machines. Our test PC ran Kubuntu but you can also run through this how-to on a Raspberry Pi.

All of the how-to is performed via the Terminal.

Rename a single file

Let's start simple with just a single file which we shall rename. The command syntax is structured as follows.

mv  

1. Create a new file called file1.txt.

$ touch file1.txt

2. Rename file1.txt, to newfile1.txt. The mv command can be used on files in the same directory, or with files in other locations.

$ mv file1.txt newfile1.txt

3. List the contents of the directory to see the new file. You should now see newfile1.txt.

$ ls

Moving a file 

The mv command’s primary use is to move files and the syntax is identical to renaming. We have a source and a target.

Lets move a file to a subdirectory.

1. Create a new directory, MoveFilesHere.

$ mkdir MoveFilesHere

2. Create a new blank file using the touch command. Touch can be used to make any type of file, but until it has the correct data inside of it, it is really just an empty shell.

$ touch blankfile.txt

3. Use the mv command to move the file to the subdirectory MoveFilesHere. We specify the source, blankfile.txt and then the target which can be a directory (as is the case here) or we can move the file into a new directory with a new name by passing the target location and the intended filename.

$ mv blankfile.txt  MoveFilesHere/

This assumes that the MoveFilesHere directory is directly below the directory that blankfile.txt is in. If you are moving your file to a directory that’s on a different level you may need to specify the full path (ex: /home/pi/scripts). You can also move a file up to its parent directory by using ../ as the destination folder.

Use the ls command to check that the file has been moved successfully. Here we pass ls (list) command the extra parameter which is the directory to look inside of.

$ ls MoveFilesHere/

If we wanted to move a file and change its name we would pass the target and supply the intended filename. So altering the above example to move blankfile.txt into MoveFilesHere and rename it as namechanged.txt we would use the following command.

$ mv blankfile.txt MoveFilesHere/namechanged.txt

How to Rename a Batch of Files in Linux 

There will come a time where we need to rename many files at the same time. Batch renaming is handled using the mv command, but we use a one line Bash script to iterate over the files that we wish to rename.

1. Create a batch of files to experiment with. This command will generate 26 files, a to z.txt.

$ touch {a..z}.txt

2. Rename all of the files from .txt to .log. We use a for loop that creates a variable (f) and iterates over all of the txt files (*.txt), replacing the value of the variable ($f is how we call the variable) with the filename which is then renamed from .txt to .log (using the (f%.txt} as a pattern matching operator for the filename stored in the f variable). At the end of the command we use “done” to signify the end of the for loop. The “--” part of the code denotes where the first part of the for loop, selecting the file to rename, ends, and where the second part, renaming the file, starts.

$ for f in *.txt; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.txt}.log"; done

Exploring the Linux MV Command

The mv command has a number of useful arguments (parameters) that we can pass when using the command. Here are a few examples.

If you need an interactive prompt when moving files, say there may be an identical file in the new directory, the -i argument will prompt for a decision when a conflict is found.

$ mv -i blankfile.txt MoveFilesHere

The opposite of an interactive prompt is where we force the command to overwrite files. Obviously check the target location before invoking this command.

$ mv -f blankfile.txt MoveFilesHere

What if we want to move our files, but not overwrite any existing files? For that we need –no-clobber (-n). This command will happily copy files over, but will skip any existing files in the target directory.

$ mv -n blankfile.txt MoveFilesHere

Need to only move files that have been updated? The -u argument will check that the source file (the one that we wish to copy) is newer than the target file. Useful for moving log files and incremental backups of documents.

$ mv -u blankfile.txt MoveFilesHere

Finally, if we want to see what files are being moved then we can use the -v (verbose) argument to display the names of the files as they copy across. Useful for quick debugs, and for looking busy in the data center.

$ mv -v blankfile.txt MoveFilesHere

I love music! I have hundreds of CDs in my collection, a few of which have survived since from the late 1980s. I have an original copy of Nirvana’s Nevermind, Foo Fighters debut album, Bush's Sixteen Stone, and many CDs from the grunge and metal era of the 1990s. I used to have a Spotify streaming account, but I want to own the music I listen to. Having the CDs is great, but that isn’t much use when I am out walking the dog. So how can I take my music with me when out and about? I need to rip the audio CDs.

Ripping CDs was a popular activity around 15 to 20 years ago. Heck, I remember ripping audio CDs to MP2 (not a typo!) on an AMD K6-2 333. It took plenty of computing power back then, but now even a Raspberry Pi can rip an audio CD and convert the output to MP3 and FLAC without breaking a sweat.

In this how-to, I show you how to use abcde A Better CD Encoder, a terminal application, to rip an audio CD and then convert the audio to an MP3 and FLAC along with full album and track details. I’m using a Raspberry Pi 5 16GB, but this project can use any Raspberry Pi model from Pi 3 upwards. We also tested it on a laptop running Ubuntu and everything was just as smooth.

For this project you will need

• A Raspberry Pi 3/4/5 or a Zero 2 W or Linux computer
• Keyboard, mouse, HDMI and power for your Raspberry Pi
• A USB CD / DVD / Bluray drive
• Audio CDs

Yes, there are alternative applications. I use freac to rip CDs on Windows, and it does a great job. On Linux, K3B is a KDE-based CD toolbox, and my favorite burning tool. K3B can also be used to rip CDs, but with abcde we can do it all with just a few commands, and very little system resources. We could even script the process to detect, rip and save the audio files to a specific location. But first, let's learn how to use abcde.

Please bear in mind that laws may prohibit you from ripping your audio CDs. Please consult your local laws before ripping your CDs.

1. Open a terminal and update the software repositories and upgrade the software installed on your machine.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

2. Install abcde CD ripping software.

sudo apt install abcde

3. Install eyed3 MP3 ID3 metadata (song info) management and lame MP3 encoder. We need eyed3 to write the MP3 metadata from the online databases for our audio files. The Lame MP3 encoder is the application called after abcde rips the audio CD to WAV format.

sudo apt install eyed3 lame

4. Connect a CD / DVD / Bluray drive to your computer and insert the CD that you wish to rip.

5. In the terminal run the command to rip the audio and encode to an MP3 at 320kbps. Change the 320 value to match your requirements. Anything above 192 is great for most devices.

abcde -o mp3:”-b 320”

6. The application will check online for the album details and then suggest three options. Choose the option that matches the album and track details for your CD, press Q to exit, and then enter the number of your choice.

7. When asked to edit the CDDB, it is your call. If the data looks correct, select N and press Enter. If incorrect, press Y and Enter to edit.

8. Is the album a multi-artist production? If yes, then select Y and Enter, then edit accordingly. No is the default, and nine times out or ten it is correct.

9. Wait for the CD to rip. The CD / DVD / Bluray drive will spring into life and start the ripping process. The application will automatically encode the audio tracks to MP3 as the process progresses.

10. Navigate to the folder containing the MP3s, and test the tracks in VLC or another media player.

What about FLAC?

FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is a digital audio format that provides lossless compression without any loss of sound quality. Digital audiophiles want the best audio, and while MP3 is decent from a file size versus quality point of view, with the price of storage being so low now, we can afford to rip our audio into the best format.

So with that in mind, lets use abcde to rip an audio CD to FLAC.

We'll need to install some extra software in order to rip to FLAC.

1. Open a terminal and update the list of available software, then install the FLAC tools.

sudo apt update && sudo apt install flac

2. Insert a CD and in the terminal run the command to rip the audio and encode to FLAC. You will need to follow the same steps as six to nine above (identify the artists, album and tracks). By default, the FLAC encoder will

abcde -o flac

With that command we have successfully ripped an audio CD to FLAC using the default compression (5). But what if you want to tweak the compression?

The FLAC encoder has nine levels of compression. The default is five, giving us good quality and reasonable compression. If you want to increase the compression choose eight, no compression, choose 0.

To set the compression, pass the value when running the abcde command. Change the value 8 to match the balance of compression / quality that you require.

abcde -o 'flac:-8'

Serial data connections are the "old school" way of making connections. And while it may be old, you will be surprised to learn how many devices still use serial behind the scenes. Televisions, test equipment (some multi-meters have a serial port) and home automation products have serial baked into their circuit boards.

Accessing a serial device in Linux is typically achieved using a command such as screen. But, with Linux there are always other options. I’ve used Tio for many years with my collection of microcontrollers. Why? Because it just works, and it is easy to use.

Windows users, here is another how to which will help you to make serial connections from Windows 11 and Windows 10.

I used Tio when hacking around with the Ifixit Portable Soldering Station. I knew that Tio would make short work of the serial connection, enabling me to look under the hood of the smart soldering iron.

In this how to, we’ll show you how to install and use Tio with its default settings with a quick Raspberry Pi Pico 2 demo being the serial device. Then we’ll move on to specifying connection settings – for boards with a specific baud rate, before learning how to log all of the serial data to a text file for later analysis.

To follow along with this how to you will need the following.

• Computer running Ubuntu
• Raspberry Pi Pico 2 (or Pico / Pico W)
• DHT11 temperature sensor
• Half-size breadboard
• 3 x Male-to-male jumper wires

Installing Tio Via the Package Manager

We’re installing Tio on our laptop running Ubuntu 24.04, the same instructions apply for the majority of Debian based Linux distributions. For other Linux distributions, please check your package manager, as Tio should be available there.

1. Open a terminal and update the repositories list, then run a system upgrade. The update part is essential so that we get the latest list of packages. The upgrade is good housekeeping to ensure that all of your software is up to date. If prompted to confirm an upgrade, press Y.

sudo apt updatesudo apt upgrade

2. Install tio.

sudo apt install tio

Quick Demo Circuit

For this, I’ve prepared a quick Raspberry Pi Pico 2 demo that uses a DHT11 temperature sensor to read the current temperature and print it to the Python shell. The output is what we will read over a serial connection. You don’t need to do this, the how to will still work with whatever serial device you connect to your computer. But with this quick demo circuit, I can show a typical scenario where Tio is used.

For this part of the how to you will need

• Raspberry Pi Pico 2 or Raspberry Pi Pico
• DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor
• Half-size breadboard
• 3 x Male to male jumper wires

The circuit for this demo is simple. We are connecting power and data between the Pico 2 and the DHT11 sensor. The Pico 2 powers the sensor, and the data pin sends the necessary data to the Pico 2.

Ensure that your Raspberry Pi Pico is running MicroPython, follow up to step 4 in this how to and you will have MicroPython and Thonny installed.

1. Open Thonny and create a new blank file.

2. Import three libraries of code. Pin, used to connect to the GPIO, time, to control the pause in our code, dht, an abstraction to make working with the DHT11 easier.

from machine import Pinimport timeimport dht 

3. Create an object, sensor, and use it to make a connection between the code and the DHT11 on GPIO 17. This abstraction makes it easier to work with the DHT11.

sensor = dht.DHT11(Pin(17))

4. Create a while True loop to continually run the code within it.

while True:

5. Pause for two seconds and then take a reading using the DHT11.

   time.sleep(2)   sensor.measure()

6. Get the temperature and store it in an object called “temp”.

   temp = sensor.temperature()

7. Print a message to the Python shell, followed by the current temperature as part of a sentence. We’re using string formatting to insert the temperature data as a string in the correct part of the sentence.

   print("Temperature Checker")   print('The temperature is:', "{:.1f}ºC\n".format(temp))

8. Save the code to the Raspberry Pi Pico as main.py This will force the code to run when the Raspberry Pi Pico is powered up.

Complete Code Listing

from machine import Pinimport timeimport dhtsensor = dht.DHT11(Pin(17))while True:   time.sleep(2)   sensor.measure()   temp = sensor.temperature()   print("Temperature Checker")   print('The temperature is:', "{:.1f}ºC\n".format(temp))

Using Tio’s default settings

The default Tio settings will often get the job done, and with that in mind, Tio makes it easy to use them. All we need to do is call the tio command along with the path to the device. But how can we locate the device? Tio has just the feature. So let's step through how to use Tio, starting with identifying the correct serial device, and then connecting to it. In this case it is a Raspberry Pi Pico 2 running MicroPython.

1. Close Thonny. Thonny, and other applications designed for working with microcontrollers, have their own serial communications features which could interfere.

2. Open a terminal and discover which device name your Raspberry Pi Pico has been assigned. In our case it was /dev/ttyACM0, but it could be something different.

tio -l

3. Use tio to connect to the Raspberry Pi Pico.

tio /dev/ttyACM0

4. You should now see the serial output in the terminal. Every second a new temperature reading will appear on the screen. Pressing CTRL + C will break the running code, and drop you into an interactive Python Shell where commands can be entered.

5. To close tio, press CTRL + t then press Q.

Tio’s list command tio -l will list all devices capable of a serial connection, including multiple devices connected at once. Here we have the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 and an Arduino Uno connected at the same time.

Specifying the connection settings

By default, Tio will use 115200 8N1, in other words.

• 115200: This is the baud rate, the rate at which data is communicated.
• 8: This is the databits, describing how a character of data is sent from a serial device.
• N: This is the parity bit sometimes called a check bit. It is used for error detection.
• 1: This is the stop bit, effectively identifying when the data stream ends.

The 115200 baud rate is pretty common these days and many boards, from Arduino to the new Raspberry Pi Pico 2

With Tio, we can specify the connection settings to match the needs of the device. In this example we have created a simple Arduino sketch to print “Tom’s Hardware” every one second to the Serial interface. In the Arduino sketch we have hard coded the baud rate to 9600 (Serial.begin(9600)).

These few steps are more for a reference, should you need to specify the connection settings.

To set Tio’s baud rate we need to run the command with some extra arguments.

1. Open a terminal and start tio with arguments to set the baud rate to 9600, databits to 8, flow to none, stop bits 1 and parity to none.

//code//

tio /dev/ttyACM0 –baudrate 9600 –databits 8 –flow none –stopbits 1 –parity none

//code//

2. The live serial data will print to the tio shell, check that the message scrolls up the screen.

3. Press CTRL + t then press Q to exit Tio and return to the terminal.

Writing data to a log file

One rather useful feature is setup when we use the Tio command. The feature in question directs a copy of the output to a log file.

Using the Raspberry Pi Pico temperature sensor project, we will capture the output to a text file called temperature-log.txt.

1. From the Linux terminal, start Tio with two arguments. The first is –log-file which specifies the full path to the file (tio will create the file if it doesn’t exist, and overwrite any existing files with the same name), the second is -L which enables writing to a log file. Remember to change the device path to match that of your device.

tio /dev/ttyACM0 –log-file temperature-log.txt -L

2. Run Tio for a few moments, enough to gather the data that you need.

3. Press CTRL + t then press Q to exit Tio and return to the terminal.

4. Open the file in a text editor to view the data log.

5. Alter the command to add the corresponding argument which will append to an existing log file.

tio /dev/ttyACM0 –log-append –log-file temperature-log.txt -L

6. Open the text file to see the appended data.

Let's assume that we need to write the exact time to the log file, this could be useful when we need to show that a certain action should happen at a regular occurrence. We’ll adapt the above command, which appends data to a logfile, so that a timestamp is added at the start of each line.

7. From the Linux terminal, start Tio with the previous arguments, and -t to add a timestamp.

tio /dev/ttyACM0 –log-append –log-file temperature-log.txt -L -t

8. Press CTRL + T then press Q to exit Tio and return to the terminal.

9. Open the file in a text editor to view the data log. The timestamp is displayed at the start of each line, just before the output.

Tio’s Advanced Functions

Tio has a slew of extra features and functions which are available while it is running. The features can be accessed by pressing and releasing CTRL + t and then one of the following keys. We’ve already used CTRL + t q which exits Tio.

CTRL+t ?  List available key commandsCTRL+t b  Send breakCTRL+t c  Show configurationCTRL+t e  Toggle local echo modeCTRL+t f  Toggle log to fileCTRL+t F  Flush data I/O buffersCTRL+t g  Toggle serial port lineCTRL+t i  Toggle input modeCTRL+t l  Clear screenCTRL+t L  Show line statesCTRL+t m  Change mapping of characters on input or outputCTRL+t o  Toggle output modeCTRL+t p  Pulse serial port lineCTRL+t q  QuitCTRL+t r  Run scriptCTRL+t R  Execute shell command with I/O redirected to deviceCTRL+t s  Show statisticsCTRL+t t  Toggle line timestamp modeCTRL+t v  Show versionCTRL+t x  Send file via XmodemCTRL+t y  Send file via YmodemCTRL+t CTRL+t Send CTRL+t character 

Your Linux distro already comes with a great package manager but sometimes you need applications that aren’t available via the official repositories.

Third party applications, such as Google Chrome, Slack, Zoom, Visual Studio Code are provided by their respective publishers. For Debian and Ubuntu systems these are provided as Debian package files (.deb) and for Fedora / Red Hat as RPM packages. These packages can be installed using your preferred OS GUI package manager, or they can be installed using a command line tool. But what if we had a tool which handled downloading, installing, upgrading and removing these third-party packages for us?

Deb-get, from Martin Wimpress is “a high-level command line interface for the package management system to easily install and update packages published in 3rd party apt

repositories or via direct download.” With deb-get we can download and install third party packages without leaving the terminal.

How can we use deb-get and what applications are available? Let's find out.

We tested the process on two machines, a laptop running Ubuntu and a desktop running Kubuntu.

Not every Ubuntu or Debian release is supported, but if you are running any of the following, you are good.

• Debian
  • Buster (10)
  • Bullseye (11)
  • Bookworm (12)
  • Trixie (13)
  • Forky (14)
  • Sid (Unstable)
• Ubuntu
  • 20.04
  • 22.04
  • 24.04
  • 24.10
  • 25.04
  • 25.10

The installation process for deb-get uses, deb-get. We download a copy of the application from Wimpress’ Github repository and then run the command to install it onto our system.

1. Open a terminal and update the software repositories list. This enables our machine to install the latest software from the software repositories.

sudo apt update

2. Install the curl application.

sudo apt install curl

Curl is used to download the deb-get application from the Github repository. It is highly likely that your version of curl is up-to-date, but it is always best to check.

3. Use curl to download deb-get to your machine, then run the installation using sudo.

curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wimpysworld/deb-get/main/deb-get | sudo -E bash -s install deb-get

How-to Use deb-get

Behaving in much the same way as apt and apt-get, deb-get has a similar set of commands to manage applications on our machine.

We start by installing an application, after consulting the list of supported software we chose to install Microsoft’s Edge web browser for Linux.

1. Open a terminal and update the deb-get package index files. This is essentially the same as our software repositories list.

sudo deb-get update

2. Use deb-get with the install argument to download the latest stable version of Microsoft Edge for Linux. Remember to consult the support software list to get the name of the application that you wish to install.

sudo deb-get install microsoft-edge-stable

We can update all of the applications installed via deb-get via one command. It will even catch supported applications installed before deb-get has been installed. The application upgraded Zoom and Raspberry Pi Imager, both of which were installed before we installed deb-get.

sudo deb-get upgrade

To search for a particular application, we can use the search argument. For example, here is the command to search for Firefox. Note that the output shows the name that we should use for installation.

sudo deb-get search firefox

To show all of the applications that can be installed via deb-get we used the list argument.

sudo deb-get list

To remove an application, we have two choices. The first is that we can perform a standard uninstall that will remove just the application. However, this leaves any user-generated configuration files in their respective directories.

sudo deb-get remove 

Secondly, if we wish to fully purge the application and any configuration files, then we can use the purge argument.

sudo deb-get purge 

To clean out your local repository of downloaded installation files we can use the clean argument. This command is generally used for housekeeping, ensuring that your system is kept tidy and that unwanted files are removed.

sudo deb-get clean

Deb-get is a remarkably useful tool to add to our Ubuntu installations. It makes short work of installing the software that we know and love, software that is either not available, or much older in the official repositories.

Related Tutorials

• How To Check Disk Usage in Linux
• How To Kill a Process in Linux
• How To Find Files in Linux

On many Linux systems the boot process sees the usual BIOS screen, followed by Grub. The Grand Unified Bootloader (Grub) takes over from our BIOS and offers the user a choice of OS options and kernel choices. Typically we just press Enter or wait for Grub to disappear. Grub is utilitarian, it does the job and doesn’t care how it looks. But what if we could add a little flair to our boot process?

Grub Customizer, by Daniel Richter, is a GUI based application for easy configuration of Grub. Rather than manually editing text files we can easily edit and preview our changes before committing them to the system.

In this how to, we shall create a custom Grub background image using Grub Customizer and a PNG / JPEG image.

Making any changes to your Grub configuration is dangerous, and could result in a non-booting system. Before attempting these steps, ensure that your system is backed up.

For this project you will need

• A computer running Ubuntu

Installing Grub Customizer 

1. Open a terminal and add the Grub Customizer PPA to your list of repositories. A Personal Package Archive (PPA) is a software repository created for Ubuntu users to share pre-release software. Most PPAs are trustworthy. If in any doubt do not install, and read the source code before moving forwards.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:danielrichter2007/grub-customizer

2. Update your list of repositories. This is always best practice before installing new software.

sudo apt update

3. Install Grub Customizer using the apt packaging tool.

sudo apt install grub-customizer

Using Grub Customizer

1. Click on Show Applications (3 x 3 grid of squares) to open the main menu.

2. Click on Grub Optimizer. You will be prompted to enter your sudo password, this is required as we are making changes that will be applied system-wide.

3. Click on Appearance settings. Under List configuration, we can alter the list of available OS choices presented on boot. Change their names, create sub-menus etc. General settings provides options to automatically select an OS, pass kernel parameters and delays to the boot. Only alter these settings if you know what you are doing.

4. Click on Background image.

5. Click on + Other Locations and navigate to the directory with your images. Because we opened Grub Customizer using sudo / root powers, our “home” folder is that of the root user. A PNG or JPEG image at your monitor's default resolution is preferred.

6. With the background image now set, click on Save to write the changes.

7. Click on Advanced Settings. This will open a menu containing extra Grub configuration steps.

8. Set GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE to “menu”, and set GRUB_TIMEOUT to “10”, click Close and then Save the changes. This ensures that the Grub menu is displayed, and if we do not touch the keyboard, the system will default boot in 10 seconds.

9. Reboot your computer, wait for the Grub menu to appear and then check that your background image loads correctly. If the image fails to load, repeat the previous steps and check the image file format.

More Linux Tutorials

• How to Use Nohup to Run Linux Scripts Unattended
• How To Find Large Files on Linux
• How to Use SSH to Connect to Remote Computers Using Windows, Linux or macOS

Compressing files is a quick and easy way to archive and group files. There are many occasions where archives are useful, a driver download, file backup or Linux distro download. In this how-to we’ll look at various commands to create and extract data from compressed and uncompressed archive files.

Whilst you become accustomed to these commands it’s good to work with example test files and directories and you should take extra care to ensure you are carefully following the instructions.

All the commands in this how-to will work on most Linux machines. We’ve used an Ubuntu LTS install but you could run this how-to on a Raspberry Pi. All of the how-to is performed via the Terminal. You can open a terminal window on most Linux machines by pressing ctrl, alt and t.

Working with TAR archives

When using Linux systems you are likely to come across tar archives as well as ZIP archives. It’s useful to practice creating .tar archives and also how to extract from a tar archive. Also of note is that sometimes TAR archives are referred to as tarballs. Tar archives in their standard form have the .tar suffix but these archives are not compressed. Compression is added using different tar compression tools which is why you will see tar archives with extra suffixes such as .tar.xz or .tar.gz.

To create or extract from these compressed archives you need additional arguments added to the tar command. We’re going to use two of the most popular compression methods, gzip and bzip2 along with a tar archive that has no compression.

Using a TAR archive

1. Open a new terminal window. This will open to our home directory.

2. Create a .tar file. Using test_directory as a target we’ll make a standard uncompressed .tar archive. This kind of archive is useful to group small files, such as logs into a single archive.

$tar cf test_archive.tar test_directory

Extracting TAR archives is straightforward. Instead of adding the c argument to create an archive we replace it with the x argument. We again need to add arguments that respond to the type of compression tool the archive was created with. When we extract from our 3 archives we would be creating duplicates of the test_directory contents so we will delete this directory each time we extract the next archive.

1. Delete the test_directory folder.

rm -r test_directory

2. Extract the standard .tar archive. After extracting the archive use ls to check the archive has been extracted.

tar xf test_archive.tarls

Using Gzip Compressed TAR Files

A gzip compressed tar archive (tar.gz) is one of many popular compression tools for TAR archives and it is common to find a .

1. Create a gzip archive by adding the z argument to the tar command.

tar czf test_archive.tar.gz test_directory

To extract a gzip compressed tar archive we need to add the z argument to identify that the archive uses the gzip compression method.

2. Delete the test_directory folder.

rm -r test_directory

3. Extract the gzip compressed tar archive using the z argument. Then list the directory contents to show that test_directory has been created.

tar xzf test_archive.tar.gzls

Using Bzip2 Compressed TAR Files

Another alternative compression method for a tar archive is bzip2, which is invoked using the j argument. Archives typically end with either a tar.bz2 or tbz suffix.

1. Create a bzip2 archive by adding the j argument to the tar command.

tar cjf test_archive.tar.bzip2 test_directory

To extract a bzip2 compressed tar archive we need to add the z argument to identify that the archive uses the gzip compression method.

2. Delete the test_directory folder.

rm -r test_directory

3. Extract the bzip2 compressed tar archive.

tar xf test_archive.tar.bzip2lsrm -r test_directory

Extract TAR Archives to a Specific Location

If we wish to extract an archive to a specific location we can use the C argument with the tar command and then specify the location. The location can be a relative or absolute path. So we can extract the archive to a sub directory inside a current directory, or we can specify the full path to another location in the file system.

Extract test_archive.tar into the Music directory. Here we are in the Home directory, and most Linux distributions feature a Music directory which we can extract the archive to.

tar xfC test_archive.tar Musiccd Musicls

To extract to another location in the file system it is best practice to use an absolute path.

Extract test_archive.tar to your desktop directory. Specify the full path, tab completion can be used to auto-complete directory names. Remember to change to match your own.

tar xfC test_archive.tar /home//Desktop/cd /home//Desktop/ls

Armed with these few examples you are now capable of extracting most common archives on the command line. Whilst GUI tool options exist for some archives, often when dealing with a compressed .tar archives, these terminal commands are much quicker and easier to perform.

The Unix / Linux filesystem hierarchy can seem quite daunting to those new to the OS. It was the same for us when we got started. But this mysterious filesystem isn’t that mysterious after all; we just need some explanation to go along with the directory names.

Linux is a great operating system. It runs on everything from a single-board system to a super computer. But for those users moving from a Windows environment, the filesystem can be daunting. Linux is gaining popularity for gaming, largely down to Valve's Steam Deck. But it is computers such as the Raspberry Pi which are introducing Linux to a new generation.

So let's take a look at a typical Linux filesystem found in a modern day install. We’re using Kubuntu but the directory structure will be the same for a Raspberry Pi and a data center.

Got root?

The starting point for the UNIX filesystem is the root directory, often referred to as /. This is the start for every directory on our system and typically only root, or a user in the sudo group will be able to write anything to this directory. The majority of files (if any) in this directory are read only to other users. The root user has its own home directory, which is where files and directories necessary for their work can be found.

From the root directory we move on to bin, short for binaries. In this directory we can find the absolute essential commands. We can spot commands such as cat, grep, ls, less etc. This directory is typically kept as is; we don’t want to install our break any files located here as it could render our system unusable.

Binaries, Applications and Utilities

The filesystem has many locations for commands and applications.

For critical commands and utilities we have bin. This directory contains many of the commands that we use at the terminal, ls, cp, mv. In our Ubuntu desktop we have 2453 binaries in this directory alone! The bin directory has everything that we need to have a usable Linux environment. The directory also contains the tools that we need to maintain the system, including the tools necessary when running in single user mode (a mode where a single superuser maintains the installation). As such, we largely leave bin alone as an incorrect keypress could bring a system down.

Another location for commands is sbin and this is where the absolutely essential commands are located. The “S” in sbin refers to “superuser”, a root user or a user with sudo privileges. These commands are only for privileged users and the directory contains tools to work with filesystems, networking and background services.

What if we want to use our own applications in the terminal? Can we just drop them into bin or sbin? The answer is no. Those directories should be left as is. Our applications should reside in /usr/local/bin or /usr/bin/ so that they do not interfere with any other directories. Another location to store our own applications is /opt/. Relatively few applications use this directory. On our test machine we found directories for Google Chrome, Balena’s Etcher, and Zoom.

The Mysterious Directories 

There are quite a few directories that can leave the Linux newcomer wondering “What does this directory do?” First on this hallowed list is etc. Pronounced “et-see”, the etc directory contains configuration files specific for your machine. Here we find configuration files for the Common Unix Print Service (cups), sensors (temperature) and cron (scheduling commands to run at set times).

The dev directory is where devices are located. Linux treats everything as a file, including physical devices and this directory is where we can find them. Devices such as disks, inputs and serial consoles (/dev/tty) reside here. In our experience we have used this directory to locate USB to Serial interfaces for devices such as Raspberry Pi Pico and other microcontrollers.

Short for libraries, lib is where we can find libraries essential to running the system. Here we can find kernel libraries and other essential files for our system. The libraries work in a similar manner to Windows DLL files.

A mysteriously named directory, “lost+found” sounds more at home at a bus terminal. But this directory is where obsolete/incomplete data is kept. If we ever need to reconstruct data, after an unscheduled power loss, error or bug, then we would use fsck along with lost+found.

Short for Processes, proc is a mount point for the proc filesystem. This entire directory contains files that show information on the current running processes. Each process is numbered, a PID, that we can identify by running a command such as top, htop, ps or bpytop. We used top to identify our Chrome browser process, then used the PID to change directory into the process. Using the proc directory we can explore the running processes, examine them for issues, information and extract data from running processes.

The run directory contains information about the system since it was booted. Any commands, be they automatic or started by the user, will leave a trace here. For example, when writing this feature we used peek to record part of our screen. In the run directory we found the relevant subdirectory containing the apps data.

Typically used for site-specific data, srv is used to store data files for a particular service. If you are serving web pages, CGI scripts can be used from this directory. On our test system, this directory is empty as we do not run any web services.

Working in a similar manner to proc, sys is a directory that stores information about the kernel. Structured into a series of directories for system buses, devices, firmware etc, it is easier to work with that finding raw PIDs as we did with proc.

Inside the tmp directory are a collection of temporary files and directories. These files and directories can be deleted with no notice, so ensure that you only use this directory for data that you no longer need. One trick with tmp is when we download installation files, saving these to tmp and running the installation means we don’t have to worry about cleaning up the installation files after use.

So what does usr contain? Well, usr is one of the most important directories in the Linux filesystem. In here we find all of the user-land (code that runs outside of the kernel) resides. The /usr/bin/ subdirectory contains many commands that we use on a daily basis. Further subdirectories contain libraries for user-land applications (/usr/lib), shared files such as fonts and icons (/usr/share) and Linux kernel source files contained in /usr/src/.

Our final mysteriously named directory is var. This directory is where files which may regularly change in size. Webmasters will be familiar with this directory as it is common to serve a website using /var/www/. The var directory is also the home of log files (/var/log). If something goes wrong, this is the directory to look into. We can examine the kernel logs, syslogs and the dpkg log, used to log the details of installing applications using dpkg or apt. In fact, apt has its own subdirectory, /var/log/apt, which contains term.log and history.log. These files show the applications installed using apt. We spotted two applications that we installed for this feature: tree, which we used to map the hierarchy, and pv which we used to slow down the output of listing the contents of the bin directory.

There’s no place like home (directory)

Each user has their own home directory. A space where they can store their documents, work, videos etc. Typically users will only use their home directory, never straying into the main filesystem. Should an application require a user specific configuration, it will save to one of a few hidden directories. Directories which start with a “.” are hidden from general view, but we can see them using the ls command along with three arguments. The first is -l and this ensures the data is displayed as a list. Next is -h, which formats the data using values a human would easily understand (2048MB becomes 2GB etc). Finally the -a argument shows all the files, even the hidden files.

ls -lha

To get a view of your Linux filesystem hierarchy use the tree command. As you can guess, the tree command lists the contents of filesystems in a tree-like structure.

1. Open a terminal, and update your software repositories.

sudo apt update

2. Install tree using the apt package manager.

sudo apt install tree

3. Use tree to view the structure of your Linux filesystem. We will limit the output to just one level (-L 1) and only directories (-d) and set the start point to be our root /.

tree -d -L 1

MORE: How To Check Disk Usage in Linux

MORE: How To Kill a Process in Linux

MORE: How To Find Files in Linux

User management may not sound like the most glamorous task, but nonetheless it is an essential part of a busy system administrator's job. Creating new users, be they your family, friends or co-workers involves giving them the correct permissions, and managing what they can do. All of this can be done via the GUI and the terminal and in this how to we will show how.

All the commands in this how-to will work on most Linux machines. We’ve used an Ubuntu LTS install but you could run this how-to on a Raspberry Pi.
Some of this how-to is performed via the terminal. You can open a terminal window on most Linux machines by pressing ctrl, alt and t. When working through this how-to take extra care when you have multiple users set up that you are selecting and deleting the correct user accounts!

Add A New Linux User Via the GUI

For most, user management via the desktop is more than sufficient and thankfully most Linux distros have this down to a tee.

To add a user via the GUI

1. Open the settings application, scroll down the list and select the users tab.

2. Click on the unlock button and enter your password. Editing these settings requires us to unlock them via a password. This helps to avoid accidents when working with user accounts.

3. Click the Add User button to open a new dialog box.

4. Add the new user's name. The tool will suggest a username, but you are free to change this. You can either add a password for that user at this stage or you can allow the user to set their own password when they first log in. When done, click Add to save. You will be prompted for your password to confirm the creation of this user.

5. Optional step: Give users additional privileges by clicking the administrator tab as you create the new user, or by toggling the administrator button if the user account is already created.

6. Log off and switch users to the new user account. You should notice that they have their own Home directory and that any applications will use the configuration settings for that user.

Deleting a Linux User Via the GUI

Making sure that user accounts are deleted is good housekeeping. It removes unnecessary files, and more importantly it removes their access.

Using the same GUI application we can delete the user Zainab from our test installation.

1. Open the settings application, scroll down the list and select the users tab.

2. Click on the unlock button and enter your password. Editing these settings requires us to unlock them via a password. This helps to avoid accidental user deletions from your system.

3. Select the user account you wish to remove and click the Remove user button. Note that if that user is currently logged in you will get a warning that deleting a user whilst logged in may create issues.

4. Click Delete Files b to remove the user's Home directory. If you haven’t yet backed up the files, click on Keep Files.

Adding a User Via the Linux Terminal

The GUI is great but sometimes we need to get our hands dirty in the terminal and from here we can easily manage users. An aspiring system administrator and a Bash script can even automate the process. Adding a user to the system using the command line interface within a terminal is straightforward.

In the following example we have used sudo at the beginning of commands as they require root or sudo privileges in order to run. If you are logged in as root you don’t need to add sudo to these commands.

1. Add a new user using the adduser command. When prompted enter your password to confirm that you have sudo privileges. The new username must be lowercase.

2. Create a password and user details for the new user account. You don’t need to complete every piece of information.You can leave them empty by pressing the Enter key to skip them.

3. Confirm the new user information by typing y and then press Enter. Should there be an error you can type n to cancel the operation.

sudo adduser jamal

Adding a User to A Group via the Linux Terminal

Group memberships are used to ensure that multiple users in a group have basic permissions and privileges. Using groups we can ensure that users in a group have these basic permissions without the need to individually assign permissions to them.

1. Open a terminal.

2. Add the new user to the sudo group using the usermod command. The usermod command has two arguments. The first is -a and this appends the user. The G argument requires the name of the group(s) to which the user should be added.

sudo usermod -aG sudo 

Deleting a User Via the Linux Terminal

Deleting a user account using the command line interface is straightforward. Similar to previous adding a user example, we need to use sudo or be logged in as root to perform these operations.

1. Use the deluser command with the –remove-home argument to remove a user and their home directory. Similar to adding a user with adduser we can use deluser to remove user accounts. Adding the --remove-home arguments removes the user's home directory and deletes all of their files.

sudo deluser –remove-home 

2. Use deluser to delete a user without deleting their home directory. Occasionally we may need to remove a user without deleting their home directory and files. To do this you simply run the deluser command without any arguments added.

sudo deluser 

Between the GUI tools and the command line interface you now have a good collection of basic approaches to manage user accounts, their file contents and group access on most Linux systems.

Related Tutorials

• How To Check Disk Usage in Linux
• How To Kill a Process in Linux
• How To Find Files in Linux

In this how-to we’ll look at various ways of using the terminal emulator to identify processes and how to kill them. A process can be an application or script running on your Linux machine. Sometimes a process can crash or become a memory hog and this is when we need to step in and “kill” the process. As ever, there are a multitude of tools that we can use to do this. We will use a variety of approaches and tools to identify and kill the processes.

While you become accustomed to these commands, it’s important to take care that you don’t kill a process which results in you losing work. Wherever possible use an application that isn’t currently in use on your machine as an example of a process to kill.

All the commands in this how-to will work on most Linux machines. We’ve used a Ubuntu 20.04 install but you could run this how-to on a Raspberry Pi. All of the how-to is performed via the Terminal. You can open a terminal window on most Linux machines by pressing ctrl, alt and t.

How to Kill a Known Application in Linux 

To begin, let's open a software application and then, in the terminal, use the killall command to kill the application. We have used Inkscape, the free and open source vector graphics package as an example, but it doesn’t really matter what you use, just so long as you aren’t depending on it for anything at the current time.

Using the killall command kills all processes linked to the named application. Later we will look at using the kill command to kill a specific process.

1. Launch Inkscape, or another test application, from the system gui.

2. In the terminal, use the killall command to kill all Inkscape processes. You should see that Inkscape closes immediately when this command is issued.

killall inkscape

Identifying Different Processes in Linux

Often, software applications have numerous processes running and it can be useful to try and work out which one is likely causing the problem. For example, it could be one browser window rather than all of Chromium or Firefox.Then you can close the problematic process while leaving the rest of the app running. We can use the top tool in the terminal to look at, interact and then kill the rogue processes.

1. Launch the top tool in the terminal. When it’s launched, you will see the terminal populate with information regarding all the processes and their status. The second line of the top screen shows the total number of tasks, which are currently running and which are sleeping, stopped or zombie status. Below this you will see a list of processes and this information will refresh at a default of once every three seconds.

top

2. Press i to constrain the current processes list to those currently active. This can be very useful if you are only interested in current running processes and makes the list easier to read.

3. Press z to add color to the top interface to make it easier to read. Because this is a text based interface, adding color can help distinguish between labels and data.

4. Launch Inkscape or another non essential application.

5. Find the listing for Inkscape and note the PID. The PID is the number assigned to identify the process and they are listed in the first column of the top output. In our example the PID for inkscape was 4582 but it will be different each time Inkscape is running.

6. Press k and then type the PID number to kill the process.

7. Press ENTER and you should see a message “Send pid 4582 signal [15/sigterm]” which is confirming you want to kill this process. Press “enter” once more to confirm and kill the process.

8. Press q to close top and return to the terminal emulator. Often, you will want to look at top for a quick glimpse at the processes and then return to the terminal.

Killing an Individual Process Outside of top

Occasionally you might want to kill an individual process outside of top. We can use the PID number found via top in combination with the kill command to do this. Note that the killall command we used earlier won’t work with an individual PID.

1. Launch Inkscape or another application. The choice of application doesn’t really matter, just make sure you aren’t working in the application.

2. Launch top in the terminal. Press i and z to constrain the results and add color to the top theme.

top

3. Identify and note the PID for the application to kill. In our example the PID for Inkscape was 4582.

4. Exit top by pressing q.

5. Use the kill command and the PID number to kill the Inkscape process from the terminal emulator. Replace the example PID value below with your own identified PID.

kill 4582

Using top provides an excellent set of detective tools to identify misbehaving processes and can often allow you to clinically close an unresponsive process whilst possibly saving other data in an application.

Killing Processes Using the ps Process Report

There is an alternative to top. We can use the ps command, designed to produce a report of all the running processes.

1. Launch Inkscape or another application. The choice of application doesn’t really matter, just make sure you aren’t working in the application.

2. Run the ps command with two arguments. The -e argument shows all the processes and the -f argument sets the format to the system standard syntax.

ps -ef

3. Use grep to filter the report. searching just for “inkscape”. The typical ps -ef output is extremely dense, packed with dozens of running processes. Using a filter we can search for the application name. The PID is the second column, just after the username. You may see multiple PIDs for the application.The one that we are interested in just shows the application name.

ps -ef | grep inkscape

4. Use the kill command along with the PID to kill the process. In our case Inkscape had a PID of 19166.

kill 19166

Process management is a key Linux skill to learn and it’s worth taking the time to practice these approaches before you need to deploy them in a real situation.

Copying files and directories in the Linux terminal is really efficient and straightforward once you know how to do it. It’s useful when we need to manage our files and directories without the need for a GUI, for example in a BASH script. We can do this whether we are at our desk or if we are accessing a machine remotely via SSH.

In this how-to we’ll look at the cp command which copies files and directories. We’ll look at some arguments that we can add to get the most out of this command.

While you become accustomed to these commands it’s good to work with example empty files and directories and you should take extra care to ensure you are carefully following the instructions.

All the commands in this how-to will work on most Linux machines. We’ve used an Ubuntu LTS install but you could run this how-to on a Raspberry Pi. All of the how-to is performed via the Terminal. You can open a terminal window on most Linux machines by pressing ctrl, alt and t.

How to Copy a Single File in Linux

Let’s start really simply by copying a single file. The command syntax is structured as follows.

cp  

1. Create a new file called test1.txt.

touch test1.txt

2. List the contents of the directory to check if the file has been created. You should now see the file test1.txt.

ls

3. Copy the test1.txt file and rename it to test2.txt. This copies the item into the same directory as the original but into a new file.

cp test1.txt test2.txt

4. List the contents of the directory to check the file has been copied and renamed. You should see that the original file test1.txt is listed and the copied file test2.txt is listed.

ls

How to Copy a Directory in Linux

Let’s run through a similar example to show that cp can be used to copy a directory by using the -r argument. Though we have used an empty directory as an example, any directory contents would also be copied to the new directory using this argument.

1. Create an empty directory in your home directory.

mkdir test_directory

2. Copy and rename the new directory.

cp -r test_directory test_directory_2

3. List the directory contents to check the copied directory is created. You should see the directories test_directory and test_directory_2 listed.

ls

How to Copy Files to a Different Location in Linux

For the next example let’s look at copying a file to a different location.

1. Create an empty directory in your home directory.

mkdir test_directory

2. Create a test file in your home directory.

touch test1.txt

3. Copy the test file from the home directory into the test directory. This copies test1.txt from the home directory into test_directory.

$ cp test1.txt test_directory

4. Check the file has been copied correctly by changing directory to test_directory and listing the contents.

cd test_directoryls

How to Copy Files to and From Directories While Renaming Them

If you know the location of a file and the target location you want to copy the file to, you don’t need to move into the directories directly and you can run the cp command from the home directory. Here’s an example of how it could be done.

1. Create 2 empty directories. From the home directory run the following command to create two new directories.

mkdir folder1 folder2

2. Move inside folder1 and make a test file called test1.txt.

cd folder1touch test1.txt

3. Return to the home directory.

cd

4. Copy and rename the test file from the home directory. We can supply the cp command with the name and location of the target file to copy and where to copy the file, renaming it to test2.txt along the way.

cp folder1/test1.txt folder2/test2.txt

5. Check that the file has been copied correctly by changing directory to folder2 and listing the contents. Use cd to change directory and ls to check the file copied correctly. You should see test2.txt listed inside folder2.

cd folder2ls

How to Copy a File to a Parent Directory

As you move through directories you may need to occasionally copy a file to the parent directory of a current location. This can be achieved without having to type long directory locations into a command by using .. to target the parent directory. Here’s how.

1. Create a test directory using mkdir.

mkdir test_directory

2. Move into test_directory.

cd test_directory

3. Create a test file inside test_directory.

touch test1.txt

4. Copy test1.txt to the parent directory. Here we simply add .. to the cp command to create a copy of test1.txt into the parent directory of the current location.

cp test1.txt ..

5. Move to the parent directory and check if the file has been copied. You should see that test1.txt is now listed at this location.

cdls

As you can see the cp command is very simple to use but is very capable and, with a little practice, it’s often much quicker to be able to surgically copy and rename files using cp than using graphical interface tools.

In this how-to, we’ll look at various ways of using the find command to help us find files and directories across the Linux filesystem. Sometimes we misplace a file or directory and we can spend precious time searching via the terminal. On the Linux desktop, the file manager will have a builtin search tool, as does the terminal. The find command is immensely useful, and exceptionally easy to use.

Whilst you become accustomed to these commands, it’s good to work with test files and directories and you should take extra care to ensure you are carefully following the instructions.

All the commands in this how-to will work on most Linux machines. We’ve used an Ubuntu LTS install but you could run this how-to on a Raspberry Pi. All of the how-to is performed via the Terminal. You can open a terminal window on most Linux machines by pressing ctrl, alt and t.

Finding a File in Linux

To begin, let's create some example files in a directory and then use the find command to find them.

1. Create a test folder containing test files. After creating the test directory and files check the files have been created using ls.

mkdir testcd testtouch test1.txt test2.h test3.c TEST.fls

2. In the test directory, find the file called test1.txt. Using find with “.” indicates that the search should be confined to the current working directory. After running the find command you should see the test1.txt file listed as a result.

find . -name test1.txt

Searching Using a Partial Filename in Linux

On occasion, we may need to search using partial file or directory names. Let’s look at how to do this and how searching for partial terms affects the results.

1. In the test directory run the following command searching for files that contain the term “tes” within their name.

find . -name "*tes*"

In the list of results, you should see that all the files have been found and listed apart fromTEST.f , this is due to -name returning case sensitive results. We’ll look at an alternative that returns non case sensitive results in a later section.

2. Repeat the command searching for a specific file extension. We can use the same method to search for a particular file type. Changing the command to search for“*.txt*” will return only the .txt filetype.

find . -name "*.txt*"

3. Use -iname to return non-case sensitive results. Here we use the partial search term“*tes*” again but using -iname forces the command to show all results regardless of upper or lower case. Therefore the results include our file TEST.f .

find . -iname "*tes*"

Distinguishing Between Directories and Files in Linux

In its standard form, the find command will also return any matching results regardless be they files or directories. We can also add tags to the find command that force the command to only return files or only return directory results.

1. Add a directory inside our test directory called test2. Use ls to confirm that the directory has been created.

cd testmkdir test2ls

2. Run a find command that will return both file and directory results. You should see that the result contains all the test files and also the test2 directory.

find . -iname "*test*"

3. Add the -type f tag to return only file results. Note that in the results the directory test2 is omitted.

find . -iname "*test*" -type f

4. Add the -type d tag to return only directory results. Note that the only result now should be the test2 directory.

find . -iname "*test*" -type d

Searching the Entire Filesystem in Linux

You may need to search the entire filesystem to try and find a misplaced or forgotten file.

1. Search for the test1.txt file from the root (/) of the filesystem. This step isn’t tremendously successful and has been added to illustrate a common issue.

cdfind / -iname test1.txt

You will find that you don’t have permission to search in a lot of areas, this results in a long reported list of areas we can’t search and, although our test1.txt file has been located we need to search through the report list to find it. Notice in this example we use / to enable the command to search all sub directories.

2. Repeat the previous search but use sudo to add root privileges. This then gives the command permission to access most places within the filesystem and as such the returned report will be much clearer and easier to read.

sudo find / -iname test1.txt

With these examples you should now have a basic tool set to find any file anywhere on your system, even if you only know a part of its name.

Historically, operating systems generally come with some form of scripting language which admins and power users can use to create custom tools. Harking back to the home computer craze of the 1970s and 80s, this was BASIC (Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) but in recent years we have seen batch scripts (I used these for my 486 DX 33 too eek out as much RAM as possible to play Star Wars: X-Wing). Unix and Linux are no different and come with their own scripting languages, one of which is baked into the terminal. These simple to create, yet fiendishly powerful scripts can do everything from remotely backing up entire file systems to making an LED flash.

Bash scripts behave like those of other programming languages. The code runs line by line in a sequence. We can use conditional logic (selection) to alter the path that our code takes and the code can iterate and repeat the execution of the code until a condition is met or run the code indefinitely.

Bash, the Bourne Again SHell is one of many different shells available to Unix and Linux users (Zsh, Ksh, Tcsh, Fish are others) and is commonly installed with many of the main distributions. We ran Kubuntu when writing this tutorial, but the same code will also work on a Raspberry Pi (with Raspberry Pi OS) or almost any other Linux distribution.

In this how-to we shall take our first steps into creating Bash scripts with three example projects. The first is the venerable “Hello World”, then we learn how to create interactive scripts, before finally creating a real script to check the status of a site / server. We then go the extra mile and learn how to make our scripts executable and available system-wide.

How to Write a “Hello World” Bash Script

We’ll start simple with “Hello World”. This may seem trivial, but a hello world test is useful to understand the workflow of creating a Bash script, and to test the basic functionality. We’ll be using the nano text editor, but you can also write your scripts in another terminal or GUI based text editor.

1. Create a new file, hello.sh and open it with nano.

nano hello.sh

2. On the first line specify the interpreter to be used in the code. In this case it is Bash.

#!/bin/bash

3. On a new line use echo to print a string of text to the screen. Those familiar with Windows batch scripts will spot that Windows and Linux both use "echo" to print to the screen.

echo “Hello World”

4. Save the code by pressing CTRL + X, then press Y and Enter.

5. Run the code from the terminal.

bash hello.sh

The output of the command is a single line of “Hello World.” This proves that our script works and we can move on to something a little more interesting.

Capturing User Input in Bash Scripts

Bash is a fully formed language, and with it we can create interactive tools and applications. In this example we will create a greeting generator which will capture the username and then choose a random greeting from an array of greetings.

1. Create a new file, random-greetings.sh using nano.

nano random-greetings.sh

2. On the first line specify the interpreter to be used in the code. In this case it is Bash.

#!/bin/bash

3. Add an echo to print a message to the user.

echo "Welcome to the Tom's Hardware Greeting Generator"

4. Read the user’s keyboard input, using a prompt to ask a question to the user. The user’s input is saved to a variable name.

read -p "What is your name?: " name

5. Create an array greeting which will store five greetings. An array is a list of items stored with an index number. Using the name of the array and the index number we can pull items (greetings) from the array.

greeting[0]="Hola"greeting[1]="Greetings"greeting[2]="How do"greeting[3]="Hey there"greeting[4]="Howdy"

6. Create a variable size which will store the number of items in the array.

size=${#greeting[@]}

7. Create a variable index and store a randomly chosen number from zero to the size of the array, in this case five items.

index=$(($RANDOM % $size))

8. Use echo to print the randomly chosen greeting along with the user’s name.

echo ${greeting[$index]} $name

9. Save the code by pressing CTRL + X, then press Y and Enter.

10. Run the code from the terminal. Follow the instructions to see the greeting.

bash random-greetings.sh

Using Arguments with Bash Scripts

The beauty of the terminal is that we can pass arguments, extra instructions or parameters, to a command. In this example we will write a bash script to check the status of a URL, passed as an argument.

1. Create a new file site-check.sh and open nano.

nano site-check.sh

2. On the first line specify the interpreter to be used in the code. In this case it is Bash.

#!/bin/bash

3. Using echo, write a message to the user to advise them on the current HTTP response code for the URL. The value of $1 is the URL that we specified as an argument.