Les Pounder

Blackpool

Author, Journalist, Trainer and Maker at Freelance

Associate Editor @tomshardware Writer for @linuxformat Formerly @TheMagPi, @ElectromakerIO,Linux User & Developer,@KidsCodeCS,@micro_mag All views are my own.

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Articles

How to turn an old PC into a Linux web server

3 weeks ago | tomshardware.com | Les Pounder

(Image credit: Future / Pexels / OpenClipArt)The World Wide Web (www often referred to as The Web), invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee way back in 1989 was created as a “universal linked information system” which shared documents and information through web servers that used Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). HTML on its own can’t do much, it needs a web server that accepts requests from remote machines, and serves the HTML content to the user via a web browser.
How to merge, extract images and digitally sign PDFs with PDF24

3 weeks ago | tomshardware.com | Les Pounder

Portable Data Format (PDF ISO 32000) is one of those data formats that we now take for granted. Originally developed by Adobe in 1992, PDF was created to contain a complete description of a document’s layout. Over the years, PDFs have become the de facto standard for sharing official documents such as contracts, press releases and even magazines.
The Essential Linux commands that every user needs to know

4 weeks ago | tomshardware.com | Les Pounder

Linux runs on hardware as diverse as the Raspberry Pi and powerful supercomputers, making it a flexible choice of operating system. Linux can be used via a graphical user interface similar to Windows or macOS. Or it can be used via a powerful terminal / command line. The command line interface provides you with a lot more control over the computer than you can get using the GUI. Many important tasks are easier, quicker or only possible via commands.
10 must-have tools to keep your 3D printer in tip-top shape

1 month ago | tomshardware.com | Les Pounder

(Image credit: Pexels, Amazon)You’ve got your new 3D printer, and whether it's one of the best budget 3D printers, or something a little more spendy (like the Prusa CORE One), you need tools to keep it running smoothly. Sure you get some tools in the box, but getting a dedicated 3D printer toolkit will make short work of caring for your 3D printer.
Use grep to search Linux files and directories smarter

1 month ago | tomshardware.com | Jo Hinchliffe |Les Pounder

You’re looking for that one file, the one that contains the all important information for your next meeting. Do you manually search all of your files? That will take time. Instead we use a little Linux command line magic. Grep is a pattern matching command that we can use to search inside files and directories for specific text. Grep is commonly used with the output of one command, piped to be the input of the grep command.
How To Manage User Passwords in Linux

1 month ago | tomshardware.com | Les Pounder

Passwords are one of the most important aspects of computing. They keep our bank accounts, user profiles and computers safe (as long as we don’t reuse passwords). Just to log into our computers, most of us need a password and, for Linux, this is even more important. Managing passwords via the terminal is relatively simple. Users can change their own passwords and users belonging to the sudo (super user) account can administrate the passwords of other users.
Run Linux scripts unattended with Nohup

1 month ago | tomshardware.com | Les Pounder

If you are building a robot, sensor platform, weather station then you don’t want the code to stop running when you disconnect from the terminal, and nohup is just the thing for you.In this how-to, we will learn how to use nohup via a series of examplesThere are times when you want to run a command, and leave it running even after you close a terminal window / SSH session.
Microsoft makes the Windows Subsystem for Linux open source after almost a decade of development

1 month ago | tomshardware.com | Les Pounder

(Image credit: OpenClipArt / Pexels)Microsoft, at its recent BUILD event, has announced that Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is now open source after almost a decade of development. The Microsoft team has closed issue #1 in its GitHub issue tracker. What was the issue? "Will this (WSL) be Open Source?" – an issue that has been open since April 6, 2016.
Damn Small Linux revived my aging Eee PC. Here’s how to use it to resurrect any old computer.

1 month ago | tomshardware.com | Les Pounder

Damn Small Linux is a lightweight Linux distro aimed at older and lower spec PCs just like the Asus Eee PC that we have from 2007. The last release was way back in 2012, and since then the project has been on permanent hiatus. Originally weighing in at 50MB back in 2012, Damn Small Linux 2024 Alpha release is a bulkier 700MB, and this hard limit means that it can be written to a blank CDR. Based on Debian and antiX, Damn Small Linux 2024 uses Fluxbox and JWM window managers.
How To Add, Remove and Update Software in Debian and Ubuntu Using Apt

1 month ago | tomshardware.com | Les Pounder

Linux has a multitude of ways to install software. We can build our own executables or use AppImage to run containerized applications. But at the heart of many Linux distros is a package management system, which for Debian based systems, such as the Raspberry Pi and Ubuntu, is Apt. Apt, the Advanced Packaging Tool is a command line application which handles the installation, categorization and removal of applications and their dependencies from the software repositories.