Some of these might be old hat to experienced Linux users, but who knows, you might also learn something new.
Command line completion
You don’t have to laboriously type out long paths, filenames, and commands. Just type the first few letters and hit tab. If bash (the command interpreter, or shell) can determine what file you’re referring to, it will fill in the rest for you. If not, hit tab again it will give you a list of possibilities if there are more than one.
sudo !!
It can be frustrating to type out an entire command only to be told you need to be the superuser to execute it. Type “sudo !!” (pronounced “sudo bang bang”) to execute the previous command as root.
Taking screenshots
Install scrot (by executing “sudo apt-get install scrot”) so that you can take screenshots within the graphical desktop environment. After it’s installed, execute the command scrot in a terminal window to save a PNG of the desktop to the working directory. Scrot is also highly configurable; execute “scrot -h” to see all the options available to you.
Log in remotely
If you want to access your Raspberry Pi’s command line from another computer, type sudo raspi-config at the prompt and choose the option to enable SSH. Then type ifconfig to get your Raspberry Pi’s IP. On a OS X or Linux computer, type ssh [email protected][ip address] to connect to your Pi. On Windows, use PuTTY.
Use your computer’s internet connection
If you don’t have a convenient ethernet connection nearby or a USB Wifi adapter handy, you can also use your computer’s Wifi internet connection and share it via Ethernet to the Raspberry Pi. Here are guides to do on various operating systems: Mac OS, Windows, or Linux (Ubuntu).
raspberrypi.local
If you have trouble remembering the IP address of your Raspberry Pi when you want to access it over the network, install avahi with the command “sudo apt-get install avahi-daemon” and you’ll be able to use raspberrypi.local instead of the IP address. If you’re accessing the Raspberry Pi from a Windows machine, you may need to install Bonjour Services on it for this to work.
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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit, be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Have you tried the new “Adafruit Raspberry Pi Educational Linux Distro” ? It’s our tweaked distribution for teaching electronics using the Raspberry Pi. But wait, there’s more! Try our new Raspberry Pi WebIDE! The easiest way to learn programming on a Raspberry Pi.