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Introduction to Ranger file manager

Ranger is a free and open source file manager written in Python. It is designed to work from the command line and its keybindings are inspired by the Vim text editor. The application has a lot of features and, working together with other utilities, can display previews for a vast range of files. In this tutorial we learn how to use it, and explore some of its functionality.

In this tutorial you will learn:

  • How to install Ranger on the most used Linux distributions
  • How to launch Ranger and copy its configuration files locally
  • Ranger basic movements and keybindings
  • How to visualize hidden files
  • How to get preview of various types of documents
  • How to create, access and remove bookmarks
  • How to select files and perform actions on them
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Developing and running an Android app on a Linux system

Get Started with Android application development using Linux and Android SDK

Developers interested in the Android mobile operating system are able to use the Android SDK and various IDE software to code applications. These apps can then be made available and marketed to Android users around the world.

There are a lot of choices when it comes to programming Android applications. Your coding environment can involve a Linux system and a variety of different IDE programs to facilitate all of the software development. The trouble here is that each Linux distribution will often have a different set of requirements to run the sofware, and a separate list of steps that need to be followed.

In this guide, we’ll go through the step by step instructions to install Android Studio – which is one of the most popular Android IDEs – on a Linux system. This will work on any distribution because we’ll be using Snap package manager to manage the installation. Love it or hate it, the Snap package manager gets your system ready for Android development very quickly, by handling all the dependencies and working identically on any distribution you’re running, whether it be Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat, CentOS, AlmaLinux, openSUSE, or any other type of Linux system.

Follow along with us below as we setup Snap package manager, install Android Studio, and then program a Hello World Android application to verify that everything is working properly.

In this tutorial you will learn:

  • How to setup Snap package manager
  • How to install Android Studio and SDK packages
  • How to create a Hello World test application
  • How to run an Android application on an emulated device

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How to Install Open-Source VSCode Without Telemetry on Linux

Visual Studio Code or VSCode is a text editor developed by Microsoft that supports many popular programming languages such as Go, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, Python, C and C++. It is a directory based, language agnostic source code editor which focuses on directories rather than projects and has many extensions available for it. VSCode’s feature set includes bracket matching, syntax highlighting, code folding, linting, debugging, and built in version control via Git, Subversion or Perforce. Ever since the initial release of VSCode in 2015, it has become an increasingly popular programming tool amongst users of all desktop operating systems including GNU/Linux.

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How to work with the Woocommerce REST API with Python

WordPress is probably the most used CMS in the world (it is estimated that almost 40% of all websites are built using the platform): it is very easy to install and use, and allows even non-developers to create website in few minutes.
Wordpress has a very large plugin ecosystem; one of the most famous is Woocommerce, which allows us to turn a website into an online store in few steps. The plugin makes use of the WordPress REST API infrastructure; in this tutorial we will see how to interact with the Woocommerce API using the Python programming language, showing how to list, create, update and delete products and categories.

In this tutorial you will learn:

  • How to generate Woocommerce REST API credentials and enable pretty permalinks
  • How to interact with the Woocommerce REST API using Python and the woocommerce package
  • How to get information about the existing Woocommerce categories, create, update and delete them
  • How to get information about the existing Woocommerce products
  • How to create simple and a variable products with variations
  • How to update and delete a product

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How to Discover, From Inside a Bash Script, the Path the Script Is In

How to Discover, From Inside a Bash Script, the Path the Script Is In

When you develop complex Bash scripts and start putting various scripts into a folder, where one script interacts with another by, for example, starting it, it quickly becomes necessary to ensure we know the path the script was started from, so we can start the other scripts with a fully qualified pathname. This is important because the first script may have been started from outside the script’s directory. We could have also done so by using a relative path, so even – somehow – reading the command that started the current script will not work.

In this tutorial, you will learn:

  • What the pwd command is, and what it does
  • How to discover from inside a Bash script what path that same script is in

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Computer Math Basics: Binary, Decimal, Hexadecimal, Octal

Computer Math Basics: Binary, Decimal, Hexadecimal, Octal

How we express a number depends on whether we are a computer or a human. If we are human, we are likely to express numbers using our familiar 10-base decimal system. If we are a computer, we are likely, at our core, to express numbers as 2-base or binary.

So what is up with all the many ways of expressing numbers, and why do they exists? This article will go into some detail and hopefully by the end you’ll be counting octal on your fingers. Which works fine by the way, as long as you use only 8 fingers, after all… octal is 8-base.

In this tutorial you will learn:

  • How to do simple counting in up non-decimal systems like binary, hexadecimal and octal.
  • What the terms 2-base, 10-base etc. stand for and how to understand them more easily.
  • The connection between these various methods of expressing numbers

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How to install Swift on Ubuntu 20.04

How to install Swift on Ubuntu 20.04

Swift is a modern open source high-performing programming language with a focus on safety. It was developed by Apple and released in 2014. Swift was designed as a replacement for the older Objective-C language. Although, the language was originally proprietary, in 2015 Apple open-sourced the language and made it available for GNU/Linux systems. Although Swift is most well known for being the language used in iOS app development, there is an uptick in using it for server-side programming on Linux. Additionally, the fact that it is a young open source general-purpose programming language may lead to increased use in other domains over time.

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How to install Anaconda scientific computing python distribution on Linux

How to install Anaconda scientific computing python distribution on Linux

Anaconda is a distribution of python and other open source packages that are meant to be used for scientific computing. It is frequently used for data science, predictive analytics, and machine learning. Installing Anaconda is the fastest way to have all of the tools for scientific computing readily available to you. It includes the conda package manager, IPython the interactive python shell, the spyder IDE, along with the Project Jupyter interactive web based computational environments: Jupyter Notebook, and JupyterLab.

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Installing Java JDK via command line on Kali Linux

How to install Java on Kali Linux

The objective of this guide is to show how to install the Java Development Kit (JDK) on Kali Linux. This is needed by Java developers and programmers in order to compile and run Java applications. It’s also required for security tools that are built in Java.

In this tutorial you will learn:

  • How to install Java JDK in Kali Linux

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How to Use Bash Subshells Inside if Statements

How to Use Bash Subshells Inside if Statements

If you have ever used Bash subshells ($(...)), you know how flexible subshells can be. It only takes a few characters to start a subshell to process anything required, inline to another statement. The number of possible use cases is virtually unlimited.

We can also use Bash subshells inside if statements, inline with the statement. Doing so gives the user and developer much additional flexibility when it comes to writing Bash if statements.

If you are not familiar yet (or would like to learn more about) Bash if statements, please see our Bash If Statements: If Elif Else Then Fi article.

In this tutorial you will learn:

  • How to incorporate Bash subshells inside if statements
  • Advanced methods to incorporate Bash subshells inline with other commands
  • Examples demonstrating the use of Bash subshells in if statements

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