Originally Posted by
tempest-anastasia
... I want to try living in the command line for a few days soon just to really get to grips with it. I understand you can listen to music with it and web browse in a very limited sense and do just about everything the GUI can do if not more. It still feels very weird to me to be using it so much and I want that weird feeling to go away...
If you are new to linux and want to get further into learning the command line one useful resource for that is --here-- (link in the blue text). linuxcommand.org is a good starting point for getting some skills on the command line and scripting.
If you do find you like working on the command line but don't like so much typing then "bash aliases" are worth setting up. A long command can be replaced with just a few characters saving much time and effort. By adding an alias to the file ~/.bash_aliases allows you to use such typing shortcuts. In case you haven't come across it already the "~" symbol indicates your home folder eg /home/<your-username>.
Some longer examples from my ~/.bash_aliases file ...
... this one is for taking a screenshot while using a console (tty consoles accessed with Ctrl + Alt + F#, where # is 1,2,3,4,5 or 6). The second one shown is for setting a time delay on the first one; note how I've strung the first alias within the second. Aliases can be "daisy chained" together for some interesting effects. This particular example requires the fbc and imagemagick packages installed to work.
Code:
alias fbc.tkss='sudo fbcat > ~/Screenshots/screenshot.ppm && convert ~/Screenshots/screenshot.ppm ~/Screenshots/screenshot_$(date +%d-%b-%Y_%I:%M:%S-%p).png && \rm ~/Screenshots/*.ppm >/dev/null 2>&1'
alias fbctkss.dl='sleep 5 && fbc.tkss'
...these next 2 are for viewing images on the console; the second one finds many different common image types and lets me view them with the "fbi" (framebuffer image) package.
Code:
alias fbpic='fbi --noverbose -a >/dev/null 2>&1'
alias viewdir='fbpic $(ls $(find $PWD -maxdepth 1 -name "*.jpg") $(find $PWD -maxdepth 1 -name "*.JPG") $(find $PWD -maxdepth 1 -name "*.jpeg") $(find $PWD -maxdepth 1 -name "*.JPEG") $(find $PWD -maxdepth 1 -name "*.png") $(find $PWD -maxdepth 1 -name "*.PNG") $(find $PWD -maxdepth 1 -name "*.bmp") $(find $PWD -maxdepth 1 -name "*.BMP") $(find $PWD -maxdepth 1 -name "*.tif") $(find $PWD -maxdepth 1 -name "*.TIF") $(find $PWD -maxdepth 1 -name "*.tiff") $(find $PWD -maxdepth 1 -name "*.TIFF") $(find $PWD -maxdepth 1 -name "*.gif") $(find $PWD -maxdepth 1 -name "*.GIF") | sort -u)'
The last ones here are for video display on the consoles using mplayer (just 2 shown of the 10 sizes I've set up for mplayer output)...
Code:
# 960x540 output...
alias mplay.med='mplayer -vo fbdev2 -zoom -slang en -x 960 -y 540 -geometry 95%:50% -cache 16384 -cache-min 30 -cache-seek-min 50 -nolirc >/dev/null 2>&1'
# Full screen 1920x1080 output...
alias mplay.hd='mplayer -vo fbdev2 -zoom -slang en -x 1920 -y 1080 -geometry 95%:50% -cache 131072 -cache-min 40 -cache-seek-min 60 -nolirc >/dev/null 2>&1'
As you can see you can save yourself heaps of time and typing with aliases; my current alias count is about 670 
.
A screenshot of video viewing on a console...
Big-Buck-Bunny_on-console.jpg
I must admit I've never had anything to do with distributed computing, but I do have a local network set up with 3 raspberry pi units and a laptop. Using VNC any of the rPi-s can have full desktop control of, and file access from, my laptop. VNC has limitations with passing video over the network so videos/files on my laptop can also be watched/accessed by any of the rPi-s over samba as well. Depending on your Ubuntu flavor VNC may not be usable without a lighter desktop installed, I either use XFCE or Mate with VNC and they work fine; I have heard the standard DE on Ubuntu may be a bit heavy for VNC usage. There may also be some security concerns with VNC if not set up right so very strong passwords should be used etc.
I mentioned samba in the previous paragraph; my laptop is located in my bedroom so with one of the rPi-s connected to the TV in the lounge I can watch videos/movies stored on my laptop on the much bigger TV screen. With VNC I also often sit in the lounge on the large screen and do my web surfing and general computer usage. Using a much bigger screen in the lounge is the main example for network use here .
Enjoy exploring your new network and set up, cheers, yeti.
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