Tools you should know about

Ying Feng Johansson, 123RF.com

Essentials

Paul C. Brown

The Ubuntu toolbox is jam-packed with interesting stuff. So much so, it is sometimes easy to miss what you really need. In this issue, we'll try and solve that.

Ubuntu's repositories come with literally tens of thousands of packages. With so many apps to choose from, sometimes you may not know what to look for when searching for a tool for a specific task. Other times, and if you're like me, you'll just get distracted and end up installing something that has nothing to do with what you were originally looking for, just so you can play with it.

To address this problem, we have compiled in this issue a set of articles that cover tools to deal with software and system administration, distribution deployment, command-line scripting, and security.

Take for example, our article on apt-fast. Apt-fast is the answer to slow and scatty Internet connections. Apt-fast allows you to identify the fastest mirror servers – usually those geographically nearer to you – and use them in parallel to download chunks from whichever is faster at any given moment.

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