I recently upgraded my laptop to Ubuntu 16.04 and save one issue, it has been rock solid. The problem? Wi-Fi, of course. Prior to the install, I ran Ubuntu in a live session and poked around. I even installed the proprietary Broadcom drivers, and they worked straight away. During the installation process, I checked the box directing that proprietary drivers, codecs, etc. be installed. However, upon boot I discovered that the Wi-Fi drivers had not been installed! The following instructions provide a quick offline fix for this issue using either the GUI or the terminal.

The Raspberry Pi Zero (Zero) is awesome. It has a 1Ghz single-core CPU, 512MB RAM, and mini HDMI all in a USB flash drive-sized package. It can, however, be more difficult to get setup than other Raspberry Pis. This guide will give you a few tips to help get your Pi up and running more quickly. It also assumes that you already have Raspbian on the Micro SD card you intend to use in the Pi. If you need help getting Raspbian installed, you can find more information here.

Setting Up Network Connections

Unlike the other Pi models, the Zero does not have ethernet. This, combined with it’s lack of full-sized USB, makes initial setup tricky. My first instinct was to connect to the Zero via SSH. Afterall, I didn’t plan to use it with a GUI or plan on needing to interact with it directly anyway. That plan fell by the wayside as soon as I realized that the Zero would not be able to connect to the network at all, without my inputing the Wi-Fi password. In short, no SSH. Unfortunately, booting it up connected to my monitor did not work either, because I could not get the Pi to power my keyboard, even with an extra power supply plugged into the MicroUSB hub.

All was not lost though. Fortunately, you can mount the MicroSD card with Raspbian already installed on it to your PC, search its directories, and create and edit files. After mounting the MicroSD card, you will need to edit two files in order to connect to your Wi-Fi: /etc/network/interfaces and /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf.

I’ve been wanting to set up a virtual private network (VPN) on my Raspberry Pi (Pi) for for awhile, and I finally took the time (be prepared to set aside an afternoon) to do it last weekend. For those who are unaware, the Pi is a small, credit card-sized computer that is roughly as powerful as a smart phone. You can learn more about them here. The particular model I used for this project is the Raspberry Pi Zero, which is not much larger than a USB flash drive. The Raspberry Pi Zero plus a power supply, case, micro USB hub, a microSD card and wireless dongle will set you back less than fifty dollars. Not bad for such a useful device.

So now you know what the Pi is, but what about OpenVPN? OpenVPN is open source software that encrypts your Internet traffic (i.e., makes it look like gibberish) between the device you are using (e.g., PC, phone, laptop) and the device that is running the OpenVPN server (e.g., a Pi). That’s nice Chris, but why do I care? If you have ever been at a coffee shop or the airport and have connected to a Wi-Fi network that didn’t require a password, you may care. Without encryption, it is trivial for an eavesdropper to see everything you are doing over the Internet (unless the website you are visiting or the app you are using have their own encryption enabled). Note that Internet traffic that does NOT have its own encryption will only be encrypted until it reaches the OpenVPN server. At that point your information goes out over the Internet, just as it would if you were surfing from the network where the VPN server resides. Any information being returned to you will travel to the VPN server first, be encrypted and then forwarded back to you, thereby thwarting the eavesdropper!