01 / ON YOUR DESK
Files worth keeping.
Start with a plan for your photos, projects and the copies you can recover.
Understand the 3–2–1 approach ↗ Independent tech, explained
A little less
tech trouble.
Set up Linux. Look after your files. Make sense of a small tech job, with tools that show their workings and guides that get to the point.
24 free tools. No accounts. Your inputs stay here.
A practical desk for the tech you actually use.
THE TOOLBOX
What are you working on?
02 / ON YOUR DESK
A little order in the data.
Work with a snippet, a table or a before-and-after without uploading it.
Browse every tool ↗03 / ON YOUR DESK
Know what the numbers mean.
Get a useful answer with the units and assumptions in plain sight.
Read bits versus bytes ↗A new chapter / Linux
A calmer way
to start with Linux.
From the installation USB to your first restore check. Eight guides explain the decisions, the commands and the details worth checking.
Open the Linux field guide Ubuntu Desktop 26.04 LTS · Reviewed 2 November 2026$ pwd
/home/you
$ ls
Documents/Pictures/Projects/
Illustration · read-only examples
01020304
Before you install
Make the backup, verify the download, inspect the disk choices.
Your first hour
Update, check your devices and make the desktop comfortable.
Learn the terminal
Find your way around before changing anything.
Make a recoverable copy
Preview a copy and practise restoring a file.
FROM THE FIELD NOTES
A useful thing to know.
One command at a time
An Ubuntu installation checklist that starts before the installer
Prepare a verified Ubuntu LTS USB, check hardware in a live session and make an informed installation decision without guessing at disk changes.
Read the guideA little separation
Check a file with SHA-256, and understand what a match means
Compare a file with a trusted SHA-256 checksum, recognise ordinary mismatches, and understand why a match is not a malware scan.
Read the guideLess weight. Same story.
Resize or compress an image? Change the thing that matters
Choose useful pixel dimensions, preserve proportions and export a smaller file without confusing quality settings with image resolution.
Read the guideA note from DigitalMaple
Make the answer useful.
Clear assumptions. Original examples. Links to the source. That is the standard for every page here.
# Then choose the next step.