Drush 8: quick passwordless site syncing and other time savers for Drupal developers

A little while ago I wrote a guide on installing Drush 8 on Debian or Ubuntu and touched briefly on some of the functionality Drush has to offer. I now want to show you how to configure Drush to quickly sync your databases and files. I'll also point out a few other time savers along the way that I use in my daily work as a Drupal developer. If you are working on many sites, some of these tricks can shave significant time off your week.

Installing Ubuntu 16.04 on a Lenovo Y700 laptop

I was a little hesitant to splurge on a new laptop that wasn't in the Ubuntu Certified Hardware list (as of May 2016) but there are usually only a couple of things that can go wrong (video and the wifi) so I researched those and felt confident enough to go for it. Other than a couple of minor hurdles, it's gone smoothly so far. I haven't seen any tutorials on these laptops so I thought I'd share.