We present a new general method for performing basic arithmetic in the finite field~$\mathbb{F}_p$ for any prime $p>2$ by using traditional binary operations over~$\mathbb{F}_2$. Our new approach is efficient and competitive with current state-of-art methods. We apply our new arithmetic method to the computation of the minimum Hamming distance of random linear codes for the fields $\mathbb{F}_3$ and $\mathbb{F}_7$. Our new arithmetic method allows to apply new techniques such as the isometric addition that accelerate the computation of the Hamming distance. We have developed implementations in the C programming language for computing the Hamming distance that clearly outperform both state-of-art licensed software and open-source software such as \textsc{Magma} and \textsc{GAP}/\textsc{Guava} on single-core processors, multicore processors, and shared-memory multiprocessors.

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