Indholdsfortegnelse for July 2023 i Linux Magazine

Data portability and transparency are ongoing issues that plague all major social media giants. Who owns the data you post to your social media accounts? Can you get a copy of the data if you ask for it? If you had a copy, what could you do with it? Many leading social media companies have APIs that let you extract and upload data, but the data formats tend to be dissimilar and proprietary, which means if you obtained the data, you couldn’t do much with it unless you are a programmer yourself and have plenty of time for personal coding. Back in 2018, a few leading social media companies pledged to make an effort at addressing this problem. The result is the Data Transfer Project, which was recently rebranded and…

By traditional definition, distributions are software. Yet increasingly, companies are offering distributions as part of a bundle that includes hardware, support, and services – a kind of one-stop solution often called vertical integration in commercial jargon. What these solutions offer, though, can vary considerably. The advantages of one-stop solutions are obvious. Vendors can offer software tailored to their hardware and win customer loyalty. For buyers, one-stop solutions offer convenience and ease of purchase, an end to the pre-purchase research that until recently has been standard in setting up a Linux computer. Until recently, attempts at one-stop solutions have floundered. For instance, in 2013, KDE failed to launch the Spark tablet, with its unique variant of the Plasma desktop environment. Ubuntu did release the Touch tablet with its own desktop, but…

The open source alternative to BIOS and UEFI, coreboot is often praised for its speed and security [1]. However, just as important is the accessibility of its firmware. According to the coreboot website, “The architecture of coreboot is designed to have an unbrickable update process. Updating firmware should be no more dangerous than installing your favorite app on your mobile phone.” As the major result of this goal, users can choose to customize their own firmware. Much like customizing the Linux kernel, the process is lengthy but mostly a matter of following instructions in the thorough documentation. Although the documentation is oriented towards Debian, it can easily be transposed to other distributions, the main difference being the occasional difference in the names of some of the necessary packages. You may…

Lenticular images store multiple exposures in the same area. Animation is achieved by tilting the image. Another application creates a spatial appearance without special tools (autostereoscopy). The digital version of this often shows up on social media as a “wigglegram.” Lenticular Cameras On the consumer market, lenticular cameras are sold under the name ActionSampler. More than 40 years ago, the fourlens Nishika (Nimslo) appeared, followed by Fuji’s eight-lens Rensha Cardia in 1991. Unlike the Nishika’s synchronous shutter action, the Fuji exposed the 35mm film sequentially. Even today, the analog scenes are still very popular on Instagram and the like. One way of creating a multilens digital recording system is to use a Raspberry Pi and a Camarray HAT [1] (hardware attached on top) by ArduCam [2]. The camera I make…

A text expander replaces predefined abbreviations with stored text modules. One example of this is wkr, which expands to With kind regards after entering the abbreviation. The AutoKey [1] tool I used until a year ago was no longer fit for purpose because it only works on Linux and only on X11 – which leaves Wayland out in the cold. As an alternative to AutoKey, Espanso [2] has been available since 2019, and it goes beyond simply replacing abbreviations in texts. The text expander, written in Rust, runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows. You can install the application on Linux for Debian, Ubuntu, and other derivatives using a DEB package or as a DIY binary package. There are also AppImages and packages for Snap. Only the Arch User Repository (AUR)…

We have plenty of image and PDF viewers but we don’t have enough ebook readers. This may be because they have specific requirements that aren’t common to PDF and image viewers, such as library management and adaptable reading views, and far fewer potential users. Calibre is the exception, because it’s an ebook reader and librarian that solves these and many other problems, but it can also be overwhelming and unintuitive when all you want to do is read a book. Which is where this new Arianna application succeeds. It’s a small, minimal ePub reader built for the KDE Plasma desktop from Qt and Kirigami, and it’s perfect if you have a small collection of books you’d like to read when the time allows. It won’t remove DRM, doesn’t require a…

It doesn’t take much effort to search Google or GitHub for API keys and other secrets inadvertently shared with the world. This kind of information is often hidden within files or repositories and shared unwittingly along with whatever files or directories were intended. Those details can be very difficult to track unless you never share anything or keep those things you share separated from the rest of your system. Services such as GitHub can help, and GitHub in particular can scan your uploads automatically for shared keys and secrets, even checking them against known providers to check their validity, but it’s far better if you can do this yourself locally. This is what Nosey Parker does. Nosey Parker is a command-line tool that will look through files, directories, and even…

The IEM in the name of this audio effects collection is an acronym for the Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics. The IEM is a renowned research institute based in Austria, with a focus on acoustics, surround sound, and signal processing, and it’s perhaps best known for being closely associated with Pure Data, the functional programming environment for audio synthesis and composition. There’s even an IEM-flavored version of Pure Data built specially for its students and faculty, and the institute produces and sponsors a lot of experimental content, some of which is software released as open source – which is exactly what happened with this suite of amazing audio effects that come directly from the institute’s current research and student projects. The suite consists of 21 different effects. They all…

Carbonyl [1] is a fork of the 100-percent open source version of Chrome called Chromium [2], which has a unique mission: turning any Linux terminal into a modern graphical web browser. In this tutorial, I describe how Carbonyl works, how to use it on Linux, and above all, why I consider this project interesting for programmers – and much more interesting for ordinary web users. Features and Limitations Let me acknowledge right away that, as cool as the concept is, Carbonyl has a few serious limitations – if you compare it to “ordinary” 100-percent graphical browsers, that is, and expect Carbonyl to replace them completely. The first obvious limit is that, while Carbonyl does handle images and video streaming, it does it at a much lower resolution than any browser…

Xubuntu 23.04 64-bit Xubuntu 23.04, codenamed Lunar Lobster, is the latest version of the Ubuntu flavor that uses Xfce 4.18 as its default desktop. It will be supported until January 2024. Like all Xubuntu releases, this release is ideal for those prefer a middleweight desktop that does not skimp on features. Traditionally, Ubuntu’s short-term releases do not include many major improvements, and Lunar Lobster is no exception. However, it still has several innovations that are worth checking out. To start with, it is the first version of Xubuntu to use PipeWire and WirePlumber, which together offer improved sound and sound management. The default terminal font is now 10 points, up from nine, a small but noticeable gain for easy reading. In addition, the image now includes Xubuntu Minimal for those…

Open data would be of little use if it wasn’t easy to automatically publish and update and subsequently find, download, and integrate with other open data, straight from the primary sources. The Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN) [1], a key component of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s mission to promote open data [2], is a collection of tools for implementing open data hubs and portals. If you have a dataset that you’d like to make available as open data, CKAN gives you a head start on implementing the necessary infrastructure. The CKAN tools help you manage and federate the data. It also comes with advanced geospacial features, search capabilities, metadata, and visualization options. Using CKAN tools and best practices, you can build a portal for your open data with the least…

Specialized Linux distributions exist for virtually any imaginable use case. However, much like the typical all-rounders for daily use, these distributions often come with many superfluous applications. These apps consume disk space and – if they happen to run in the background – CPU resources as well. Some users want a lean basic system without additional software, which they can customize with the programs they actually need. This article looks at graphical front ends that give users a DIY Linux image quickly without too much overhead. Strategies Customizable Linux distributions are usually based on a conventional ISO image. Ideally, the image will already contain a graphical user interface or offer a simple approach to installing a graphical desktop at the prompt. You also need an integrated package manager. A customizable…

A while ago, I bought a Thermo-Pro TP358, a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) digital thermometer with a display. The ThermoPro shows the temperature, humidity, and air comfort indicator, as well as the time and day of the week. Its big display is nice for immediate feedback, but the device also lets you read its values and view graphs in the ThermoPro Sensor app, available on Android and iOS (Figure 1). Moreover, every time you connect to the device with the app, it synchronizes the time. While that is a nice feature, I have a couple of other types of Bluetooth sensors with a clock, and I didn’t want to use multiple apps to view the sensor measurements and synchronize the clocks. For the sensor measurements, a solution already exists: Software…

Now that the dust has settled (a little) on the great Twitter takeover, with its third-party API closure and the clamor for all things Fediverse, it’s a good time to consolidate and look at Mastodon alternatives. Several have been able to seize the momentum behind the recent attention to develop quickly, including the brilliant KDE Plasma client, Tokodon, and Sengi. Sengi is particularly unique because it’s a Mastodon client that attempts to recreate the look and functionality of TweetDeck, which was itself an evolutionary window on the world of Twitter. It was Tweet-Deck’s column view that made it so unique and powerful because each column could display the real-time results of a hashtag, search result, user, list, or timeline. Users could configure their own real-time window on the world in…

John Coltrane will need little introduction. He was one of the great jazz composers and performers of the last century and helped transform our expectations of what music can and should be. He did this through both exploration and exposition, experimenting and performing with unique scales and music theory. And it’s these last elements of musical study that coltrane helps to make accessible in a unique and intuitive way from the Linux command line, regardless of whether or not you enjoy avant-garde jazz. It works as both an interactive interpreter and as a command that takes arguments to generate output of musical insights, and it has several modes of operation (pun intended). At its simplest, coltrane will take three or more note letters and tell you which chord they are.…

There are dozens or even hundreds of open source console emulators for Linux, from GNU Pong to the thousands of arcade games emulated by MAME. But it’s been the relatively recent development of various Nintendo emulators that have really impressed. Dolphin is doing an incredible job with both GameCube and Wii emulation, and it’s remarkable how well Yuzu can already run Switch games. It helps that Nintendo’s hardware is never cutting edge, and often a revision of its previous generation’s technology, but it’s still surprising how well games run on even modest hardware like the Steam Deck. Until recently, one piece of the Nintendo emulation stack was missing from Linux, and that was emulation of the massively underrated Wii U. The Wii U was the successor to the Wii, but…

Linux Magazine is looking for authors to write articles on Linux and the tools of the Linux environment. We like articles on useful solutions that solve practical problems. The topic could be a desktop tool, a command-line utility, a network monitoring application, a homegrown script, or anything else with the potential to save a Linux user trouble and time. Our goal is to tell our readers stories they haven’t already heard, so we’re especially interested in original fixes and hacks, new tools, and useful applications that our readers might not know about. We also love articles on advanced uses for tools our readers do know about – stories that take a traditional application and put it to work in a novel or creative way. Topics close to our hearts include:…

For as long as governments have kept records, citizens have debated over access to those records. When the ancient Mesopotamians started recording data on clay tablets, I have no doubt that lively discussions erupted over who should or should not get to see those tablets. Information, after all, is power, and data is the first step on the path of information. But data has a funny way of becoming more powerful with more eyes looking at it. Enlightened government eventually came to understand that the whole society could benefit from giving access to outside viewers who might find insights. The rise of democratic governments, where the people (at least in theory) set the rules, and the concept of press freedom brought more attention to the need for public access, leading…

Slackware [1] has a bad reputation when it comes to package management. Many new users experience Linux through distributions that include advanced package managers. Tools such as Apt or Discover [2] set expectations and, for a new user, define how a package manager functions as well as its capabilities. Modern package managers can track software dependencies, purge software no longer in use, search and find applications in the available repositories, and perform system upgrades. When users come in contact with Slackware, they find Slackware’s approach too different from what they are used to and wonder why would anybody like it. Intended to be installed as a monolithic system, you are expected to install the whole Slackware distribution on a machine. Slackware includes lots of libraries, desktop environments, web browsers and,…

As a backup solution, I use a Synology NAS with some hefty hard drives. But because of the strict regulations driven by paranoia and noise-protection goals in the hallowed halls of Perlmeister Studios, the device only runs when actually needed (i.e., when a backup is running). To switch it on when needed, I prefer to push a mouse around a GUI and click occasionally instead of getting out of my chair. The Syno desktop application presented here (Figure 1) powers up the NAS via the local network at the push of a button and graphically displays the milestones during the boot process with progress bars. As soon as the system has finished booting and is ready for access, it notifies the user. After the work is done, a mouse click…

In the previous issue of Linux Magazine, I introduced the digital integrated circuits called field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) [1], explained why they are important, and described the bare minimum needed to set up and try a state-of-the-art FPGA design environment on Linux. This article, which is divided into three parts, concludes that introduction. First I’ll describe the main types of elementary digital circuits that can be built, combining the logic gates covered in the first tutorial and the basic features of hardware description languages (HDLs) that allow their implementation and simulation. The central part combines some HDL code that's freely available online [2] [3] into one simple HDL module and the code necessary to simulate it. The final part shows a run of that simulation and concludes by explaining why…

With so many options for transferring files from one computer or location to another, it’s surprising that it can still be a difficult and unpredictable process. Two computers need to support the same protocol or run the same client. They may need to be on the same network, have common access through a firewall, or permit a third-party proxy to negotiate a connection on their behalf. It’s complicated. And that’s before we’ve considered operating systems, or even which Linux distribution to run. These are the problems that X-Pipe attempts to solve through either a graphical file manager interface or its command line equivalent, and both have been specifically designed to make transferring files and directories from one place to another as simple as possible. X-Pipe takes a clever and pragmatic…

As many of us are fond of saying, Linux is all about choice, and it can be difficult to argue that there’s sometimes a little too much choice to wade through when you need one simple thing to get a job done. Package management has become a little like this, with a plethora of cross-distribution solutions offering imperfect coverage of applications, utilities, servers, and tools that might not otherwise be available in your distribution’s package manager. You might only be able to install LXD with Snap packages, for example, or the latest Steam from its Flatpak. And then your favorite game might only provide an AppImage, while your distribution remains two or three major releases behind. Navigating this set of meta-dependencies can be confusing, and it’s this confusion that this…

Many of us idled hours and days away in our younger years playing video games. Life seemed to stretch forever, and a Sunday wasted collecting virtual acorns seemed like a good use of our time. One of the best solutions to adult commitments getting in the way of such abandon is to find a short, addictive, and intense arcade-style game to play when no one is looking, and one of the best games of this type is Super Hexagon. Super Hexagon was created by Terry Cavanagh from crude, simplistic two-dimensional blocks that converge into or expand from the center of the screen, accompanied by a thumping soundtrack. The blocks converge in such a way that there’s always a gap, and your job as the player is to spin a small…

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