Innehållsförteckning för March 2020 från Linux Magazine

Dear Reader, The “paperless office” was once the dazzling vision of futurists and keynote speakers. Tech blogs and efficiency gurus have been talking about eliminating printers for at least 20 years, but it never really happened – or at least, not yet. Despite the predictions, contracts, school compositions, tax forms, and other essential documents sometimes require the corporeal manifestation that comes with a printer. In other cases, printing is just easier. I often print the articles I’m editing just because I like to make notes in the margins and draw lines and arrows to sketch out changes. Printers are still around, but they are subject to the same forces that are affecting the rest of the industry. So even though they look the same, the business arrangements surrounding them are…

To anyone who has spent any time researching companies that offer hardware with Linux preinstalled, chances are you know about the Dell XPS Developer edition. This began as Project Sputnik in 2011, when Dell’s Barton George realized that no major original equipment manufacturer (OEM) was building a fully-supported Linux laptop that included drivers and provided a great out-of-the-box experience. Fast forward nine years later, and the project is still going strong. In fact, the Dell XPS Developer Edition has been declared a best in show Linux laptop by numerous reviewers and outlets. Dell knows this and understands the audience for which this hardware is targeted. Dell also listens to the communities they serve. Case in point, the Linux community. One thing that has been sorely missing from Linux laptops is…

Author The Linux kernel mailing list comprises the core of Linux development activities. Traffic volumes are immense, often reaching 10,000 messages in a week, and keeping up to date with the entire scope of development is a virtually impossible task for one person. One of the few brave souls to take on this task is Zack Brown. Line Ending Issues Jonathan Corbet posted some kernel documentation updates gathered from many contributors. However, Linus Torvalds spotted some file format problems. Specifically, some of the patches used CRLF (carriage return, line feed) characters as line endings. This dates back to MS-DOS of the elder days, and it’s hard to imagine these line endings appearing in any Linux development tool chain. Jonathan C. said it wasn’t his tool chain, but that Jonathan Neuschäfer…

For many years, a small, fanless industrial PC with two Gigabit Ethernet interfaces has served as a firewall in my home storeroom. The hardware is not very powerful, but it is just about sufficient for forwarding network packets and a few iptables rules. I seem to recall that this device has 2GB RAM – but whether in the form of a 2GB module or as two 1GB modules, I really don’t know. How many RAM slots are there anyway, and what is the maximum amount of RAM I could use if I decided to upgrade? I would like to find that out without taking the firewall off the Internet and removing its case, because that always provokes disrespectful comments from my kids: “What kind of availability is that, Dad?” Hardware…

Try this: Open a terminal window and type the following at the prompt: Then move your cursor back to the space between ls and non-existent_dir and press Ctrl+K. Next hit Ctrl+Y and see what happens. Congratulations: You are now using Bash as it was used 30 years ago. Or, to be precise, you are using Bash’s Readline [1] interface. Originally written by Brian Fox, the creator of Bash, Readline is a library for advanced key-jockeying for text-based interfaces like Emacs and, yes, Bash. It provides a set of utilities for cutting and pasting (called “killing” and “yanking” in Readline parlance) before such things were made common in graphical interfaces. In the examples above, the K in Ctrl+K stands for “kill” and the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+K kills everything to the right…

We are always looking for good articles on Linux and the tools of the Linux environment. Although we will consider any topic, the following themes are of special interest: • System administration• Useful tips and tools• Security, both news and techniques• Product reviews, especially from real-world experience• Community news and projects If you have an idea, send a proposal with an outline, an estimate of the length, a description of your background, and contact information to edit@linux-magazine.com. The technical level of the article should be consistent with what you normally read in Linux Magazine. Remember that Linux Magazine is read in many countries, and your article may be translated into one of our sister publications. Therefore, it is best to avoid using slang and idioms that might not be understood…

Kali Linux (64-bit) Kali Linux is a popular distro dedicated to the craft of penetration testing. Kali comes with hundreds of practical tools for information gathering, vulnerability analysis, wireless attacks, and stress testing. A bootable Forensics mode leaves the drives unmounted and provides a powerful collection of forensics utilities. GParted (64-bit) The GParted Live DVD is the easiest and best way to access the GParted partition editor. Use GParted to create space for new operating systems, grow or shrink existing partitions, and rescue data from lost partitions. Although this Linux Magazine disc has been tested and is to the best of our knowledge free of malicious software and defects, Linux Magazine cannot be held responsible, and is not liable for any disruption, loss, or damage to data and computer systems…

If you’re a GNOME user with multiple devices and have longed for the day when those devices could easily be synced with one another, that wish may be coming true. Red Hat developer Christian Hergert has started developing a project called Bonsai, which will serve as a sort of personal cloud for all of your Gnome-based devices. On his blog, Hergert stated, “I want access to my files and application data on all my computing devices but I don’t want to store that data on other peoples computers.” This idea led Hergert to create Bonsai. Although this tool is very much in the experimental phase (which means it’s not an official Gnome project), it is being hosted on Hergert’s Gnome GitLab repository. The gist of Bonsai is simple – a…

At Percona Live Europe 2019, I joked with Jaime Crespo, Senior Database Administrator (DBA) for the Wikimedia Foundation, that the Wikipedia project is essentially just one big database. You might expect that it takes hordes of DBAs to keep one of the world’s largest knowledge pools constantly online, but you’d be wrong. Crespo shares the unique challenges Wikimedia faces in managing its servers. Linux Magazine: Tell me about yourself and how you got started as a database administrator. Jaime Crespo: My name is Jaime Crespo, and, by my name, it’s easy to spot that I’m from Spain. I’m currently the Senior Database Administrator for the Wikimedia Foundation. A bit of follow up to that I have to do is that the Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that provides support,…

Views on the 2019 RISC-V Summit About a year ago, I wrote an article on the RISC-V architecture and how it seemed to be interesting. I also pointed out that it seemed to be moving along very fast, but there were naysayers who were questioning whether it would get off the ground. I advised the naysayers to wait a year before offering their opinions. On December 9-12, 2019, I attended the second RISC-V Summit in San Jose, California. There were a little under 3,000 attendees, a few of whom I had worked with over the years at Digital Equipment Corporation, on the Linux kernel project, or other similar projects and companies. Quite frankly, I was blown away. While there is much that still has to be done, there was a…

Sparkling gems and new releases from the world of Free and Open Source Software Information organizer TreeSheets Data organizers, note takers, and memory mapper applications aren’t initially the most exciting tools to install and use. The results typically look utilitarian, maybe even a little prosaic, and seldom seem to spark the imagination in the same way 3D tigers do for Blender. But this is all a little unfair, because these organizers are only really limited by the person using the tool, and there are many times when a project is so big, an idea so convoluted, or a set of notes so unwieldy that you have to love any tool that can help straighten it all out. TreeSheets is one of those tools. It’s a note taking application that looks…

Users, developers, and vendors meet at Linux events around the world. We at Linux Magazine are proud to sponsor the Featured Events shown here. For other events near you, check our extensive events calendar online at http://linux-magazine.com/events. If you know of another Linux event you would like us to add to our calendar, please send a message with all the details to events@linux-magazine.com. SCaLE 18x Date: March 3–5, 2020 Location: Pasadena, California Website: https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/18x SCaLE is the largest community-run open source and free software conference in North America. It is held annually in the greater Los Angeles area. SCaLE 18x expects to host 150 exhibitors, along with nearly 130 sessions, tutorials, and special events. CloudFest 2020 Date: March 14–19, 2020 Location: Europa Park, Germany Website: https://www.cloudfest.com/ CloudFest 2020 will explore…

The versatile Linux supports a delightful and diverse array of tools for digital media. Next month we explore the Gnome Cast to TV extension and study how to dial up Spotify from the command line. Preview Newsletter The Linux Magazine Preview is a monthly email newsletter that gives you a sneak peek at the next issue, including links to articles posted online. Sign up at: https://bit.ly/Linux-Update Approximate UK / Europe Mar 07 USA / Canada Apr 03 Australia May 04 On Sale Date SPECIAL DVD RELEASE! Along with our usual mix of technical articles, issue 233 includes the Complete Raspberry Pi Geek Archive DVD. This exclusive DVD includes every issue of Raspberry Pi Geek and 2 bonus Special Editions – Raspberry Pi Adventures and Raspberry Pi Handbook. Secure your copy…

With the US ban on Huawei, the company has opted to focus some of their efforts on their own server solution. To prevent a continued dependence on US software, the Chinese company has released an open source version of EulerOS, a server platform based on CentOS. Geared for IoT and cloud infrastructure, openEuler (https://openeuler.org/en/) has been released for ARM64 architecture and is compatible with the Open Containers Initiative (OCI). Huawei claims it has made changes to CentOS to give it a performance boost and reliability. OpenEuler currently has more than 50 contributors and 600 commits. The openEuler repositories include two new projects: iSulad, a lightweight container runtime daemon created specifically for IoT and the cloud (https://gitee.com/openeuler/iSulad), and A-Tune, an OS-tuning software (https://gitee.com/openeuler/A-Tune). At the moment, there is very little information…

Most computer owners have long since stopped buying games in a cardboard box with floppy disks, CDs, or a DVD including a booklet and other goodies. Usually you log on to an online sales platform for games, such as Steam, acquire a license via the portal, and then download the game off the Internet. These portals are very popular, despite the drawbacks. For example, Steam has for years prevented honestly bought Steam games from being resold as used games, as you could do with a game purchased in a box – although that policy has recently been challenged in the EU [1]. Another disadvantage with purchasing games online is the difficulty of keeping track of all the titles in your collection. In addition to Steam [2], there is GOG (formerly…