Innehållsförteckning för December 2021 från Linux Magazine

COVID-19 has had a dramatic impact on countries around the world. Researchers are continuing their work to develop vaccines and explore other ways of containing the virus. Many research projects require enormous computing capacities, but expensive supercomputers are not always available. Thanks to the concept of distributed computing, you can support research efforts by providing the computing power of your home PC. The concept of using home computers to assist with research projects has been around for several years. The SETI project (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has offered home users a chance to process radio telescope data since 1999. IBM launched the World Community Grid [1], a central platform for managing volunteer distributed computing projects, in 2004. Since 2005, the World Community Grid has used BOINC [2], a software tool…

When it comes to the Linux distro scene, variety is unrivaled. Willing Linux users can choose from hundreds of distributions. Although this delights die-hard distro hoppers, others might find it too much to handle. While many distributions differ only in the minor details, the strategy behind rlxos [1], an immutable filesystem, is definitely not that of an off-the-shelf Linux distro. Pronounced Relax OS, rlxos is one of the modern Linux derivatives with a progressive strategy (others include Fedora Silverblue, for example). The developers of Red Hat, Fedora, Endless OS, systemd, and the Gnome desktop see these strategies as the future of distributions, but this has not yet been universally accepted in the various communities. Unbreakable System In general, these strategies envisage immunizing the filesystem against vulnerability through updates by always…

We’ve not looked at Open-Shot for some time. During that time, the state of video editing on Linux has improved massively. Linux video editing is now at the point where we’ve noticed many YouTubers using open source editors over their proprietary alternatives, much as they choose to use Audacity or Blender. Kdenlive has become a stable, powerful, and accelerated alternative to the costly Final Cut Pro on macOS, and it appears OpenShot is fast catching up. OpenShot adds the kind of features that take it beyond functional video editing and into creative territory. There’s a host of new video and audio effects, including, for example, motion tracking, object detection, and video stabilization. The last one is reportedly one of the most requested features ever, and it’s great to see what…

If you’ve ever done any development by working on your own scripts or hacking on a website, you will have encountered JSON. JSON is a text notation format for sending, retrieving, and storing data, and it uses a specific JavaScript-like syntax of curly brackets and square brackets, double quotes and commas to contain that data. These elements are used to describe key and value pairs ("name":"graham", for instance), arrays, and hierarchy. YAML files aren’t difficult to comprehend, and many programming languages will provide libraries to help parse the data transparently, but they can be difficult when you want to create a simple script or use them from the command line because you need to find a way of navigating their hierarchical bracketed syntax. This is where the venerable jq command…

We’ve looked at the LÖVE games framework before. It’s a brilliant way to easily create 2D games with the accessible LUA language. Many developers have already used it to create unique and fully fledged games. Mr. Rescue is one of these. Like many of the games built using LÖVE, Mr. Rescue has a lovely pixelated design reminiscent of games from the 8-bit era, albeit on a console with a 24-bit color palette. The game’s objective is equally positive. Rather than trying to destroy things, you save people by running through an already burning building, picking them up, getting to a window, and throwing them out. There’s no mention of their fate from this point, especially when the buildings can stretch dozens of floors into the sky, but let’s assume there’s…

Blender, the free and open source creation suite, includes a modeler, three renderer engines, a compositor, a tracker, a nonlinear video-editing system, a particle system, and the ability to animate physical simulations and export them as video. Suffice it to say, figuring out where to start can be overwhelming. Picking a relatively manageable project is key. An easy way to start is to model a simple item, such as a perfume bottle. For this tutorial, I will model a transparent perfume bottle filled with liquid. By using concrete but varied shapes, a limited scope, and a small number of different materials (i.e., surfaces), this tutorial can help take the frustration out of getting started with Blender. (Note: Having some basic previous experience with Blender will be helpful in this tutorial).…

Tails 4.22 64-bit Tails 4.22 (the Amnesic Incognito Live System) is the latest release of one of the most popular security-oriented distributions. Based on Debian, Tails runs from an exterior device, either making all incoming and outgoing connections anonymous or blocking non-anonymous ones. It is especially well known for its Tor Browser, which provides an easy way to browse anonymously, control JavaScript, and remove ads. Other tools in Tails include Pidgin for encrypted instant messaging, OnionShare for anonymous file sharing, Thunderbird configured for encrypted email, and Electrum for bitcoin transactions. A basic part of security and privacy is updates with the latest patches. In keeping with this criterion, Tails 4.22 consists largely of application updates. Other changes from earlier releases include reducing the time out when reconnecting from 60 seconds…

Gnome has been evolving at a breakneck pace. And no recent release proved that more than Gnome 40, where the entire workflow was reconfigured and reworked. For those that have experienced the shift that was brought about by Gnome 40, every update since has been nothing more than minor tweaks. While Gnome 41 isn’t doing a major overhaul, it still adds some important improvements to the desktop. Such improvements include a revamped Gnome Software that brings to life a much livelier landing page and updated app categories. New-to-Linux users should find using Gnome Software much easier for locating the software they need to install. Another feature is the ability to adjust power profiles directly from the Status menu. Enable the Power Saver profile when you’re running on battery or use…

Linux is the most popular Free and Open Source (FOSS) operating system, but it isn’t the only alternative. Many FOSS operating systems are too niche to serve as a true alternative to Linux – you would not use Minix or Free-DOS for the same things you use Linux for. However, the BSD operating systems are a powerful family that is worth considering for tasks usually assigned to Linux. It is said that Linux users have a poorer understanding of BSD than BSD users have of Linux. Given that both BSD and Linux are closely related to Unix, it is not surprising to learn that using one does not feel very different from using the other. They have similar userspace tools, you may install (mostly) the same utilities on each, and…

Qubes OS is one of the most original security solutions available. Using the Xen hypervisor, Qubes divides computing into security domains, or “qubes” (Figure 1) – including the root-like Dom0 – and incorporates them into the desktop menu (Figure 2). For other routine operations, such as copying to an external drive, Qubes OS creates a disposable qube that is discarded after the operation is complete (Figure 3). Recently, community manager Andrew David Wong explained more about Qubes OS in response to Linux Magazine’s questions. Linux Magazine: Why is free software important to security? Andrew David Wong: An operating system like Qubes OS aims to be the fundamental bedrock of people’s digital lives. We strongly believe that any such security-critical software must be free and open source in order to be…

Of the systems I work on, about 90 percent are virtualized and 10 percent are legacy hardware servers. For many jobs, this makes no difference, but when I write scripts that call or change hardware-related functions, I need this information. If I have root privileges on the system and am also allowed to retroactively install software, the problem can be solved very quickly. I install either Facter [1] or virt-what [2]. Facter provides extensive information about the system’s hardware, much like lshw, and is actually overkill for answering the “virtual or not” question. Calling facter virtual returns the virtualization platform as the answer, such as vmware or kvm. The same result is returned by a call to virt-what. If I don’t need the power of Facter elsewhere, I prefer the…

Storage-hungry applications such as video-editing software gobble up disk capacity like a massive vacuum cleaner: Before you know it, everything has been used up. In situations such as this, incorrectly programmed software tends to crash, and all the time you invested in your current project is irretrievably lost. If you take precautions up front, you can avoid headaches later on. How about a constantly updated display of the remaining space on a dashboard-like instrument on the desktop, where you can see out of the corner of your eye how much disk space is wasted by an action that has just been triggered, such as rendering a video? You can write something like this quickly in Go. On the Dashboard A car’s dashboard shows the current speed as well as the…

There are some fun and interesting projects that can be done by repurposing an old home router. If you don’t have an old router lying around, you can usually find one for about $5-$25. These routers are easy to reflash, so a new programmer doesn’t have to worry about messing things up too badly. In this article, we will look at three projects to get some extra life out of an older router. The first project uses the router’s USB port to connect to third-party devices. The second project collects microcontroller and internal data, and the final project displays the data on the router’s web page and on a Raspberry Pi. Selecting a Router and Firmware A number of open source firmware solutions can breathe new life into an old…

A few years ago, I was doing quite a bit of traveling between the US and Europe with my usual array of technology. I was worried about what I should do if I was forced to unlock a device and either hand that device over or permit the device to be searched. While I wasn’t involved in anything that might be considered investigative journalism, I did want to set a good example and behave appropriately if anything like this happened. One impractical solution I envisaged was letting someone else encrypt my devices, so I could honestly say I didn’t know how to unlock them (with the intention of asking that trusted someone for the keys when I arrived safely). Another more practical option was to take devices completely empty of…

The Spotify music streaming service has become hugely successful. And like many other Internet behemoths, it’s success is partly built on open source. The quality of the Ogg Vorbis audio codec and container has helped Spotify differentiate itself from the other streaming services, for example. While Spotify doesn’t use the open source version of Qt, its adoption would have helped fund the Free version. It’s also published a number of open source projects of its own, with pedalboard being its latest. Pedalboard is an audio effects library for Python, which may sound overly technical for most people, but it really does have genuine utility for most of us. If you’ve used the Audacity audio editor, for example, you’ll be used to the idea of processing your audio with audio effects…

Few features in a word processor are less glamorous than a search tool. That is, until you do some intensive editing, especially if your revisions include reformatting. Then you will be thankful for a full-featured tool. In the case of LibreOffice Writer, the available tools are barely adequate, which is why I recommend the Alternative Find & Replace for Writer extension, also known as Alt-Search [1]. Like all LibreOffice extensions, Alt-Search is easily installed. Just download it from the LibreOffice extension site, and open Tools | Extension Manager. The next time you start Writer, AltSearch appears as a menu item, as well as an icon with green binoculars in the upper left corner of the toolbar. You can understand the need for Alt-Search by examining the default search tools in…

If you need hardware information, where do you turn? You might have the box and a Quick Start Guide, but chances are they’re lost in the back of some closet. More detailed information is probably available online but is not much use without the model number. The simplest source is your system itself, which has plenty of commands – including basic ones such as grep and ls – to pry out the information you need from the niche where it resides. Many echo the basic ls command in their name, and many have two or more levels of verbosity, each one giving more detailed information than the last. But whatever the name or structure of the command, each unlocks an often untapped cache of information. Most of the time, you…

Mass storage devices are taking on an increasingly central role in modern PCs due to the daily increasing flood of data. This makes it all the more important for users in the private sector and in the enterprise to keep an eye on the storage systems installed in their computers, to avoid data loss due to defects or overheating. The Hard Disk Sentinel [1] program helps you keep a permanent eye on the data media so that you always have a current status for your mass storage devices. Software Hard Disk Sentinel, which originates from Hungary, has become the industry standard in the field of professional mass storage maintenance on non-Linux operating systems over the past 10 years. The proprietary software is available, for a fee, in several versions for…

Free software desktops such as Gnome and KDE are built on top of toolkits that provide support for the graphic elements. Gnome is built on the GTK toolkit. GTK is an important component of many GUI-based Linux systems, and a new release of GTK eventually has implications for all Linux users working in Gnome and other GTK-based desktop systems. GTK4 [1] was released at the end of 2020, and components that rely on GTK4 have quickly followed, starting with Gnome 40 in March 2021. Recent distributions such as Fedora 34 [2] and Arch Linux already include Gnome 40. Other distributions such as Ubuntu 21.04 [3] include the GTK4 libraries in their package sources but don’t use the GTK4-based desktop yet. In practice, however, GTK4’s influence in these distributions is still…

Over the years, we’ve looked at a lot of activity monitors. There are now so many that they’ve become difficult to write about with any originality. It must have become a Linux developer’s rite of passage to create a tool that shows which processes are taking up CPU time and hogging all the system memory. But gotop is worth writing about because it takes the best parts of some of our favorite monitoring tools and combines them into an easy-to-install, cross-platform, and CPU-efficient single executable. There are precompiled binaries for many ARM variants, including executables that will simply run on a Raspberry Pi, x86 Linux, macOS, and even Windows. Each version runs identically, with a few exceptions. There’s an option to monitor NVidia graphics hardware, for example, and power monitoring…

The Vim text editor doesn’t normally need much of an introduction. It’s the yin to the Emacs yang, the source of many “How do I quit?” posts, and the fuel for many a late night best-editor argument. It’s a terminal text editor driven by infamously opaque keyboard commands that need to be committed to memory and normal, visual, insert, and select operating modes that can totally confuse a generation brought up on Microsoft Word. But it is also ubiquitous, powerful, mature, and ultimately wedded to the command line. There have been many attempts to bring its uniqueness to the desktop, but most of us would rather simply open a terminal and edit our files from there. If we need to make a graphical editor more Vim-like, there’s usually an option…

It finally seems like Wayland, the successor to the X.Org windowing system, is ready for prime time. Not only are we seeing it as the only viable option for many embedded and mobile devices, several major Linux distributions now pick Wayland by default. With Valve’s Steam Deck bringing Linux gaming into the spotlight, there are signs that NVidia, too, might finally begin optimizing its drivers for Wayland. But this does mean that certain applications relying on X.Org might need to be reworked, and those would include anything with XInput to access games controllers. AntiMicroX is a graphical configuration application for games controllers that has just finished a compatibility transition to Wayland, bringing its powerful “assign anything anywhere” approach to the new desktop. When you connect a controller, its main window…