Using Linux today looks very different from five or 10 years ago. The most popular desktop environments no longer look stuck in the 90s. While you may still need technical knowledge to install Linux, you no longer need to be a computer whiz to use it afterward.
This change has happened gradually, so here is a compilation of some specific ways the Linux desktop experience has changed over the past decade.
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The Linux desktop has changed over time, but increasingly the Linux desktop is only part of the story. Various Linux desktop environments are now appearing on smartphones and tablets. They're not yet ready to go toe-to-toe with their proprietary counterparts, but progress is happening, and devices like the PinePhone Pro come with Linux pre-installed.
I've been a Linux user since 1997, and I am here to tell you that the open-source desktop operating system is not only so much more flexible, reliable, and secure than the competition, but it's also a lot more fun. I've spent many a day (and weekend) tweaking the Linux desktop simply because I could.
Some of the desktops I've configured have been so amazing that friends wanted to know how they could achieve the same look, only to be disappointed that their operating system of choice wasn't capable of pulling off such a feat.
To that end, I wanted to share some of the really cool things that you can do with the Linux desktop that you can't do with other operating systems. My goal is to not only convince you that Linux is a really incredible operating system but hopefully to convince you to give it a try.
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Linux just works. It really is that simple. But more importantly, it works and works and works. So, if you're looking for a way to put the fun, flexibility, ease of use, and reliability back into computing, do yourself a favor and give Linux a try.
The latest version of the StarBook Linux laptop from UK-based Star Labs is a 14 inch notebook that’s available with a choice of Intel and AMD processor options. But what sets the new StarBook Mk VI apart from the Mk V model that launched earlier this year is that customers who opt for an Intel processor will now get a 28-watt, 12th-gen Intel Alder Lake-P processor rather than an 11th-gen Core U-series chip.
The StarBook Mk VI is up for pre-order for $884 and up, and should begin shipping around the end of September.
Next month, Granulate will add a free gMaestro tool to its existing portfolio of tools for optimizing workloads on Kubernetes clusters. The new tool makes it possible to reduce overprovisioning of infrastructure by automatically rightsizing workloads. This addition is the first extension to the company’s portfolio since Granulate became a unit of Intel earlier this year.
In this video, we are looking at Neptune OS 7.5.
Today we are looking at Neptune OS 7.5. It is based on Debian 11, uses Linux Kernel 5.18, KDE Plasma 5.20, and uses about 1GB of ram when idling. Enjoy!
Are you good and helpful linux user? Maybe you are maybe you aren't but today we're going to go over 10 commandments you should follow to be a good linux user.
Playing with Arduinos, a 1337 h4x0r tool, ChromeOS Flex, a proprietary software win, whether open-sourcing AI makes sense, and more.
This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we’re going to be talking with Jax from System76. Jax is going to give us the run down of what System76 is up to next. Plus, we have our tips/tricks and software picks. All this and more coming up right now on Destination Linux to keep those penguins marching!
The 2022 election for members of the Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board (TAB) will be held during the Linux Plumbers Conference, September 12 to 14. The TAB represents the kernel-development community to the Linux Foundation (and beyond) and holds a seat on the Foundation's board of directors. The call for nominees for this year's election has gone out; the deadline for nominations is September 12.
The add-on was created by Bert Hubert, a software developer and a member of a Dutch oversight board. It sources information from publically available Google IP addresses, which is what sets off the beeps.
It’s scarier than it has any right being. As you can hear by listening along to the example video above (which uses the Dutch government jobs website), as Hubert types into the search bar in Google Chrome, the system beeps and makes noises.
What that means is that Google is collecting data on your keystrokes in the address bar (which it does). This is part of what informs the autofill prompts when using Google Chrome.
But there’s more to the video. As Hubert arrives on the page, we hear a beep. As he clicks any listings on the page, we hear a beep.
Additionally, after putting up the video testing the add-on with Google Chrome’s data collection, Hubert put up this test using Firefox. The machine continues to beep.
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You can install Googerteller on Linux-based operating systems, though a Twitter user claimed that they got it working on MacOS.
As per the humorous abstract quote from the creator of the NeoMutt e-mail client (Michael Elkins), all e-mail clients suck but the NeoMutt e-mail client just happens to suck less.
The use of e-mail clients in our day-to-day transaction/exchange of email messages is something that has transformed into a permanent culture. Right now, it is possible to carry on with one’s daily activities without worrying about text messages. However, when it comes to e-mail addresses, the urge to access our mailboxes is like an unstoppable itch.
For most Linux users, whose personal work and projects revolve around a personal computer, their mailbox is one web browser tab away. Also, these same Linux users tend to spend most of their productive time in a command-line environment.
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This article will walk us through the installation and basic usage of the NeoMutt command-line mail reader in Linux.
Today we are looking at how to install Minetest 5.6.0 or newer on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.
In this guide, we will show you how to install Anydesk on Ubuntu systems
AnyDesk is a remote desktop application distributed by AnyDesk Software GmbH. The proprietary software program provides platform independent remote access to personal computers and other devices running the host application. It offers remote control, file transfer, and VPN functionality. AnyDesk is often used in technical support scams and other remote access scams.
In this guide, we will show you how to install Draw.io on Ubuntu systems.
Draw.io offers extensive drawing possibilities for process flowcharts, info-graphics and other visualizations on a wiki page. Descriptive graphics like process chains or decision trees can be constructed directly on a wiki page.
(Draw.io) is free online diagram software. You can use it as a flowchart maker, network diagram software, to create UML online, as an ER diagram tool, to design database schema, to build BPMN online, as a circuit diagram maker, and more. draw.io can import .vsdx, Gliffy™ and Lucidchart™ files .
Telegram is a free, cross-platform messaging app with end-to-end encryption. It’s famous for providing video calling and other missing features from Facebook or Twitter – one of its main attractions! The application also has no ties between them (the big social media companies), meaning you can be sure your data won’t go unnoticed by anyone else besides whom it belongs; this makes Telegram a safe choice for anyone curious about trying out a new messaging app. Although it’s been around for less time than some competitors, Telegram has gained a loyal following thanks to its robust privacy features and commitment to user satisfaction. In an age where data breaches are becoming more common, it’s refreshing to see an app that puts users first and ensures their information is kept safe. If you’re looking for a new messaging app, Telegram is worth checking out.
In the following tutorial, you will learn to install Telegram on Linux Mint 21 LTS release series using apt package manager and flatpak package manager with some tips for maintaining or removing popular messenger software in the future.
Kdenlive is a powerful video editing tool that offers a wide range of features for novice and experienced users. The software is based on the MLT Framework, KDE, and Qt, and a small team of passionate developers is constantly developing it. One of the best things about Kdenlive is that it is free and open source, meaning anyone can contribute to its development. Additionally, the software accepts various audio and video formats, allowing you to add effects, transitions, and titles easily. Whether you’re looking to create simple home movies or complex video projects, Kdenlive is an excellent choice.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Kdenlive on Linux Mint 21 LTS release series with APT or Flatpak using the command line terminal, along with some tips on maintaining the software into the future.
In this post you will learn How To Install XnView MP on Ubuntu 20.04 | 22.04 LTS
XnView is an image organizer and general-purpose file manager used for viewing, converting, organizing and editing raster images, as well as general purpose file management. It comes with built-in hex inspection, batch renaming and screen capture tools. It is licensed as freeware for private, educational and non-profit uses. For other uses, it is licensed as commercial software.
In this guide, we will show you how to install Transmission in Ubuntu systems.
So, Transmission is a BitTorrent client which features a variety of user interfaces on top of a cross-platform back-end. Transmission is free software licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, with parts under the MIT License.
Transmission allows users to quickly download files from multiple peers on the Internet and to upload their own files. By adding torrent files via the user interface, users can create a queue of files to be downloaded and uploaded. Within the file selection menus, users can customise their downloads at the level of individual files. Transmission also seeds, that is, it will automatically share downloaded content.
Kdenlive 22.08 video editor brings user interface improvements, improved audio recording experience, global subtitle styling, and more.
Kdenlive, a non-linear and cross-platform app that allows you to create compelling video content for free, is one of the most robust free video editors on Linux. Non-linear means that editing can be done in any order without overwriting the source media files.
Most video processing is done by the MLT Framework, which relies on many other open source projects like FFmpeg, frei0r, movit, ladspa, sox, etc.
The editor’s flexibility appeals to new users, while the advanced features provide a wide range of professional uses. In addition, Kdenlive also includes a wealth of online resources, such as title templates, wipes, render profiles, and so on.
We have a checklist that is a Work In Progress but I believe is useful right now.
One could use the checklist and fill out the elements one can answer. Then rename the checklist with your nick or handle in place of nickname_checklist, and post in this forum.
If you are – like me – running podman-compose from EPEL in RHEL8 and running into the error message “invalid config provided: extra host entries must be specified on the pod: network cannot be configured when it is shared with a pod” the problem is a incompatibility between the very old version of podman-compose in EPEL8 and podman 4.1.
Since the update to current Debian stable, the website for YARRG, (a play-aid for Puzzle Pirates which I wrote some years ago), started to occasionally return “Internal Server Error”, apparently due to bug(s) in some FastCGI libraries.
I was using FastCGI because the website is written in Mason, a Perl web framework, and I found that Mason CGI calls were slow. I’m using CGI - yes, trad CGI - via userv-cgi. Running Mason this way would “compile” the template for each HTTP request just when it was rendered, and then throw the compiled version away. The more modern approach of an application server doesn’t scale well to a system which has many web “applications” most of which are very small. The admin overhead of maintaining a daemon, and corresponding webserver config, for each such “service” would be prohibitive, even with some kind of autoprovisioning setup. FastCGI has an interpreter wrapper which seemed like it ought to solve this problem, but it’s quite inconvenient, and often flaky.
I decided I could do better, and set out to eliminate FastCGI from my setup. The result seems to be a success; once I’d done all the hard work of writing prefork-interp, I found the result very straightforward to deploy.
When I first moved from being a technical consultant to a manager of other consultants, I took a 5-day course Managing Technical Teams – a bootstrap for managing people within organisations, but with a particular focus on technical people. We do have some particular quirks, after all…
Two elements of that course keep coming to mind when doing Debian work, and they both relate to how teams fit together and get stuff done.
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There are all sort of teams in Debian – those which are formally brought into operation by the DPL or the constitution; package maintenance teams; public relations teams; non-technical content teams; special interest teams; and a whole heap of others. Teams can be formal and informal, fleeting or long-lived, two people working together or dozens.
But the all have in common the Tuckman stages of their development and the Belbin team roles they need to fill to flourish. At some stage in their existence, they will all experience new or departing team members and a period of re-forming, norming and storming – perhaps fleetingly, perhaps not. And at some stage they will all need someone to step into a team role, play the part and get the team one step further towards their goals.
Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 749 for the week of August 14 – 20, 2022.
The organization that updates the Linux operating system has added software drivers to support Li-Fi from pureLiFi, which could bring pureLiFi closer to embedding technology in smartphones, tablets, and other devices. The Android operating system, popular on phones, is based on Linux.
“This marks the first time a major operating system has included a Li-Fi driver in an upgrade,” pureLiFi CEO Alistair Banham said in a recent press release from the Edinburgh, Scotland–based company Li-Fi pioneer. “This is another great endorsement for Li-Fi and signals a growing maturity and interest in Li-Fi for broader use.”
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“The addition of Li-Fi in the Linux kernel is just the beginning,” Banham said. “We look forward to driving the adoption of Li-Fi and the inclusion of pureLiFi drivers in more operating systems. This is another important milestone in our journey to connecting everything and everyone with Li-Fi.”
In the first part of SenseCAP K1100 review/tutorial we connected various sensors to the Wio Terminal board and transmitted the data wirelessly through the LoRa-E5 LoRaWAN module after setting the frequency band for Thailand (AS923). In the second part, we’ll connect the Grove Vision AI module part of the SenseCAP K1100 sensor prototype kit to the Wio Terminal in order to train models to capture faces and display the results from the camera on the computer. and evaluate the results of how accurate the Face detection Model is. Finally, we’ll send the data (e.g. confidence) using the LoRa-E5 module to a private LoRaWAN IoT Platform system.
The Raspberry Pi Zero and Raspberry Pi Zero 2 are incredibly small, cheap, and versatile single-board computers… but in a time of global supply chain shortages, they’re also kind of hard to get your hands on these days. But there are also a growing number of other tiny PCs competing in this space. And Bret Weber has managed to assemble a bunch of them and run a series of performance tests that may help you decide which best meets your needs.
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In other Raspberry Pi-related news, there’s a new adapter that lets you use a Raspberry Pi Zero as if it were a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3, and a Raspberry Pi intern wanted to find out what happened if you overclocked a RP2040. The results are both impressive and potentially destructive.
A pantograph is a machine that lets an artist copy an image by tracing the original. Traditional mechanical pantographs use a complex linkage system to move the output pen relative to the stylus. While 1:1 pantographs do serve a purpose, the real value comes from a pantograph’s ability to scale the output. It is possible to create an output drawing several times the size of the traced image and also to do the opposite, which is particularly useful for fine engraving work. Mechanical pantographs are now niche machines, but this tutorial will walk you through how to build an electronic pantograph using an Arduino and Hall effect sensors.
Hall effect sensors detect the presence of a magnetic field and engineers often use them as proximity sensors. For example, security systems use Hall effect sensors to detect when a door closes or opens. But Hall effect sensors also detect the magnitude of the magnetic field, which means they are useful for more than binary proximity detection. In this case, two 49E linear Hall effect sensors in the joints of the pantograph’s tracing arms monitor rotational angle. Those connect to an Arduino Nano board as analog inputs so the Arduino can monitor the magnitude of the magnetic fields and determine the angle of each joint.
As sure as the sun rises and sets, so a new version of the Mozilla Firefox web browser emerges every four weeks.
And lo, Firefox 104 is ready for release.
Before we look at what’s new, a quick word to those of you hoping to hear that Firefox’s new Linux touchpad gestures are enabled out-of-the-box: they’re now. But, as in Firefox 103, you can enable the Wayland-compatible feature yourself via the about:config section. Usual caveats apply.
On to what is included in Firefox 104…
If there’s a “headline” change to be found in this release it’s that performance of the main Firefox UI itself is now “throttled” when the browser is minimised or obscured, in much the same way background tabs are. This, Mozilla devs say, should help to improve battery usage of the browser when running on laptops and similar.
With numerous content management systems (CMSs) available, it can be challenging to choose the best one. If you’re an independent writer or blogger and looking to start your website, two of the most popular solutions are; Ghost and Substack. The article will give you an overview of what Ghost and Substack offer and compare the pros and cons of each platform so you can make an informed decision on which one to choose.
Many bloggers and business owners have decided to go with Ghost because of its clean design and intuitive functionality, but there are alternatives worth considering before settling on the platform that’s right for you.
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Ghost, however, requires you to have technical knowledge because it is open-source software that needs to be installed on your web hosting.
GNU Parallel 20220822 ('Rushdie') has been released. It is available for download at: lbry://@GnuParallel:4
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GNU Parallel - For people who live life in the parallel lane. If you like GNU Parallel record a video testimonial: Say who you are, what you use GNU Parallel for, how it helps you, and what you like most about it. Include a command that uses GNU Parallel if you feel like it.
This is due to the excesive binary logs which are generated by database server.
From MariaDB documentation – The binary log contains a record of all changes to the databases, both data and structure, as well as how long each statement took to execute. It consists of a set of binary log files and an index.
It is required to periodically clear out those logs to avoid runninng into the problem of No space left on device.
One thing that I like very much about BaCon is the simple implementation of associative arrays:
https://www.basic-converter.org/documentation.html#ASSOCIATIVE_ARRAYS
At first glance, I could not see that capability in Nim, and a search came up with something about using tables -- and the example given was unclear.
Programming in Perl is choices all the way down. Perl is a multi-paradigm programming language which means that Perl can support the development of software using different programming paradigms, e.g. functional programming, object-oriented programming, and more.
Programming languages are culture, and culture follows philosophy. Philosophy is how every culture provides itself with justification for its decisions, values, beliefs, and worldview.
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It’s probably worth mentioning that the Raku team has also adopted this posture (and tradition).
The Hot Chips 34 conference that is normally held at Stanford University is in full swing this week, and thanks to the coronavirus pandemic is being held entirely online. Which means we have to buy our own ice cream and make our own lunches as we ponder the presentations offered up by chip vendors and academia, showing off the innovations them are bringing to bear.
The Computer Express Link, or CXL, protocol for cache and memory coherence is a big area of research and development these days, and Hot Chips hosted a tutorial on what it is, how it is evolving, and what impact it will be having on system architecture. We are well aware that alternatives such as Gen-Z (Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Dell), CCIX (Xilinx, AMD, and the Arm collective), OpenCAPI (IBM), Infinity Fabric (AMD), and NVLink (Nvidia) all have their benefits, and are each in their own ways better than the initial CXL that Intel proposed as a means of providing asymmetrical cache coherence for accelerators over the PCI-Express bus and over PCI-Express switch fabrics.
Details of an eight-year-old security vulnerability in the Linux kernel have emerged that the researchers say is "as nasty as Dirty Pipe."
Dubbed DirtyCred by a group of academics from Northwestern University, the security weakness exploits a previously unknown flaw (CVE-2022-2588) to escalate privileges to the maximum level.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has announced that it is representing cryptography professor Matthew Green, who has chosen to republish the sanctioned Tornado Cash open-source code as a GitHub repository.
EFF’s most central concern about OFAC’s [US Office of Foreign Assets Control] actions arose because, after the SDN [Specially Designated Nationals] listing of “Tornado Cash,” GitHub took down the canonical repository of the Tornado Cash source code, along with the accounts of the primary developers, including all their code contributions. While GitHub has its own right to decide what goes on its platform, the disappearance of this source code from GitHub after the government action raised the specter of government action chilling the publication of this code.
In keeping with our longstanding defense of the right to publish code, we are representing Professor Matthew Green, who teaches computer science at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute, including applied cryptography and anonymous cryptocurrencies. Part of his work involves studying and improving privacy-enhancing technologies, and teaching his students about mixers like Tornado Cash. The disappearance of Tornado Cash’s repository from GitHub created a gap in the available information on mixer technology, so Professor Green made a fork of the code, and posted the replica so it would be available for study. The First Amendment protects both GitHub’s right to host that code, and Professor Green’s right to publish (here republish) it on GitHub so he and others can use it for teaching, for further study, and for development of the technology.
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Under either analysis, GitHub has a First Amendment right to continue to host independent copies of the Tornado Cash source code repository. Professor Green’s fork and publication through GitHub is protected, and neither the hosting nor the publication of these independent repositories violates the OFAC sanctions.
If you are reading this you likely do not need to be told about the importance and many benefits of free and open-source software. Much of the software that powers the Geminispace is FOSS and many Geminauts are themselves maintainers of, or contributors to, FOSS projects.
Those who support FOSS principles but may lack the technical skills (or simply the inclination) to contribute code to FOSS projects can still contribute by writing documentation, providing feedback or even donating money to development efforts. However, there are a number of projects out there that seek to apply similar principles (ie, the crowd-sourcing and free sharing of information) to fields other than software. In this post we will briefly discuss a few of these projects and how you can get involved.
This is a short essay I wrote today in a Matrix room currently called "Arising to Lasagna" while discussing Industrial Revolution. I'm publishing it here so more like-minded people can potentially enjoy it.
The Industrial Revolution occurred as a result of various socioeconomic factors including the adoptions of steam-powered technologies and the centralization of production into the hands of a bourgeois class (capitalism). Different social movements have different perspectives on this shift and its implications for societal development.
The communists of the late 1800s saw capitalist production as the current stage of human evolution, pulling us out of feudalism and creating new class antagonisms. They believed that the next step would be state-controlled production, which would lead to the eventual dissolution of the state in favor of worker-run production. According to them, a socialist revolution was inevitable due to the uncontrollable course of history. Gradually workers would become conscious of their class and overthrow their masters. This view was not universal among socialists.
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.