Linux Format Summer 2021
Linux Format is your complete guide to the world of Linux. Whether you've just discovered Linux, or you're a full-time guru, Linux Format has everything you need to make the most of your OS. The editorial formula is a mix of features, reviews and practical tutorials that tackle topics as far ranging as installing software to socket programming and network management. Thought-provoking features and interviews also provide a focus on key technologies, trends and issues in the fast-paced world of Free and Open Source software.
in this issue
meet the team
Jonni Bidwell Come to think of it, a live music and coding session with Sonic Pi would be somewhat engaging. Viewers could submit their own code snippets via git in near real-time, and probably a chaotic cacophony would ensue, but it would make for a good experiment. Nick Peers I would stream a heartfelt plea: how do I stop buying endless amounts of optical discs for personal streaming purposes? And then follow it up with a live stream showing me going through the process of ripping, converting, tagging and adding to my ever-growing Jellyfin/Plex libraries. Les Pounder For the past year Tom’s Hardware has streamed The Pi Cast, which is a Raspberry Pi-themed show using OBS to switch between shots for a virtual webcam. We can mix live video feeds, images and external devices into…
cross the streams
Live streaming isn’t a subject we touch upon much, which is bad when the world’s leading streaming software is open source under the GPL v2. That’ll be the Open Broadcaster Software aka OBS Studio and it started life as one man’s open source project. These days it’s sponsored by YouTube (owned by Google), Twitch (owned by Amazon) and a social networking site that we won’t mention. Of course, being open source means that you can apply it to almost any application you like. From streaming your Linux desktop to a Twitch channel, to compiling it for the Raspberry Pi and broadcasting your avian-based birdbox activity to a self-hosted open hosting platform. It’s down to you just how much in control you want to be. If you like to keep things a little…
what does windows 11 mean for linux?
Microsoft has recently announced a new operating system: Windows 11 (https://bit.ly/LXF279Windows11). This has surprised many people: a few years ago the company was pretty adamant that Windows 10 would be the “last version of Windows” and would instead receive major updates every year. Windows 11 will be arriving towards the end of 2021. So, how will this affect Linux users? An increasing number of new machines will likely come with Windows 11 pre-installed, and while Microsoft has previously declared how much it loves Linux, it’s never been too fond of enabling other OSes to be installed alongside it, and there’s a concern that Windows 11 systems could make a dual-booting Linux setup more difficult to achieve. Microsoft released PC Health Check, to prepare users for the new OS. Many people found their…
amd fidelityfx super resolution technology now available
AMD has finally officially launched its FidelityFX Super Resolution technology. Similar to Nvidia’s proprietary DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) tech, FidelityFX Super Resolution uses machine learning to upscale games to higher resolutions without a noticeable performance cost. As an example, the technology could take a game running at 1080p resolution and upscale it to 4K, while maintaining image quality. The game should then run much more smoothly than if it were running at 4K natively, especially on lower-powered hardware. What sets AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution apart from DLSS is that while DLSS is closed source and limited to Nvidia’s latest high-end RTX graphics cards, AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution is open-source as part of the GPUOpen initiative (https://gpuopen.com), and it will also support both AMD and Nvidia GPUs. While the technology is currently Windows-only,…
almalinux os 8.4 now available
The fallout from the Red Hat’s decision to announce the end-of-life of CentOS 8 and replace it with CentOS Stream (see LXF278) rumbles on. While the CentOS alternative Rocky Linux, led by CentOS co-founder Greg Kurtzer, has hit 80,000 downloads (as reported by The Register at https://bit.ly/LXF279Register), AlmaLinux remains keen to win over ex-CentOS users who may be uncomfortable with Kurtzer’s control over Rocky Linux. AlmaLinux claims it’s the only “CentOS alternative that is 100 per cent community owned and governed.” The AlmaLinux Foundation has been set up, and AlmaLinux OS 8.4 for ARM64 has been released (download it from https://bit.ly/LXF279AlmaLinux) with features such as Secure Boot support and Python 3.9 module streams. While Rocky Linux hasn’t been bashful about announcing its success, assessing AlmaLinux’s popularity is more tricky. An email to…
wine, vulkan & wayland
“For the past few months I’ve been working on improving the experimental Wayland driver for Wine, which enables Windows programs to run on Wayland compositors. The latest update adds several features including Vulkan support, multi-monitor support and HiDPI handling, cursor clipping/ relative movement, and Wayland keymap handling. In addition to multi-monitor support, the driver also supports changing the application-perceived resolution of each monitor to implement mode changes. There’s also support for HiDPI monitors, which is achievable under the current Wine and Wayland constraints. Cursor clipping and relative mouse movement is an important feature for FPS games, and the driver uses heuristics to map application requests to Wayland functionality. The driver now has enough features to be useful for many cases, while also providing enough confidence that it’s a viable option going forward. The…
