Inhoudsopgave van October 2021 - Linux Magazine

Back in November 2020 [1], Linux Magazine tested the InfinityBook S 14 v5 from Tuxedo, a German laptop vendor that has been in the Linux business for more than 15 years. Despite a couple of minor gripes with the trackpad and power management, we were largely happy with the machine: It was light, slim, and had excellent battery life (14 hours on medium brightness, playing videos). Now Tuxedo has a new laptop on offer, the InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen6 [2]. Tuxedo advertises the InfinityBook Pro as an “ultra portable business notebook,” with particular marketing efforts focused on its display, magnesium-alloy chassis, and glass touchpad. The laptop is available in various configurations starting at EUR1160 (~$1,360), although the base price does not include a WiFi card. Our review unit checked in…

Every computer user is familiar with the scenario. Your favorite piece of hardware tells you “End of Support – sorry, this device is no longer supported” (Figure 1) or “This device will no longer receive software updates,” followed by the laconic advice to “Please consider upgrading.” No software is supported forever. The continual task of coding updates and bug fixes takes time and energy, and after some predetermined support interval, the vendor just stops providing patches for old versions in order to focus on later systems. With Chrome OS and Chromebook computers, the task of providing support is even more complicated. The term Chromebook does not define a single hardware system. Instead, Google contracts with several different hardware vendors to produce Chromebooks, including Samsung, HP, Toshiba, Asus, Dell, and many others.…

The Vim text editor accompanies every sys admin throughout their entire professional life, just like the classic corny joke about it: “I’ve been using Vim for 15 years – but mainly because I have no idea how to quit it.” It takes a few years for some admins to grudgingly resign themselves to the text editor. Others claim to really like Vim, but that could be Stockholm syndrome. Either way, the basics have to be drilled in because Vim is one of the constants you can and must rely on with any Linux system. Beyond the basics, Vim offers a few functions that enhance the user experience. There are two ways to customize the editor: globally or per user. The global settings are located in the/etc/vim/vimrc file; each user can…

You’re behind on a big project, you’re close to the deadline, and you stay up late, staring at your computer screen. Or maybe it’s the middle of the day, and you’re staring at your screen because something on the screen is just so darn exciting. Either way, eye strain is the scourge of the modern worker, as we labor through our days online, typing on keyboards and clicking mice. The experts say it is better to look away from your computer screen and focus on something else from time to time to give your eyes a rest. But can you honestly say you heed those wise words of the experts? A free tool called Safe Eyes displays periodic warnings and reminders to protect your eyes during those long dances with…

At first glance, working from home seems very convenient. You save time on your commute, money on transportation costs, and avoid overcrowded buses or trains. However, occupational safety often falls by the wayside at home. Most likely, you don’t have an ergonomic workstation, and you don’t turn away from your screen for a short conversation with a coworker or leave your desk for a meeting on another floor or adjoining building. Instead, your gaze remains fixed on the screen for hours. At home, the responsibility for taking breaks and evenly spacing out your work falls entirely into your hands. You can use a Pomodoro timer [1] to regularly remind you to take breaks. However, if you continue to stare at the screen during your break – maybe surfing the web…

Stenography is the ancient art of documenting something in a shortened form without losing any information, usually by replacing words and characters with more readily written symbols. That particular mode of stenography became known as shorthand – beloved by assistants everywhere. But the original stenography lives on and is now most commonly associated with court-of-law stenographers, transcribing everything from murder motives to matrimonial misdemeanors. Modern stenographers do this with a keyboard input device, called a stenotype, that looks more like an octave of a piano keyboard. The stenotype translates chords of keys into words and sentences almost instantaneously, enabling stenographers to type up to 300 words per minute, compared to the 60-80 most of us can manage. This epic typing speed obviously has many advantages for Linux users, but stenotype…

Despite the negative commentary that the official Spotify client seems to attract, it’s generally a solid piece of software. It mimics the user interface of its Windows and macOS cousins. While it always lags behind Windows and macOS in new features, Spotify does allow you to explore and play your Spotify music subscription from the Linux desktop. However, the Spotify project also seldom responds to comments or feature requests, in addition to being in a perpetual state of beta development. Oh, and Spotify is not open source. This is why third-party unofficial clients are so exciting. They’re able to capitalize on Spotify’s lack of official development and responsiveness to create clients that better integrate with your desktop, run from the command line, or use fewer system resources because there are…

It’s hard to believe that Nintendo’s Game Boy is now over 30 years old. Like the Sony Walkman, it was a device that defined a generation, letting them play Tetris, Super Mario Land, and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening wherever they wanted. It also paved the way for modern hand-held gaming, from Pokémon on a smartphone to the success of the Nintendo Switch and even Valve’s hugely hyped Linux handheld, the Steam Deck. What’s even more remarkable is that the CPU in the Game Boy was based on the humble Z80, with only 8KiB of internal memory expanded by the ROM cartridges and a screen resolution of 160x144 pixels. Despite this, the playability of many of its games still stands up, all these years later, which is of course…

Two Terrifific Distros on a Double-Sided DVD! Linux Mint 20.2 Cinnamon Edition 64-bit Linux Mint is one of the most popular Debian and Ubuntu derivatives. Cinnamon is Mint’s own desktop and one of the most innovative desktops for Linux. The 20.2 release is a Long Term Support (LTS) release, which will receive updates and bug fixes until 2025. As often happens with LTS releases, 20.2 contains numerous new or enhanced features. These include Bulky, a mass file renamer, plus an Android app that supplements Warpinator, enabling easy file transfer to phones and tablets. Another useful addition is the ability of the file manager Nemo to search for content as well as file names. Many new features are found in the Update Manager, which now supports Spices updates (i.e., updates for…

Linux from Scratch (LFS) [1] and Beyond Linux from Scratch (BLFS) [2] are online tutorials that provide step-by-step instructions for how to compile and assemble your own Linux system from freely available sources. The abbreviation LFS refers to both the documentation and the resulting Linux system. If you’ve been around Linux long enough, you have probably come across the need to compile software – either from a homegrown application or possibly from source code available at an open source project website. You might think that compiling an operating system is similar, and in some ways it is, but building a complete operating system is vastly more complicated than compiling your average desktop application. Keep in mind that the modern distro you are using to build that desktop app already has…

Linux has all the necessary commands for manipulating files, everything from ls and cp to rm and mv. However, file managers have the advantage of centralizing all the commands and requiring less knowledge in all except the most advanced circumstances. In fact, file managers remain so useful that Midnight Commander (mc) continues to be used at the command line 27 years after it was first released. A more recent command-line file manager is ranger [1], which uses many Vim keybindings and is written in Python, which allows for the easy creation of custom scripts. Ranger is available in many distributions, and the latest version can be downloaded from GitHub [1]. It requires Python 3 and includes a long list of suggested packages for full functionality, such as w3m for graphics…

Today’s operating systems typically consist of well over 100,000 files, and more files are quickly added during daily work. Many of these added files are temporary files or logfiles. Over time, you might also accumulate duplicate files, configuration files for deleted programs, and the remnants of broken files. Resourceful programmers have developed tools to remove these unneeded files quickly and efficiently. One cleanup tool that is gaining attention with Linux users is Czkawka [1]. According to the project developers, Czkawka will help you discover and delete: • Duplicate Files: Finds duplicates based on file name, size, hash, and a hash of just first 1MB of a file• Empty Folders: Finds empty folders with the help of an advanced algorithm• Big Files: Finds the biggest files in given location• Empty Files:…

Figure 1 provides a simplified view of the root partition resize process. When the Raspberry Pi first boots, it reads command-line parameters from the/boot/cmdline.txt file (step 1), with parameters for the output console, TTY speed, root partition ID, and so on. In step 2, the init_resize.sh script performs a number of housekeeping chores, such as preparing and mounting the filesystems. Surprisingly, this script does not resize the physical partition; it simply calls the partition editor (parted) to modify the SD card partition table, which determines how big the SD card is and then modifies the second partition entry to expand it to fill the remaining empty space, making the initial resize a quick process. The script also modifies the cmdline. txt file, removing the term quiet plus removing itself so…

On a recent podcast episode, we ran an informal survey of what most listeners thought was their most essential open source tool. The overwhelming winner was the humble secure shell, SSH, the remote command-line client and server that many have been using for decades. SSH is super secure and easy to use, often configured by a distribution at install time, which enables even beginners to start using their machines remotely. But SSH can also be a victim of its own success. Its ubiquity makes it a common attack vector, as anyone who runs an SSH server and happens to look at the logs will attest. Your logs will be full of automated attempts to guess your username and password combinations, a situation not helped when even distributions such as older…

Little Spy is a beautifully executed 2D platform game with nostalgialaden graphics and an easy, accessible style of gameplay. It starts with a loading screen that both looks good and ably introduces the core game mechanics: Use cursor keys to control your character; press space to jump; and navigate between the floating platforms and the baddies, collecting things, before reaching the helicopter launch pad. It all feels slightly reminiscent of 8-bit Sensible Software games in the 1980s, especially when the baddies parachute in like your companions in Cannon Fodder. You can also parachute, dash, attack enemies, and double jump, all of which needs to be mastered before you can complete the game. The game sensibly starts with a simple level to get you used to the controls, with lots of…

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More than just a hand-held gaming system, the Steam Deck is a Linux-powered system with a KDE interface that can be docked and used as a regular PC. Steam Deck uses Proton as a compatibility layer to play Windows games on Linux, but users are free to replace it. The device specs include an AMD 4-core Zen 2 CPU, an 8-core RDNA 2 graphics unit, 16 GB of memory, a 7-inch 1280x800-resolution touchscreen. As far as game control, Steam Deck includes several trackpads, thumbsticks, buttons, and triggers. A 40Wh battery is said to allow anywhere from two to eight hours of use. The device is charged via a single USB-C port that doubles as the means to connect the Steam Deck to external monitors and docks. Steam Deck has three…

LemonDuck is a targeted attack that originally focused on vulnerabilities found in Microsoft’s Exchange server to enable crypto mining on the compromised system. To make this attack even more vicious, Lem onDuck removes other attackers from a compromised device to get rid of competing malware. This attack originally focused on China but has since begun targeting other countries (such as the US, Russia, Germany, the UK, India, Korea, Canada, France, and Vietnam). LemonDuck initially set its sights on Windows servers but has since expanded to Linux systems as well. On top of this, LemonDuck has expanded beyond crypto mining and can do things like send phishing emails, install backdoors, disable security controls, and steal credentials. LemonDuck can spread via phishing emails, USB thumb drives, brute force attacks, and security exploits.…

Traditionally, Garuda is a giant bird or bird-like being who appears in several Asian mythologies and is a cultural and national symbol in several countries. By contrast, Garuda Linux [1], from India, is a relatively new Linux distribution with an emphasis on efficiency, ease of use, aesthetics, and gaming, as well as a growing name for originality among distributions. Recently, Shrinivas Kumbhar, the lead founder, agreed to talk about the distribution and where it is going. Kumbhar was introduced to free software in junior college when he attended a seminar on ethical hacking. A few years later, he experimented briefly with Remix OS and tried to install Kali Linux. However, when he managed to install Kali, he says, “I couldn’t figure out anything. So my hunt for a friendly beginning…

A regular expression (regex) [1] is a sequence of characters that describes a search pattern. You can use a regex to save time searching and replacing in texts, such as strings in programming languages, database query results, or normal documents. Regexes also can help you effectively use utilities, such as grep [2], xmlgrep [3], and ugrep [4]. Ultimately, a regex’s usefulness depends on the pattern you select. Formulating a regex that delivers precise results is no easy task (see the “DIY Regular Expressions” box). To save time, a regex generator can automate this step for you by taking a text/character string and deriving a suitable regular expression. Regex generators work with varying degrees of precision. Some regex generators offer maximum precision, where the regular expression finds exactly one pattern. Others…

If programmers are not careful, program parts that are running in parallel will constantly get in each other’s way, whether as processes, threads, or goroutines. If you leave the order in which system components read or modify data to chance, you are adding time bombs to your code. They will blow up sooner or later, leaving you with runtime errors that are difficult to troubleshoot. But how do you avoid them? The common assumption that components will run in the same order that a program calls them is a fallacy – one easily refuted with an example such as in Listing 1. But coincidence can also be a factor. It is quite possible for something to work once but then crash after a small, and often unrelated, change to the…

Hard disks have three states: empty, dead, and full. You can reach a full disk faster than expected due to carelessly hoarded data, much like in a kitchen junk drawer. Error messages logged once a millisecond, such as .xsession-errors, can also quickly fill up a logfile causing even large hard disks to overflow overnight. If your disk is filling up, you first need to identify the cause, specifically which directories or files are hogging the most space. Plasma and Gnome have graphical tools such as Filelight, GdMap, or Baobab, which display the utilization level. However, these tools are very slow, making them unsuitable for network servers or full hard disks, because a graphical user interface will often fail to launch if the disk utilization level exceeds 95 percent. Instead, you…

In a world where most people carry a cell phone, autocomplete might seem too widely used to cause contention. However, Copilot [1], a new code autocompletion service for Visual Studio Code (Figure 1), is already raising licensing issues, especially for copyleft licenses such as the different versions of the GNU General Public License (GPL) that are the backbone of free software. Code assistants are not new. However, Copilot claims to be in a class of its own. Developed by GitHub, Copilot is built on Codex, the new AI system created by OpenAI, and trained with all the public code on GitHub in dozens of programming languages. With this backing, Copilot includes the potential to reduce the time coders take to write or find examples or to learn a new programming…

My daughter and I looked at trying to repurpose an old eReader. Our goal was to make a kitchen kiosk display that would show items of daily interest. For us, that included news, stocks, and weather data that we pulled from the Internet, along with some local data from Arduino, Home Assistant [1], and Raspberry Pi nodes (Figure 1). In this article, we look at how to install Linux on an eReader and look at eReader Python apps and kiosk-mode web browser pages. Getting Started For this project, we used a Kobo Mini eReader, so the procedure to load a new operating system will vary somewhat according to the eReader model and manufacturer you use. First, crack open the eReader. The operating system (OS) and data are stored on a…

If you are anything like me, you may have an old laptop from the mid-2010s lying around that still works well but has some obvious deficiencies. While the hardware is mostly fine, the 15.6-inch screen has bezels that encroach well into where we now expect to see uninterrupted screen space. With a few modifications, this old laptop is a perfect candidate for a backup Linux machine for when your main laptop inevitably fails (even if you do need to carry the charger with you at all times). After buying a pair of 4GB DDR3 sticks and the least expensive 120GB SSD you can find and installing Ubuntu, this old laptop runs great, but the screen still feels like something from the Windows ME days. All you need is a few…

elfcat is a tiny yet brilliant command for the terminal. Its cute name also hides its functionality; this is a command that outputs (cats) the contents of a binary executable (elf) in a humanreadable way, letting you explore the hidden secrets of your favorite applications from the command. Taking the name of a binary as its only argument, elfcat produces output from the binary. The raw output isn’t especially human readable and not especially accessible from the command line, but it’s a lot more useful than using cat to see a binary. The output is concatenated into an HTML file which (of course) looks best when dropped into a web browser. This is a brilliant idea because the HTML output is fully annotated to describe everything detected about the binary…

One of the most widely used system administration tools on Linux is the humble rsync, a command that’s brilliant at replicating the contents of a directory, usually across a network, to a different location. What makes rsync so effective and better than a normal copy is that it can do this with certainty, thanks to hashing. rsync can do this by only copying the differences between an older version of a file and a newer version of a file that already exists at the destination. But what rsync isn’t very good at is bidirectional synchronization. This is a common requirement when you’re working on the contents of a synchronized directory in more than one location, such as the same project on both PC and laptop, or at home and work.…

This is really two FOSSPicks in one. The first part is the ratbagd DBus daemon, a background service that helps expose configuration options for specific input devices that would otherwise require a manufacturer-provided driver. It specializes in gaming mice, and much like OpenRGB, ratbagd developers have painstakingly decoded the various protocols required to unlock undocumented and proprietary features outside of their standard driver support, scaling modes, and unused buttons. There’s support for more than 50 devices, including a majority of devices from Logitech and a few from SteelSeries, among others. There is a command-line tool that can help you configure those devices, but for best results, you’ll want to use our second FOSSPick for this entry, the Piper GUI. Piper is a modern GTK-based GUI for configuring the options exposed…