Linux Format February 2022

Jonni Bidwell Paranoid? Moi? Well, apart from using the sandwalk to cross town (because who knows when the Shai-Hulud will strike?) I sometimes like to prefix my bash commands with a space so they’re not committed to the history file. I also like to torch my work machine at the end of every day. Tim Armstrong There are many things that I do that others might consider paranoid. Something I recommend using virtual credit cards and ephemeral email addresses when shopping online. This helps to prevent targeted ads, spam, fraud, identity theft and purchase history harvesting. Les Pounder Each OS release, be it Ubuntu on my desktop or Raspberry Pi OS. I always back up and perform a fresh install. To me it makes sense because I get a fresh experience with none of my…

If you weren’t taking your security seriously before, it’s time to start. I’m not about to start saying silly things like “it’s the year of malware on Linux”. Unix-based systems have always had malware, but in many ways the targets are reversed to those of Windows. Linux has a tiny consumer base but a huge business, server and IoT base, and so commercial ransomware or hacking attacks and IoT botnet capture are favourite methods employed by criminals. Contrast this with Windows and its huge consumer base (running out-of-date builds) as a target. But the world is changing, if slowly. It takes a long time to overhaul a market that’s almost entirely geared to offering Windows-based products, you know. However, the arrival of Steam Deck in early 2022 alongside the continuing growth…

While we’ve been reporting about an open source revolution sweeping Europe for a while now (see news in LXF68, LXF167, LXF174, LXF222, LXF264 and LXF265), it looks like a German state is planning to make the switch to open source software. As The Document Foundation announced in a blog post (https://bit.ly/lxf285tdf), the state of Schleswig-Holstein, which is in the north of Germany and home to around three million people, is looking to replace Microsoft Office with LibreOffice on all of its 25,000 PCs used by employees and civil servants by 2026. Windows will also be replaced by Linux. In the blog post, The Document Foundation says that “We at The Document Foundation are pleased that LibreOffice is being used in public institutions, and hope that more federal states, governments and other…

Blender 3.0 has now been released, bringing some major updates to the popular open-source 3D graphics software. To celebrate the launch, the Blender team has published a release announcement (https://bit.ly/lxf285blender3) highlighting some of the major changes with the new version, which it claims marks “a new era for open source 2D/3D content creation.” Some of the improvements include better performance for a more responsive experience when moving around 3D environments, improved denoise for more detailed images, and better shadow tools. Blender 3.0 also supports Vulkan graphics API by default. The release announcement has a handy video that highlights a lot of the best new features. Early benchmarks have appeared (https://bit.ly/lxf285blenderbench) that shows some promising improvements with Blender 3.0. In particular, the Cycles X project, which adjusts the cycles of GPU kernels for…

Last issue we reported on how popular YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips published a video showing the team struggling to use Linux for various basic tasks. This led to a backlash against the team behind the distro used (Pop!_OS), while many others worried that the video damaged Linux’s reputation by seemingly confirming many people’s fears that the operating system is buggy and overly complicated. Since then there’s been a far more positive development, with many members of the Linux community coming together to list all of the issues that the Linus Tech Tips team encountered, and working on fixes. You can see the list of issues at https://bit.ly/lxf285github. It’s also inspired 10-year-old Rudra Saraswat to create a new distro, Gamebuntu, that could help newcomers to Linux who want to play PCs games,…

New year, new you. At least, that is what New Year Resolutions are supposed to help you achieve. What should you be thinking about in 2022? The first resolution should be to check your bills. Conducting a review of your approach can help you cut down your costs over time. And it should be a regular habit, rather than a one-off. You can find easy ways to improve your performance without resorting to the simple ‘scale by credit card’ approach. Look at what your databases are currently doing, and where you can tweak them to support your workloads more effectively. The best thing here is that you can learn and benefit yourself professionally too. The second resolution? Contribute more to open source communities. There are many ways to get involved besides code. For…