Linux Format March 2022

Jonni Bidwell The modern web has too many moving parts. Look how many domains/scripts any major website connects to, then all the cookies and objects that are dropped into local storage. These tracks are hard to cover, so I’ve been looking at Project Gemini (https://gemini.circumlunar.space) a lighter, simpler hypertextual domain. Nick Peers My main use for a VPN is as a client (Cyberghost) for connecting to insecure public Wi-Fi networks on my phone or tablet. I have successfully set up a VPN server too using my QNAP for remote-dialling into my network. I wish I could remember how I did it, though, because it’s a complicated setup… Les Pounder I receive all my emails and files via a specially trained team of pigeons that fly in random flight plans around the web. For video calls…

I have no idea what you get up to online and you know what, I don’t want to know. You know who does? Pretty much every government and corporation in the world. This wasn’t supposed to be a paranoia-fuelled introduction and it isn’t. The hard facts are Google, Facebook, Twitter et al. openly do their utmost to track your online (and real world) movements to the nth degree. Turning to nation states, China openly monitors and restricts its own citizens to a drastic level (so imagine what it’s happy to do with you) and it’s well documented the Five+ Eyes intelligence alliance (USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other buddies) monitor each other’s citizens and then share the data back, so no pesky local laws manage to get in the…

Despite the best efforts of game devs, gaming-orientated distros, companies like Valve and teams behind opensource driver alternatives like Nouveau, Linux is still neglected by the vast majority of PC gamers, who are still mainly using Windows 10. However, things could change in 2022, with a range of exciting changes that could lead to more gamers making the leap to Linux. For a start, Canonical is looking for a Linux desktop gaming product manager (https://bit.ly/lxf286canonical), clearly hoping to make its Ubuntu desktop more popular to gamers. According to the job posting, the role will require “an analytical storyteller with a strong sense of message and a deep understanding of Linux graphics, gaming, and desktop technologies and communities,” with the key role of selling Ubuntu to gamers, while also helping design and…

TikTok is a hugely popular video-sharing service and has recently released a new desktop application, known as Live Studio. However, shortly after the launch the company was accused of using code from OBS Studio without adhering to the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 licence that OBS, an open source program for streaming, uses when making its code available to use. Following TikTok’s launch of Live Studio, an incendiary tweet was posted on Twitter by @Naackers (see https://bit.ly/lxf286tweet). They claimed that the new program was “a fork of @OBSProject,” and accused TikTok of stealing from OBS, which is an open source project whose source code is available under the GPL V2 licence. While TikTok would have been free to use the code, it would also need to publish the source…

Linux PCs running on Intel’s new Alder Lake generation of CPUs should be in line for a performance boost, with the company patching its Linux drivers to support its Thread Director technology. Intel’s 12th generation processors are hybrid CPUs, comprising performance and efficiency cores. In Windows 11, which already has support for Thread Director, the operating system could switch between cores depending on what kind of task was being performed. Using the performance cores would offer better results when doing intensive tasks, while switching to efficiency cores when idle or performing light tasks could prolong battery lives and reduce temperatures. As Phoronix reports (https://bit.ly/lxf286phoronix), the Linux kernel relies on ITMT/Turbo Boost Max 3.0 driver code to switch between cores, which isn’t as adaptive at the solution in Windows 11, which uses the…

According to research from Stack Overflow, only 25 per cent of developers are happy in their role and not looking for a new job. Around half of all developers are open to offers, while 24 per cent are actively looking. If you manage a team, what should you do to keep the developers you have, and attract more high-quality recruits? It comes down to developer experience: how those programmers and architects find it to work every day can have a huge impact on how happy they are, and consequently more likely to remain. Making it easier to work helps existing developers be more productive, while more than 53 per cent of developers state that developer experience is a key element in choosing any new role. Typically, using cloud services or Database-as-a- Service…