Innehållsförteckning för September 2024 från Linux Format

Nvidia has something of a love-hate relationship with the open source community. The company has often refused to provide source code for drivers to allow Linux operating systems to take full advantage of all features. This conflict reached its nadir in 2012, when in a video interview, Linus Torvalds called Nvidia “the single worst company” he and his associates had ever worked with, followed by giving them the middle finger. Two years ago, ransomware gang Lapsus$ took matters into its own hands by threatening to leak GPU data files unless the company agreed to fully open source all of its drivers in perpetuity. While the chip manufacturer refused to give in, in 2022 it did begin open sourcing GPU kernel modules, starting with the R515 driver for data centre GPUs,…

Most Linux users are familiar with the meme depicting an elaborate machine representing all modern digital infrastructure. The machine is propped up by a tiny component labelled, “A project some random person in Nebraska has been tirelessly maintaining since 2003.” As such, it’s easy to believe that all open source projects are underfunded and that pro developers can only spare the odd coffee break to work on them. This doesn’t seem to be the case for FOSS media server Jellyfin, however. In early June, lead developer Joshua Boniface created a post in the user forums entitled “We’re good, seriously.” He went on to explain that the project has around $24,000. Given that current expenses are around $600 a month, he calculated that this is sufficient to keep Jellyfin going for…

Back to font Having switched over to Linux Mint from Windows, I was a bit surprised by how bad some websites look – I’m using Vivaldi and Firefox. I thought the web had moved to web pages that can display their own fonts, even if they’re not installed on your computer. It seems that, for some reason, browsers in Linux continue with their ugly standard serif font, even if I load the same page in Windows using the same browser. It seems Windows runs the Verdana font but in Linux it reverts to whatever serif it is, which looks awful. Mathew Tanner Neil says… I’m not an expert at web design and CSS ins and outs, but I think this is an interesting outcome of designing for the most-accessed platform,…

The Q4OS website describes this distro as a “fast and friendly, desktop-oriented operating system based on Debian Linux”. The current version (code name Aquarius) is based on Debian 12.6 Bookworm. Aquarius is a long-term support release, with security patches and updates until at least June 2028. The OS can be downloaded as a live DVD ISO as well as a basic install DVD. There’s a version with the KDE Plasma desktop but Q4OS is best known for its Trinity desktop environment (TDE). Originally a fork of KDE 3.5, TDE offers a traditional and lightweight user interface. After firing up the live DVD, we were keen to test this using the bundled KSysGuard. On first boot the system used only 180MB of RAM and the CPU load was so minimal it…

Mabox Linux is a Manjaro-based rolling release distro. The developer’s About page states that it’s based on the latest stable release and uses a rock-solid LTS kernel. Downloads of the most recent (24.07) and past versions are available via Sourceforge. After downloading the 2.3GB ISO and booting it into a virtual machine, we were pleased to see that not only does Mabox support live mode but you can also choose to run it with proprietary or open source drivers. These steps are covered in Mabox’s user manual, complete with helpful illustrations (https://maboxlinux.org/users-guide/). We were less impressed to see that neither the manual nor the extensive forums list the exact system requirements to run Mabox (the specs on the left are for Manjaro). Box of tricks As you’ll see upon loading…

Moonlight has an extensive set of supported platforms, reflecting its gaming origins. It can be installed on all the major desktop platforms, and there are homebrew ports for the major consoles and some handhelds, along with single-board computers such as the Pi. For our Ubuntu machine, we installed it via Flatpak but the Snap was up to date, too. We installed X2Go via a PPA. There is more than one client, but we followed the instructions on the PPA homepage and installed the official X2Go client, which is a QT5 app. The client machines must have SSH access to the server computer, which you might have to set up. You also have to install a desktop environment that X2Go can launch on the server, and Gnome 3 doesn’t work properly.…

The main Remmina window has icons down the left that link to useful functions such as changing the connection quality on the fly, resizing and changing the scaling of the viewer, and sending the clipboard to the remote machine. It’s also a multi-tabbed window, which can be extremely useful. RustDesk has a little icon bar at the top that expands in use to offer quite a lot of features, such as changing the screen settings in real time and opening a chat window. It’s a completely usable free application, and it feels thoroughly professional in use. The main Moonlight window doesn’t have a control toolbar and is controlled through keyboard combinations. Before starting to use it, learn a few key commands so you can move between full-screen and windowed mode,…

New Ubuntu Long Term Support (LTS) releases are a particular pleasure. Once the thrill of the launch has passed, we can bathe in the afterglow as a wave of new Ubuntu derivatives (such as Pop!_OS, Elementary OS and KDE Neon) washes over us. Most refreshing among these wavelets must surely be Linux Mint. This community-powered distribution has stuck to its ideal (giving users what they want; radical, we know) since its genesis in 2006. If you’re new to Linux, Mint 22, code name Wilma, is an ideal place to start. It’s easy for beginners to learn and its Cinnamon desktop makes it simple to pick up if you’re used to Windows or Mac OS. If you like, but don’t love, Ubuntu, Mint might be for you. It uses Ubuntu’s…

If you want to transfer files from another machine on your local network, Mint includes the ever-so-useful Warpinator. You can download it for Windows (from https://winpinator.swisz.cz) and it’s available on other flavours of Linux. When you start it, it automatically detects other Warpinator instances on your network and allows you to instantly send files. You’ll see a message warning you that its Secure Mode has been disabled. This means that Warpinator will stop listening for new connections in an hour, and that all transfers have to be manually accepted at the other end. To enable Secure Mode, you need to change the default Group Code (by clicking Set Code on the banner). Once done, update the code on other Warpinator instances and you have access to other options in the…

Credit: https://nixos.org Distributions pop up like mushrooms in autumn, with most being new spins of the main ones: Debian, Ubuntu and Red Hat. The major differences are the package manager, choice of desktop and default software. Maintainers aim new spins at specific users – Kali Linux for security professionals springs to mind. These distros all deliver binary programs, a practice that means they are not optimised. Instead, they work on all the platforms you choose. Others have a recipe approach, where the system describes how to compile your package for the current system. Gentoo and Arch use this approach. They both require effort to install; well worth it, according to their most fervent users. You can spend your entire life arguing which approach is better and get nowhere. It all…

How do you increase storage on a system with no more drive slots? That’s a reasonable question, especially when most modest motherboards only offer two NVMe slots. As storage prices have spiked over the last year, it’s not too hard to believe you have a few older NVMes hanging around, or if you have a system with a smaller NVMe boot drive, you’re looking at options to expand your main storage pool. Sure, there are older SATA options, but why would you opt for 500MB/s speeds when even PCIe v3 NVMe offers 2GB/s? While speed is a consideration here, the real reason for this tutorial is about adding NVMe slots to a system – while 4+ SATA ports is the norm, NVMe numbers remain limited. As NVMe is effectively bolted…

The SN850X builds upon the successes of its predecessor, with targeted optimisations that position the drive among the fastest PCIe 4.0 SSDs on the market. The previous-gen SN850 impressed us when we reviewed it. Western Digital took from its solid SN750 design, which was in turn based on the popular WD Black NVMe, and created a top-tier PCIe 4.0 SSD. However, a lot can change in that time. Drives based on Phison’s E18 and InnoGrit’s IG5236 controllers were upgraded with Micron 176-layer flash, pushing for all-new heights. More recently, SK Hynix released the stellar Platinum P41 with its own 176-layer flash. Enter the SN850X. It takes everything that worked in the SN850 and turns it up a notch. WD uses the same pSLC cache scheme with better post-cache performance and…

When it first launched in late 2021, the Kingston KC3000 was one of the fastest SSDs around. Today, it doesn’t necessarily stand out on its own, using standard hardware that’s been a PCIe 4.0 SSD staple for quite some time – it has a Phison E18 SSD controller paired with 176-layer Micron TLC NAND. However, this mature platform performs very well, though you’ll likely want to add your own heatsink. Armed with the fastest flash to ship from Micron at the time and Phison’s E18 SSD controller, Kingston’s KC3000 delivers a very responsive performance that proves it’s one of the best SSDs then and remains solid now. Unlike Seagate and Corsair, Kingston has unleashed what seems to be the E18’s full potential in KC3000. In testing, the Kingston KC3000 edges…

Credit: https://store.steampowered.com We’ve been playing games on Steam since 2004, which makes us roughly as old as those ancient heads on Easter Island. Even though we’ve been using Valve’s digital platform for two decades, that doesn’t mean it can’t still surprise us. And hoo-boy, did Valve ever drop a delightful one earlier in the summer. Steam Game Recording has just become available in beta version on the Steam Deck, and we’re already obsessed with it. You can find out a lot more about it at the Game Recording beta blog (https://store.steampowered.com/gamerecording) but we’ll attempt to briefly summarise what makes this feature so special. In essence, it’s a new built-in system that enables you to record footage of your Steam games. Said footage can then be replayed, cut into clips and…

Switzerland has enacted the Federal Law on the Use of Electronic Means for the Fulfilment of Governmental Tasks (EMBAG), which in theory requires use of open source software for all sector bodies. A closer inspection of Article 9 reveals that federal authorities subject to this law must publish the source code of any software they develop, unless this clashes with third-party rights or important security concerns. The European Commission has stated that the implementation of EMBAG is expected to serve as a model for other countries considering similar measures.…

Pardus began life in 2005 as a fork of Gentoo Linux. Since then, developers based at the Scientific & Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK) have released successive Corporate and Community editions sporadically. The latest Community release (23.2) is based on the most recent unstable version of Debian (sid). Spins are available with both Gnome and Xfce. The specs on the left are for the Gnome version. Downloading the 2.6GB ISO took some time, so we explored the online documentation. Despite being developed in Türkiye, there is an English option, where we learned that Pardus is the Latin word for leopard. On first boot, the DVD offers you a choice between Turkish and English. You can then boot into the live environment, complete with leonine wallpaper. There is a small…

The more things change, the more they stay the same. T Men of War 2 layers in new deck-building elements and some shiny graphics alongside a wedge of single-player and multiplayer options, but beyond that, this sequel is the same as the franchise ever was: brutal, shocking violence that can see scores of your forces wiped out in an instant. This is what Men of War 2 does best. No other strategy game in this recent RTS resurgence can deliver moments quite like it: a single soldier on a mounted machine gun holding off a hundred enemy infantry; a lucky artillery shell wiping out a terrifying tank; or a brave paratrooper demolishing your opponent’s defences by crawling up to a defensive line with a bag of explosives. These moments leave…

Remmina doesn’t have its own server, but it has support for the main protocols that you’re going to encounter: VNC, RDP and SSH, and there are a few different Linux server options for each of these. It can even be used as a client for X2Go. Moonlight is designed for the proprietary Nvidia GameStream protocol, but it is also compatible with Sunshine, an open source server that implements that protocol. Even though it only supports the one protocol, this means that paired with Sunshine, it offers an end-to-end open source solution for desktop and game sharing. X2Go uses a modified (and incompatible) version of the high-performance NX protocol that is implemented by the semi-proprietary NoMachine remote access system. It provides its own server. Google Remote Desktop uses its own, proprietary,…

We’ve ended up with five options that can handle a variety of remote desktop scenarios. Remmina is best if you need to connect via a variety of protocols. Having said that, there’s nothing about the interface that’s too complicated for casual users who need to occasionally connect to another computer. The detailed configuration options are there to fine-tune how things work on different types of connection, but it’s up to you to set up a server on the remote side. Moonlight started life as a client for Nvidia’s GameStream protocol, and thanks to the Sunlight server, it’s a complete open source system for establishing a remote desktop. It has a lot of useful options to fine-tune the connection, which makes it adaptable for different usage scenarios and types of network.…

By this point, you’re more than likely eager to try out Mint for yourself. You might want to do that in a virtual machine (there are some pointers for running in VirtualBox at www.linuxmint.com/rel_wilma.php). But you might also want to run it directly, which is easier and totally risk-free. The Mint installation image boots to a live environment that doesn’t touch your storage until you elect to install it. In order to get there, you need to figure out how to get your machine to boot the installation USB we created on the previous page (yes, turn back and do that now – you know who you are). This usually involves pressing a key (often F10, F2 or Delete) as the machine turns on, in order to either summon…

Credit: https://micro-editor.github.io Manchester United, M Night Shyamalan, cargo trousers and your favourite text editor all have one thing in common: they all failed to achieve universal appeal, which as a concept is unattainable. You’ll sooner be able to settle the debate about whether Han Solo fired first or Greedo than unite the universe into liking the same thing. While the ’90s and ’00s were spent raging about Emacs and Vim, our troubled Linux distros have even more text editors vying for attention now. One such text editor is Micro. If you’ve used Nano, you can guess from the name that Micro aims to follow in the same footsteps. Designed to be lightweight, Micro boasts of extensive mouse-support and useful default keybindings. It also features persistent undo, the ability to split…

Of the key components in any PC, the storage drive is the slowest. A poor-performing drive often leads to a big bottleneck, forcing your processor (even if it’s one of the best CPUs) to waste clock cycles as it waits for data to crunch. Finding the best SSD or solid-state drive for your specific system and needs is key if you want the best gaming PC or laptop, or even if you just want a snappy productivity machine. To find the best SSDs, we test dozens of drives each year, and it’s possible to have multiple categories, including the best SSD for NAS and the best SSD for the Steam Deck. Here we’re focusing on the ultimate for cheap and deep storage. Picking the best SSD The newest budget NVMe…

The Sabrent Rocket 5 performed admirably in our tests, usually getting close to the ultra-fast Crucial T705. It then distanced itself from the pack as the fastest drive we’ve ever tested with sustained writes. That’s a niche workload, but these are high-end PCIe 5.0 SSDs we’re talking about. If you’re gunning for very high steady state write performance, the Rocket 5 is the fastest available. It still pulls a lot of power and needs a heatsink during sustained workloads, but it otherwise hits all the right notes. The Rocket 5 also comes in the full capacity range, where 4TB is missing from some drives. Furthermore, Sabrent has made it a point in the past to push for higher capacities, so it’s possible or even likely that 8TB is a real…

At first glance, the Adata Legend 960 Max seems like just another drive among many. And that’s true in many respects, because there are better drives in almost every category. There are faster drives, drives with more IOPS, more efficient drives, and so on. What the Legend 960 Max does right is typically of little interest to desktop users: it has good sustained performance and runs cool while maintaining that speed. It also has DRAM, living in a world where DRAM-less drives are becoming more popular and are affordable, but aren’t always ideal for heavier workloads. The Adata Legend 960 Max, as with the original Legend 960, comes in 1TB, 2TB or 4TB flavours, and the drive reaches up to 7,400MB/s and 6,800MB/s for sequential reads and writes, and up…

PureDome is a capable business VPN from the people behind PureVPN, one of the most experienced consumer VPN providers around. Signing up gets you all the benefits of PureVPN: easy-to-use Linux, Windows, Mac, Android and iOS apps; thousands of servers across 60-plus countries; WireGuard support for maximum speeds; a kill switch to protect you if the VPN drops; and plenty more. But PureDome adds business-friendly security, remote access and team management tools of its own. You can control who uses the service and what they can do. Single sign-on support enables your team to access the VPN using their existing credentials, and you can enforce your preferred VPN settings on users for maximum security, and even prevent users accessing the VPN unless, say, they’re running your preferred antivirus. PureDome is…

FILE MANAGER XFE Version: 1.46.2 Web: http://roland65.free.fr/xfe/ If you aren’t using Linux on a well-endowed machine, you can scrape off some load from the hardware using the X File Explorer (XFE). This lightweight file manager is an interesting mix of the classic interface with modern day flexibility. The fact that it can be operated from the keyboard alone will please experienced campaigners. The XFE project doesn’t put out any binaries, but it isn’t too cumbersome to compile it from source. Grab the compressed tarball from its website and extract it with tar -xvf xfe-*.tar.xz. Then run the ./configure script, and use your distro’s package manager to install any missing dependencies, if at all. Then type make, followed by make install. If that sounds too cumbersome, you can also pull in…

THIS ISSUE: Linux is CrowdStruck » Nvidia opens up » Google eats cookie » words Jellyfin’s firm funding base » Swiss roll out open source As most of the world knows, on 19th July 2024, a faulty update was released for CrowdStrike’s Falcon sensor. This caused an out-of-bounds memory read in the Windows sensor client, resulting in millions of devices entering a boot loop. Although a fix was quickly released, this had to be applied manually on each affected machine, meaning that at the time of writing, almost a week later, the effects of the biggest outage in IT history are still being felt. According to CNN, insurers have calculated that the total damage from this outage to Fortune 500 companies is over $5.4 billion. This was a good time…

Ext4 was first released back in 2006 with Linux 2.6.19 and has become the default filesystem for many popular distros. One of ext4’s original developers, Ted T’so, posted recently in the Linux Kernel Mailing List to discuss ext4 updates for Linux 6.11: “Some performance improvements; in particular, improving IOPS and throughput on fast devices running async direct I/O by up to 20% by optimising jbd2_transaction_committed().” Thanks to these JBD2 optimisations, users have indeed reported performance improvements of up to 20% on devices using async direct I/O.…

Creator Thomas Crider, aka GloriousEggroll, describes Nobara Project as “a modified version of Fedora Linux with user-friendly fixes”. On the main website the former Red Hat software engineer goes on to explain that while Fedora Workstation is a respectable OS, it has little pre-installed third-party or proprietary software. This is a particular issue for gamers, which is why Nobara comes with packages like the Wine compatibility layer, third-party codecs for GStreamer and certain Nvidia drivers. This informs one of the first choices you make when downloading Nobara, as there’s both a Standard ISO as well as an Alternative version with Nvidia drivers pre-installed. The official build of Nobara (the focus of this review), comes with a customised version of KDE. There are also spins using standard KDE, Gnome and two…

Chrome Remote Desktop » X2Go » Moonlight » Remmina » RustDesk Remote desktop solutions enable you to control one computer from another. They do this by running a server on the remote computer that compresses the graphics and sound, and sends it over the network. On your end, you run a client application that views the remote desktop and sends your keyboard and mouse input back to the server. In other words, you are in control of the other computer and can operate it as though it were the computer in front of you. You can use a setup like this for remote administration, technical support or even gaming. You might be installing printer drivers for your mum or gaining access to a more powerful computer from your laptop or…

Session management is the first point of contact for daily use of a remote desktop tool. It’s the part of the program that lets you set up a connection to another computer and manage a list of such connections. What you are looking for here probably depends on what you are using a remote desktop for. The home user might only have a couple of different machines to which they need quick access. These might be a desktop PC and a couple of virtual machines, for example. We could extend that to the machine of a relative for whom they provide technical support. A business or IT expert user, on the other hand, might be more interested in good facilities for connecting to a large variety of computers. In all…

Remmina doesn’t have a mobile app version. As it is a client that supports a number of open protocols, you could install another remote access app on your mobile device to take over when you’re on the move. Moonlight is available as a mobile app. The app has gaming-specific features such as being able to add an on-screen game controller. However, it’s quite possible to use the app to control a full desktop, and therefore serious applications, particularly for light or occasional use in this role. Google provides a client app to access a Chrome Remote Desktop shared desktop from a mobile device, with Android and iOS versions. Its reputation has suffered recently as updates have removed functionality and compromised its stability. There is a RustDesk Android app, but at…

Hopefully the machine reboots effortlessly to the Mint login screen (Lightdm) and after a flourish of credentials, you’ll be back at the Cinnamon desktop. The first thing you’ll see is a Welcome screen. As well as being a friendly greeting, this is actually quite useful because it guides you to all sorts of things you might want to set up, now that Mint is officially up and running. So useful that it pops up every time you log in until you tick the box (bottom-right) telling it not to. We’ll cover a couple of things from the First Steps section, and leave you to follow through with the rest. Any modern operating system needs to be updated, and we’ve already mentioned that Mint is no different. And that its…

Files play a crucial role in any operating system, but they’re especially important in Linux thanks to the way its ext4 filesystem is structured. In this tutorial, we’ll take you through the art of navigating the Linux filesystem (FS) on your PC. We kick off with a quick tour of your desktop’s file manager, based on the Files app found in the latest version of the Cinnamon desktop in Mint 22. We’ll then delve into the key aspects of working with files. You’ll get an overview of the ext4 FS itself, including how to mount additional drives so they’re easily accessible. We’ll then take you on a quick tour of Linux’s key directories and what you can expect to find inside, before tackling a key aspect of Linux files: permissions…

The Samsung 990 Pro is an exceptionally powerful PCIe 4.0 SSD. It did not disappoint, giving us some record-breaking results and performing well where it mattered. Its sustained write performance seems a bit relaxed, but the overall consistency makes it worthwhile. This drive proved to be efficient and thermally sound, but it is possible to push it for higher performance if desired. It promises up to 7450/6900 MBps, sequential read and write, with up to 1.4/1.55 million read and write IOPS. This is a fine successor to the 980 Pro and, perhaps more importantly, a strong rival for the Platinum P41 and SN850X. Those two drives shone brightly earlier this year by pulling away from the ever-growing pack of high-end PCIe 4.0 drives. In particular, the Platinum P41 impressed with…

The era of affordable, high-capacity SSDs is upon us. And no sacrifices have to be made in terms of heat production or power efficiency. The TeamGroup MP44 is one of several new drives that promise more capacity at a reasonable price. The MP44 is available in 512GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB and 8TB capacities. This is a very large range and a lot of storage for a four-channel controller. As a result, performance decreases at that capacity. Even 4TB (£256) is beginning to tax this hardware, and the price premium for 8TB (£828) is likely prohibitive. Where the MP44 stands out in comparison to the competition is the warranty. It’s still the standard five years but with 700, 1,450, 2,500, 3,000 and 6,000TB for each capacity’s endurance rating. Impressive. The TeamGroup…

AngelVPN, established in 2022, is headquartered in London. The UK isn’t ideal for hosting a VPN company, unfortunately – it’s one of the primary members of the Five Eyes data-sharing alliance. This raises questions about how well AngelVPN can deal with law enforcement requests and targeted spying from intelligence agencies. On a more positive note, AngelVPN has servers in 67 countries, and more than 80 locations, and even boasts coverage across 13 points in America. Plus, in addition to plenty of spots in Europe, such as the UK, France, Italy, and Germany, there are a few lesser-covered regions listed, including Russia, China, Brunei, the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands. This is pretty rare, so if you need a VPN to unblock content in these locations, AngelVPN might be…

This part of our computing heritage may now be largely forgotten but, from the mid-’80s, the PDA, or personal digital assistant, had an enthusiastic following. Often thought of as the digital equivalent of the Filofax – a leather-bound loose-leaf paper organiser – these products would be many people’s first foray into computing on the move. Their place in history is hardly surprising, given the alternatives available at the time. After all, these were the very early days for laptops, which were bulky and heavy, and had multi-thousand-pound price tags. Smartphones, on the other hand, were still quite some way off. The first ever PDA, produced by British company Psion, was the Organiser. It appeared in 1984 and had a tiny one-line, text-only monochrome LCD display, and a 36-key keyboard. It…