Linux Format

Saying “free software” has always caused confusion. Most people think gratis, while in the software world we mean libre – software that’s freed from constraint. Freed software that’s available to all, to use as people see fit and at no cost, and that even provides the source code so you can modify, contribute to and redistribute that same freed software. When Richard Stallman formed the Free Software Foundation 38 years ago, we’re not sure he realised quite how close he was to seeing the real problems of the 21st century: DRM media you never own, social media sites tracking and selling your every bit of data, corporate tracking devices willingly carried by all, and fully walled-garden proprietary ecosystems the norm. So, let’s take a moment to thank the crummy printer…

Jonni Bi dwell I can only imagine how many wild design decisions Gnome devs will make before the next LXF tricentenary. Surely we’ll get 3D AR-driven file management. We’ll be able to move things anywhere in space. Except to the desktop, which remains reverentially blank since Gnome 3. Matthew Holder I predict that the work started by the likes of Fedora Silverblue will continue, and immutable filesystems and containerised apps will be used by most distros. I also predict that the number of developers using Mac OS will decrease dramatically as WSL gains features. Michael Reed If we’re talking about desktop Linux, it might be that Linux wins on the desktop as it may be the final preserve of desktop computing as we know it. Other platforms will be subscription-only…

OFFICE SOFTWARE LibreOffice 7.5 released Turbo-charge your productivity with this upgraded office suite. T he Document Foundation has just released LibreOffice 7.5, a major upgrade of its popular open source office suite. This latest version includes a huge number of improved features. Lovers of dark modes will be pleased to hear that more than 40 bugs have been ironed out to make it much easier to activate and navigate. If you prefer a little colour in your life, you can also enjoy the more rounded application and file icons, based on the Sifr icon set. These aren’t the only features to be more vibrant: Writer bookmarks now come in all hues of the rainbow, making them much easier to see, while Impress and Draw now have a much wider and…

Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux kernel 6.2-rc8, noting that the “6.2 series continues to be fairly calm, and the only real reason for an RC8 is – as now mentioned several times – just to make up for some time during the holiday season”. Since there’s an RC8, this means that the merge window (two-week period of time during which disruptive changes are allowed into the kernel) for what will be 6.3 won’t open for a bit longer. We will have a full summary of the 6.3 merge window in the next issue. Confidential computing The industry may be having a moment in which AI is getting a lot of attention, but another topic that continues to loom large is that of information security. Digital sovereignty and confidentiality…

''I recently revived the long-dormant Kernel Podcast (http://kernel podcast.org), something I’d started back in 2008 while working at a major Linux vendor during the early development of one of its products. At the time, I used the podcast to motivate me to keep up with upstream development. At first, I did the podcast daily, then weekly, and eventually it was too much. For many years since, I’ve continued to do much of the same research that goes into making a podcast, but for this column. I spend many hours each month combing through thousands of messages posted to the Linux Kernel Mailing List. Not for money, but because I want to force myself to keep up with what’s going on, and help readers in the process. I’ve decided that it…

For our 300th issue, we thought we would round up some of the more common problems we’ve dealt with over the years. We considered making a league table about the most frequently encountered issues, but realised we’d be answering questions about GRUB, GRUB, GRUB, CUPS and GRUB. Instead, here are five of the most popular and interesting topics… Q Pick an OS We receive a lot of questions about dual booting. That is, running Windows and Linux on the same computer. There are two main issues. The first is having the two (or more if you have multiple distros installed) operating systems available and choosing which to boot. The second is accessing the data from one system when using the other. A Choosing which OS to boot is handled by…