Table of contents for No. 190 in Linux User & Developer

Welcome to the UK and North America’s favourite Linux and FOSS magazine. We’re looking back somewhat wistfully at this past month as we reflect on the passing of Professor Stephen Hawking, a giant in the field of theoretical physics and ‘most intelligent guest star on The Simpsons’. On the flipside, we had the pleasant surprise of a Pi-shaped blip appear on our radar (see p86 for our Raspberry Pi B+ review). It seemed clear that 2018 was to be bereft of new Pis, so we’d consoled ourselves with a big, fat Electronics for Pi Hackers feature (p18) on building circuits and ways to interface with the Pis we did have. But the new Pi 3 B+ is a great addition with its appealing networking charms, and we’ve already pencilled in…

1 New default apps Several new default apps are being included with Ubuntu (or made available at the setup screen), following a community consultation in 2017. VLC, LibreOffice and GIMP line up alongside Kdenlive, Mozilla Thunderbird and Shotwell. 2 Xorg display server Wayland remains the shape of future display servers, we’re reassured, but thanks to the myriad applications and games that failed to run properly with it, Ubuntu 18.04 restores Xorg. 3 Colour emoji are here This is the feature you’ve really been waiting for. In previous versions, emoji were monochromatic; this is set to change in 18.04 with the arrival of Android’s full-colour, open source versions. 4 Minimal installation Not a replacement for the Ubuntu Minimal ISO, but an actual feature in the installation screen, it’s possible to install…

Chrome OS is based on Linux (Gentoo, specifically), so you might expect installation of Linux apps to be straightforward. Unfortunately, that’s not currently popular, leading to the use of some hacky workarounds. Anyone wanting to run Linux on a Chromebook has two choices: installing ChrUbuntu, or running the Crouton script. The first option requires a new partition (and can be time-consuming to switch to), while the second introduces a considerable security risk. So what’s the answer? Various indicators suggest that Chrome OS will soon provide support for Linux virtual machines. After all, having an official option for running Linux is preferable to relying on a third-party project such as Crouton. Then there’s the problem of having to activate Developer Mode, exposing yourself to potential hacks. It’s a risk no computer…

In today’s IT industry, automation is becoming the norm. From configuration management on entire IT infrastructures to deploying applications to a production environment, Ansible is capable of automating tasks for system administrators, developers and other IT pros. In this tutorial, we’ll look at how to update software on a remote machine by using both Ansible’s ad-hoc commands and playbooks. What is Ansible? Ansible, founded by Michael DeHaan and later acquired by Red Hat, is software that automates configuration management, application deployment and software provisioning for system administrators. It can be extended to automate advanced tasks such as cloud deployment and so on. Ansible works by configuring remote computers via SSH, so thus there’s no need to install any server software. The kind of functions system administrators and developers can automate…

One issue that many people complain about when writing Python code is poor performance. Often, this is due to using programming techniques learned from other languages that simply do not transfer well when writing Python code. But sometimes, even after writing your program in as Pythonic a way as possible, it still doesn’t quite run fast enough. In these cases, one of the options available to you is to try a different Python interpreter. The standard interpreter, CPython, is the one that you are probably using today; its focus is to run your code strictly according to the language specification. Other interpreters instead focus on getting the most performance possible out of a given program. This issue, we’ll look at a few possibilities available to you. The first is PyPy.…

• Sputnik starts Project Sputnik started out as a small project to create a single machine but has grown in scope since. We look at how the range has expanded to cater for more users than ever before. • Using the hardware If you invest in a Project Sputnik-powered machine, what does the out-of-box experience feel like? Is it as slick as you’d expect for a product as high-end as the hardware promises? • Into the future As Ubuntu itself continues to mature and Canonical pivots slightly on its mission, what does the future hold for desktops, servers and even gaming machines in Dell’s Linux division? es? • XPS 13 9370 review We take an in-depth look at the latest 9370 version of the XPS 13, which is more powerful…

The process of installing Arch Linux is a command-line-driven affair that involves downloading the ISO, configuring the network and partitioning manually, installing the base OS and then carrying out a whole host of configuration tasks that can be daunting even for the experienced user. Installing Manjaro is the polar opposite experience: the ISO boots into a full live distro experience from where, after having a good try of the system, the user can launch a graphical installer. The installer itself has only a handful of self-explanatory steps that are required to get fully up and running.…

When Chromebooks first launched, many scoffed at their chances of making a significant impact on the computing world. After all, who would really want an OS that basically only runs a web browser? Well, as it turned out, quite a few people did. Chrome OS is still growing in popularity, particularly in the low-cost and educational markets, and its simplicity and Material Design visuals certainly appealed to more people than expected. Given this success, it’s no surprise that Linux developers have seen fit to follow suit with distributions that echo the Chrome OS approach. Of course, Chrome OS itself can be installed courtesy of Chromium open source-based project releases such as the impressive Neverware CloudReady (www.neverware.com). Neverware also recently acquired the developers of Flint OS, a similar product which offers…

Ubuntu Touch is a long-running effort to produce a touch-friendly phone and tablet version of Ubuntu. Begun in 2011, the project was canned by Canonical in April 2017 as the Ubuntu desktop distro moved back to Gnome. As is often the way with open source, however, the project lives on as it’s been picked up by the UBports team (https://ubports.com). As well as continuing the development for phones and tablets, UBports is hoping to build the convergence product, which envisaged being able to connect a mobile device to a screen and keyboard and use it as a primary machine – an idea gaining popularity.…

Resources FFmpeg http://FFmpeg.org FFmpeg info for streaming http://bit.ly/lud_streaming On a hackathon a year ago, we decided to build a 24/7 life-streaming device. Among other things, we learned how to create a Twitch-streaming device from a Raspberry Pi – and now so can you! With cheap high-res camera sensors, fast and affordable internet connections and hardware-accelerated HD video encoding, it’s no wonder live video-streaming blew up. People stream games, real-life events, tutorials and even the most boring things, like driving to grab some food from McDonald’s – there are new purposes for streaming being invented every day, and if you find a novel and interesting subject, viewers will come. Talking of viewers, they are one important aspect of modern livestreaming: find your audience and interact with it.…

01 Optimise your website images When uploading your website to the internet, make sure all of your images are optimised for the web. Try using jpegmini.com software; or if using WordPress, install the EWWW Image Optimizer plugin. 02 Host your website in the UK Make sure your website is hosted in the UK, and not just for legal reasons. If your server is located overseas, you may be missing out on search engine rankings on google.co.uk – you can check where your site is based on www.check-host.net. 03 Do you make regular backups? How would it affect your business if you lost your website today? It’s vital to always make your own backups; even if your host offers you a backup solution, it’s important to take responsibility for your own…

Has the Nintendo Switch has been hacked to run Linux? It would seem so, thanks to a hardware bug. A tweet from hacking group fail0verflow on 15 January said: “In case it wasn’t obvious, our Switch coldboot exploit: * Is a bootrom bug * Can’t be patched (in currently released Switches) * Doesn’t require a modchip to pull off”. Plenty of information there… but that’s as deep as it gets. Although it followed up with a video appearing to confirm the exploit, showing someone using the Switch’s touchscreen to browse the web in a Linux desktop, information on how to run this exploit at home has yet to materialise. The lack of performance information, meanwhile, doesn’t make it clear whether you would even want to install Linux on the Nintendo…

Mycroft is seen as the open source answer to voice-activated personal assistants such as the Amazon Echo, Siri, Cortana and Google Assistant, but when Joshua Montgomery, now CEO of Mycroft AI, was looking for a voice assistant for himself, the likes of Amazon Echo didn’t exist. “We’d never seen one, certainly. I think it was in beta,” says Joshua, sitting beneath a large, bold Mycroft logo. “We wanted to build Jarvis from Iron Man into our maker space. We went looking at the existing voice assistant technology and realised that none of it would allow you to customise it. You couldn’t change it. To a large extent, that’s still true. With the other voice stacks, you basically get whatever capabilities the big corp gives you. You can’t customise it to…

1 Bend component leads Components with axial leads, such as resistors, will need those leads to be bent at right-angles at the correct pitch, so they can pass through the holes in the stripboard. Hold the lead using small pliers, close to the component body. 2 Fit components to board Place all the components in their correct positions on the non-copper side of the board, with the leads passing through holes. Optionally, use a piece of foam over the components to hold them in place while you turn the board over. 3 Solder the components While holding the foam in place, turn the board over so the component leads are uppermost, and place it on your workbench. Using a soldering iron, make a solder joint between each component lead and…

Doctor Tarek Loubani was back home in Canada when we spoke to him about his work for Glia, an umbrella organisation that he started for developing open source hardware projects, mainly focussing on high-quality, low-cost medical products. Tarek may live and work in Canada – he’s an assistant professor at the University of Western Ontario – but his second life is with his humanitarian work as a volunteer physician in the Gaza Strip. Situated on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, and part of the Palestinian territories along with the West Bank, Gaza is densely populated with around 1.85 million Gazan Palestinians living in 140 square miles. Anyone who follows international news will be aware that it’s part of the larger Israel-Palestine conflict. It’s governed by the Islamist group…

Browser-based cryptocurrency mining is a new trend. Whether it’s malicious scripts injected to otherwise benign and trusted websites, man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks such as Coffee Miner, or common distributed malware, they all serve the same purpose. That’s to make the owner’s computer, laptop, smartphone or IoT gadget use their processors for the lucrative task of crypto-mining. Consider these malicious actions as a sort of ‘opportunistic computing’, where attackers leverage thousands of CPUs to compute hashes. Imagine that these attackers are inside your network performing MITM attacks; they can intercept, modify and play back any sort of packet going through the network. Now consider this: they are only interested in tampering with HTTP requests and responses to inject JS payloads to anyone browsing a website. These payloads could do almost anything you…

Resources Ada GPS IDE Community Edition www.adacore.com/download Or check your distribution’s package manager Ada is a surprising language. Developed by the US Department of Defense in the late 1970s, it has been predominately used for military applications. As one would expect from a language that is used in situations requiring a great deal of security and safety, with little to no room for error, there are strong safety features built into the language, including an extremely strong static typing system and good support for exceptions. The surprising thing is that Ada was also built for speed. In fact, Ada seems to have more in common with languages such as C and C++ than it has with more modern safe languages such as Haskell, which often run quite…

Aside from Project Sputnik – apparently named because Canonical’s Mark Shuttleworth was the second ever private ‘space tourist’ (albeit on a Soyuz capsule, but hey, Sputnik sounds cooler) – Dell also has other long-term commitments to Linux. All Dell servers are available with multiple versions of Ubuntu or Red Hat Enterprise Linux. A significant number of client platforms are also available from the factory with NeoKylin (aka ‘Linux for China’) and although development appears to have stalled somewhat. Dell via Alienware has been a significant supporter of Valve’s Debian-based gaming distribution SteamOS. Dell also sells a range of Chromebooks (which of course are Linux powered) so its investment in alternatives to the ‘Windows only’ approach of many of its competitors is refreshing. This is compounded by the prominence of Barton…

• It just works! Distributions that ‘just work’ out of the box are vital to Linux’s future and will help shape the next generation, but there’s still room for more technical offerings too. • Accessible and beautiful A sensible set of initial applications and design to rival commercial OSes are becoming widespread. Linux general app support is key too; the continuing improvement of apps such as LibreOffice helps. • Chrome-OS inspired Linux-based Chrome OS has been far more popular than anticipated, inspiring Chromium OS-based spin-offs and conventional Linux-based homages. • Safe and secure Distributions with a focus on security offer differing levels of protection, from ultra-secure options to slightly tweaked versions of the main popular distros. User awareness of security is growing.…

“Endless OS includes a core set of custom apps ideal for the average user” While the ‘just works’ distros are gaining in popularity and look set to play a big part in the future of Linux, other distros are taking a different approach. These are going beyond a focus on core functionality and the initial setup process by looking at both the visual aspects of the distro and the simplicity of the experience for a specific type of user. The leading example of this today – and a distro that has dramatically increased in popularity – is elementary OS (https://elementary.io ). Right from the off elementary is touted as a ‘fast and open replacement for Windows and Mac OS’. Elementary is based on Ubuntu LTS and includes the Pantheon desktop…

Android-x86 Linux underpins the world’s most popular mobile operating system: Android. But its use isn’t limited only to mobiles – you can run it on your PC too, using this project. Bliss OS Android-x86 works pretty well on a computer, but Bliss OS provides an Android-based OS specifically optimised for laptops and desktops. The community-based release is surprisingly stable. Tails Privacy is a growing concern so it’s not a bad idea to carry a bootable USB with a distro on it for using with unfamiliar PCs. Tails is ideal for this – it’s entirely self-contained and leaves no trace on the PC. Subgraph OS Subgraph OS is a hardened distro based on Debian Linux, designed to be particularly resistant to surveillance and interference by third parties. It’s now in alpha.…

Like it? Peter completed his Masters in Arts in the Digital Media program of the University of the Arts in Bremen in 2017. You can find his other projects in his portfolio at http://peterbuczkowski.com Further reading Peter’s projects range from representations/ interpretations of theoretical topics over functional products, to applied software. He now wants to focus on computer game-connected projects, such as his previous projects Current Times and Twitch. From alarm-clocks and to-do lists to calendar notifications and email reminders, do you sometimes get the feeling that you’re a slave to the machines? Peter Buczkowski has just taken the slavery to the next level. His Prosthetic Photographer ‘looks’ through a digital camera for interesting scenes and when it finds one, it jolts you with an electric shock, forcing your index…

Every popular open source programming language and app documents its source code in what are known as docsets. These are an essential resource for any developer who wants to contribute to the project. As you can imagine, docsets for some large open source projects – such as WordPress – are fairly extensive, so apps like Zeal help make the docsets readable. In a sense, you can think of Zeal as a documentation browser for developers. The app is available in the official repositories of mainstream distributions and Ubuntu users can fetch the latest version via a PPA. Zeal’s main USP is that it enables you to download a wide array of docsets from within the app itself. Head to Tools > Docsets to bring up the Docsets window. To download…

WHAT IS IT? Every time you see this symbol in the magazine, there is free online content that's waiting to be unlocked on FileSilo. WHY REGISTER? • Secure and safe online access, from anywhere • Free access for every reader, print and digital • Download only the files you want, when you want • All your gifts, from all your issues, all in one place 1. UNLOCK YOUR CONTENT Go to www.filesilo.co.uk/linuxuser and follow the instructions on screen to create an account with our secure FileSilo system. When your issue arrives or you download your digital edition, log into your account and unlock individual issues by answering a simple question based on the pages of the magazine for instant access to the extras. Simple! 2. ENJOY THE RESOURCES You can…

Microsoft’s accommodation of Ubuntu is either pleasing or desperate, depending on how you look at it. Regardless, it’s set to continue, following the release of plans to make it a ‘first-class’ guest under the Hyper-V virtualisation platform available in Windows. Under Enhanced Session Mode, Ubuntu 18.04 will be ready to run at any time. In a blog post, Microsoft’s Craig Wilhite, a program manager, explains how his team is “partnering with Canonical on the upcoming Ubuntu 18.04 release to make this experience a reality […] to provide a solution that works out of the box. Hyper-V’s Quick Create VM gallery is the perfect vehicle to deliver such an experience.” The implication is that the “VM experience is tightly integrated with the host […]. With only three mouse clicks, users will…

Top 10 (Average hits per day, 30 days to 9 March 2018) This month In development (7) Stable releases (2) The march of Manjaro continues, breaking up the Debian family’s previous hold on the top three spots. Meanwhile, Kali and Linux Lite maintain their positions. Highlights Fedora Red Hat’s ‘free’ version, supported by a massive community, Fedora uses GNOME and aims to introduce new technologies before other distros. Kali Linux Based on Debian, Kali Linux is intended as a security-focused distribution and sports a collection of security, network-monitoring and forensic tools. Linux Lite With the primary aim of introducing Windows switchers to Linux, this distro is built on Ubuntu LTS and features the Xfce desktop, office suite, and other software. Latest distros available: filesilo.co.uk…

Linus Torvalds has announced Linux 4.16-rc5 (Release Candidate 5). In his announcement mail, he said “[T]this continue [sic] to be pretty normal”, with just a few of the usual types of fixes, and none of the kind of wild security drama seen in the previous development cycle. Traditionally, an RC5 comes toward the very tail-end of a cycle, which typically has no more than seven (or at worst case, eight) RCs in total. This means that, if things go to plan, we will have full coverage of the upcoming feature ‘merge window’ for 4.17 in our next issue. Indeed, most developers are already prepping patches. Meltdown and Spectre patching While the 4.16 development cycle may be far less dramatic than 4.15 was, we’re not completely done with the clean-up exercise…

So far in this series, we've learned the basics of using Make to automate program builds, as well as some more advanced concepts and techniques for handling projects that span multiple directories. In this final tutorial, it’s time to take a different approach to Make. We’re going to learn how we can use it for purposes other than the one it was designed for. We’ll give two case studies, starting with a makefile that can be used to copy files to a server in the most efficient manner possible. We’ll brush up on Make’s capabilities for parallel processing, and show that they are powerful enough that they can be used in their own right. As a common theme, neither of these case studies will use anything like the full capabilities…

1 Implement cryptography the right way Cryptography is all about maths, but you don’t need to be a mathematician to understand some of the key concepts behind it to implement crypto the right way. That’s precisely the point of the book Serious Cryptography, by Jean-Philippe Aumasson (No Starch Press, 2017). It tells you the minimal mathematical concepts behind some of the most-used crypto algorithms, focussing on more practical aspects of crypto such as how to measure the abstract concept of ‘security’; how to implement crypto systems securely; how to measure the cost of an attack; the difference between ‘provable security’ and ‘probable security’; and a high-level description of the most common crypto systems. 2 Pick your conference When it comes to computer security, keeping up to date with new hacking…

“Solus ships with a well-rounded suite of apps for office users, devs, gamers and content creators” One question that’s sure to polarise the opinion of Linux fans is ‘Does it matter if Linux is difficult to set up and use?’. Linux’s roots are obviously among users who can – and even choose to – get deep down and dirty with the internals of a system to get it working at all and get it working well. While this is all well and good, it creates a barrier to entry – perceived by some as no bad thing, but by many others as a fundamental problem for Linux. Great strides have been made in this area in recent years, and improvements will continue for next-generation distros. Solus (https://solus-project.com) is a great…

Antergos Antergos is another option based on Arch Linux, adding a graphical installer to the distro. It focuses on simplicity, offering a fully configured OS with sensible defaults to get started right away. It uses the Numix theme for a fresh, modern appearance. Linux Mint Linux Mint’s goal is to produce a modern, elegant distribution blending ease of use with powerful features. Based on Ubuntu, it’s designed to be ready to go from the off. Community-driven development means a thriving user base and growing popularity. Nitrux OS Nitrux is a relatively new Linux distribution which focuses on design. It’s based on Ubuntu but features Nomad desktop, which is built on KDE Plasma 5 and Qt. Other major features include a built in-firewall, Snap-based software and semi-rolling release model.…

“Should Purism succeed in delivering a fully functioning phone OS, it will have achieved something Canonical couldn’t” When you’re working on your computer, you expect your data to be safe. Even if you’re not someone who is specifically at risk, you expect your operating system to look out for you. Until now, this hasn’t really been a major focus – Linux has enjoyed something of a ‘security through obscurity’ resilience to attacks and together with the peer-reviewed security nature of open source, most mainstream distros haven’t trumpeted their security features. This is slowly changing, however, with the introduction of distros such as PureOS, https://pureos.net. Pure OS is a Debian-based distro using the Gnome desktop environment which comes with leading privacy-protecting applications installed. Out of the box you’ll find Tor support,…

Resources Raspberry Pi Zero Micro SD card Micro-USB to USB cable There’s no doubt that the Raspberry Pi boasts a wide range of resources – software and hardware which can be used for computing, programming and creating exciting and engaging projects. There are numerous add-on boards and components to expand the capabilities of the Pi. A lot of these require access to the command line or the GUI via a screen, available in a range of sizes, styles and colours. To use your Raspberry Pi you also require a keyboard, mouse, power supply or USB battery. The Raspberry Pi Zero also requires additional conversion sockets to add the various components. This often means you must carry around an additional kit if you want to access your Pi away from your…

Specs CPU Intel Pentium Pro or AMD Athlon Graphics Video adaptor and monitor with 1,024x768 or higher resolution RAM 1GB Storage 10GB Licence Various, mostly GNU GPL Available from www.calculate-linux.org The Calculate Linux project produces a handful of distributions all based on the venerable Gentoo Linux. In addition to a bunch of desktops for regular use, there’s Calculate Directory Server (CDS), Calculate Linux Scratch (CLS), and Calculate Scratch Server (CSS) for business and advanced users. CDS can add clients through LDAP and Samba, and Directory Server also includes Mail, Instant Messaging via Jabber and other functions. If you want to spin your Gentoo-based distribution, you can use CLS and CSS, which include everything you need to build your own desktop or server variant. The desktop release has several…

Fed up of seeing pestering online ads? The cross-platform, open source uBlock Origin browser extension is an ad-blocker that doesn’t just zap unwanted adverts, but also protects your privacy by blocking tracking servers, malware domains, and more. The extension is available in the app stores of all mainstream web browsers including Firefox, Chromium, Opera, Chrome and others. It comes with dozens of well-maintained filter lists, which unlike some other content filters don’t bog down the web browser. In fact, the browser might actually become more responsive, because the memory saved by not displaying adverts is generally larger than the memory required to use the extension. uBlock Origin also manages to work its magic without any noticeable delay in page loading. There’s a minimal user interface which helps you keep track…

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PROJECT HIGHLIGHT Flutter Google’s new mobile UI framework hit beta in late February, so it’s no great surprise that it has gained in popularity. Its main appeal is that it enables high-speed development across multiple platforms – using built-in Material Design and iOS widgets, motion APIs and natural scrolling – to produce beautiful native interfaces. If you’re interested in finding out more, take a look at the introductory guide: https://flutter.io/get-started NEXT ISSUE ON SALE 3 MAY Control Containers | Ubuntu 18.04 LTS lands FOLLOW US Facebook: facebook.com/LinuxUserUK Twitter: @linuxusermag…