Inhoudsopgave van May 2025 - Linux Format

“Kubernetes saw its first code commit in June 2014. After the hype around Hadoop, some speculated that Kubernetes would fade away as well. Instead, it has continued to grow thanks to features that made it more accessible and useful across IT domains beyond just app deployment. StatefulSets is one such feature. By providing pods with stable network identities and persistent storage attachment, StatefulSets allowed mature solutions for managing clustered databases on traditional infrastructure, like Patroni for Postgres, to be used in Kubernetes pods. Kubernetes could now support databases reliably as well as stateless containers. Some developers explored alternative approaches. They argued that having the Kubernetes operator manage the addressing, storage and role of each pod in the cluster makes the best use of Kubernetes and aligns more with cloud-native principles.…

“Last month I discussed burnout in the kernel community, particularly as a side effect of assorted contentious debates. One of the larger, more contentious debates has centred around the adoption of Rust. Arguments over Rust were enough to drive the Asahi (Apple Silicon) Linux project lead to quit. That’s too bad, but it’s not an isolated event. Central to the debate is that of introducing a new language with very different semantics from C, in which the kernel was originally written. C does not have the concept of memory safety and instead allows you to do very bad and dangerous things with memory, assuming you know what you’re doing. Rust is constructed to be safe and won’t allow you to do things that could lead to memory safety bugs that…

The multitude of directories in a Linux installation can be quite confusing at times, so here is a brief rundown. /usr is used by the OS, and this is where the package manager installs most of its files. Do not be tempted to install or modify files in here as your changes could well be overwritten by future updates. Most programs have the option of altering the default configurations and other files by placing them in /etc, which takes priority over /usr in these cases. Systemd relies heavily on this, and the man pages show how you can override just about anything this way. If you’re installing software from source, the default location is /usr/local. This has the same directory structure as /usr, but is not affected by package managers.…

It is this neglect (and to a lesser extent users not upgrading) that leads to the characteristically fragmented Android ecosystem that we know today. A quick glance at https://statcounter.com will show you that some 35% of devices are running Android 14 (the latest), with the previous couple of releases not too far behind. The concern is that a good number of devices are running Android 11 or earlier. And those versions no longer receive security updates, at least not from Google. So, in theory, those devices become vulnerable as soon as new attacks are unearthed. Apart from being a security risk, these devices generally end up becoming Android landfill. If you have an older device that you want to breathe life back into, why not try installing an AOSP-based (or…

Depending on what you’re used to, LineageOS might seem anywhere between indistinguishable or drastically different from your phone’s previous OS. If you have one of Google’s Pixel devices, which run pure, unblemished Android, you’ll feel right at home. LineageOS also keeps the UI as Google intended. If you’re used to UI overlays such as Samsung’s Touchwiz or Xiaomi’s MIUI, then things will seem different. Don’t worry, though – it’s really easy to get the hang of. But maybe you don’t want easy. Or maybe you just want to run something else. And that’s fine, because Android is not the only fruit. Come to think of it, it’s not a fruit at all. Anyway, we digress. The first modern attempt at a serious open source (up to certain bits of firmware…

The Upton One, which is seemingly named after Raspberry Pi co-founder and CEO Eben Upton, is a sleek laptop with the power of the Compute Module 5. Using the Compute Module 5 means that users should be able to configure their laptop RAM and eMMC by swapping out the CM5 module. If Raspberry Pi continues to use the same dual 100-pin high-density connectors (as it did moving from the Compute Module 4 to 5), then we could upgrade the Upton One when the Compute Module 6 arrives. For all of us who enjoy hacking with the GPIO, we’ve asked Argon40 to confirm how the GPIO will be broken out of the laptop. Previous Argon cases have broken out the full GPIO via a hatch, could it be the same? The…

SPECS Build: Cast aluminium Cooling: Cast aluminium heatsink, 30mm PWM fan Ports: Dual HDMI, 2x rear USB 2.0 via Pi, 2x USB 3.0 via Pi, 2x front-facing USB 2.0 ports, 3.5mm audio jack with DAC GPIO: Full GPIO, UART and RTC via JST, camera (CSI) and display (DSI) ports, optional OLED display via GPIO, optional ZigBee header, optional M.2 PCIe Gen 3 board for NVMe SSD Size: 160 x 95 x 30mm Argon 40 has a history of designing eye-catching cases for the Raspberry Pi. The Argon range has always reminded us of a prop from The Expanse, with cool aluminium and space-grey colours merged with sci-fi design. But for its latest case, the Argon One V5, we get a black case. Heck, it reminds us of a VHS cassette.…

One of the best features of the Vim text editor is its extensibility with the aid of plugins. It probably won’t surprise you, then, to learn that Vim offers a plugin to help you quickly draw a whole multitude of shapes. Some Linux distros now offer Vim-tiny instead of the full-blown Vim editor, which is often criticised for being too overwhelming for new users. The minimalist variant of Vim offers a limited number of features, however, so you might want to install the full version from your software repositories when you start working with Vim’s plugins. With Vim itself installed, you can now download the DrawIt plugin with the wget -O DrawIt. vba.gz https://www.vim.org/scripts/download_script.php?src_id=21108 command. This downloads the latest version of the DrawIt plugin, but we still have to install…

The general, quick and dirty method presented in this and next month’s tutorial is perfect for occasional bulk generation of ODF documents, and for learning about all their components in a concrete, practical way. Sooner or later, however, people needing to do heavy ODF processing on a regular basis will have to graduate to something more powerful than what is presented here. In principle, since ODF is basically a zipped archive of assorted XML files, any XML library or program could be used to process ODF files, and there are so many tools that is impossible to master them all. As far as ODF is concerned, however, there is no scarcity of software made to handle it. The first solution you may want to evaluate is the ODF Toolkit (https://odftoolkit.org),…

Part Two! Don’t miss part three in next month’s issue! OUR EXPERT Mike Bedford had his first hands-on RISC experience with the Pi’s ARM-based chip, despite having been around to see some of the early RISC chips. Linux can trace its roots to the Intel 80386 – the only processor supported by the very first version of Linux – but the early ’90s computing landscape was a lot more varied than that. What’s more, it wouldn’t take long for Linux to embrace many of the up-and-coming alternative processor architectures and the computers they powered. We’re going to look at some of the non-x86 processor families of the ’80s and ’90s that were designed to address the high-performance workstation and server market. They adhered to the RISC philosophy and, despite the market…

OUR EXPERT Ali Jennings fully embraces the adage “those who can’t, teach”, to the full extent of not teaching either, but then what’s this? There are plenty of 3D printers to choose from nowadays, which means there’s a model to fit every budget and every need. Because hobbies can cover a huge range of activities, in this selection we’ve focused on printers that offer the greatest flexibility in terms of use, while also considering the workflow and how easy it is to transform your hobbying ideas into reality. Since hobbies can take many forms, including 3D printing itself, we’ve tried to highlight the types of hobby areas each printer is best suited to. So, whether it’s models, RC, cosplay, jewellery, crafting or just 3D printing, you’ll find some great options here.…

In Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, the author claimed it takes 10,000 hours to master any complex skill. Critics later determined that Gladwell had been observing expert musicians, who after practising in the right way for years came to dominate their field. Misconceptions like the 10,000 hour rule and the perceived complexity of hacking mean that many people believe they’ll never have a deep enough understanding of the subject. Still, this ignores the fact that better men have gone before us to make learning about pen testing not only easy, but fun. In this month’s Hacking section, you’ll discover some of the basic equipment necessary for ethical hacking of wireless networks. The Panda N600 Wi-Fi adaptor not only has excellent range and speed, but also works with popular pentesting distros such as…

If you’re just starting out as an ethical hacker, you need to follow some best practices. For those who want to practise their pentesting skills, there are plenty of tools, including Juice Shop, designed specifically to help you identify common security flaws. However, even if you’re using pen-testing tools for demonstration or practice purposes, you should never use the same operating system you use as your daily driver. If you do so, you run the risk of introducing security vulnerabilities to your main system. Instead, it’s best to use a dedicated penetration-testing distro, such as BackBox or Kali Linux, to run all your tools. These not only come with common security tools pre-installed but allow you to run them safely in a contained environment. If you want to save your…

Just as Windows Mobile wasn’t Windows, and Apple’s iOS isn’t Mac OS, Android isn’t desktop Linux. That was the dream of Canonical’s Ubuntu Touch, a hybrid device that enables you to carry desktop Linux with you, but that functions equally well on a mobile device. Unfortunately, the reality of offering complex desktop software with its detailed toolkits that works on a mobile device never progressed far enough to be commercially successful. But, of course, as it was open source, that dream never quite died… Of course, you can use the terminal, SSH and VNC on Android as apps – we look at those and other mobile options – but really the dream has always been how you can take full-fat Linux on the move with you. With projects like Ubuntu…

Former Amazon vice president Ethan Evans has admitted that “Goliath lost” in the company’s attempts to disrupt the gaming platform Steam. In a LinkedIn post, Evans catalogued Amazon’s failures over 15 years, such as the tech giant’s failed attempt to scale up Reflexive Entertainment After Amazon’s acquisition of Twitch, Evans noted that the company also created its own PC games store under the mistaken assumption that users already connected to Twitch would then buy their games from Amazon directly. He also touched on the Luna game streaming service, which like Google’s Stadia, failed to gain any significant market share relative to Steam. He stated that the key difference was failing to understand how players made use of Steam, given that it provided extra features, such as a virtual trophy cabinet…

QUBES OS 4.2.4 This ultra-secure OS uses Xen-based virtualisation to compartmentalise sensitive data on your machine. This means you can have one browser dedicated to online shopping, for instance, and another for work-related emails running completely isolated from each other. The latest release is based on Debian 12 and contains revisions to GUI apps like Qubes Global Settings, as well as the interface for creating new qubes (virtual machines). Xen itself has been upgraded to version 4.17. SMOOTHWALL EXPRESS 3.1 SP6 Since the year 2000, this operating system has been maintained by the British-based company Smoothwall as a specialist firewall distribution. As such, Smoothwall has no graphical desktop environment but it can be configured via a web interface. The release notes state that the Linux kernel has been bumped to…

Linus Torvalds announced the seventh (and likely final) Release Candidate for what will be Linux 6.14. As we covered during the merge window (period of early development when disruptive changes land), the new kernel includes driver enhancements, particularly for AMD GPUs and AI-related integrated NPUs. It also includes the new ntsync driver to speed up Windows emulation in Wine. In fact, a late breaking development on the latter identified that it was by default only available to the root user, prior to a trivial one-liner patch that changes permissions on the device file used to access it. Kernel Samepage Merging The kernel (optionally) includes a feature known as Kernel Samepage Merging (KSM). It is traditionally used by KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine), the in-kernel hypervisor, to detect when pages (the unit…

We’d love to try to answer any questions you send to answers@linuxformat.com, no matter what the level. We’ve all been stuck before, so don’t be shy. However, we’re only human (although many suspect Neil isn’t paying attention), so it’s important that you include as much information as you can. If something works on one distro but not another, tell us. If you get an error message, please tell us the exact message and precisely what you did to invoke it. If you have, or suspect, a hardware problem, let us know about the hardware. Consider installing hardinfo or lshw. These programs list the hardware on your machine, so send us their output. If you’re unwilling, or unable, to install these, run the following commands in a root terminal and send…

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Pop!_OS is a sophisticated desktop Linux OS aimed at technology experts. The developers are currently working on a custom desktop environment written in Rust, but development has been slow. As a result, the current stable release is based on Ubuntu 22.04, which is quite out of date now, and you might be unable to install some software on it. Xubuntu is an official Ubuntu flavour based around the Xfce desktop environment. We’re fans of that environment, but it hasn’t been updated in a while. We’re looking forward to distros that implement the latest version of Xfce (4.20) later this year. We chose to look at Lubuntu instead as it’s similar. Ubuntu Mate is another official Ubuntu flavour. As the name suggests, it uses the Mate desktop environment. Mate is a…

Much like replacing any operating system, replacing your mobile OS is not something you should even think about unless you’ve backed up anything important from your device. The main storage will be completely wiped, and you should probably remove your SD card (if you’re not going to back up everything on it elsewhere) to ensure its data survives. These days, many people use Google Authenticator (or a less Googley service) for two-factor authentication. This is great but if those codes disappear, you lose access to everything. So, make sure you have backup paper codes, or move the authenticator to a new device. One that you’re not about to wipe. Android apps generally work fine on Android-based OSes (and even on some non-Android ones, thanks to Waydroid and such) but there…

If you look carefully at PostmarketOS’s devices page, you’ll see that the ubiquitous Raspberry Pi is supported. In fact, the whole range of Pis are supported, although the 32-bit ones (the Zero, 1 and 2 with armhf architectures) probably won’t be for much longer – and also aren’t recommended due to resource constraints. You can also run LineageOS on a Raspberry Pi, but if you want to run anything newer than version 17 (based on Android 10.1), you’ll need a Pi 4. This is mostly due to Google bumping Android 11’s RAM requirements to 2GB back in 2018. If you want bleeding-edge LineageOS releases for the Pi 3, 4 or 5, look no further than Konsta Kang’s repository at https://konstakang.com/devices/. You’ll find images that you can write to an SD…

You can’t have missed the uproar of DeepSeek in the AI community. The minnow took on the big names in AI and caused stock prices to drop sharply, so over on Tom’s Hardware, I tested DeepSeek on a Raspberry Pi 5 with 8GB of RAM. Now let me manage your expectations before we get too far. It ran really slowly. Using the R1:8b model, I asked DeepSeek to “write a python script to ask the user their name, save it to a variable called username, and then greet the user by their name 100 times”. It then proceeded to tell me, in great detail, its reasoning as to how and why it was tackling this problem in this way. It read a bit like an online recipe, telling me about…

OUR EXPERT Les Pounder is associate editor at Tom’s Hardware and a freelance maker for hire. He blogs about his adventures and projects at http://bigl.es. YOU NEED • Pi Pico W or Pico 2 W • Breadboard • 3x jumper wires • NeoPixels • Code: https://bit.ly/lxf327code We have a deep love for NeoPixels. One of our first projects as a maker in residence (well over a decade ago) was a USB dance mat that controlled a series of NeoPixels. It was called the Dance Mat of Doom and it annoyed a lot of parents at the Raspberry Pi Birthday Party. NeoPixels, WS2812B to be exact, are individually addressable RGB LEDs. Essentially, we can individually control thousands of RGB LEDs using very few system resources. In this tutorial, we shall learn how…

At a high level, many of the enhancements stem from the upgraded tensor cores in the Blackwell architecture. The biggest change is native support for the FP4 (4-bit floating-point) data type, with throughput that’s twice as high as the prior generation’s FP8 compute. Nvidia has been training and updating its AI models to leverage the enhanced cores, and it lumps these all under the Blackwell Neural Shaders header. Nvidia lists five new features: Neural Textures, Neural Materials, Neural Volumes, Neural Radiance Fields and Neural Radiance Cache. Read through the list fast, and you might start to feel a bit neurotic… Neural Materials will help future games potentially reduce memory use for textures and materials by around one third. That will require game developers to implement the feature, so it won’t…

OUR EXPERT Nick Peers has come a long way since piecing together over 1,000 irreplaceable text files, one file at a time, from the command line back in the late ’90s. One of the most fundamental rules of backing up is that you should ideally store at least one copy of your data in another location. The simplest way to do this is through a third-party cloud provider such as Google, Mega.nz or OneDrive. But just how secure are those backups? These days, it’s not just online breaches you have to worry about, it’s the increasingly aggressive stance taken by governments over having access to individuals’ private data. The solution is to wrap your backups in an additional layer of encryption before you upload them to the cloud – all using…

The OpenDocument Format for Office Documents (ODF) was developed, beginning in December 2002, by an industry consortium called Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). The first version of ODF was approved in 2006 as an international standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), which was a big deal because ISO/IEC compliance is mandatory for many public administrations worldwide. Successive releases of ODF, whose version 1.4 is under development on GitHub, added several features to improve accessibility and support for digital signatures, encryption, change-tracking and interoperability. When ODF first came out, Microsoft immediately marched to quell its adoption, knowing, much better than most free/open source software advocates, that it’s closed file formats that really create and enforce monopolies, rather than proprietary software…

Hopefully, you’re a step ahead when it comes to your mental well-being if you’re using Linux. With Linux, you decide what’s installed and how it works. You can mould the environment to your needs by selecting desktop components and applications, turning your workstation into a safe and happy place. Sometimes, you want to retreat into the computer without distractions, and Blanket (https://github.com/rafaelmardojai/blanket) is a small app that has a number of sound sources, such as rain and birds, that you can combine into the perfect audio environment. It’s particularly relaxing through headphones. We all like hunkering down on the computer, but remembering to take breaks is important. As well as benefiting your state of mind, a break every now and then can help stave off repetitive strain injury. Workrave (https://workrave.org)…

The chips we look at in the main part of this article were mostly produced by existing computer manufacturers, or by companies specifically set up to address the RISC market. But the established players in the CISC market also ventured into producing RISC processors. Motorola formed part of the consortium responsible for the hugely successful PowerPC. Intel went alone, though and, as we see here, it wasn’t its finest hour. Intel’s venture into the RISC market was double stranded, and contemporary to most of the other chips we look at in the main part of this article. The i960 made its debut in 1988, and the i860 appeared a year later. The i960 had a lot going for it. It was the world’s first superscalar microprocessor, which made it able…

The testing journey begins with the initial build, setup and calibration, assessing the ease of the process. While some printers can be up and running within minutes, others may require far more time and effort before they are ready. Next, we examine the first layer print quality, dimensional accuracy, bridging, overhangs, stringing, layer adhesion, and surface finish. Speed is another important factor, as we analyse the time it takes the printer to produce a model without compromising print quality. Noise levels are also a consideration; some printers are far from quiet, especially when the speed picks up – OK for short prints but incredibly annoying if a print duration is hours or days long. We thoroughly examine features, such as connectivity options, interface intuitiveness, software compatibility, and any additional functionalities…

As huge fans of the show, we had to ask whether Offensive Security was involved in the depictions of Kali in Mr Robot. Jim: Yes, we were involved. The show’s team would often reach out asking, “We want to accomplish XYZ, what attack scenario would make sense?” I remember where they were doing a flashback to a specific date, so they asked us for the version of Kali (actually BackTrack) that was being used at the time. We also participated in the show’s alternative reality game (ARG). We had a process where we hid clues in Kali’s source code for the season finale. That was quite fun, as we had to find clever ways to hide something fun in the distribution months beforehand. Ben: If I remember rightly, it was…

Part four! Catch up with previous issues – see page 64! OUR EXPERT Nate Drake is a tech journalist specialising in cybersecurity and retro gaming. His first experience of video games was the cocktail cabinet version of Space Invaders in his father’s local. So far in this series, we have covered how the classic programming language Basic (Beginners’ All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) can still be used today to code games like Mark Buckwell’s Cosmic Invaders. In the first part, we created code to establish a basic title screen. The next tutorial covered loading elements such as the player ship and bases, and the invaders. If you followed the steps in the third part and/or ran the sample script COSMIC10.bas, your player ship is now capable of firing missiles. The…

Now you have a good understanding of the game code, you can start customising play. One of the simplest ways to do this is by tweaking the game’s starting values to alter the difficulty. For instance, if you change the value of MBomb% on line 2260 of the original code from MBomb%=Start%+6 to say MBomb%=Start%+8, this increases the maximum number of alien bombs on screen from six to 12. You can also up the ante by changing the value for Shield$ to alter the shield shape. Currently, this is a series of character blocks (BL$), but you can reduce these to make the shields smaller or have a different layout. (Use D$ to move the cursor downwards.) If you feel the # character isn’t the best choice to represent alien…

A big difference between Rust and most other programming languages is the concept of ownership for complex types such as String, Vec or Struct. In this code, s1 is assigned a string value “Hello”. Then s2 gets the value from s1. Nothing unusual there, you might think, but you would be wrong. Other programming languages would say that you’d copied s1 to s2, and print s1. Rust doesn’t; it moved the value from s1 to s2, and s2 now has the value and owns it; s1 is no longer valid. The compiler won’t compile the println! line as the screenshot (top of page) shows. Each value has a single owner and when it goes out of scope, the value is dropped. What about primitive types such as i32? That compiles…

“Digital infrastructure underpins almost every aspect of governance, communication and commerce, so ensuring digital sovereignty has become a key priority for nations and organisations. An often overlooked but key aspect of this is the adoption of open and standardised document formats. Document standards such as the Open Document Format (ODF) play a key role in maintaining user control over data, ensuring interoperability and reducing reliance on proprietary systems. Open standards ensure that documents remain accessible and editable across software versions and applications. This promotes transparency and interoperability, facilitates collaboration, and enables archiving without fear of obsolescence. Proprietary formats may contain undisclosed vulnerabilities that could be exploited for cyber-attacks or unauthorised access to data. Open standards have been vetted by the global technology community, making them more resistant to security threats.…

Brother printers have traditionally enjoyed a solid reputation for reliability, with none of the vendor lock-in found with other brands. According to YouTuber and right-to-repair advocate Louis Rossman, this may have changed, as he claims to have uncovered proof that the company may have degraded print quality for those using third-party cartridges. In a statement to ArsTechnica, Brother explicitly stated that it does not block third-party ink from its machines, though it recommends using genuine Brother cartridges. Brother also reached out to Rossman, who’s pinned a comment to this effect to his YouTube video. He’s also stated that he’s sent a number of technical questions to Brother to see if there might be another explanation why other users have reported quality issues when printing with non-Brother products. Rossman has promised…

“Starting with Mesa 25.1, Nouveau users will no longer get the old Nouveau OpenGL driver by default and will instead get Zink+NVK. Unlike most OpenGL drivers, which are written to target the underlying hardware directly, Zink is an OpenGL implementation written on top of Vulkan. We’ve been talking about this for a while but finally landed the merge request. If we did this right, most users wouldn’t notice beyond getting a slightly more stable experience with better performance. Zink has matured a lot since the initial blog post in 2018. It has grown to support OpenGL 4.6 and is a conformant implementation on top of multiple hardware drivers. It’s also improved significantly in performance and stability. We’re confident that Zink+NVK will be an improvement over Nouveau GL across the board.…

Neil Bothwick lives and breathes Linux and open source. Q It’s a date What is the correct command-line terminal command for changing the date attribute of any file? Not to be confused with the date modified or date created attribute of a file. If it is not possible using the terminal, does an open source app exist that can accomplish such a date attribute file change? Owen Nash A There are several date attributes associated with a file in the ext4 filesystem: date created, date modified, date changed and date accessed. There are also date attributes stored in the EXIF data of image files – usually from digital cameras. The difference between date modified and date changed is that the former is set when the file’s contents are modified, whereas the…

SPECS Arch: GB202 Tech: TSMC 4N Trans: 92 billion SMs: 170 Shaders: 21,760 AI cores: 680 RT cores: 170 Clock: 2,407MHz VRAM: 32GB, 28Gb/s, 512 bits Cache: 96MB ROP: 176 Texture units: 680 TFLOPS: 104 FP32, 838 FP16, 3,352 FP8/4 Bandwidth: 1,792GB/s TBP: 575 watts The raw specs alone give a hint at the performance potential of the RTX 5090. It has 33% more Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs) than the previous generation RTX 4090, just over double the SMs of the 3090, and 2.5 times as many SMs as the RTX 2080 Ti that kicked off the ray-tracing and AI GPU brouhaha. Just as important, it has 33% more VRAM than the 4090, and the GDDR7 runs 33% faster than the GDDR6X memory used on the 4090, yielding a 78% increase…

Michael Reed is such an expert at spins, he should be a spin doctor for a political party or join the band The Spin Doctors. We’re casting our eyes over a collection of desktop Linux distros that use the ever-popular Ubuntu as their base. Ubuntu offers a stable and well-supported underpinning, and this means that the developers of a spin-off distribution can concentrate on crafting and customising the user-facing aspects rather than reinventing the plumbing underneath. We’re concentrating on pure desktop distributions that the average user can use to carry out typical computing tasks such as browsing the web, running business apps and playing media. We’re also considering if they would make a good starting point for Linux newbies. Who knows, one of these might be the ideal recommendation that tempts…

The Android/iOS duopoly that dominates the mobile landscape gets us down. Apple’s walled garden approach to software and locked-down hardware keeps its ecosystem pristine, but somewhat boring. And stock Android just wants to show you in-app Google ads and harvest all your data to make Google richer. This is particularly galling, because at its heart, Android is built on open source. We’re going to show you how you can get rid of all that proprietary software on your device, so you can enjoy la vida libre. On your phone at least. First we’ll look at some privacy-enhancing tips that will easily quell the Google-wards flow of information. Then we’ll look at some open source apps that you can enjoy, and how you can get them not from the Play Store, but…

Reading this magazine, you are probably already aware that Android is based on Linux. If you’ve ever used an Android smartphone, though, you’ll also be aware that it doesn’t exactly look or feel particularly Linux-ey. Or maybe that’s just us. Anyway, rest assured that behind all those pretty Java (OK, fine, Kotlin) apps, a Linux kernel and userspace are running the show. Specifically the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), which is an operating system in itself, albeit a rather minimal one. It’s missing the Google apps, including the Play Store (so you need to first sideload an alternative marketplace in order to install apps). On top of that, if you want to run AOSP, you need to either port it to your device or use someone else’s port (from the…

Google apps packages have to be installed immediately after a new OS is installed, otherwise they won’t work. The Googley bits have to be on there before any user data. You’ll find links to the required packages at https://wiki.lineageos.org/gapps/ for each Android version (and 32-bit and 64-bit ARM architectures). For clarity, it’s entirely possibly to have Play Services (and associated Google apps) installed without signing into a Google account. You won’t be able to use some apps (in particular the Play Store), and Google will still track you to some extent. If you need apps from the Play Store, you can use an alternative front-end (such as Aurora, which you’ll find on F-Droid). If you really need GApps, flash it with: Then continue with the reboot instructions as detailed in…

Retro is the in thing, and since the early days of the Raspberry Pi, it’s been something of a retro gaming machine. The original Pi offered an analogue-compatible composite video output (the old yellow RCA port) but modern Pis are digital only, which means old-school CRTs lost support, until now. A detailed post from Raspberry Pi outlines how using the new Digital Parallel Interface (DPI) and a bit of external component magic, it’s possible to recreate a full analogue interlaced video output that can drive old CRT displays; specifically classic VGA and RGB-Scart interfaces. The solution involves getting the DPI to generate alternate interlaced video fields, do so at the exact frame timing, and generate the sync pulses. This becomes rather involved on the timing side because VGA utilises separate…

IN BRIEF Born from the ashes of CentOS, AlmaLinux is a lightweight Gnome-based distro that offers a fresh experience while being snappy, even on microSD. It works with all models of Raspberry Pi from 3 to 5, and it can be installed to NVMe for an added speed boost. AlmaLinux 9.5, an RHEL-binary-compatible Linux distro created to fill the gap left by the discontinuation of CentOS, is a lightweight OS designed for the Raspberry Pi 3, 4, 400 and flagship 5. For this review, we’re using a Pi 5 with 4GB of RAM and a class A2 microSD card for the best speed. We downloaded the prebuilt RAW disk image from the AlmaLinux website and, using Raspberry Pi Imager, we flashed the image to a 32GB microSD card. First boot…

CheerLights is a simple Internet of Things (IoT) project that has a goal of being the Hello World of IoT, and a great way to show how one simple command can reach thousands of devices across the globe. It was created by Hans Scharler, and while it is a fantastic way to demonstrate IoT, it is also a remarkably simple means to connect people around the world. Everyone can control the RGB LEDs of any connected project. We can use CheerLights to spread joy, or to show that we are thinking of someone during a dark time. CheerLights works with Mastodon, Discord, MQTT and AdafruitIO, and reacts to supported colours by changing the LED colour of connected devices to match. It really is that simple, and it helps introduce IoT…

OUR EXPERT Shashank Sharma is a trial lawyer in Delhi and an avid Arch user. He’s been writing about open source software for 20 years and lawyering for over 10. As much as one enjoys the company of a spirited and lively nephew, keeping them entertained while on the computer, without turning to Peppa Pig, is a challenge. You can’t leave them to their own devices for fear of bricking your system, or worse still, deleting or moving files and directories through some aggressive mouse and keyboard manoeuvres. Teaching them to type will only take you so far. Thankfully, drawing is a far more entertaining and enthralling activity. Even better to do it from the comfort of the console. While it might sound novel, you’ll probably be surprised to learn…

There’s plenty of help to be had with Duplicati should you need it. The latest (2.1) release gains its first official documentation (https://docs.duplicati.com), but we also recommend the community-written User’s Manual (https://prev-docs.duplicati.com). Although written for v2.0, most of what it contains remains relevant, and you’ll find information here not yet transferred across to the official site, most notably a detailed list of all available advanced options. Should you run into problems, consult the Duplicati logs by going to About > Show Log. Select Live, then choose the level of messages you wish to review, such as Warning or Error, to see what comes up. Then take this information to https://forum.duplicati.com, where you can perform a search on key messages to see if others have reported similar issues. Also take the…

OUR EXPERT Marco Fioretti is a long-time open source trainer and writer, and an aspiring polymath. Part One! Don’t miss next issue, subscribe on page 16! So-called office documents, the collective name given to complex text files with rich formatting, spreadsheets and presentations, are a necessary evil of modern life. Creating such files without any programming skill is easy with suites such as LibreOffice. However, using such tools to manually create large numbers of documents, spreadsheets or slideshows can be really time-consuming. Ditto for creating many versions of the same document, each with different values of one or more variables. This two-part tutorial introduces a quick and dirty – but very flexible – general and important approach to solve this very problem, based on the OpenDocument Format (ODF) for office documents…

OUR EXPERT Michael Reed has a circadian rhythm disorder, and he often wishes there were more than 25.7 hours in a day. Part One! Don’t miss part two in next month’s issue! We’re always being told that the technology corporations are spying on us and gathering data, but there are times when we want to keep tabs on ourselves for the good of our own health. Fortunately, there are loads of Linux applications, mobile apps and websites that can help us to monitor our health, and that’s what we’re going to look at with this short series. Logging applications can be passive or active. They are either stopped and started by the user or they sit in the background recording what you’re up to for later analysis. Some record useful data…

ISSUE 326 April 2025 Product code: LXFDB0326 In the magazine Join our Hacking Academy and discover all the tools and techniques to get started. Plus, find out which power distro is the best, read our interview with the Wireshark founders, defend your network against AI threats, run Android apps on Linux, and learn about the hardware that made Linux great. You’ll also find our usual news and reviews, along with a packed Pi section and more. ISSUE 323 January 2025 Product code: LXFDB0323 In the magazine Follow our pick of Raspberry Pi projects and kick-start your maker hobby. Plus, learn all about Fyne, the toolkit that makes it easy to build cross-platform apps. We also take a look at five of the best IDEs, and some of the latest distro releases.…

In 1980, mainstream processors were typified by the Intel 8086 and 8088, the first of the x86 chips, and representing the CISC philosophy. Yet this was the year in which a RISC project came into being at the University of California, Berkeley. Led by David Patterson – whom we have to thank for the term RISC – the project’s aim was to create a RISC processor. Simulations showed that it would offer similar performance to the DEC VAX/780 high-powered minicomputer. Silicon for the chip, RISC I, was delivered in 1982 and, although it actually ran more slowly than the VAX, it gave the team confidence to progress an upgraded design, RISC II. To cut a long story short, that chip succeeded where RISC I had failed. It outperformed the VAX,…

Cybercriminals are using GitHub to target children with infostealing malware, a new McAfee report has claimed, saying it spotted an ongoing malicious campaign on the popular code repository. In an analysis, the researchers said they observed many repositories pretending to be game hacks, cracks or free versions of otherwise commercial software. However, instead of providing these programs, the repositories were actually hosting Lumma Stealer, a known infostealer malware. Cracks and keygens have been a well-known vector for hacking attacks and cryptominers. This latest move sees famous games such as Roblox, Minecraft, Apex Legends and GTA V being offered. This “network of repositories”, as McAfee described it, changes the description every week, and creates new repositories, as the old ones get flagged and removed by GitHub. The payload, however, always remains…

OUR EXPERT Nate Drake is a technology journalist specialising in cybersecurity. His latest hacking attempt backfired spectacularly, when he accidentally reprogrammed his smart toaster to burn bread to cinders. The fire rises. If you’re serious about diving into the cut and thrust world of penetration testing, you need a safe way to practise your ethical hacking skills. The Juice Shop is a creation of OWASP (Open Worldwide Application Security Project) and provides an excellent way to get started. This web application has been deliberately designed to be insecure. By understanding the Juice Shop app’s various vulnerabilities, budding hackers can gain valuable insight into how to test for them. One of the first challenges is to find the Juice Shop’s score board. This gamifies the process by marking your progress as…

Mayank Sharma has more RPis than he knows what to do with. So he does what any sane person in his situation would do. He forgets about them and buys more. FILE SYNC AND BACKUP FreeFileSync Version: 14.0 Web: https://freefilesync.org Backup apps come in all shapes and sizes, and your distro probably has one by default as well. But if you need something that offers plenty of options through a graphical interface, take a look at FreeFileSync. You can use this handy application to mirror the contents of two folders, as well as take backups, irrespective of whether they are housed in a local drive or a remote location. Download the app’s CLI installer as a tarball from its website. Then extract it and fire up the installer with. /FreeFileSync_14.0_Install.run. By…

Part Three! Catch up with previous issues – see page 64! OUR EXPERT David Bolton gets even rustier with two poker programs for shuffling a pack of cards and outputting a text file of 1,000 sets of seven poker cards. In the previous article, there was a Rust program, PokerGen, that generated a text file of playing cards, seven of them to a line, separated by spaces. Originally, the file output the card suit using Unicode characters; however, it was a bit messy reading those, so we modified it to output text characters instead – ace of diamonds is AD, and so on. The 280-line program PokerHand accepts the name of the file on the command line, then reads it into memory and processes the 1,000 lines, each with seven cards,…

So, we want the program to do two slightly different things: 1. Use the test_card_hands.txt file and print the cards and the result. 2. Use 1000_card_hands.txt and print how long it takes on average to evaluate a hand. In both cases, we still pass in the filename, but we can have the program handle the second case by setting a feature. To do this, we use the Cargo Features capability to add show_ cards. If this is present in the command to run the program, it gets picked up and the program behaves differently. Here are the steps to do this. Step 1. Add this to Cargo.toml. This is a text configuration file created in your project when you do a Cargo new command. Add a blank line after [dependencies]…

LXF328 will be on sale Tuesday 29th April 2025 Secure your browser There’s safe browsing, then there’s secure browsing. We look at the best options for a private online life. Café coding From zero to business hero, we look at how you can deploy open source software to start your own internet café! Your musical muse Linux is amazing for audio and musical production – we delve into MuseScore to explore how to create your own. Of mice and men Enhance the main way you interact with your PC – get a better mouse and tweak your Linux settings. Content of future issues subject to change. We’ve not installed 24.04 yet!!…