Tabla de contenidos para March 2024 en Linux Magazine

Dear Reader, Another one of those blog posts appeared this month [1] lamenting the end of computer print publishing in America. Whenever this happens, our office experiences a range of responses, from gloating to that odd sensation that comes with being invisible. What about us, dude? Sometimes the eulogists point us out as an exception [2], and sometimes they don’t. But we’ve always been an enigma, a unique little creation that is in both worlds. We certainly look European, and we sell lots of magazines in the UK and Europe. European publishing is in our DNA, and yet we are published in the USA by a team with roots dating back to the early days of American computer publishing, and that gives us some perspective to talk about what the…

Opcode Life Cycles In the Mariana Trench of Linux kernel development swims the elusive yet luminescent creature, the opcode. Rarely seen by user eyes, the opcode forms the basis of the elaborate computer ecosystem upon which rests the digital life and productivity of our entire planet. Opcodes exist at the hardware level. They are implemented by the actual AND, OR, and other silicon-based logic gates that exist by the millions on chips that run nearly every CPU in the known universe. Quantum computers, Babbage difference engines, and Antikythera devices are something else again – Linux support coming soon. Steven Rostedt recently caught a glimpse of the rare and elusive cmpxchg opcode. This opcode compares and then potentially exchanges two values with one another, without allowing anything to interrupt it during…

Few attack methods have gained more attention in recent years than “phishing.” An interesting and deeply concerning report published in the second quarter of 2023 by Zscaler ThreatLabZ [1] noted a 47.2% rise in phishing attacks relative to 2022 which, in turn, was massively higher than the number of recorded attacks in 2021. According to the National Institute Of Standards and Technology (NIST), which is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, phishing is defined as: “A technique for attempting to acquire sensitive data, such as bank account numbers, through a fraudulent solicitation in email or on a website, in which the perpetrator masquerades as a legitimate business or reputable person.” And according to Forbes, “Phishing is still one of the preferred methods used by criminal hackers” [2]. More worryingly,…

The Arduino [1] project was initially created in 2005 at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Italy as an educational tool to teach students how to create and program interactive devices with sensors and actuators. Over time, the project expanded beyond its academic origins and became the go-to platform for hobbyists interested in programming microcontroller boards. The Arduino graphical integrated development environment (IDE) [2] (Figure 1) has played a significant role in Arduino’s success. It’s easy to learn, without too many bells and whistles, but with all the basics you need. If you’re satisfied with the Arduino IDE or if you use another IDE for Arduino, such as Visual Studio Code [3] with PlatformIO [4], feel free to continue using them. However, many developers have a command-line-centric workflow because it…

Diffoscope [1] is a Python 3 command-line tool that shows, with many more details than you might imagine, all the possible differences between two files, folders, or file archives in TAR, ISO, or other formats. In TAR, ISO, and the others, diffoscope can browse the full internal hierarchy of those containers to look at every file they contain. The basic features and most common uses of diffoscope were previously explained by Bruce Byfield in Linux Magazine [2]. After a brief recap of those features, I will discuss what I consider a limitation of this tool for non-programmers and then illustrate a general method to overcome that limitation – allowing you to much more quickly exploit this great tool’s potential. Diffoscope’s Main Features The full diffoscope package can handle almost every…

The number of online threats increases every year. Phishing attacks, for example, are growing more sophisticated and are often prepared in such a way that it is very difficult to distinguish a malicious message from a legitimate one. Analysts are often challenged with determining whether a file, such as a file sent to an email address, is malicious or not. If the file does turn out to be malicious, the next questions are what are the contents and what task is it supposed to perform? When it comes to analyzing potentially malicious files, distributions that are adapted to malware analysis come in handy. The REMnux forensic toolkit and SIFT Workstation, for instance, are examples of toolkits designed for digital forensics tasks. What Is It? I’ll show you an example of…

In my continuing quest to become immortal, I’ve been maintaining a YouTube channel that displays newly produced videos on an ongoing basis (Figure 1). I figured that it would be interesting to see which of my productions did best: the home cooking videos, those dealing with car repair tasks, or even those dissecting and modding all kinds of electronic gadgets. Sure, YouTube provides basic stats in its Studio section, but because I like writing my own code with custom features, I thought it’d be interesting to see how to fetch YouTube stats with Go and process and visualize the data this month. Register Before You Try Before granting your homegrown applications access to the viewer metadata, however, YouTube owner Google requires you to register a project [1] to use their…

Sometimes you want a grand, sweeping application that will transform your experience, and sometimes you just want a simple tool to make your life a little easier. In this month’s Linux Voice, we lean into a few of those simple tools. We take you inside diffoscope, the value-added diff utility you can use to find the differences between similar files. We also introduce you to the Qiplex toolset, a collection of tools that will help you take the monotony out of ordinary file management tasks. And finally, we show you how printing from the command line can be the simplest, quickest option – using just a single input line – for printing Postscript and PDF files.…

Linux Magazine is your guide to the world of Linux. Monthly issues are packed with advanced technical articles and tutorials you won't find anywhere else. Explore our full catalog of back issues for specific topics or to complete your collection. Order online: https://bit.ly/Linux-Magazine-catalog #279/February 2023 Intrusion Detection You don't need a fancy appliance to watch for intruders --just Suricata and a Raspberry Pi. On the DVD: EndeavourOS Galileo 11 and Arch Linux 2023.12.01 #278/January 2024 Scientific Computing A crypto mining rig is built for math. Can an old rig find a second life solving science problems? That all depends on the problem. Also this month, we explore a few popular data analysis techniques and stir up some analysis of our own with the R programming language. On the DVD: Kubuntu…

Available Starting March 8 Preview Newsletter The Linux Magazine Preview is a monthly email newsletter that gives you a sneak peek at the next issue, including links to articles posted online. Sign up at: https://bit.ly/Linux-Update…

Gnome 46 Alpha Available for Public Testing It seems only yesterday that Gnome 45 was released to further polish the open source desktop environment. On January 12, the team posted an announcement regarding the release of 46.alpha (https://discourse.gnome.org/t/gnome-46-alpha-released/18940). This latest release includes a few key features that should excite Gnome users. Headlining that list is the new headless remote login via the Gnome Display Manager (GDM). This new feature is made possible via gnome-remote-desktop, which provides a built-in server that allows users to connect remotely with Pipewire (the subsystem used for handling audio and video streams for Linux). Also included with Gnome 46 is a new terminal app, called Prompt, which (according to the Gnome blog: https://blogs.gnome.org/chergert/2023/12/14/prompt/) “marries the best of Gnome Builder’s seamless container support, the beauty of Gnome…

Considering computer memory I belong to mailing lists for several farflung groups that I had the privilege of knowing over the years. One of those lists is “Linux-aus”, loosely formed around the Australian Linux Community. Recently one of its members, Russell Coker, lamented about the huge memories that Linux systems use these days. This led to a discussion about how inexpensive main memory is today, how fast processors are, and why should we really care how much memory is used by applications or how many cycles are used to run an application? Main memories, even in laptops, have grown from the 64MB of the mid-1960s to 8, 16, or even 32GB (in top-end laptops) today. That is a growth of approximately 500 times. A less discussed issue is the increase…

Sparkling gems and new releases from the world of Free and Open Source Software Control software Chataigne Despite missing native Linux versions of the most popular professional creative software, Linux and open source solutions thrive whenever there’s both a creative and a technical requirement. This is particularly evident in projects such as Monome Norns, which now hosts a huge library of music and compositional tools. It’s also evident in 3D design and CAD utilities such as Blender, FreeCAD, and Open-SCAD, and in applications for live and creative performance and broadcasting, including Ardour, Ossia Score, and this, Chataigne (a French word for chestnut). While Chataigne is difficult to summarize, it acts like an IDE for creative people who may want to build interactive elements into their creation, and it’s rather brilliant.…

Users, developers, and vendors meet at Linux events around the world. We at Linux Magazine are proud to sponsor the Featured Events shown here. For other events near you, check our extensive events calendar online at https://www.linux-magazine.com/events. If you know of another Linux event you would like us to add to our calendar, please send a message with all the details to info@linux-magazine.com. DrupalCon Portland 2024 Date: May 6-9, 2024 Location: Portland, Oregon Website: https://events.drupal.org/portland2024 The biggest open-source event in North America, DrupalCon, is coming back to the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon. We can't wait to see you at this one-of-a-kind experience! Whether you’re new to Drupal or a longtime member of the Drupal community, you’ll find new insights and connections to advance your career and your business. ISC…