Table of contents for May 2023 in Linux Format

As any gamer will tell you, ray tracing is a technique used to generate advanced computer graphics. It simulates the behaviour of light and how it reflects off 3D objects and surfaces. It was first used in Unreal 2 in 2002, so it’s surprising to see ray tracing in Half-Life, which came out four years before. Nevertheless, this is what developer Sultim Tsyrendashiev has done through creating a special mod for the version of Half-Life available via Steam. For more information visit https://github. com/sultim-t/xash-rt/discussions/119/.…

SPEC Size: 1TB Type: M.2 2230 Controller: Phison E21T Mem: Micron 176-layer TLC PCI: PCIe 4.0 x4 DRAM: N/A HMB Spec: 4,750MB/s read, 4,300MB/s write IOPS: 450K read, 545K write Endurance: 600 TBW Warranty: Five years T he Sabrent Rocket 2230 is a tiny but capable PCIe 4.0 SSD designed to fit in special devices as an internal storage upgrade or replacement. The drive exhibits good all-round and sustained performance, and our testing shows it’s also quite efficient. There are multiple capacities offered, but it’s a shame that a 2TB model doesn’t exist yet. This M.2 2230 drive will cost you significantly more than longer 2280 options, but the promise of a retail product with a name behind it is probably worth the premium. The Inland TN436 was the first…

IN BRIEF Endless is the perfect OS for offline environments, coming with a colossal range of built-in programs, games and educational materials. Still, it’s let down by a lack of customisability and a very restrictive software licence. SPECS CPU: 2GHz Mem: 2GB (4GB recommended) HDD: 32GB (Basic) Builds: ARM64, x86_64 Endless OS is a very original reinterpretation of Linux. It’s owned by the Endless OS Foundation, which has been developing the OS for over 10 years. It also produces hardware with the OS pre-installed, including the sub-$100 Endless Mini, which resembles a bowling ball. The overriding ethos behind Endless seems to be to provide an OS that doesn’t require internet access to use. Its developers claim it’s for “underserved users in the developing world”. This obviously could also be useful…

SPECS OS: 64-bit, glibc 2.17+ CPU: 64-bit Mem: 8GB GPU: Nvidia GTX 680, AMD R9 280X HDD: 2GB The first Rogue Legacy won the hearts of many a roguelike fan with a clever twist on the genre that saw failure go hand in hand with progress. And nearly a decade on, Cellar Door Games faces not only the weight of expectation that comes with creating a sequel but competition from an army of titles inspired by its roguelite formula. Far from buckling under pressure, the developer has crafted a spectacular follow-up that revitalises the series with fresh ideas while expanding on what made the original so immensely enjoyable in the first place. Once again, you step into the shoes of a randomised hero tasked with navigating the levels of a…

Version: 0.11.0 Web: https://app.nofwl.com OpenAI’s ChatGPT is all the rage these days. The ChatGPT app just makes it easier to use by wrapping the web-based tool inside a desktop app, along with some useful extensions. This also means that if you can’t use ChatGPT in your browser for some reason – for instance, if it isn’t available in your country – it means you won’t be able to skirt around the issue using this app. The app has a DEB binary for Debian-based distros such as Ubuntu and Debian, but it’s best to use the distro-agnostic AppImage. Just grab the official AppImage from the project’s website and make it executable, either using the file manager and heading to properties, or with the chmod +x command. When it’s installed, fire up…

Version: 2.6.0 Web: https://github.com/dvorka/hstr Like the clipboard, Ctrl+R is another time-saver for anyone who works with the command line. It brings up a searchable view of the history and saves time writing long commands again and again. The HSTR command-line utility improves the command completion feature and makes it more efficient than Bash’s default. It’s a refreshing new way of parsing through the CLI history that eases searching through previously used commands. HSTR is available in the repos of many distros, such as Ubuntu and Fedora, where you can install it with sudo apt install hstr or sudo dnf install hstr . Once installed, you can invoke it using hh or hstr . The utility reads the .bash_history file to provide a suggest-box type functionality to filter the commands. As…

Version: 1.2.9 Web: https://elth0r0. github.io/iqpuzzle IQPuzzle is a challenging pentomino puzzle. Pentominoes are used as puzzle pieces and the game offers more than 300 different board shapes, which you need to fill with the pieces. The game is available in the repos of several distros, such as Fedora. However, to ensure you always have the latest version, you can install it using the distroagnostic Flatpak with the flatpak install flathub com. github.elth0r0.iqpuzzle command. The objective of the game is to arrange the pentominoes in the space available. Before you do, you have the option to change the orientation of a piece. Right-click on a piece to flip it, or use the mouse wheel to rotate it. You can change the mouse controls from the preferences window of the game. To…

Version: 1.0.12 Web: https://github. com/alexkdeveloper/forgetpass Virtually all web browsers have lots of options for generating strong passwords. But not everyone is a fan of using browser-based password or even online or cloud-based services for managing passwords. If you count yourself as one of them, you can use a local password manager, but they don’t have the portability of online solutions. Forgetpass is an offline password generator that attempts to offer the best of both worlds. The app gets its name from the fact that while it can generate strong passwords, you can safely forget the password and instead retrieve it every time you need to sign in. The app is available as a Flatpak and can be installed with the flatpak install flathub com.github. alexkdeveloper.forgetpass command. There’s not much to…

Newsdesk THIS ISSUE: Catch the Lunar Lobster Apple-flavoured Linux Flathub developments Wayland on Gnome Half-Life raytracing The final freeze of Ubuntu 23.04 (Lunar Lobster) is set for 20 April. Meanwhile, we have managed to sift some nuggets of information about new features by testpiloting the latest daily build (https://cdimage. ubuntu.com/ubuntu-budgie/daily-live/current/). As we write this, features are subject to change but we do know that the Flutter-based installer will now be enabled by default. This is welcome news to Ubuntu-noobs, given that it’s not only more lightweight than the previous GTK4 installer but involves fewer steps. It even contains a built-in Wi-Fi connection wizard. The Ubuntu Devs mailing list has also been buzzing with rumours of reintroducing a minimal (140MB) network installer but it hasn’t materialised yet. The kernel freeze is…

KDE developer Nate Graham has announced on his blog (https://pointieststick.com) that work has now officially begun on Plasma 6, which will use the new Qt6 framework. The master branch of Plasma-aligned software repos has already mostly been ported. While work is ongoing, adventurous users can get Plasma 6 running if they want to try it out. There’s a number of bug fixes, as well as an improved UI for window borders and polished link buttons. Full details are available at https:// community.kde.org/Schedules/Plasma_6/.…

SPECS Socket: V LGA1700 Process: Intel 7 10nm Cores (P+E): 6+4 Threads: 16 P cache: 480KB L1, 7.5MB L2, 20MB L3 (shared) P core: 2.5GHz (4.6GHz boost) E cache: 384KB L1, 4MB L2, 20MB L3 (shared) E core: 1.8GHz (3.3GHz) Unlocked: No GPU: N/A Mem max: 128GB, no ECC, two-channel Mem speed: DDR5 4,800MT/s, DDR4 3,200MT/s PCIe: v5 and v4 20-lanes processor base Power: 65W Maximum turbo power: 148W W e’ve been waiting patiently to test the Intel Core i5 13400F processor. You’ll understand why once you read the specs. A 10-core processor made up of six Performance cores (P-cores) and four Efficient cores (E-cores), the Core i5 13400F has a total of 16 threads. Its fastest cores run up to 4.6GHz out of the box, a clock speed that…

IN BRIEF Vanilla OS sets system files into read-only mode and sandboxes apps to prevent tampering. You can easily configure programs from the Gnome desktop via a number of package managers. SPECS CPU: 2GHz Mem: 4GB HDD: 50GB Builds: AMD64, x64 Itmight be plain, but year after year, vanilla is rated as one of the most popular ice cream flavours. This philosophy has been copied into Vanilla OS, which while based on a standard install of Ubuntu 22.10 with Gnome, has one important difference: it can be immutable. In plain English, this means you can change system files from being editable to read-only, so no one can install new programs or make system-wide changes. The read-only root filesystem, care of ABRoot, certainly has its uses: if setting up a computer…

Back in 2006, Clive Humby – a British mathematician and most famous of data scientists – said B that data is the new oil. But if it weren’t for code, that data would still be stuck in the metaphorical ground, which many might argue would be better for the world in both analogy and reality forms, but we digress… If data is the new oil, we’re not sure exactly what that makes code – perhaps the entire petrochemical infrastructure – but it shows how valuable good (and probably mediocre and awful) code has become. With our ongoing exploration of classic coding languages that helped bring computing to the modern age (see page 62 for our focus on FOCAL this month), we thought we should take a whirlwind look at what…

Version: 23.01.0 Web: https://apps.kde.org/tokodon Another online service that’s grabbed everyone’s attention these days is Mastodon, a microblogging alternative to Twitter, which has become the refuge for users unhappy with the changes Twitter’s new management is making to the popular social network. Tokodon is a Qt-based Mastodon client for Linux desktops, although it works on other desktop environments such as Gnome as well. Tokodon is available in the official repos of all the popular distros. Or you can install it as a distro-agnostic Flatpak with flatpak install org.kde.tokodon . When you fire it up, the app asks you for the URL of the Mastodon instance you want to join, along with your username. When you click Continue, it spits out a URL where you have to authorise Tokodon to access your…

Version: 1.16 Web: https://sourceforge. net/projects/katalogg We’ve all got data everywhere, from the multiple HDDs and SSDs in our computers, to the plethora of USB keys and external drives we have scattered around. Katalog helps you keep track of your data by cataloguing it. To install the app, grab its tarball from the website and extract with tzr zxvf Katalog_linux*.tar.gz –onetop-level . Then change into the directory and launch the app with the ./Katalog.sh command. On first launch the app asks you to point it to a collections folder, where it houses all the data for the catalogues. The app has a rather busy interface, which looks a little overwhelming for first-time users, but it grows on you. Head to the Create screen to make your first catalogue. You then have…

Version: 0.14.0 Web: https://veloren.net Veloren is a multiplayer voxel RPG written in the Rust language. The game is inspired by other popular titles such as Cube World, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft, and borrows elements from all of them. The game has modest requirements and will work on machines with 4GB of RAM, a multi-core CPU with a GPU that supports Vulcan, and 2GB of disk space. To play the game, you need to download its launcher, called Airshipper, which ensures you’re always running the latest version of the game, which come out incredibly frequently. The launcher ships as a Flatpak and can be installed by using the flatpak install flathub net.veloren. airshipper command. The game has two modes. In single-player mode, the game…

Credit: https://github.com/stevenalbert/3d-chess-opengl OUR EXPERT Andrew Smith is a software developer for NHS England. He enjoys video gaming and started coding in C/C++ in 1997 on a Borland C++ for DOS compiler . We’re going to look at a 3D chess program that has been created in C++ and OpenGL. Throughout the decades, there have been many chess programs (both 2D and 3D) created on various platforms that can be played in various ways: single-player against an AI opponent or multiplayer (two players on same machine or across LAN/internet). The chess program that we are going to look at has been created as a two-player game that can be played on the same machine. It was created by Steven Albert and the original source code can be found at https://…

WRITE TO US Do you have a burning Linuxrelated issue that you want to discuss? Write to us at Linux Format, Future Publishing, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA or email letters@ linuxformat.com. Gecko lovers I’d appreciate more coverage of OpenSUSE in general, and I have a specific need: I recently heard about ALP as a coming replacement for OpenSUSE Leap after version 15.5. I’m not finding much online about it and no indication about CUDA support (crucial in my work), or whether the transition from OpenSUSE to ALP is as simple as between 15.x and 15.x+1, or whether OpenSUSE Tumbleweed will continue as is. I co-admin 18 OpenSUSE systems across two universities and will need a long time to plan if we need to move away from OpenSUSE…

IN BRIEF Brave is the last word in privacy, with a built-in ad-blocker, antitracking and support for Tor. It’s simple to use, though new users may struggle with how to earn rewards. SPECS CPU: Pentium 4 class SSE2 Mem: 1GB HDD: 400MB  OS: 64-bit Ubuntu 18.04+, Mint 19+, Debian 10+, OpenSUSE 15+, Fedora 28+, or CentOS/ RHEL 8+ Brave Browser has been around for about seven years, care of the good people at Brave Software. It boasts some impressive credentials, as the company’s CEO is Brendan Eich, who created JavaScript and co-founded the Mozilla Foundation. Brave is based on Chromium and its main emphasis is on privacy. The built-in Brave Shields feature contains a very powerful ad-blocker and anti-tracking. It broadcasts “Do not track” to all sites by default. There…

IN BRIEF The Tor Project never fails to impress with its easy-to-set-up private browser, which doesn’t record a web history and hides your IP address. The latest version supports more languages than ever before and offers a selection of bridges to connect to Tor, even in countries where it’s censored. SPECS CPU: 1GHz Mem: 512MB HDD: 500MB Builds: ARM64, x86_64 Since 2008, the Tor Browser has been making waves in providing online privacy. Successive versions are based on Firefox ESR (in this case version 102.8) and come with a number of features to make you as anonymous online as possible. Since our previous look in LXF263, the Tor Browser has seriously upped its game in terms of protecting your privacy and evading censorship. Onion 101 The Tor Browser uses so-called…

The Biqu Hurakan promises to make speedy 3D printing easy thanks to its built-in Klipper firmware, but its road has a few design potholes. Klipper is fast and accurate, and takes more horsepower than Marlin, the firmware normally installed on printers. Before the Hurakan – and the FLSun V400 – the only way to get Klipper was to install it yourself on a Raspberry Pi, then tether it to your printer. Of course, Pis are in short supply these days and installing Klipper requires a level of expertise many makers lack. Biqu manufactures boards and other parts for 3D printers, so it’s not surprising that it was one of the first to develop a standalone system with enough power to run Klipper. Even without Klipper, the Hurakan is an attractive…

QUICK TIP While testing, we found a bug that stopped FitoTrack from starting up on a given smartphone. We reported the bug to the issue tracker (https:// codeberg. org/jannis/ FitoTrack/ issues), and Jannis fixed it and pushed out the update in an hour or so. Now, that’s service! Maybe you need something to motivate you to get into shape. Or perhaps you’re already working out and you’re interested in documenting your exertions. FitoTrack is an open source fitness tracking app that runs on Android devices such as phones and tablets. You can use it to track activities such as running and cycling, and all you need is a smartphone to start logging your performance while building up long-term records. By examining the data, you can make all sorts of useful…

Version: 6.4.0 Web: https://hluk.github.io/CopyQ The clipboard is perhaps one of the best timesaving tools, though despite its convenience, it only remembers the last item you copied. CopyQ is a nifty little utility that corrects this wrong. When running, CopyQ stores every single item you add to the clipboard. You can then select and paste them from the app, or even assign a custom keyboard shortcut for even faster pastes. CopyQ has binary packages for DEB- and RPMbased distros, but you can use the distro-agnostic Flatpak to get the app to work on any distro with flatpak install flathub com.github.hluk.copyq . Once installed you can fire it from the applications menu or using flatpak run com.github.hluk.copyq . The main interface displays a list with the clipboard history. Copying text or images…

Version: 1.2 Web: https://stellarium.org Stellarium is a virtual planetarium that shows 3D photo-realistic skies in real time. You can use it to view stars, constellations, planets and nebulae, as well as other deep-sky objects. It can also simulate astronomical phenomena such as meteor showers and eclipses. Stellarium is available in the official repos of most desktop distros. It’s also available as a distro-agnostic Snap and AppImage. To use the AppImage, download it from its website, and use the file manager or chmod +x to give the AppImage executable permissions. The app runs full-screen and you can move around the sky by dragging your mouse. The left and bottom edges of the screen hide the status bar and the toolbar. Stellarium calculates the positions of the Sun and Moon, planets and…

Version: 0.10.0 Web: https://rofi. roger-ferrer.org/eiciel The traditional file permission model, where read, write and execute permissions are set on each file for the user, group and others (UGO), has one drawback: it can’t be used to define per-user or per-group permissions. For that, you need to employ access control lists (ACL), which help determine the access rights for each file. You can modify the permissions from the command line or use the graphical Eiciel utility, which helps make the process more intuitive, especially for new Linux users. Eiciel is available in the official repos of most distros. Users of DEB-based distros such as Ubuntu and Mint can download it with sudo apt install eiciel . Similarly, sudo dnf install eiciel installs it in Fedora. Once installed, Eiciel integrates with the…

OUR EXPERT Mihalis Tsoukalos is currently working on Time Series. You can reach him at: @mactsouk. For our final delve into eBPF, we’re tackling applications, the kernel and Docker containers. At the end of the day, all Linux machines execute code for applications or services, and we want to be able to understand why our programs are running slowly or misbehaving. Although the issue is usually with the app itself, there are times when the Linux kernel is misconfigured or is running slowly due to system limitations (memory, hard disk, network and so on). Additionally, many apps are now executed as Docker containers. So, in this last tutorial of the eBPF series we’re here to get you started with observability at the app, kernel or container level. While reading,…