Table of contents for May 2024 in Linux Format

Since late February 2024, the first Framework 16 laptops have made it into customers’ hands. The manufacturer’s claims are bold: from just $499 for the bare-bones model, you can have your very own customisable, repairable and upgradable laptop. Framework devices largely follow open standards, including open source firmware. The new expansion bay can attach PCIe components such as the AMD Radeon RX 7700S, but this costs an extra $400. If you want a functioning laptop out of the box, prices start at $1,399. Visit https://frame. work to learn more.…

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. LXF is wrong! In the password manager article (Roundup, LXF312), it stated that you would still have to pay for premium features if you self-hosted Bitwarden. Just an update, but if you selfhost with Vaultwarden (https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden), you get most premium features for free. Vaultwarden still uses the official Bitwarden clients and is a much lighterweight installation, better suited to home servers. Thanks for continuing to put out such a great magazine! Ken P Neil says… Thanks for putting us straight on that one. I’ve not come across Vaultwarden, so that’s good to know about for the…

IN BRIEF KaOS is light on system resources but offers the best of Plasma. Bundled apps are well selected (except for an email client). The OS offers simple setup when it works. SPECS CPU: 2GHz Mem: 1GB (2GB suggested) HDD: 8GB (25GB suggested) Builds: x86_64 KaOS is an independently developed distro, though its design is inspired by Arch Linux. Originally released as KdeOS in 2013, it has since changed its name and follows a rolling release model. The OS is designed solely for the x86_64-bit architecture and exclusively uses Qt (currently version 6.6.1) as well as the latest version of KDE. KaOS 2024.01 is the first stable release to incorporate the Plasma 6 desktop environment. It now also comes with an overhauled version of the OS’s own Midna theme. In…

The ease of daily use. If the application is fiddly and difficult to use, you are less likely to be meticulous when it comes to logging actions. In the same way, having to put in extra work every time you recommence your activity can make getting back to work even more of a chore than it usually is. We’re particularly interested in the daily use cycle of these applications. That is, how easy is it to start or stop logging, the principle function of a timetracking application? Beyond that, we expect other day-to-day features to be accessible and quick to display. We appreciate a realtime update of how long we’ve been working on the current job. Editing an entry is another commonly used function and we want that to be…

TimeWarrior has a couple of report modes. The summary command option outputs a summary of total time taken on different tasks. There are quite a few options that can be applied to this, such as limiting the summary to a period or filtering by tag. It also has a graphical text-mode charting option. There is also an extension system that uses Python plugins for the ultimate in custom data processing. Even on the free tier, TimeCamp has a full set of report features. Many are based on business needs, and can help you with billing by assigning hourly rates for different jobs. There are some helpful charting facilities that help to give an overall view. Hamster’s report generator is accessed via Export on the main menu. The report encompasses the…

OpenAI’s now infamous chatbot has a series of formidable features, most of them hidden from those who don’t subscribe O to ChatGPT Plus. It’s worth doing, even if only for a month, so you can evaluate the sheer power that lurks here and work out whether it could make a difference to your professional – or even your social – life. ChatGPT Plus can perform hugely sophisticated data analysis, saving you from having to spend time learning how to do it yourself in applications such as Excel. It can tidy up your computer code, your emails or your PowerPoint presentations. It can hook into third- party services to plan holidays, book restaurants or scour for facts on your behalf. But unless you know how to get the best out of…

Version: 1.4.6 Web: https://github. com/adrienverge/PhotoCollage I f you have a bunch of photos that you want to stitch together into a collage, you could use venerable tools such as ImageMagick or GIMP. They can certainly do the job, but it takes time and requires you to have some image-editing chops. If that’s not you, take a look at PhotoCollage. The app automates the process and can spit out photo collages with a single click. It’s available in the repos of most popular distros, but the version there would be outdated. However, it doesn’t take much to install it from source if you have Python 3: $ git clone https://github.com/adrienverge/ PhotoCollage.git $ cd PhotoCollage $ sudo python3 setup.py install  $ photocollage The app has a simple interface. Click the Add Images…

Version: 1.8.3 Web: https://github. com/linuxmint/ There are tons of ways to send files to remote drives, but shuttling files from one device to another inside the same network isn’t always straightforward. But it can be with Warpinator. It’s developed by the Linux Mint project, but Warpinator is available as a Flatpak, so you can install it on any distribution with flatpak install flathub org.x.Warpinator . The app also has unofficial builds for Android, iOS and Windows, which you can find on its website. By default, the app launches with Secure Mode disabled, as it uses the default group code Warpinator. To enable Secure Mode, all you need to do is set a custom group code that is at least four characters long. Now install Warpinator on other distros and devices…

Version: 2.0.0 Web: https://github. com/Bollos00/LibreMines Another ’90s classic, Minesweeper doesn’t have the same kind of fan following that Doom has with FPS players, but it did help popularise the puzzle genre. LibreMines continues that legacy with its cross-platform Qt-based clone. The game is available in the repos of many distros, but it’s best to pull it from Flathub with flatpak install flathub io.github.Bollos00.LibreMines to ensure you have the latest release. On launch, the game offers three predefined modes: easy, medium and hard. The three levels have differently sized grids and different numbers of mines. There’s also a fourth option to create a customised game, where you can choose the grid size and the number of mines, specified as a percentage of the grid. The gameplay is the same as the…

Version: 1.1.6 Web: https://amanusk. github.io/s-tui/ Linux doesn’t have many stress-testing tools, but it isn’t surprising that one of the ones it does have works on the CLI. The Stress-Terminal UI, or S-tui, can maximise your hardware as per your whims, and also doubles up as a nice CLIbased system monitor. It is available in the repos of most distros. However, the developers recommend installing it via Python’s Pip package manager to get the latest release. If you don’t have Python, you can easily pull it from your distro’s official repos, either with sudo apt install python3 (if you’re running Ubuntu) or with sudo dnf install python3 (if you’re running Fedora). You can then install S-tui with pip install s-tui --user . You also need to equip S-tui with an actual…

FreeBSD kernel hacker John Baldwin has announced that version 15.0 of the OS is unlikely to support ARMv6, i386 and PowerPC platforms. FreeBSD 16.0 will almost certainly not support ARMv7. He did reassure readers that it will be possible to execute 32-bit binaries on 64-bit FreeBSD kernels and there are no plans to remove this feature from the stable branch. Baldwin has justified this decision by pointing out that FreeBSD has also adapted to support various architectures based on changes in the marketplace. While this initially meant supporting i386 systems, this has long since been superseded by x86_64. He also correctly stated that the pool of 32-bit developers is shrinking each year, with only the ARM7 architecture being used in recent system designs. The FreeBSD team may, however, support 32-bit…

SPECS Socket: AM5 Arch: Zen 4 (Phoenix) Process: TSMC 4nm FinFET Cores: 6 Threads: 12 Cache: 384KB L1, 6MB L2, 16MB L3 Speed: 4.3GHz (5.0GHz boost) Unlocked: Yes GPU: Radeon 760M GPU clock: 2.8GHz Compute: 8 units AI: Ryzen AI, 16 TOPS Display: Up to 4, DP 2.1, HDMI 2.1, AMD FreeSync, 8k @ 60Hz Mem max: 256GB Mem speed: DDR5 3,600- 5,200, twochannel, no ECC PCIe: v4 20 lanes TDP 65W (45W-88W options) I f you’re considering putting together a new system on a tight budget, but don’t want to spend any of the money you do have on a current-generation graphics card, AMD’s Ryzen 5 8600G may well be the solution for you. The 8600G is an affordable six-core variant of AMD’s exciting Phoenix range of laptop, handheld…

IN BRIEF Bluestar offers a beautiful UI, easy setup and a whole range of preinstalled apps. It’s only let down by a lack of official website and documentation. Use at your own discretion. SPECS CPU: 1GHz Mem: 1GB HDD: 20GB Builds: x86_64 Bluestar Linux’s main goal seems to be to provide a user-friendly version of Arch Linux, on which it’s based. Its SourceForge page puts this in more colourful terms, stating it’s “built with an understanding that people want … a solid operating system that provides a breadth of functionality and ease of use without sacrificing aesthetics”. We mention SourceForge as, besides a rather active Facebook page, Bluestar stands alone in all the distros we’ve reviewed so far in not having a dedicated website. This is even more surprising given…

The TimeCamp app places itself in the status panel area of the desktop. It offers a hybrid between a native app and a web-based one. For example, several functions open a page in your browser. However, it does provide some advantages of a native app as the usage reports contain detailed records of your actual desktop use, showing which apps and browser windows you were using at different times, something that wouldn’t be possible from a purely web-based tracker. It is possible to start and stop app tracking while offline, but the online documentation makes it clear that it is your job to select the synchronisation function in the app once back online and that some of the analytics data is not acquired in this mode. Timewarrior is operated from…

Microsoft and its flagship Windows OS have a troubled history with Linux and open source. When Bill Gates penned his ‘Open Letter to Hobbyists’ in 1976, he complained about the rampant software piracy taking place in early hobbyist communities – particularly that of the Altair Basic interpreter, which he’d co-created. At a time before open source initiatives like the GNU and Linux projects, his opinion was clear: “Are people who copy software any different than those who copy records and books?” Twenty-two years later, one of the leaked Microsoft Halloween Documents (see box) focused on how the tech giant viewed its rival OS, even showing grudging respect: “Linux represents a best-of-breed Unix, that is trusted in mission critical applications, and – due to its open source code – has a…

IN BRIEF A security focused operating system that is well suited to the Raspberry Pi 4 2GB and upwards, but not Pi 5 for now. ParrotOS provides a plethora of security auditing tools for both red and blue team members. This is a great distro for learners and networking experts to use in their job. ParrotOS is an interesting choice for the Raspberry Pi. We generally think of the Pi as a learning tool for coding, building projects and advancing our computing knowledge. Another aspect of learning with the Pi is security. Whether you are on the red or blue team, you need a toolkit, and within that will be a Raspberry Pi. ParrotOS is an alternative to Kali Linux, and we can debate the pros and cons of both…

If there’s a Windows program stopping you switching to Linux, or stopping you doing so full time, now is the time to see if it works with Wine. No, we’re not advocating drowning your sorrows or drinking on the job (uh oh–Ed). We’re here to tell you about the powerful Wine application, which translates Windows function calls to Linux ones, thus enabling your Windows programs (be they serious tools or relaxing games) to run on our favourite operating system. That’s the theory, anyway. In practice ,things may need some tweaking. Or they may not work at all; Wine can’t work miracles yet. Be that as it may, there is a brand new release to try: Wine 9.0. It may be the solution to all your problems. If you’ve never touched…

Everyone knows how containers revolutionised application building and deployment. Using a E disposable stack of containers that make up an app that aren’t using the docker-compose command to manage the stack are missing a trick. It allows the shipping of an entire stack in one single file. Using docker-compose enables the administrator to group all the application’s containers into a single stack. It means an entire stack can be started or torn down with next to no effort. No configuration needed. It can be as simple as docker-compose up and stopping the stack with docker-compose down . As a really useful example, it provides a way to distribute an entire application that can be deployed as designed, tested and then brought down and deleted. In production, using docker-compose is much…

Version: 2.2.0 Web: https://wummel. github.io/patool/ TAR, TAR.GZ, ZIP and 7ZIP are just some of the endless list of archiving formats you’ll run into on a fairly regular basis on the Linux desktop. What makes working with them even more complicated is the fact that they all come with their own tools for managing them. And, of course, these tools all have their own commands and options. With Patool, you don’t need to bother to remember the arcane CLI options for each format, because the Python-based utility can handle a wide range of archiving formats, including all the common ones. So, all you need to do is remember Patool’s options to create and manage archives, and the utility automatically translates them for the relevant archiving format behind the scenes. Before you…

Version: 9.6.12 Web: https://schollz. com/tinker/croc6/ If you are a CLI warrior or don’t want to restrict yourself to the local network, Croc can ferry files to any computer on the internet. It is available in the repos of most distros, but it’s best to install the latest release from source. This doesn’t take much effort and can be achieved with curl https://getcroc.schollz.com | bash . This downloads and extracts the latest release in /tmp, and then installs it under /usr/local/bin, after prompting you for the superuser password. Croc is cross-platform and can be installed in Mac OS and Windows as well. Use the send option to send a file, such as croc send ~/Documents/some-folder . This displays the size of the transfer, along with a code, which you must send…

Version: 24.2.5 Web: www.qownnotes.org Linux users are spoilt for choice when it comes to note-taking apps. Joplin and Trilium are some of the best in the game, but if you’re concerned about the appearance of your notes, take a look at QOwnNotes. One of the best things about this app is its support for Markdown. QOwnNotes is available in the official repos of all the popular distros. The project also puts out an AppImage of the app that you can download from its GitHub page, and make it an executable from the file manager or with chmod +x . On first launch, the app prompts you for the location where you want to store your notes, which by default is ~/Notes. Next you have to select from one of five…

A ccording to data gathered by StatCounter, as of March 2024, Linux accounts for 4.19% of all desktop operating systems. This marks an all-time high for Linux desktop adoption. Naturally, these figures are nothing compared to the Windows market share during the same period (72%) or even Mac OS (15.46%), but two years ago, Linux desktops only accounted for around 2% of users. Assuming the Linux install base continues to double every two years, Redditors have pointed out jocularly that we can expect 100% Linux adoption some time in 2033, or even sooner if you count Linux-based ChromeOS. All joking aside, this is a huge leap considering that it took Linux over 30 years to secure a 3% share of all desktop operating systems, a target it reached in June…

On 28th February, Plasma 6 (built on top of Qt6) was released. One of the biggest changes is that Plasma now defaults to the Wayland display server, with experimental support for HDR. X11 will be supported for the foreseeable future and users can still select it upon login. The desktop has also overhauled how it deals with workspaces. Mercifully for inept touchpad users, scrolling via the desktop no longer automatically switches users from one workspace to another. You can still use touchpad gestures to summon the new overview screen to display and select individual workspaces, however. The much-loved desktop ‘cube’ effect has also returned. While we’re talking mouse movements, for the first time Plasma now defaults to doubleclicking for opening files and folders. (You can still switch back…

PostmarketOS (abbreviated as pmOS) is an operating system primarily for smartphones, based on Alpine Linux. One of the project’s ultimate aims is to support the mainline Linux kernel on all phones. In early March, pmOS took a step further towards this goal by providing a version of the OS that builds on top of Systemd. At the time of writing, several-proof-ofconcept images are available and developers are free to build their own version. Although Alpine Linux doesn’t ship Systemd, there are currently no plans to move pmOS away from it.…

IN BRIEF Potential privacy issues aside, this is one of the most visually rich versions of Linux you’ll ever use, with a host of excellent home-grown programs, such as the Linglong package manager. SPECS CPU: 2GHz Mem: 8GB HDD: 64GB Builds: x86-64, i386, RISCV64, ARM64, LoongArch64 Deepin development began way back in 2004 as Hiweed Linux. Until 2015, it was based on Ubuntu, but since then, successive versions of the OS have been based on the latest stable version of Debian (in this case, Debian 12 Bookworm). The distro is known for its DDE (Deepin Desktop Environment), built on the Qt 6 toolkit (updated to version 6.6.1 for this release). DDE is available in the repos of distros like Fedora as an alternative desktop, which is why you may have…

IN BRIEF We love the idea of a gaming-specific version of Linux, but Drauger fails to deliver. Given the setup/kernel issues, you’re far better off installing Ubuntu, then adding gamingspecific packages yourself. SPECS CPU: 1.8GHz (2GHz suggested) Mem: 1GB (6GB suggested) HDD: 32GB (128GB suggested) Builds: x86_64 In Norse mythology, draugrs are undead warriors with a penchant for the blood of the living. Skyrim players will also know they’re a common foe you encounter when dungeon-crawling, so developer Thomas Castleman, a keen player, named this OS accordingly. One typo later, Drauger OS was made available in 2018. It’s based on Ubuntu LTS (in this case Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish) and is supposedly optimised for gaming. The main website’s About page is also very clear on what Drauger is not: if…

The Linux Mint system package for Timewarrior was out of date, so we installed the latest version from Snap. The Hamster package in the distribution repository was the latest stable release (which is quite old), but we could also have installed via Flatpak, Snap or built from source code. There are installation instructions for Debian-based distros such as Ubuntu along with Fedora and OpenSUSE. The system package for Arbtt was out of date. It wasn’t available on Flathub or Snap, so we had to build it from the source archive. The build process involved using Cabal, a package manager for the Haskell programming language. We’d rate it at the lower end of medium difficulty as build jobs go. Once the program is actually installed, a default configuration file has to…

We’re choosing TimeCamp, a freemium solution that isn’t open source, as the overall winner. The facilities on the free tier are decent, and the free package could be everything that a single user would ever need. It can be used from any platform as it is accessible from the web. In addition, there is a mobile phone app. The native Linux application isn’t exactly brimming with features, but it’s usable, and it can automatically record your actions for precise, effortless activity recording. All of these options are tied together in the cloud, meaning that you can move seamlessly from one platform to another. TimeSlotTracker is a good program overall, but we have a few misgivings about recommending it. It hasn’t been updated in quite a while (not since 2021). It…

The origins of WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) lies in Microsoft’s Project Astoria, a tool originally designed to port Android apps to Windows 10 Mobile. The project was killed in 2016 but the code formed the basis of WSL, which was released in beta later in the same year. Unlike third-party apps like Cygwin, WSL’s initial aim was native Linux compatibility through serving Unix programs as custom isolated ‘pico processes’. In May 2019, Microsoft announced the release of WSL2, a huge improvement over its predecessor, given it uses virtualisation to run Linux kernels inside a lightweight virtual machine. This not only improves performance but adds full system call compatibility. Both WSL2 and compatible Linux distros can easily be installed via the command line or Microsoft Store. WSL’s ‘so what?’ moment…

When the Pi Pico was first launched, there was talk about using its I2C capabilities to run DVI outputs, which is to say to drive a digital display. here already exists a Pi Pico DVI library called PicoDVI (https://github.com/ Wren6991/PicoDVI) that enables a Pico to control a digital display over HDMI. Utilising this, Clem Mayer, after initially running into timing issues when attempting to directly connect the HDMI to the Pico, found more success once he used a Pico DVI Sock (https://github.com/Wren6991/Pico-DVI-Sock), which is a small PCB that sits under the Pico with an HDMI mounted on it. Mayer successfully initiated the new pseudo Pico GPU with a Hello World display. To turn his creation into a true GPU, he devised a PCIe PC expansion card to mount the Pico to…

Credit: www.onlyoffice.com QUICK TIP To enable the AI assistant, access the Plugin Manager in the opened editor via the Plugins tab, find ChatGPT and click Install. Every day, we work with numerous office files together with our colleagues, team members E and various external users. Sometimes (or maybe often) chaos breaks out; the necessary editing rights are missing, important files can’t be found, or co-workers from another department don’t leave suggestions but edit the text directly. Such a scenario can cause serious problems, especially when it comes to sensitive documents such as contracts. Keeping this in mind, it’s important to choose a solution that helps eliminate such difficulties. In this guide, we’ll introduce you to the features of OnlyOffice DocSpace and explain how to install the server build on your…

Version: 10.3.2 Web: https://moosync.app There’s no scarcity of music players for the Linux desktop, but what sets Moosync apart from its peers is its ability to seamlessly play local tracks and online music. Moosync offers both DEB and RPM precompiled binaries. You can also download the platformindependent AppImage and make it an executable from the file manager or with chmod +x . On first launch, the app starts a setup to help determine the location of your music collection. It defaults to ~/Music, but you can add and remove folders. You can also use this setup to connect to supported online services, such as YouTube, Spotify and LastFM. You can optionally log into those services, using IDs and credentials that depend on the service. The good thing, though, is that…

Version: 1.0.1 Web: https://mijorus.it/projects/collector/ Your distro’s default file manager does a good job of copying and moving files, but it isn’t very efficient if your workflow involves ferrying multiple files from all over the filesystem. And this is exactly what Collector is designed for. The app functions as a temporary holding space in which you drag and drop files, or paste clipboard contents, web links and more, and then copy them to their destination in one go. Collector is officially distributed as a Flatpak and you can install it with flatpak install flathub it.mijorus. collector . When it’s installed, the app embeds itself in your Applications menu. On launch, the app places a small window on the desktop that acts as a temporary holding space for the content you want…

Version: 0.13.0 Web: https://freedoom.github.io We just can’t get enough of Doom. The firstperson shooter genre has grown in leaps and bounds since its first release back in the early ’90s, but there’s a certain charm to the original that just keeps pulling fans back for more. The community has been churning out ports and mods ever since the Doom source code was released. The Freedoom project is one such enterprise that produces game data files (or WADs) for Doomcompatible gaming engines. The project is a collection of three games. Firstly, there’s Freedoom: Phase 1, which is made up of four episodes, each with over half a dozen levels. It offers interesting gameplay with tons of mazes and enemies to battle. Then there’s Freedoom: Phase 2, which has a single episode…