ROUNDUP: PHOTO MANAGERS
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This issue we asked our experts: Linux and its developers can be pretty smart, but what could be smarter in the world of Linux?
Jonni Bidwell Douglas Adams once said that he was “rarely happier than when spending an entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand.” It’s a sentiment I share entirely and it’s my general excuse whenever my copy is late for Linux Format.
Neil Bothwick Most of my life is driven by shell and Python scripts. My ultimate goal in home automation is to reach the level achieved by Wallace in The Wrong Trousers. Although I may have to use Windows to control it as one lesson from that film is that letting anything penguin-powered near such a setup can have disastrous consequences.
Matthew Hanson I love tinkering and building PCs at home, which inevitably involves a certain amount of troubleshooting to find out what’s gone wrong when things break. This is really frustrating, so I’d like to build a robot that would do that for me. Of course, if I needed to troubleshoot that robot, I’d need to build another… And another… what have I done?
Les Pounder While I enjoy walking my dog, all that cold wintry weather is awful, even if my beard keeps me cosy. A GPS-controlled dog walking robot would be great. I could plot the route and schedule a time from my phone, and receive Twitter updates during the walk. Oh and it could also get some bread on the way home.
Nick Peers I’d like to automate our home’s lighting system. First off, it’s good for the environment, but it’s also very good for my wallet. It would also help mitigate the effects of my family’s apparent allergy to switching off lights when they leave a room. When things get really tough, I could always initiate ‘disco mode’ for a family dance off.
The internet of Linux things Smart homes, smart TVs, smart watches, smart phones, smart fridges: is there anything that isn’t smart these days? Smart humans, might be a useful start. The startling thing is that behind that huge list of smart things is Linux (and perhaps a bit of BSD). The open source nature of Linux; its lightweight footprint and robust security (though nothing is foolproof) makes it perfect for use in tiny, deployable, internet-connected smart things. Linux has enabled an entire generation of new gadgets, but alongside the software you do need hardware. That’s where the Raspberry Pi plays its part. We now all have access to the software smarts and handy hardware to build our own tiny internet-connected devices that can transform a home, school or office into an automated paradise. This issue we’re looking at how you can hack your home with Linux and the Pi. We’re basing a lot of these projects on the Pi, but you could adapt them to any tiny PC or even Arduino boards. It’s the ubiquity of the Pi that makes it our go-to [no gotos! – Ed] device of choice for home hacks (see p34). We hope you find it inspiring, as what you can do is only limited by your imagination! With no Pi User section this issue, we’ve bolstered our features and tutorials for those more interested in using Linux on their PCs. Importantly we’re finally covering the thing called KDE Plasma 5 (see p59), though that’s KDE Plasma and KDE Framework. It’s a stunning desktop, community project and interface ecosystem that’s worth your attention. We also delve into getting a Linux laptop, it’s no easy task, you’ll have to get your hands dirty but it’s possible and worth it. With tutorials covering encryption, partitioning, network enhancement and drive encryption, plus coding chess in Python and the cool new Perl 6 there’s surely something for everyone? Enjoy your hacking.
Neil Mohr Editor neil.mohr@futurenet.com
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Contents
“If you don’t want a generation of robots, fund the arts!” – Cath Crowley, Graffiti Moon
Reviews Motorola Moto 360 2.0...... 17 The technology world asks: “Why aren’t you all wearing smart watches?” And an uncaring world stares blankly back. Perhaps the new Moto 360 can make it to our wrists?
There’s no doubt some smart watches do indeed look very smart.
Google Nexus 6P...............18
HACK IT! Transform your home into a smart one with Pi-powered projects and Linux tools p34
Roundup: Photo managers p26
The latest all-powerful Android smartphone released under the Nexus range is from Huawei – will it make it into your pocket?
Google Nexus 5X...............19 Finally the best Android phone of all time, the Nexus 5, gets an upgrade. Is this a worthy replacement for that stalwart device?
Raspberry Pi Zero............. 20 No one expects the Raspberry Pi Foundation! Here it goes again with an allnew Pi, the smallest and cheapest one yet!
You thought PCs couldn’t get any smaller – meet the Pi Zero.
Fedora 23 Workstation.... 22 Keep your hat on – this could be the ultimate backup, image and repair tool.
OpenSUSE Leap 42.1....... 23 Should you take the Leap or avoid the gecko entirely? Our verdict on the live-free distro.
Ooznest Prusa i3............... 24 It’s the greatest self-build 3D printer to date, the ideal buy for makers and designers.
OggCamp 2015 The unconference at OggCamp brought out the most interesting talks. We report from the liveliest camp in the world p44
4 LXF206 January 2016
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On your FREE DVD Fedora 23 64-bit Ubuntu 15.10 64-bit, Tails 1.7 32- and 64-bit
Only the best distros every month PLUS: Hotpicks and Photo managers
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In-depth...
Features Buy the best Linux laptop............50
Discover KDE Plasma 5.................59
Raspberry Pi Zero................. 20
Explore the world of the Linux laptops, how you can buy one, how you can install your own and how you can build one from open hardware.
So is it KDE Plasma Desktop, or is it KDE 5 and what about KDE Framework 5? Actually it’s all of them, let’s go discover the amazing new desktop…
We get the inside scoop on making the new Raspberry Pi Zero by chatting with Eben Upton and an in-depth review of the new Pi Zero.
Linux laptops do exist, just not in the shops.
The KDE Plasma 5 desktop looks amazing!
Coding Academy
From zero to hero, the Pi is back!
Tutorials Linux games Gnome Games....................72
Perl 6....................................... 84 14 years on and finally Mihalis Tsoukalos can get his hands on Perl 6. Many say “Haha, use Python” but it’s an essential upgrade to the long-standing programming language.
Matthew Hanson loves to do a bit of gaming, well, a lot of gaming. So he’s over the moon to use the new Gnome games.
Image deployment Fog........................................74
Chess in Python.................... 88 Jonni Bidwell dreams of becoming a chess master, straddling the globe like a gaming colossus, but instead he’s sat here creating chess programs in Python.
Mayank Sharma isn’t lost in the fog he’s using it to deploy multiple images over the cloud to his many servant systems.
Regulars at a glance News.............................. 6 Subscriptions............32 Back issues................ 70 Help defend the GPL and get it back
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Ubuntu 15.10 landed and we
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old Google drop support from
pie and we all love pie, right?
your celebratory issue in LXF205.
Chrome, LibreOffice gets 1,000 developers and Gimp is 20-years-old.
Sysadmin....................54 Next month................98. Mr. Brown is hunting ELK, not to
It’s time to rid the world of Windows
Mailserver.................... 11
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improve your security too!
Discussions blaze in this issue.
User groups.................15
breaching Turkey’s airspace, he’s too busy flying high with sweet FLOSS
Roundup.....................26
ZuluCrypt Drive encryption.............. 82
like: MATE, GNU LibreJS, Nuntius,
N1, Double Commander, Eiskaltdcpp,
Get all your Christmas photos
Deadbeef, Lincity-ng, Powermanga,
organised with these managers.
CUDABI, Arista.
Neil Bothwick covers the essentials on creating and managing your RAIDs.
Nick Peers gets to grips with GParted and explains how to manage your partitions.
Alexander Tolstoy isn’t planning on
Les Pounder is recovering from
RAID Manage your drives.......... 76 GParted Create and manage.......... 78
HotPicks.....................64
OggCamp 2015 at a LUG near you.
I can see clearly now the Fog is here.
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Mayank Sharma finds his way out of the fog just in time to encrypt all his drives.
January 2016 LXF206 5
This ISSUE: GPL
LibreOffice
Gimp at 20
Linux training on ISS
licensing news
GPL is losing its grip as the go-to licence
Are developers ditching GPL for less restrictive licenses?
T
he GNU General Public License (GPL) – most specifically the second version – used to be the most widely used open source licence in the world, enabling people to create projects using software under the licence, granting them freedom to run, share and modify the software as they see fit. Although the GPL is perhaps the best-known open source licence and has often been considered one of the main reasons for the success of Linuxbased operating systems, the Richard Stallman-authored licence has fallen in popularity recently with the MIT License taking the top spot. (Note: This is according to a list at http://bit.ly/ Top20OpenSourceLicenses) that tracks forges, foundations and organisations throughout the open source community). According to this list, the MIT Licence, which originated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is used in 24% of open source projects, just squeaking out a win over GPL 2.0, which is used by 23%. The Apache License 2.0 comes in third with a 16 per cent share. So why the rise of the MIT License? First, we should point out that while the GPL 2.0 has fallen to second place, GPL 3.0 is in fourth place with 9%, which combined makes it still more popular than the MIT Licence. However, there was a time when the two versions of GPL were more popular than almost all the other licenses put together. One of the reasons for the MIT License’s rise is because it is less restrictive than GPL 3.0, and because more projects are increasingly being
6 LXF206 January 2016
used as Software-as-aService (SaaS), rather than being deployed, which means the protection of your code isn’t quite as important – or so people think. While the more restrictive GPL licence has lost over 21% of its user share since 2009, another more permissive licence – Apache – has gained over 12%. If GPL is to remain relevant it may have to consider the changing landscape and what people want (or need) from a software licence. With the rise of more permissive licences it’s also more important than ever for developers and projects to know which licence suits their needs to ensure that their code is properly protected. Last year the Software Freedom Law Center found that 85.1% of programs that were on GitHub had no licence at all.
It’s got a flashy logo, but GPL’s status as the FOSS licence of choice is eroding. Should it change its ways?
“Over 85% of programs that were on GitHub had no licence at all.” Although GPL is feeling the squeeze from more permissive licences, it has a number of strong allies, including the Software Freedom Conservancy (http://sfconservancy.org), which is a supporter-driven organisation that
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focuses on critical free software issues to support the GPL against violations, and to help endangered projects remain free and open source. Big wins by the Software Freedom Conservancy in 2015 include: supporting the lawsuit Christoph Hellwig brought against VMware in the first case on derivative works and the GPL; making 172 contractor payments to developers writing free and open source software, which included various different internships and contract software development work; and along with the Free Software Foundation helped Canonical achieve compliance in its Intellectual Property Policy, which we reported on a few months ago. The Software Freedom Conservancy does very important work, but with only three full-time employees it’s wholly dependent on its supporters, which is why the Conservancy has launched a drive for new supporters to help it carry on its work – you can find out more and donate to the cause at http://sfconservancy.org/supporter.
Newsdesk Software dev news
LibreOffice needs 1,000 developers Jan Iversen, a senior developer from Apache Software, joins the team to help speed development.
L
ibreOffice has enjoyed a healthy growth in its contributors since its creation – with a monthly average of 16 people contributing code. This has helped LibreOffice hit the milestone of 1,000 developers at the end of 2015, with a global mentoring effort by some of the project’s founders helping to achieve that number. However, as the open source office suite has matured, its complexity has grown, requiring a new influx of developers. The fact that LibreOffice is available on Linux, Mac OS and Windows, as well as mobile platforms, means there’s a huge need for a large team with a breadth of experience, which is why the LibreOffice project is starting up
another new drive to attract 1,000 more code contributors to the project The news of LibreOffice’s search for another 1,000 developers has been met with a warm reception from the wider community, as a larger development team should mean fewer bugs; a quicker response time to fixing problems and a steady influx of new features. As one of the highest profile open source projects some could even argue that LibreOffice is a bit of an ambassador for open source for people who aren’t too at ease with open source. Having a feature rich and stable LibreOffice is in everyone’s best interests, so let’s hope the next 1,000 developers have what it takes.
Newsbytes There’s bad news for people running Google’s Chrome web browser on 32-bit Linux distributions (distros), as Google will end official support for those platforms in March 2016. While the browser will still work on distros like Ubuntu Precise (12.04), and Debian 7 (wheezy), they will no longer receive essential updates and security fixes. Google does intend to continue to support 32-bit build configurations for Chromium. Managing your Docker containers is an important part of many people’s jobs, but does it have to be a boring one? The rather impressive Dockercraft project lets you visualise and manage Docker containers in Minecraft. Sure you can only use it on your local machine for now as it doesn’t support authentication, but it shows you what a bit of imagination and inventive coding can achieve. You can find out more at https://github.com/ docker/dockercraft.
LibreOffice has just hit 1,000 contributors – and it’s on the search for 1,000 more.
Software news
Gimp turns 20
Gets a new website to celebrate.
O
ver 20 years ago Peter Mattis and Spencer Kimball developed the General Image Manipulation Program, with the first public release in January 1996. Abbreviated to the always-fun-to-Google-at-work Gimp, the first release was compatible with Unix systems like Linux, however since then it has been ported to Windows, Mac OS X and other operating systems. It has also had its name changed (with the blessing of Richard Stallman) to GNU Image Manipulation Program. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of when Peter Mattis announced the availability of General Image Manipulation Program on Usenet (which can be read at http://bit.ly/GimpHistory), a new version of Gimp (2.8.16 – which can be downloaded from http://www.gimp.org/ downloads) has been released. This new version includes support for layer groups in OpenRaster files, fixes for layer groups in
PSD, interface improvements OSX build system fixes and more. The Gimp website (www.gimp.org) has also been given a redesign by Pat David, making it better for viewing on mobile devices with a full RSS/Atom feed for news items. But enough of looking back at what Gimp has achieved – what does the future hold? Work is well underway for the public version of the 2.9.x series which will bring GEGL, 16-/32-bit per channel processing, basic OpenEXR support, vastly improved colour management implementation, new tools, on-canvas preview for many filters, and more, and will pave the way for Gimp 2.10. Further on down the roadmap there will be a GTK+3 port to support state-of-the-art Wacom graphic tablets in Windows, and hopefully nondestructive editing for Gimp 3.0 and beyond. Check out the full roadmap at http://wiki.gimp. org/wiki/Roadmap.
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Docker and Minecraft are two big success stories and they’ve been brought together with Dockercraft.
Training by the Linux Foundation is now underway to prepare the NASA team on the International Space Station (ISS) to migrate to Linux. Keith Chuvala of United Space Alliance, a NASA contractor, commented that they had “migrated key functions from Windows to Linux because we needed an operating system that was stable and reliable – one that would give us in-house control. So if we needed to patch, adjust or adapt, we could.” With the transition to Linux coming soon, it was vital the staff on the ISS were prepared – which is where the Linux Foundation came in as it produced two courses specially designed for NASA: Introduction to Linux for Developers and Developing Applications For Linux. Sometimes getting tech support when you’re on Earth can be hard enough – we can only imagine what a pain it would be in space.
January 2016 LXF206 7
newsdesk Comment
Collabora’s CODE
Michael Meeks
This month Collabora has launched a number of easy to access Virtual Machines and packages for LibreOffice Online with a sample integration with OwnCloud on OpenSUSE 13.2. This launch provides a great way of getting access to an unstable development version of a key part of what will become Collabora CloudSuite, please do give it a try. This announcement primarily benefits developers, so we even came up with a completely cheesy name for it: Collabora Online Development Edition (CODE). The hope is that CODE will enable everyone to play with, improve and contribute to the LibreOffice Online project with ease; even those who are pure web/Javascript developers can customise and play with CODE to their hearts content as it develops. And there’s lots still remaining to be done in the area of feature depth – this is a very simplified initial release, but, of course, features such as high availability, scalability, collaborative editing and more are all being worked on. It is, however, wonderful to be able to integrate with the very polished, FLOSS OwnCloud package as it highlights what is possible with this edition for all other Content Management Systems.
What the FOSSODE?
How does CODE work? Well, we host a cleverly managed, and shared LibreOffice on top of an OpenSUSE 13.2 distribution base inside the VM. What this does is carefully isolate users’ documents from each other in different chroots but also enables significant sharing options. This model, we’ve found, also allows us to re-use almost all of the LibreOffice code and its feature-set verbatim, which gives great document rendering and spreadsheet calculation fidelity. Why not give CODE a try, and start getting your head wrapped around the burgeoning era of free software online document editing. Failing that, why not come and see us in Brussels in early February 2016 at FOSDEM – Europe’s best open-source developer conference. Book yourself a place now and I’ll see you there! Michael is a pseudo-engineer, semi-colon lover, SUSE LibreOffice hacker and amateur pundit.
8 LXF206 January 2016
Hitting the mirrors What’s behind the free software sofa?
MakuluLinux 10 MakuluLinux 10 has just been released. This distro is built from Debian and Ubuntu packages and comes with the Cinnamon desktop environment. The idea is to create a familiar feel for Windows users who have recently entered the brave new world of Linux.
Oracle Linux 7.2 Oracle has announced the 7.2 release of its distro built from Red Hat Enterprise Linux source code. As well as being binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise, it comes with two kernels – a ‘Red Hat Compatible Kernel’ and Oracle’s ‘Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel’, and by
A culmination of over 3,300 hours’ work, MakuluLinux 10 “Aero” has been extensively tested to make sure it’s as stable as it is powerful, making it a great choice for convincing people to ditch Microsoft’s OS. Find out more and download it from: http://makululinux.com/aero.
default the latter is selected when you boot up. There’s some heavy duty updates here, including an upgraded version of OpenSCAP (to version 1.2.5), and admins can now configure kdump during non-graphical installations. Find out more at: http://bit.ly/OracleLinux7_2.
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ICBMs? Thank you for an interesting magazine, which i have read for several years. I would like to see a future project/article on how to adjust colours on a printer in Linux. I have a HP laser printer and run Ubuntu on my PC. The colours on my monitor are good, but when I print a picture the colours becomes very dark. I understand there are ICM profiles, but I have not found one for my printer. Can I create one myself without investing a lot of money in equipment or software? Mats Werf, via email Neil says Thanks for your kind words, they always make us blush. As for your problem and suggestion, that’s a really good idea. Both sides of colour calibration (printers and monitors) are either often overlooked or ignored, but on Linux the deviceagnostic system is the
International Color Consortium (ICC) profiles; the Windows system uses ICM profiles, but they’re based on similar systems. So the problem is that displays use a mixture of Red, Green and Blue to generate colour, which is one specific colour space with its own gamut. While printers uses Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (or a variation based on those base colours) to create their colours and again this has its own colour space (a subset of every possible colour), which is different to that your monitor uses. In a perfect world your graphic driver contains the ICC for your monitor and the printer driver has the ICC for your printer. One colour space is converted to the other et voila, print outs look like they do on your screen, unless you’ve not calibrated your monitor in which case this is all a waste of time! So in a too long, didn’t read fashion: great idea for a feature!
Colour Space - the final frontier, these are the voyages of the starship CMYK.
Poor performance In LXF200 on page 20 you state of Sabayon “Sabayon 15.06 Gnome is incredibly fast, especially when compared with its more famous peers.” Despite this it gets a 7/10 performance rating, while its ‘more famous peer’ on the previous page, Fedora, gets a 9/10. Could you please explain what objective
criteria were used to create these ratings numbers since it would seem that the numbers directly contradict the text. Evan Langlois, via email Neil says There’s a few things going on here. The first is that the ratings aren’t actually testing what you’re suggesting. Performance is a broad term that encompasses everything from boot times,
Letter of the month
Windows fan
I
I can’t believe I’m typing this (I have not used windows since Ubuntu 05) but I bought a cheap laptop which had Windows 7 installed, with the intention of installing Linux. As an experiment I downloaded the 10 upgrade and to my amazement have found it rather good (even taking into consideration the pain in finding and downloading new software and inevitable slowing down of the system). Battery life is exceptional and it is a good looking OS and very well integrated. As Microsoft has no doubt spent £millions on it (and Linux distros are often maintained by a person working from home – I think) it is not a fair comparison. I was so unnerved by this that I have taken out a Linux Format subscription and hope
that I find a Linux distro to compare ( I have hopes of Solus, for example). Kevin Garner, Shropshire Neil says: Shocking! you’re right, it certainly looks like Microsoft learnt its lesson with Windows 8 and booted Balmer out of the company, which is now far more focused and delivering products and services consumers and businesses want, which includes integrating functionality with Linux on the cloud side. Frankly though nothing has changed for Linux on the desktop, until box shifters pre-install Linux, there won’t be any major swing to using it by consumers. The one big exception here is with Chromebooks, but many Linux users wouldn’t consider this a traditional GNU/ Linux distro for good reasons. Personally, even in just the two years I’ve
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been on Linux Format, I think we’ve seen huge shifts for many desktop Linux distros in stability, ease of use and performance. So when people now get to use a Linux distro they’re more likely to stick with it.
Microsoft has sorted itself out and is threatening to engulf Linux once more.
January 2016 LXF206 11
Mailserver general responsiveness, to a more aspirational how it performs as “a distro”. The out of context quote you pulled is actually comparing it to other Gentoo distros in terms of speed of install, not specifically Fedora. You also ask for objective criteria, where there are none, we’re weighting this on subjective long-standing experience, and ultimately all reviews are opinion. Shashank says Sabayon is fast, but the performance rating refers to more than just speed. It’s also a measure of reliability. The installation repeatedly crashed on my test machine when I chose LVM partitioning. Even if this was a local issue I had to dock points, because other distros don’t have this problem.
I disagree
and the familiar Gnome window manager is a welcomed familiarity which I hope the developers will keep forever! It’s not broken, so why fix it? Mocheche Mabuza, via email Neil says Everyone disagrees that’s the beautiful thing about the GNU/Linux world! I like to think these features spark debate, keep people’s awareness of the distro landscape fresh and perhaps
Eternal vigilance The article in LXF203 by Bradley Kuhn on the Future of Freedom bounced me out of my comfort zone of believing that the world might be accepting software freedom – in particular Microsoft. I have never trusted Microsoft and their grudging acceptance of the existence of Linux and other free software. Not only are they inveigling their way into the
We’re looking forward to the release of Mint 17.3 and Mint 18 in 2016!
shane_collinge@yahoo.com
I disagree with your choice of the top distro, in my opinion Linux Mint is still the king of the distros. I started using Mint after I got frustrated with Windows 8 that came preinstalled with my laptop (ASUS SC400) I have been using Mint for over a year now and I have no regrets. The reason I would not use your top two suggested distros as as my everyday distro, is because of the package manager they use. I have had a couple of issues such as my earphone socket stopped working recently, and I am quite sure it’s not the socket. Plus I could not update to version 5 of LibreOffice, until I came across a helpful guide. Other than that, it’s been a stable OS and a joy to use with little to no annoyances. My battery life has also improved
Sabayon is a fine distro and believe it or not 7 out of 10 is a good score.
encourages people to try something new. I’m biased as I use Mageia for my day-to-day desktop, but I do find your main objection to the package manager as really odd, as they’re not used that much on desktops. Where I will agree is that Mint remains an exemplary distro for desktop users. It could be Ubuntu 16.04 and Unity 8 finally brings Ubuntu up to date to compete with modern desktops, but it’s the backend, server and cloud aspects that get all the attention for Ubuntu.
12 LXF206 January 2016
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software freedom arena by joining various umbrella organisations, but their attempts to lock people into their proprietary software prison seems even more devious than before. As an analogy, Microsoft, post Ballmer, seemed to take on board a more environmentfriendly attitude to the conservation of the software habitat. Admittedly, they began by trying to re-arrange the habitat to their idea of an ecosystem, by eliminating “weeds” through the good old method of “harvest and burn”. But that failed to stop new “weeds” popping up - so they have begun the more insidious and potentially better method of planting brambleberry bushes offering easily accessible free fruit while the mother plant quietly began, through its rapid growth and painful thorns to cover, strangle and obliterate the diversity of other species that makes a habitat not only resilient but capable of evolving to deal with natural threats. I’m surprised Microsoft hasn’t attempted to buy the rights and all DVD copies of the “Little Shop of Horrors” because the similarity between Microsoft and “Audrey II” are frighteningly apparent. The article reminded me that we must not get too complacent about the burgeoning success of free software and software freedom we are attempting a cultural revolution against powerful organisations whose idea of freedom is, switching analogies, being able to walk the exercise yard of a high-security prison. Dr Colin R. Lloyd, via email
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