Linux Format 213 (Sampler)

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Raspberry Pi Camera Tutorial Pi Zero HAT Reviews Cloud y Pi Own Raspberr

Picon Zero

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he Raspberry Pi Foundation recently released a new version of its popular camera attachment. In this tutorial we’ll use the he Raspberr camera to create a y Pi has special effects selfie machine. power the This project will also to change work with the older Raspberry Pi not just we learn, Camera and all versions how but Before of the Raspberry Pi with a camera port. the Raspberr how we think. As well as the official of it we was an your e in you hardware Pi Camera, you static and with y Pi came need a breadboard, plenty robotics, GPIO avid are pins from to use a with external to which a momentary switch a hostnam spare reasons, we why would here are out I setone server fact. I knew Linux user—I and a female to ne of the different boards if youinto a few Pi. This is handy if out there, There are many can’ male jumper wire. 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Stay safe, people

Is it safe to open source weaponisable code? We’re using this against human beings

Laura Bell on puny human insecurity Open hardware

Roundup

Open source has won and it’s time for hardware to join in

For the best web speed get a lightweight browser

Stallman speaks

Faster browsing

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Features at a glance

Quick tip

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21/06/2016

Plus: Pi User 13:56

8-page Raspberry Pi companion

Build an OwnCloud doc server Instagram Pi Zero image effects



Welcome Get into Linux today!

What we do

We support the open source community by providing a resource of information, and a forum for debate. We help all readers get more from Linux with our tutorials section – we’ve something for everyone! We license all the source code we print in our tutorials section under the GNU GPL v3. We give you the most accurate, unbiased and up-to-date information on all things Linux.

Who we are

This issue we asked our experts: What’s your best home server tip?

Jonni Bidwell The cowsay and fortune programs and the /etc/motd file can all be combined with some cunning scripting to give your users random aphorisms from a talking cow when logging in. Alternatively, you could issue abuse based on the username. Much more useful than what version of Linux the server is running.

Neil Bothwick The best advice I always manage to ignore is “once it is working, don’t mess with it”. In particular, I find that upgrading your mail server ten minutes before you intended to go to bed is an excellent source of sleep deprivation for the foolish, as you try ever more desperate solutions as a direct result of increasing fatigue.

Nick Peers Does your server support link aggregation, as many NAS drives now do? If so, remember that while 802.3ad aggregation is supposed to improve performance, it will only do so when two or more clients are sharing bandwidth with the server; it won’t speed up transfers or streaming between your server and a single computer.

Les Pounder Running a low-power server is now really simple to do thanks to the latest Raspberry Pi 3. This version supplies the level of processing power to undertake most of the tasks that a home scenario demands. Running Raspbian Lite unleashes even more low-cost power, all you need is an external hard drive.

Mayank Sharma I use PageKite to tunnel localhost to the internet and access my home NAS server from anywhere in the world. PageKite is a pay-what-you-want service that reduces a complex procedure into a single command. The FOSS service also respects privacy by SSL encrypting all domains and not recording any traffic.

Serving you since 2000 In this modern world with all-powerful mobile devices, ever-present internet connections and storage devices measuring in the multi-terabyte level you’d be excused for thinking a self-supported home or office server is as dead as the dinosaurs. How wrong you’d be. Ever since I realised I needed a dependable back up solution I’ve run a home-built server even if broadband manages to reach gigabit levels, I’ll still want to control where my backups are stored and have instant access to them. Once you have a server stood there ready to serve, it’s trivial to start adding services to its rank of abilities. File serving, backup, download manager, torrent box, media streamer, remote access, virtualisation hypervisor and even a streaming game server. Combine a home Gigabit LAN and good wireless connectivity and you can enjoy simple, high-speed, redundant remote storage along with a host of server services. We’ll take your hand and explain how it all works. Then if you want something that’s not going to add to the electricity bill, we also explain how the Raspberry Pi can be used as a home or work collaboration server running OwnCloud and useful web server. We also print an essay by a chap called Richard Stallman, this important message extols the need for more open hardware platforms. The world is thundering down the tracks to a place where vendor-locked proprietary devices are the only option – even Android struggles to stay freed outside of the kernel – and the problem has shifted from being able to run your own freed software to being able to access the hardware to run anything at all. If you are after some new hardware we’ve reviewed the latest Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition running Ubuntu—it’s awesome. Plus there’s the usual huge dose of practical tutorials, Raspberry Pi projects and coding fun to be had over the next hundred pages. Enjoy!

Neil Mohr Editor neil.mohr@futurenet.com

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On digital and print, see p30 www.techradar.com/pro

August 2016 LXF213    3


Contents

“Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.” – Muhammad Ali

Reviews Dell XPS 13 2016................16 Does the Dell remain the Linux laptop to own or have the problems with Intel Skylake tarnished the sheen? Jonni Bidwell runs off with the review unit never to be seen again…

The ideal blend of portable 13-inch chassis and Intel Core i7 power?

Shuttle XPC Cube..............18

Build a home server Create the ultimate server for you, tailor services, make it bulletproof and set it up with advance features. Get going on page 32

Roundup: Lightweight browsers p24

A tiny PC case that’s capable of housing an awesome home server system running the latest Intel Skylake hardware.

Bq M10 Ubuntu tablet.......19 With a fresh OTA11 update can the Ubuntu tablet prove to be a better proposition or will Neil Mohr run screaming from Linux Format towers, again?

Endless OS......................... 20 Jonni Bidwell wonders what he’s done to deserve this? Brain the size of a cryptographer and he’s sat here reviewing a beginners’ Linux distro, at least it’s pretty.

Why do people keep thinking beginners want to use Linux?

LibreOffice Online v1.0.....21 We test out the first release of the fully open source cloud document editor.

Duskers............................... 22

In Linux Format Towers no one can hear you scream, largely down to the thick Bath stone walls. Also, we review a game set in space.

4     LXF213 August 2016

Interview

My research area is Human-centric Security which is sort of made-up. Laura Bell on protecting humans from themselves p40 www.linuxformat.com


On your FREE DVD

Ubuntu Server 16.04, Debian 8.4, ClearOS 7.2, OwnCloud, Clonezilla 64-bit

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64-bit

32-bit

32-bit

Only the best distros every month PLUS: Hotpicks, Roundup & more!

p96

Raspberry Pi User

Subscribe & save! p30

In-depth... On open hardware................ 44

Pi news.................................... 58

Stallman speaks! Open hardware is coming and RMS explains how he envisions its arrival so we can all enjoy a freed world of devices.

Eben Upton gets a CBE, the Pi Zero breaks a record and Farnell gets sold. It’s all happening!

Picon Zero.............................. 59 A dedicated Pi Zero HAT that promises to power robots to a new world order, hopefully not.

Pi camera effects.................. 60 Les Pounder takes us on an artistic coding journey to generate selfies with a twist.

Home OwnCloud server....... 62

Run a low-power OwnCloud server to share documents and to-do lists around your home.

Will the world cope with open hardware?

Coding Academy

Tutorials Terminal basics Partitions...........................68

Rust: Networking.................. 84 Our series continues with Mihalis Tsoukalos, this month learn how to start writing network applications in Rust, what else!?

Nick Peers explains how you can use text input to partition your drives, one day you just might have to do it.

Image editing Photo manipulation.........70

Python: drawing.................... 88 Mihalis Tsoukalos explains how to get to grips with the basics of drawing with Python. Circles, lines, squares, we go geometry mad!

Alexander Tolstoy thinks your photos are rubbish, so here’s how to create an open source photo-editing workstation.

Regulars at a glance News.............................. 6 Subscriptions............30 Back issues................66 Open hardware is coming, no really.

Are will still in the EU? Do we need to

100 flipping apps, we listed the must-

Ubuntu Snaps take over the world.

start charging import tax? Subscribe

have open source in LXF212.

Oracle loses over its Android API case

while you still can!

and other stories.

Mailserver.................... 11

Sysadmin....................48 BOOM! Mr. Brown is back!

Next month................98. Mint 18! The release you’ve all been waiting for in its prime and unhacked

It’s an embarrassing month with

Slamming it to the servers like a LOIC form, you lucky people. All that and

far too many compliments for an

DDOS attack. Ahem. Also he looks at

Englishman to take.

Discourse, a cool forum system.

drones, build a Linux drone!

Les Pounder goes off on a personal

Alexander Tolstoy isn’t causing trouble in France, as he’s too busy

Roundup.....................24

Config management SaltStack........................... 80

for this month: QOwnNotes, Neural-

Mayank Sharma is a lightweight

style, WeatherDesk, Screenkey, Kronometer, Rear, Smartmontools,

they’re low resource but fully featured. Corsix-th, TSC, Xpiks, Etcher

Chatting with friends a lot? Mats Axelsson explains how to use WebRTC to set up a direct contact with friends.

John Knight shows garage musicians how to enter the world of multi-track recording.

fighting the many open source picks

when it comes to his web browser,

WebRTC Real time chat................... 74

Audio editing Music workstation........... 76

User groups.................14 HotPicks..................... 52 hackathon, but his copy is never late.

It’s like Instagram for grown ups.

Our subscription team is waiting for your call.

www.techradar.com/pro

Chris Notley explains how this configuration management tool can be used at home.

August 2016 LXF213    5


This ISSUE: Open hardware

Google vs Oracle

Snap packages

Chromebooks

hardware news

Open hardware is poised for success

Developments in open processors are paving the way.

F

ree and open hardware has long been a dream for many of us who want devices in the hands of as many people as possible, no matter their background, while banishing the reductive spectacle of patent wars that can hold back so many promising technologies. Sadly, the practicalities of open hardware has made the road to an open and free hardware reality a long one, but it looks like we may finally be there. Later in this issue, we have an essay by Richard Stallman (see p44) extolling the virtues – and looking at the complicated ethics – of free and open hardware. One of the key dilemmas of the open source community is whether using closed design hardware is OK if we’re running open source software on it. For some people, the ends justify the means and that’s enough, but for others they want to make sure that every part of a device, both the hardware and software, is free and open. The lowRISC (www.lowrisc.org), a not-for-profit organisation that has close connections with the University of Cambridge, has been making progress in creating open processors based on RISC designs in a bid to create a fully open-source RISC-V based SoC by the end of 2016. The chip designs will be based on 64-bit RISC-V architecture. This will join the ranks of other open source RISC-V-based processors, such as the 32-bit PULPino (www.pulpplatform.org), which is completely free. As the PULPino website states: “it is free, no registration, no strings attached, you can use it, change it,

6 LXF213 August 2016

adapt it, add it to your own chip, use it for classes, research, projects, products”, with the source code available on GitHub (https://github. com/pulp-platform/pulpino). While current free and open hardware is often dismissed as either being underpowered or out of date, there are some open hardware solutions that are looking to buck that trend, eg the Raptor Talos Secure Workstation (http://bit.ly/ TalosSecureWorkstation) is a $3,100 system that’s completely free and open while delivering high-performance thanks to its POWER8 architecture,

unparalleled performance, security, and user control to the desktop.” So while things are looking up for RISC-V-based open hardware platforms (which is itself open source and modular), open x86 architecture is still facing hurdles thanks to Intel’s tight grip on x86. As Krste Asanovic, chairman of the RISC-V Foundation, mentioned in a recent presentation: “Most important interfaces are not open source”. Asanovic noted that as soon as opensource ARM-compatible cores are announced, they get shut down with a cease and desist letter from a law firm representing ARM. There’s still a struggle for widespread adoption of open hardware, then, but with RISC-V being recently described as “the Linux of microprocessors”, and the growing number of RISC-V-based CPUs being produced, we will hopefully see open hardware alternatives to closed architecture growing in popularity. One day we may no longer have to compromise by using closed hardware to run open software.

“One day we may no longer have to compromise by using closed hardware to run open software.” which is an eight-core 130W CPU from the OpenPOWER Foundation. According to Raptor, the Talos Secure Workstation is “the world’s first ATX workstationclass mainboard for the new, opensource friendly IBM POWER8 processor and architecture. Raptor Engineering’s Talos Secure Workstation brings

RISC-V could be the key to open hardware.

www.linuxformat.com


Newsdesk newsdesk sexy Legal news

Google vs Oracle: jury sides with Google Rules that Android makes fair use of Java APIs.

T

he long-running legal fight between Google and Oracle over the use of Java APIs in the Android operating system could finally be drawing to a close, with a federal jury concluding that Android does not infringe on Oracle-owned copyrights. After three days of deliberation, the jury decided that Google’s re-implementation of 37 Java APIs was protected by fair use. In a statement made after its victory, a Google spokesperson commented that: “Today’s verdict that Android makes fair use of Java APIs represents a win for the Android ecosystem, for the Java programming community, and for software developers who rely on open and free programming languages to build innovative consumer products.” Oracle, which acquired the Java programming language with its purchase of Sun Microsystems, sued Google over the APIs back in 2010, and in the early proceedings it had asked for $9 billion in compensation. Oracle attorney, Peter Bicks, claimed in his closing arguments that “They

copied 11,500 lines of code … it’s undisputed. They took the code, they copied it, and put it right into Android.” Oracle hasn’t yet commented on the results of the court case, but it’s widely expected that the software giant will appeal the decision. So, while we’re happy to see this on-going argument reaching the end of the road, there may still be a few twists and turns before it’s completely over.

Is the Google vs Oracle fight finally over? Dare we get our hopes up?

distro news

Canonical announces universal Snap packages

They now work natively on a number of different distros.

W

e often report on falling outs and acrimonies among open-source teams and projects, so it’s also nice to talk about when they all work together. Canonical has recently announced that developers from various Linux distros, as well as a number of companies, are collaborating on the universal Snap package format, which will allow a single binary package to work on any Linux desktop, server or device. Among the names connected to the project, which can be found at http://snapcraft.io, are Dell, Samsung, the Linux Foundation, The Document Foundation, Krita and Mycroft, along with contributors to Arch, Debian, Ubuntu, OpernWrt and other distros. Snap packages are designed to be easy to create and make it simpler for third parties to create Linux applications that work securely on a number of distros. Snap packages can now work

natively on Arch, Debian, Fedora, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Gnome, Ubuntu Kylin and many more. Native support for CentOS, elementary OS, Gentoo, Mint, OpenSUSE, OpenWrt and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are coming soon. One of the biggest beneficiaries of Snap packages will be IoT (Internet of Things) smart home devices. With a number of IoT device manufacturers using their own technology and standards, these devices have often not been able to communicate with each other—but by using Snaps, multiple vendors will be able to create compatible devices that can securely communicate while being easy to update even on slow data connections.

www.techradar.com/pro

Newsbytes Microsoft has announced that FreeBSD 10.3 is available directly from its Azure Marketplace as a readymade virtual machine image. Microsoft has been investing in making FreeBSD a “[first] class VM guest on Hyper-V, enabling performant networking and storage capabilities that for the first time, made it possible to run production FreeBSD workloads in Hyper-V environments”, according to Jason Anderson, Principal PM Manager of the Open Source Technology Center at Microsoft. By getting FreeBSD through the Azure Marketplace, you’ll get technical support from support engineers, something that the FreeBSD Foundation doesn’t offer (instead relying on the community to offer support). According to Justin T. Gibbs, President of FreeBSD Foundation, this is “quite a significant milestone for FreeBSD community and for Microsoft to publish a supported FreeBSD image on Azure Marketplace. We really appreciate Microsoft’s commitment and investment in FreeBSD project”. Ubuntu has become the most popular Linux distro for web servers, with a market share of 32.1 percent (Source: w3techs.com), overtaking the market leader Debian for the first time since 2011. Combined, Ubuntu/Debian has far more of the market than Red Hat/ CentOS, while other distros are a mere blip on the charts. The ascent of Ubuntu has been remarkable – in 2009 it ranked a fifth behind Debian, CentOS, Red Hat and Fedora. Since then, it has seen remarkable growth with every 2.2 minutes one of the top 10 million websites switching to it. It’s not just Ubuntu that’s on the rise – Chomebooks have now outsold Macs for the first time in the US – in terms of shipments (Source: IDC). While Apple shipped around 1.76 million Macs in the first quarter of 2016, Dell, HP and Lenovo combined shipped almost 2 million Chromebooks. That may be three companies vss one, but it’s clear Chromebooks are gaining momentum.

Chromebooks have outsold Macs in the US for the first time.

August 2016 LXF213 7


newsdesk Comment

Collabora Online Michael Meeks

This month was extraordinarily busy as we prepared and polished an initial release of several years of work as Collabora Online, which brings LibreOffice to the cloud and your browser. Getting all of the final bugs fixed, and user experience polished for our first release was all consuming. The first release has basic editing functionality – simple text and formula editing, shape manipulaton and so on. While the editing tools are simple, we render a large number of documents at high fidelity – re-using the proven LibreOffice engine and give a real WYSIWYG editing experience. We also support Shared Editing – allowing multiple concurrent viewers while a single person edits the document – very useful for team work. Clearly our security and scalability is built around Linux’s powerful architecture and a container-like system to isolate individual documents.

Play with Collabora

Getting the engine in-place allows people to integrate the online goodness into their myriad DMS, and CMS systems with commitments from across the opensource space: OwnCloud, Seafile, Pydio, VNC and others. Next, we’re working towards allowing multiple concurrent editing cursors, improving performance and scalability while helping to tailor the solution to hosters to allow integration into their web solutions. The very latest version is available to play with, and to contribute to via the Collabora Online Development Edition (CODE) which can be downloaded from http://collaboraoffice.com – please do have a play and get involved. We’d love to hear what you think of it.

We review the first release version of Collabora Online, part of the wider Collabora CloudSuite, on page 21. Michael is a pseudo-engineer, semi-colon lover, SUSE LibreOffice hacker and amateur pundit.

Distro watch

What’s behind the free software sofa?

Baruwa Enterprise Edition 6.8

B

aruwa Enterprise Edition 6.8 has been released for download, and supports the ACME client protocol, which brings ACME-compatible Certificate Authorities into the fold. In the release (found at http://bit.ly/BaruwaOS6_8), it’s explained that “Baruwa will

Manjaro Linux 16.06 Manjaro Linux, an Archinspired distro that uses a rolling release schedule, has reached version 16.06 and features the Linux kernel 4.4 and 10 alternative kernel versions, giving the distro an extensive selection of kernels.

The Xfce edition comes with version 4.12 of the environment and the Manjaro Settings Manager have been overhauled to provide an easyto-use graphical interface for switching between kernels. For more information check out http://bit. ly/ManjaroLinux16_06.

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8 LXF213 August 2016

now request Certbot certificates for the HTTPS and SMTP TLS services if you do not have a CA issued certificate. Certbot certificates are supported by a wide range of browsers so you should no longer have the warnings generated…” To download head over to www.baruwa.com.



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Disc numbers First the good news: I like the magazine (I’ve been taking it since about LXF18), so keep up the good work! I have one small little issue: I like to file the cover DVDs (I have a storage box for 5.25-inch floppies which is wellsuited to this), and I’ve noticed that from LXF193 onwards that have you put the issue number on the DVD but not on the cardboard envelope for the DVD. This has meant that if I want to see the issue number that an LXFDVD relates to I have to take it out of the envelope. I’ve resorted to writing the issue number on the back of the

cardboard envelope, but it would be good if you could go back to printing it on the front, as you used to with magazine issues up to LXF192. Ian Park, Berkshire Neil says: I’m sure that you’ve noticed but the disc number has always been printed on the back of the disc sleeve as part of the DVD brand mark. It’s there so we can quiz people as to the disc they have, if it’s been separated from the magazine. Putting that aside, the dropping of the number from the front of the DVD wallet was part of a design shift, because it allowed us to have a more flexible canvas to work with. It seems the position and style of the number has varied over time with the whims of Effy’s art muse at any given time in his extensive LXF career, but losing the bottom bar that rather uselessly suggested you open the index.html file lost this fixed area for the issue number. While in general we’re happier to modify the design depending on what’s on the disc each month. So

unfortunately I can’t see that the disc number is likely to be coming back to the front anytime soon. But to be clear, our revised disc design pushed off the front-facing disc numbers, but there’s still one on the back, if that helps.

Super Tux Today I updated my OpenSUSE 13.2 distro only to find that, at the next bootup, it failed to load. The system displayed an error message to the effect that a Grub file and something like an ‘i386 | pc-common file’, were missing from my system. My computer then dropped into grub-rescue mode, which was no help to me as I’m not familiar with the commands that are available there. This was beginning to look like a major disaster for me. Then I remembered that the latest DVD held a copy of Rescatux. I rebooted into this and clicked on the grey ‘Restore Grub’ button. Next, I ran the Boot Repair utility. (No, I did’t know if both were required.)

Blasphemy! Opposable thumb Tux should not be!

End result: in a very few minutes a borked OpenSUSE system was ‘brought back to life’. Major brownie points to Mr Bothwick for including Rescatux on the LXFDVD. It could not have been more timely. Stuart Elliott, via email Neil says: Oddly, I’ve used the disc to do almost exactly the same thing on a couple of occasions recently. Once was after foolishly nuking my work drive. Thankfully, everything’s backed up, so it’s more managing the red-faced embarrassment levels than anything else.

Letter of the month

So embarrassing

P

ersonally, I think you’re the best computer magazine regardless of OS, I’ve been reading you since roughly about LXF35. Now that I’ve flattered you, may I make one complaint? Please lose the Sans Serif fonts. They are an evil plot by Redmondites to make people stop reading. Besides being ugly and hard to see, you will condemn us to spend our lives distinguishing ‘1’ from ‘l’ from ‘j’ from ‘I’ from ‘i’, all of which appear similar in the Sans Serif fonts, not to mention trying to

tell ‘m’ from ‘rn’. Otherwise, keep up the good work! David R. DeSpain, Texas, USA. Neil says: You’ve discovered our dirty secret, run for it lads! We’ve talked about changing these – as it certainly makes code and terminal commands harder to read – but we’re locked in to certain typefaces with licences; our main typeface is Benton Sans and the code is Lexia DaMa. We’ve recently adopted running code and terminal commands inline with body copy, as the problem is less pronounced with the Lexia

www.techradar.com/pro

You’d think that intelligent people would be able to pick a typeface that made distinguishing i, l, L and 1 a little easier.

typeface. There is a plan to redesign the magazine towards the start of 2017, part of that will be choosing a typeface where you can tell the difference between 1, l and i. Sheesh, who does the art on this thing?

August 2016 LXF213    11


Mailserver

Archived Ark manages various archive formats, including TAR, GZIP, BZIP2, RAR and ZIP. It can be used to browse, extract, create, and modify archives. The Ark package is part of the KDE Software Compilation (KDE SC) utilities module. There’s a thread on the Ubuntu forums asking about tape archival software. TAR actually stands for Tape ARchive and once you have an archive you can cp the TAR to the tape. The key to understanding it is that in Linux, a tape drive appears as a device, usually /dev/st0. To backup your home directory, you’d just use something like this: tar -cf /dev/st0 /home Then you’d rewind and eject the tape using the mt command (Magnetic Tape): mt -f /dev/st0 rewind mt -f /dev/st0 eject As all of this is command-line stuff, you can put this together into a script, and use Cron to fire the script off at regular intervals. There are many more options to tar and mt , of course, so I’ve found that it’s a good idea to

read the man pages for both these commands. Enter: LTFS Open Edition (OE) and Library Edition (LE). The Linear Tape File SystemOpen Edition was released in 2010. LTFS enables users to read files from – and write files to – a tape cartridge with a single tape drive in much the same way files are accessed and written to disk and flash storage devices. Using LTFS-LE you can move data to and from tape by simply dragging and dropping files from one window to another, as you would with disk in most popular operating systems. I think we need a Linux story about the above operations. Paul Tabolinsky, Tennessee US Neil says: While I think the topic is interesting, I unfortunately, think the usage case for tape has been reduced to a narrow enterprise role. The simplicity and cost of hard drive storage and even cloud storage is at a point that makes the ease of access much more attractive than using a tape drive. So while I’m not saying people don’t use tape, those that do are, at least, doing so in a commercial role and really should already

Instant Linux I so want to permanently leave the World of Windows. It is a place that I have, over the decades, reluctantly contended and struggled with, ie software bugs, blue screens and programs not responding etc. As someone who has worked in IT and built many PCs I’m more than capable of assembling a new tower unit and want to make the fastest, most powerful computer that my money can buy even if it costs four figures! I primarily use the internet, office applications: Microsoft Word and Excel plus an, infrequently used, PDF reader. I don’t use memory/system demanding things like Photoshop or video-editing software. I don’t mind if the new case is server-sized. I liked the look of Linux Mint and Zorin which I tried out for a short time. What I really want and need is instantaneous computing so that when I click open a browser, or Microsoft Word equivalent, it’s there in split seconds with no delay! I don’t know if Mint and Zorin will run high-end PC hardware and if I will be able to achieve the responsiveness I want. Although I plan to go into,

shane_collinge@yahoo.com

Tape drives are still used and available but cost over £1,000.

know about tar and LTFS! In fact, I recall the last time I used tape was in the late ‘90s archiving my old Amiga magazine for work. Of course, if more people want us to cover tape then it can still happen! Thanks for highlighting LTFS.

12     LXF213 August 2016

www.linuxformat.com

Until AMD gets its act together (perhaps with its next-gen Xen architecture) Intel offers stunning performance.

what for me is, quite unchartered waters, with this planned and sizeable financial commitment in hardware, I need to have some idea as to the kind of results that I should expect. I don’t want to find myself installing Windows on my newly built PC—that would be dire! Rodger Deyn, Manchester Neil says: It’s hard to answer this question, but rest assured that any up-to-date Linux distro does support (most of) the latest hardware, the usual exceptions are graphics cards—this area is getting better as AMD has moved to a mostly open-source driver, but the Nvidia driver still lags— this means that you can buy the latest Intel Skylake hardware and it’ll work fine. Add to that an M.2 solid-state drive or similar with 16GB of memory and you should have a system that responses pretty much instantly. But there are issues with, for instance, the Nvidia 980 and 1080 cards.



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