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3 Issue 123
Contents Reviews
10 amazing 66 HTC One X+
Raspberry HTC updates its flagship
smartphone for 2013
Developer tutorials
and the open source scene
86 Q & A
Parted Magic Subscribe
46 Celebrating the life of Pi
Your problems solved! Fedora 18 today! We sit down with three core members of
30 Save at least 30% the Raspberry Pi Foundation to celebrate
on the shop price.
US customers the first year on sale and to find out what
can subscribe via 2013 has in store
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06 News | 12 Opinion | 94 Letters
Swipe
Each edge of the phone has a specific use. Here’s
what happens when you swipe from the top…
THE SPECS
When you want to access the particular setting or ENTRY-LEVEL SUPERPHONE
notification, pull down the rest of the bar right over SMARTPHONE INCLUDING DESKTOP
the running app, similar to Android notifications. For a solid competitor to For a high-end smartphone
This allows you to change system settings without today’s smartphone, that docks as a portable
going to a whole different menu. you’ll need: desktop, you’ll need:
6 www.linuxuser.co.uk
News
The latest in the Linux community
OPEN SOURCE
ANDROID
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Contact us…
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MOBILE
TIZEN
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News
The latest in the Linux community
OPEN SOURCE
HARDWARE
Linux calendar
Chromebook Android Magazine –
tops the charts
21 Feb 2013
issue 22
» www.littlegreenrobot.co.uk
Samsung model top in US ■ Samsung’s 11-inch Chromebook
Android Magazine, our best and
only print source for everything
Online retail giant Amazon is currently putting at the number-two spot in the UK. Although the Android, is coming out today. Check
different variants of the Google Chromebook Windows 8-powered Acer Aspire E1 currently out what’s in store over on page 64.
at the top of its hourly updated listings of holds the top spot in the UK, Windows has been
the bestselling notebooks in the UK and the knocked into third place by the 13-inch Apple SCALE 11x
US. At the time of writing, Samsung’s 11-inch MacBook Pro in the US. It certainly seems that » Hilton Los Angeles International
offering is in the number-one position for US Microsoft’s one-time dominance of computer Airport, Los Angeles, CA
sales, while the Acer C7 Chromebook is sitting hardware is now in question. » USA
»www.socallinuxexpo.org/
HARDWARE scale11x
Google has tasked Lior Ron, ex-chief Motorola’s patent portfolio as the chief reason The largest annual gathering for
the Python community, PyCon is
technology officer of the Israeli Army for the acquisition. Google initially played down
a diverse conference dedicated to
Intelligence, to head up the team to develop any talk of the company creating its own in- providing an enjoyable experience
a new Android super-phone, according house, end-to-end, Android ecosystem. for everyone who attends. Tutorials,
to reports in The Wall Street Journal. The “Google remains firmly committed to Android talks, summits and open spaces
‘X-Phone’ is part of a plan for Google to as an open platform and a vibrant open source are available at the conference.
increase the profitability of its Motorola community,” Andy Rubin, Google’s senior vice
Mobility unit and claw back a share of the president of mobile, commented at the time.
smartphone hardware market now dominated “We will continue to work with all of our valued
by Samsung and Apple. Android partners to develop and distribute
When Google first bought Motorola Mobility innovative Android-powered devices.”
last year, the company carefully stage- Since then, Google has avoided any sign of
managed the deal. The focus was placed on favouritism to Motorola. The ‘Nexus’ branded
contract to premiere the latest version of
14 March 2013
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hardware
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News
The latest in the Linux community
OPEN SOURCE
OPEN SOURCE
Jon Masters
Jon Masters summarises the latest happenings in the
Linux kernel community, including the closing of the
development ‘merge window’ for the 3.8 kernel
Jon Masters is a compute) bigger brothers than the chip used in
Linux kernel hacker who the Raspberry Pi, while being used in systems
has been working on of similar price. It is possible, for example, to
Linux for almost 17 years, purchase one of the popular ‘MK802’ plug-in TV
since he first attended
university at the age of 13. dongles built using the AllWinner A10 CPU for
Jon lives in Cambridge, $35. That yields a full ARM-based Linux system
Massachusetts, and works running at 1GHz, with 1GB RAM, USB, Wi-Fi,
for a large enterprise Linux
vendor. He publishes an SD card interface and full HDMI output.
a daily Linux kernel Even more capable systems of a similar price
mailing list summary at point are appearing all the time, so the A1X will
kernelpodcast.org
remain popular.
Linus Torvalds closed the 3.8 kernel ‘merge Transparent zero huge pages are another 3.8
window’ (the period of time during which kernel feature that will be popular with users,
disruptive changes are allowed into the although if the feature is working correctly,
kernel, and are then stabilised before final users who use it may never realise that it is
release) just prior to the Christmas holiday. even there. Huge pages are a hardware feature
In his announcement of the first 3.8 ‘release of modern CPUs in which the built-in CPU
candidate’, Linus said, “The longest night of virtual memory translation caches, known as
the year is upon us (and by ‘us’ I mean mainly TLBs (translation lookaside buffers), support
people in the same time zone and hemisphere both the conventional smallest unit of virtual
as I am. Because I’m too self-centred to care memory page size of (typically) 4KB, as well
about anybody else), and what better thing to as a much larger ‘huge’ page of 2 or 4MB or
do than get yourself some nice mulled wine, more. This is useful because the CPU has only
sit back, relax, and play with the most recent a limited number of these much faster TLB
RC kernel?” Some readers might question caches that it uses to store previously looked-
whether this is truly the most relaxing course up (translated) virtual memory mappings from
of action, but nobody can fault Linus for trying addresses used by applications to those of the
to motivate developers to spend some holiday underlying hardware. By using huge pages, the
time testing code. hardware can keep more translations cached
The 3.8 merge window was, according to and improve performance. But, there is a
Linus himself, the biggest merge window in performance catch to using huge pages.
the 3.x kernel series so far (in terms of raw Historically, huge pages had to be manually
number of changes going into the kernel assigned, but support for ‘transparent’ or
codebase). It will contain a number of new and automatic huge pages was added to the
exciting features. Two that interest this author kernel some time ago and has been present in
in particular are the support for transparent distributions for a number of releases. With the
huge zero pages, and newly added support for introduction of transparent huge pages came
the AllWinner ‘A1X’ series of system-on-chip the unintended side effect that some systems
ARM processors. The latter are very popular, would actually waste memory in the process.
inexpensive and more capable (in terms of This is because when allocating conventional
12 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Opinion
The kernel column – Jon Masters
open source
“Transparent zero huge pages are move ‘debugfs’ out into the file-systems menu.
13 www.linuxuser.co.uk
OpenSource Your source of Linux news and views
of Windows 8 (which I suspect will continue services above all else. It adds little to nothing to
to cause Microsoft as many problems as it the open source community at all.
resolves), and listening to a salesperson try and But it doesn’t have to be like that. Convincing
sell anti-virus software to someone buying a the mass market to adopt an open source
tablet computer called for rarely seen levels of operating system for a desktop PC or laptop was
restraint. The methodology of old remains the always going to be a proverbial uphill struggle,
same, it seems, even if the products themselves but there’s a different set of parameters now.
gradually changed. While Windows 8 continues to try to win people
Two things have buoyed Currys, however. The over, the truth that Microsoft is facing is that, for
first is the demise of another big British chain, the first time in a generation, there’s change on a
Comet, which inevitably brought fresh footfall software as well as a hardware level.
into the market. Sadly, by allowing the likes of Amazon to
But the other, and less UK-specific factor seize that, there’s an argument that some
is the staggering, ongoing success of tablet opportunities have been lost already. But the
Simon Brew is a technology
writer and editor, computers. Tablets are now heavily mainstream, taking for granted of a touch-screen interface
working across the as well as filling in niches in the market that a full means that there’s space here for something of
Linux, Windows and computer can’t do. Take the rise in educational note in the retail sector to develop; for devices
Mac OS X platforms
and child-targeted tablet computers, for that work on a genuine framework of open
instance. Granted, this is usually a cheap source software, to offer genuine choice.
Given that the general impression given of Android-powered model that’s had a few apps Remember the days when Dell first
the British retail sector in particular post- clustered together on it. But there’s potential introduced its laptop customisation purchase
Christmas was one of doom and gloom, with here to push the hardware itself into affordable, screen that seemed intent on selling you as
several major chains facing well-documented interesting places, and the low price that’s been much as it possibly could? Well, that might just
problems, closer inspection revealed some asked for such devices suggests that there’s be inverted now. Instead, software becomes the
interesting upward trends in the midst of the headroom to do more. choice. Given that most hardware in the sector
figures. And technology, not for the first time, What’s particularly interesting about the is created equal, we’re at a stage where end
was adding some of the fuel. tablet market too is that Apple no longer users can, instead of quibbling over memory and
Appreciating that there were many appears to be having things its own way, and storage space, focus on application and what
contributory factors, the numbers for high- that’s been crucial to the relaxing of the sector they actually want a device for.
street electrical giant Currys were surprisingly as a whole. Samsung and its Galaxy line is at the Currys is unlikely to be interested in that any
impressive. In line with similar chains in other top end of Apple’s rivals, and Google’s Nexus line time soon. But by continuing to fuel the tablet
countries, Currys has spent money making its continues to thrive. Sadly, it looks as if Amazon’s explosion, the retailer may yet have a helping
stores bigger, consolidating its brands under less-friendly-than-it-looks Kindle Fire has been hand in bringing to the fore a more interesting
one (very big) roof. I went in one just before making serious headway, though, which is a way of computing.
Christmas and, truthfully, couldn’t leave worry. As those who have used the Kindle Fire
fast enough. The PC World segment of the extensively can testify, it’s a tablet that exists
business seems to exist to try to sell us copies to get you closer to Amazon’s products and
14 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Opinion
The free software column
open source
Apple scruffs
Android phones are no more a ‘rip-off’ of the iPhone than
the iPhone is a rip-off of earlier mobile phones and technology,
argues Richard Hillesley…
idea. So the cars of any era, however different on clean design and usability principles. Apple
they might have seemed in their time, look like made all the right decisions, sidestepped the
other cars of that era – and the same can be competition and still holds a significant share
said of, say, furniture, graffiti, clothes, hairstyles of the market – but very few of the constituent
and mobile computer devices. A mobile phone is parts of the iPhone were really unique or
based on any number of software and hardware original. Competitors adopted Android, which
technologies developed by individuals and firms had been under development since 2003,
such as Nokia, Samsung and Motorola over a offered all the advantages of the iPhone and
period of 30 years, but a modern phone looks cost significantly less.
very different to one of 30 years ago. The justification for Apple’s subsequent
A mobile phone has some basic requirements. righteous war against the Androids is the
It has to be portable and fit in your pocket, tendentious claim that Android is a ‘rip-off’ of
preferably with smooth edges so that it doesn’t the iPhone and “a stolen product”. The primary
catch on the threads of your jacket or shirt. It contention is that Samsung and Android have
Richard Hillesley writes about has to be able to scan the web and talk to other ripped off Apple’s style and look and feel, but
art, music, digital rights,
Linux and free software for phones. Sometimes we expect a little bit more, Android is no more stolen from the iPhone than
a variety of publications but the basic technology and appearance, the iPhone is a ‘rip-off’ of the pioneering work of
albeit refined and improved, remains the same, the likes of Motorola, Nokia and Samsung itself.
Igor Stravinsky once said that “a good and owes everything to 30 years of research The instrument for Apple’s war has been
composer does not imitate; he steals”, and and development by any number of companies the acquiescence of the United States Patent
TS Eliot once said “immature poets imitate; and individuals who wormed away at the idea and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the US
mature poets steal.” Even the idea that good of touch screens and mobile communications, courts, ownership of scores of debatable
art embraces the work of other good artists is sometimes making breakthroughs and utility and design patents, and its claims
not unique or original. sometimes encountering failure. against Samsung and others of ‘trade dress
Good art is often a synthesis of thoughts The commercial breakthrough of the infringement’. The good news in recent months
and methodologies that have been poached smartphone is dated to the launch of the is that some of these entitlements, such as
and recycled from other sources. Very little is iPhone in 2006, but the ideas and technology Apple’s patent entitled ‘Touch screen device,
entirely new or original, and this understanding it embraced did not slip, clean and new, out of method, and graphical user interface for
is equally true of other aspects of our lives. Ideas Apple’s ownership of one particular part of the determining commands by applying heuristics’
are cumulative and depend upon the evolution ether. Apple was not alone in recognising that (bit.ly/TPWeEw) and ‘the rubber band patent’
of techniques, observation and criticism, so the mobile phone had a significant future, but (ars.to/SmJ6pP) have come up for review and
it isn’t entirely surprising that inventions and had the advantage of being an outsider to the been found wanting by the USPTO. The bad
discoveries are often made simultaneously by business, able to take a dispassionate view of news is that Apple still has a vast portfolio of
different people in different locations. It is still the possibilities. Apple synthesised the best debatable patents to draw upon.
a matter of argument, for instance, whether the aspects of existing mobile phone technologies Patents are not a defence of the rights of the
electric light bulb was invented by Joseph Swan and smartphones, and added the marketing innovator, but a weapon against competition
or Thomas Edison, or the telephone by Elisha potential of the idea behind iTunes to make an and invention and the rights of the user. Android
Gray or Alexander Graham Bell… iPhone out of an iPod – a phone that doubled as is no more a ‘rip-off’ or ‘stolen product’ than
The style and design of the prevailing art and an iPod and a web device, and gave access to the iPhone itself, or the music of Stravinsky or
everyday items of our lives reflect the zeitgeist the Apple store. Marketing and the inertia of the poetry of Eliot.
and are a refinement and an assimilation of competition did the rest.
the judgement of their times. Everybody copies The iPhone was the best mobile phone of
everybody else, and style is not a patentable its time, used the best hardware, and relied
15 www.linuxuser.co.uk
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TEN AMAZING
RASPBERRY PI
PROJECTS
The £25 computer is celebrating its first
anniversary – here’s to a year’s worth of
magnificent, unique and exciting achievements
As portable computing whole host of projects. Some have satisfied imagination of the creators. And the balls
goes, the Raspberry Pi a craving for fun; others for exploration and to keep going to realise those dreams, of
could hardly be bettered. indulgence. More still have satisfied the course, but that would be three things.
Small enough to slip inside a current trend for performing real-world Over the next few pages, the creators of
pocket, it can go anywhere tasks at the lowest possible price. The Pi these projects talk us through their projects.
and everywhere with you. Yet is the recession buster with the potential You will find the majority of the source code
to use the Pi as a standard to empower a future generation (as one on our cover disc and we'll also tell you where
Linux machine kind of misses the point – or, at schoolboy emphatically showed). you can find tutorial instructions, where
the very least, the opportunities afforded by Here we present ten of those projects. available, to allow you to replicate them. But
this small-form-factor, high-spec wonder. Each of them, we believe, encapsulates all more than all of this, we hope it provides you
Over the past year, this inexpensive that is good about the Pi, making great use with inspiration for your own projects. You
machine, produced as an educational of two things: the machine itself, with its never know – you may see your creation here
plaything, has taken centre stage for a tiny credit card size; but above all, the bold in a year's time.
18 www.linuxuser.co.uk
10 amazing Raspberry Pi projects 1 RasPi
Top Raspberry Pi projects to amaze and inspire birthday
st
special
feature
19 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Feature 10 amazing Raspberry Pi projects
The Raspberry Pi
Since the ultimate aim of the Raspberry Pi is to encourage
children to experiment with computers and understand their
inner joy, the supercomputer project built by computational
engineers at the University of Southampton could not be a
Supercomputer
better example of the magical things being done with this
miniature marvel.
The creation by Professor Simon Cox and his team cost
less than £2,500 to build, excluding the switches, but it also
Take some Lego and 64 had a special ingredient: Prof Cox’s six-year-old son, James.
It was while playing around with a Pi with his son that the
The supercomputer
runs Raspbian OS,
which is based on
Debian and optimised
for Raspberry Pi
20 www.linuxuser.co.uk
10 amazing Raspberry Pi projects 1 RasPi
Top Raspberry Pi projects to amaze and inspire BIRTHDAY st
SPECIAL
FEATURE
■ Lego features highly in the project, but so does research. link a little Python computer program to a bar graph LED ■ The project
Although the supercomputer uses an ordinary downloadable started when Prof
caught the imagination of myself and my son who built a
system image from the Raspberry Pi website, the performance Simon Cox and his
and various other parts of the firmware and drivers have been Lego case for it,” he tells us.
son, James, began to
improved by a factor of 50 or more So he waited for a large supply of Pis to became available. play with a Pi
“We then had to decide on the network switches. My
Running off a single 13 amp mains socket and using MPI background researching supercomputers and IT meant I
to communicate between nodes using Ethernet, it offers a knew you could spend a lot of money on switches. We begged,
staggering amount of power when you consider the low cost. stole and borrowed some old switches that were being
Prof Cox had been impressed straight away by how great decommissioned from our computing service, which meant
the Pi was for playing around with electronics using the GPIO we could link them together. I got some power over Ethernet
connectors. “The fact you could turn LEDs on and off and switches from another project I was working on.”
James used his design skills to build the racking out of
little plastic bricks before testing it using Python and Scratch.
But one of the most time-consuming processes was getting
all of the images set up. Prof Cox found it was one thing to
download one image on to one SD card, but quite another
doing 64 of them.
“The Pi, for the first time, has meant you can assemble a
supercomputer for a couple of thousand of pounds. And if you
take just four of the units, suddenly you are at £100 and that
means that large-scale supercomputing, or the principle of it,
can be seen in schools. That's very special.”
TRY IT YOURSELF
The Kit: Plus items that were in the lab:
• 64 Raspberry Pis Model B/256MB = £1,475.20 • 3 Netgear ProSafe 24-port smart
• 64 Kingston Ultimate X 16GB Class 10 switches with PoE / 192W total 4 SFP
(SD10G2/16GB) = £622.72 (GS724TP) = £269.99 each
• 64 metres of CAT 5E (misc colours) = £90.88 • DrayTek Vigor 2820N router
• 64 micro-USB power supply adaptors, UK, 1.2A • Keyboard
= £244.48 • Monitor
• Mouse
■ Since the drivers for the Pi's video card are open source,
the potential to use that video chip for processing opens up The Knowhow: • HDMI-to-monitor cable
24 gigaflops of general-purpose computer performance www.soton.ac.uk/~sjc/raspberrypi • 3 CAT 5E cables to connect the
switches together
21 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Feature 10 amazing Raspberry Pi projects
Picade
arcade
cabinet
No need to stand
around in arcades
– bring the action
to your home
Games have often been said to be a key driver of technology
and so we were extremely excited to see the Picade project
when it emerged on Kickstarter. Created by Jonathan
Williamson and Paul Beech, it looks like a mini, retro-style
cabinet and comes in kit form. All people need is a screwdriver,
a pair of pliers and an hour of time to put it together.
“The idea had been in our heads for a while,” says Jonathan.
“Paul and I have been through a number of startups and we
had frequently seen a JAMMA cabinet in the office. It seemed
the thing to have. We thought that only people with too much
money or time on their hands were getting enjoyment out of
them, so we decided it would be good to build one ourselves.”
The pair have been interested in technology for a long time
and the Picade has been an accumulation of knowledge. From
reading about joysticks to monitors, all of those ideas have
come together. “We’ve also benefited from Kickstarter and
globalisation,” says Paul. “Having the Pi was amazing.”
As if to underline just how the project has turned heads, Ian
Stewart, the founder of Sheffield’s Gremlin Graphics – a games
22 www.linuxuser.co.uk
10 amazing Raspberry Pi projects 1 RasPi
Top Raspberry Pi projects to amaze and inspire BIRTHDAY st
SPECIAL
FEATURE
23 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Feature 10 amazing Raspberry Pi projects
MAKER:
Lego remote- TOM REES
controlled car
A Pi-powered
self-contained
remote-controlled
car guided by an
Xbox controller
Very often what you didn’t have in your
childhood inspires you in adulthood. That was
the case with the Lego remote-controlled car
Tom wanted a simple Although Tom says he Tom suffered dodgy
created by Tom Rees using the Raspberry Pi. and robust chassis could go on for years 5V regulators
Having always wanted a remote-controlled car design, so Technic building larger and and overloaded
when he was young, the desire never left him. clip joints and axles more complex vehicles components. He
The steering is are used through with increased power, also found that the
And thanks to the power of the Pi, he was
controlled via a high- everything. Servos four-wheel drive, cheap micro-USB
also able to go one better. Rather than build torque 180-degree and motors need weaponry, cameras, cable going into the
something controlled on a long tether to a TowerPro servo and a to be held together caterpillar treads, Pi could barely carry
computer or via Wi-Fi from a laptop, Tom could Lego gear is attached tightly and two he is keen to invent half an amp and had
integrate the computer into the car itself. This with superglue motors are required something new to be replaced
means it became a ‘real’ remote-controlled car
comprising just the vehicle and the controller. with the simplest possible proof-of-concept to kept catching fire because the Pi consumes
The original plan was to build an RC Lego show all parts of the system working.” so much current. Smoke pouring out of the
DeLorean, but all he could produce was an To even begin to prototype, jumper wires, Lego Technic holes is pretty terrifying.”
ugly white box. He then came up with different breadboards, a multimeter and lots of batteries Trickiest of all was powering the electronics
prototypes, most of which looked nothing like were needed, plus a selection of resistors, aboard the car. “The Raspberry Pi has strict
a car and were essentially motors, servos and capacitors, LEDs and a soldering iron. Once tolerances on its 5V input, and it will consume
LEDs attached to Technic towers. “I remember Tom had all the necessary supplies, he just well over 1 amp when the Microsoft USB
the very first thing I built was a pair of LEDs decided to dive in. He learned as he went along. peripheral is attached,” he says. But he is more
which were turned on and off by the Xbox “I had plenty of disasters,” he admits. “The than pleased with the result.
controller,” he says. “It’s important to begin cheap inductors I used in the 5V power regulator “Most stunning has been the reaction to
this project. I knew I wanted to do something
“I think the thing that has really encouraged me is original with my Pi, to push the envelope very
if you actually look at the number of these things slightly, and be a little more imaginative than
where the Pi is a tool, it is not the Pi that is really the another ‘internet-controlled LEDs’ project. It’s
hit, it is the thing around it that is really the piece of seen a great reaction and I’m very pleased to
see some projects inspired by this one.”
inventive genius”
■ Extra electronics
■ The car is controlled via a wireless
are needed on top
Xbox 360 controller. Software on the
of the Lego and the
Pi translates the controller buttons
Raspberry Pi. The
into motor speed, motor direction
Cobbler breakout
and steering rotation
kit from Adafruit
broke out the
power, GPIO, I2C
■ All the hardware lives on and SPI pins from
the car. There is no need for a the 26-pin header
laptop issuing commands over onto a solderless
Wi-Fi. This is the simple chassis breadboard
24 www.linuxuser.co.uk
10 amazing Raspberry Pi projects 1 RasPi
Top Raspberry Pi projects to amaze and inspire BIRTHDAY st
SPECIAL
FEATURE
Light painting
with the Pi
Artistic images that
simply astound are
possible with the
power of Pi
There is seldom a more stunning effect than ■ An Arduino could handle the core task, but required a ton of preprocessing
light painting. It uses long exposure times with and staging of the image data in flash storage. Another thought by Phil
lights in motion to produce amazing images. was to use his laptop and FTDI chip, but that machine is rather precious to
him and he was not eager to strap it on a bike. The Pi was a middle ground
When Phil Burgess wanted to produce a
– the horsepower and programming ease of the laptop, but the throwaway
machine that could create effective artistic inexpensive nature of it. As you can see, the results are astounding.
images, he had a hunch that the Raspberry Pi
would be able to streamline the process, not preprocessing and staging of the image data amount of ‘coolness’ in a project can cover for
least because of the memory it could provide in flash storage. The Pi could handle this – and a lousy explanation.”
for the project. because it is inexpensive, it got over the worry of And there were other considerations. A
The concept had been stewing for months, getting it damaged. 5V DC power supply was needed because
but no existing device made for a really “So far we have created the prototype,” Phil the LED strip draws so much more power
satisfactory solution, Phil says, and by that tells us. “The next version will be smaller and than the micro-USB connector can provide.
he meant something that could be shared lighter with a proper battery pack. At the time I A 26-pin IDC cable was sacrificed to create a
and easily built by others. The open source was just scrambling among parts in the garage purpose-built cable between the Raspberry
electronic prototyping platform Arduino and relied on an enormous camping inverter to Pi GPIO header, LED strip and power supply in
was considered and Phil says it could quickly solve the problem at hand.” Things went order to make the whole project more robust.
handle the core task but it requires a ton of well too. “All the hardware and software was Phil also says Python warrants a mention:
amazingly co-operative and everything fell into “My first attempts at communicating with
■ The bike. Other than having place,” Phil adds. the LED strip were in C, but if this project
the basic concept already, there The trickiest part of the project was was to be shared, C with makefiles and extra
was no planning: Phil just went the documentation. “Explaining things as libraries and such would add complexity. In
straight into implementation,
which took about two days concisely as possible, cleaning up the code to 48 hours, starting with zero Python exposure,
be presentable, providing clear diagrams and it was possible to get this not just working,
such is always hard,” comments Phil. “Good but actually pretty well optimised as I got a
documentation can elevate even a modest better handle on the language. And it’s all in
project into something desirable, but no one source file, easily shared.”
TRY IT YOURSELF
MAKER PROFILE:
The Kit: PHIL BURGESS
• Raspberry Pi = £25
• Adafruit Pi Cobbler breakout kit = $7.95 A Californian living in the
San Francisco Bay area,
• Digital RGB LED weatherproof strip 32 LED = $29.95
Phil Burgess’s roots in
• 4-pin JST SM receptacle cable = $1.50 art and technology go
• 4-pin JST SM plug cable = $1.50 back many decades.
• 5V 10A switching power supply = $25 The light painting demo is the
• 5V 2A (2000mA) switching power supply = $9.95 latest in a progression of LED
• Female DC power adaptor: 2.1mm jack to screw terminal block = $2 projects inspired by artist/engineer
Bill Bell in the 1980s. Today Phil
• Plus a bike and mounting hardware (PVC pipe, hula hoop, zip ties)
develops kits and tutorials for
■ Phil just scrambled among parts in the The Code: We’ve included the code on the cover disc Adafruit Industries, a firm at the
garage and relied on an enormous camping The Knowhow: learn.adafruit.com/light-painting-with- centre of the open source and
inverter to get these effects raspberry-pi ‘maker’ movements.
25 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Feature 10 amazing Raspberry Pi projects
The one-button
audio player
Music to a grandma’s ears…
it’s the easy-to-use audio player
Michael Clemens’s idea for his Raspberry With her 90th birthday approaching, Michael
Pi project came less out of hobbyism and sought a solution: to build an audiobook player
more out of a solution to a very personal that was inexpensive and easy to operate, with ■ The difficult part came in the automatic
problem. His wife’s grandmother is visually as few buttons as possible. It also needed to be mounting of the USB flash drive and the
process of deleting the old audiobook,
impaired and the couple find it difficult to open source. The Raspberry Pi was the answer.
copying the new one and refreshing the
keep her entertained. Listening to television “The idea came quick, but planning it playlist of the music player daemon (MPD)
is not ideal and she struggles to operate through and building it was kind of fragmented which Michael used to play the MP3s
her CD player. because my work includes travelling,” he
says. “When I knew what I wanted, I soldered As for how well the present was received,
TRY IT YOURSELF the button and LED to a board that could be Michael laughs. “It was Christmas and she
The Kit: connected via the GPIO pins and then I used was obviously confused about all the people
• Raspberry Pi = €40 a little Python coding and configuration of around her. On another day, we showed her
• ModMyPi enclosure = €12 standard Linux software for the rest. Being no how to use it and she was very happy about it.”
• 1 button = €2 good coder or expert in electronics, this was the
• 2 resistors (330 ohm, 10 kilo-ohm) = few cents simplest way to achieve my goals.” MAKER PROFILE:
• 1 blue LED = few cents
• 1 (slow) 8GB SD card = €8
The sound quality can crack when you play or MICHAEL CLEMENS
resume an MP3. “But,” Michael says, “that is a
• Some wire = few cents known problem in the Raspberry Pi community. Fascinated by electronics and
• A pair of speakers – he already had them, rough mechanics from childhood, Michael
The quality of the device itself is quite solid, began work as an IT apprentice and
cost about €30
but I’m thinking about building a new, large worked seven years as a UNIX and
The Code: We’ve inluded the code on the disc
enclosure out of wood for the player together database administrator before
The Knowhow: blogs.fsfe.org/clemens/ becoming an IT security consultant.
2012/10/30/the-one-button-audiobook-player with the speakers.”
MAKER PROFILE:
Time-lapse photography AARON HILL
with Pysnap
Aaron Hill is a 12-year-
old schoolboy who
loves to program and
is very knowledgeable
26 www.linuxuser.co.uk
10 amazing Raspberry Pi projects 1 RasPi
Top Raspberry Pi projects to amaze and inspire BIRTHDAY st
SPECIAL
FEATURE
Pi-Face - the
The interface has
been designed to
take some abuse
since it’s targeted
digital interface
at beginners
MAKER PROFILE:
DR ANDREW
ROBINSON
Andrew Robinson can
trace his first interest
in electronics back
to making a model
lighthouse aged five.
At the University of Manchester,
Andrew did a PhD in low power
TRY IT YOURSELF processor architectures (which
The Kit: Pi-Face is available complete from Farnell for included looking at ways to make
■ The hardware architecture was altered ARM processors more efficient).
during the project so that it would work with £20, which is cheaper than buying the parts separately –
piregistration.element14.com/signup.html While working in the group Andrew
mobiles (with Android and USB OTG) and became interested in ‘public
desktop PCs too. It works with Raspberry Pi The Knowhow: engagement’, to get more people
through SPI, but also through USB pi.cs.man.ac.uk/interface.htm interested in Computer Science.
27 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Feature 10 amazing Raspberry Pi projects
28 www.linuxuser.co.uk
10 amazing Raspberry Pi projects 1 RasPi
Top Raspberry Pi projects to amaze and inspire BIRTHDAY st
SPECIAL
FEATURE
MAKER PROFILE:
Retaliation-inspired NATHAN BYRD
This simple foam-missile project is a wife and son. Other hobbies include
amateur photography and open
This office missile launcher is an inventive use requires one to be on all the time or at least
of the Pi and while not original (the inspiration whenever there are people there to shoot…
came from https://github.com/codedance/ and greatly limits the placement of the missile
Retaliation#readme), the portable nature of launcher. With the Raspberry Pi I could mount it
the Pi has proved a perfect fit. “The original just about anywhere and leave it on all the time
project had a few limitations,” says Nathan without requiring a full computer.”
Byrd. “Using a full computer for this project Nathan bought the Pi to teach his 11-year-
old son to program and familiarise him with
TRY IT YOURSELF hardware. Retaliation worked in this regard
too: “What 11-year-old, or adult for that matter,
The Kit:
• Raspberry Pi (initially he used an early 256M doesn’t love shooting foam missiles around the
revision with polyfuses) = £25 house?” Nathan had to order the missile launcher,
• Dream Cheeky USB missile launcher = $34.99 then find the packages and software, before
(www.dreamcheeky.com/thunder-missile-launcher) testing and documenting the build. Hooking it up
• Powered USB hub = from £14 without a powered USB hub proved a problem
• USB extenders, mounting hardware etc as needed so there was a bit of soldering involved (although
for environment ■ While a powered USB hub can be used (and
that is no longer the case with newer revisions of
The Code: You’ll find everything on the DVD is recommended), Nathan removed the need
the Raspberry Pi). And along the way they had to
The Knowhow: itr8r.tumblr.com/post/ for one by soldering across the polyfuses on
31840231144/raspberry-pi-retaliation shoot lots of foam missiles at each other. his early-model Pi (bit.ly/RDIJVe)
29 www.linuxuser.co.uk
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32 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Open source genealogy with Gramps
Use Gramps to research, organise and share your family tree
TUTORIal
01 Getting Gramps
Gramps should be available in most
Linux distributions. For Debian-based ones, you
07 Adding a spouse
Staying in the Relationships section, you
can click on the ‘Add a new family’ icon to create a
would install with ‘sudo apt-get install gramps’. new family with this person as a parent. You can
There are Windows binaries available, if you then either add an existing person or create a new
want to get your friends hooked on Gramps, too. person as the spouse.
As always, the source is available if you would
rather compile your own copy.
08 Setting marriage Information
While the New Family dialog is open, you
will need to click on the Event tab in the bottom
section. Click on the plus icon to add a new event,
selecting Marriage as the type. You can then set
the date and location.
09 Adding children
Before closing the New Family dialog, you
06 Adding parents can also add any children. Clicking on the Children
Click on the Relationships entry on the tab in the bottom section will allow you to add
03 Add a new person left-hand side. This will open the relationship either existing people or new ones as children of
A family tree is of little use without section for the selected person. You can add this family unit.
people. So, the next step is to add your first parents to this person by clicking on the plus icon
person. If you are doing your own family tree, in the top bar. You can either add existing people
you may as well start with yourself. Clicking or create new people, for the father and mother.
33 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Tutorial Open source genealogy with Gramps
10 Editing events
You have used events to add information,
You can
like births and marriages. There are many built-
in event types when you install Gramps, covering
generate a full
most areas of life. You can edit the details of any
of these events by clicking on the Events link on
website, with
the left-hand side.
navigation, of all of
your genealogical
information
14 Adding notes
All of the objects in Gramps can have
notes attached to them. This allows you to add
usual chart that you will likely want to look at is
the ancestral chart. This shows all of your direct
ancestors in the classic family tree form. Clicking
extra information to items like photos that have on the menu item Reports>Graphical Reports>
been added, places of importance, sources of Ancestor Tree will open a dialog window. Here, you
12 Adding sources
You can add sources to your family tree
by clicking on the Sources link on the left-hand
side. You can add a new one by clicking the plus
icon and filling in all of the relevant information.
Recording where you get your information is a
very important part of research.
13 Adding media
In this age of digital media, it is easier than
ever to add a new dimension to your research. You
can add media objects (eg image files, videos) to
your family tree. Once added, they can be linked
through references to events and people.
34 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Open source genealogy with Gramps
Use Gramps to research, organise and share your family tree
TUTORIAL
17 Generating a calendar
With the power of Python, you have the
ability to do very complicated processing. One
21 Checking an import
You can also import data from a
GEDCOM file. Sometimes these files may
of the included plug-ins allows you to generate have errors in them. You can check the
a calendar of important dates, like birthdays imported data by clicking on the menu item
and marriage anniversaries. You can generate Tools>Family Tree Repair>Check and Repair
a calendar by clicking on Reports>Graphical Database. This will check several possible
Reports>Calendar. problems in your data.
18 Looking at a timeline
You can generate a timeline of events
throughout your history. Clicking on Reports>
Graphical Reports>Timeline Chart will open a
new dialog where you can set the options. By
22
default, it will create an OpenDocument file,
Verifying your data
but this can be changed to one of several other
You may also need to verify the actual data
file formats.
itself. Do you have a 200-year-old relative? Do you
have someone who has kids that are older than
19 Generating a website
You can generate a full website,
with navigation, of all of your genealogical
they are? Clicking on Tools>Utilities>Verify the Data
will bring up a dialog window where you can set the
parameters to use in the verification.
information. You can choose how much
23
information gets exported, and details of the Locating duplicates
formatting. You can set the stylesheet that is One common issue, especially when
used for the display. You can even export the importing data from other sources, is having
whole thing into a gzipped tarball. duplicate entries in your database. Clicking on
35 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Tutorial Put Cinnamon on your distro
A mixture of the KDE The panel shows you There’s plenty of Cinnamon is also
and GNOME 2 menu what windows you ways to add extra highly customisable
also includes a great have open, unlike bits of information by default, and is
search function GNOME 3 and navigation extendable with
with applets plenty of extensions
36 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Put Cinnamon on your distro
Use the Cinnamon desktop environment with any major distro
TUTORIal
01 For starters…
Remember, once you’ve installed
Cinnamon, you’ll need to log out and select it
from the Session’s menu of your login/display
manager before you log back in. It will show
up as Cinnamon, and don’t worry about the
GNOME options it might add.
04 Ubuntu repository
Cinnamon is not included in the
standard Ubuntu repos, but no matter what
07 openSUSE GNOME
The first step to getting Cinnamon
onto openSUSE may sound a little odd – you
02 Mint MATE
Here’s a simple one to start off with
– if you got the MATE version of Linux Mint and
the reason for that is, you can simply add the
official Cinnamon PPA using the following:
need to install GNOME first. To do this, open
the package manager and install GNOME 3.4.
$ sudo add-apt-repository If you’re already running the GNOME spin, then
want to try out Cinnamon, you can easily install ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon- you can continue to the next step.
it either via the Software Centre, or in a terminal stable
like so:
$ sudo apt-get install cinnamon
Agree to the prompt to add the PPA.
08 openSUSE sources
Once you have GNOME installed, you
05 Cinubuntu
Once that’s finished, you can install
it from the terminal you’re using by first of all
can add the repos you need by entering this in
the terminal:
$ sudo zypper ar http://download.
updating your package list with: opensuse.org/repositories/
$ sudo apt-get update X11:/Cinnamon:/GNOME34/12.2/
…followed by: X11:Cinnamon:GNOME34.repo
$ sudo apt-get install cinnamon Unless you have an update or installation going,
you can tell openSUSE to quit the PackageKit.
09 CinnamonSUSE
To install Cinnamon, first refresh your
package list with:
06
you’ll need to install dpkg-dev so you can
Ubuntu tip
download dependencies for other packages.
In Ubuntu 12.10, if you have too many
Do this with:
desktop environments and too low a resolution
$ sudo apt-get install dpkg-dev
monitor, you may not be able to click the Accept
button to switch session. The trick to this is to
key down with an arrow until you get to where
Accept is, and hit Return.
37 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Tutorial Put Cinnamon on your distro
15 Build Cinnamon
Now we’ve built Muffin, the window
manager for Cinnamon, we can actually build
Cinnamon itself. Move into the Cinnamon
directory using cd, and start the process with:
$ ./autogen.sh
This will quickly get things set up to compile.
You can create your DEB files by again using:
$ dpkg-buildpackage
This shouldn’t take as long as the Muffin
compiling. Once it’s done, cd back up again, and
install the Cinnamon DEB with:
$ sudo dpkg -i cinnamon[version and
architecture].deb
Log out or reboot, and then select it from the
session manager.
16 Cinnamon Mageia
While it’s definitely not recommended,
if you’re desperate to get Cinnamon in Mageia
without compiling, the RPM binaries from Fedora
will install and work. Long term, though, it’s not
the best solution. The Mageia devs are currently
11 Cinnamon dependencies
Now that dpkg-dev is installed, you
14 Install Muffin
considering adding the DE officially to the repos.
17
can install the necessary dependencies with Move back up to the working directory Arch Cinnamon
the following: with this command: There is a specific Arch Linux remix
$ sudo apt-get build-dep muffin $ cd .. called Cinnarch that already exists, but if you
…followed by: Here’s where all the DEBs are you just made. want to install it to an existing Arch system, you
$ sudo apt-get build-dep cinnamon The best thing to do is install of them using: can find the source in AUR at:
Both will take a little while to download all the $ sudo dpkg -i *.deb h t t p s: //a u r. a r c h l in u x .o r g /p a c k a ge s .
necessary packages. At the very least, though, install: libmuffin-dev, php?ID=55330
gir1.2-muffin-3.0, libmuffin0, muffin and Download the tarball, makepkg, and then
muffin-common. install with pacman to add it to your system.
12 Cinnamon source
You can get the source for Muffin and
Cinnamon from Git to build your DEB. First
create a project folder with:
$ mkdir CinnamonSource
Then sync the sources for Muffin with:
git clone git://github.com/
linuxmint/muffin.git
…and Cinnamon like so:
git clone git://github.com/linuxmint/
Cinnamon.git
13 Compile Muffin
Use cd to move into the Muffin folder we
downloaded in the project directory, and build
38 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Put Cinnamon on your distro
Use the Cinnamon desktop environment with any major distro
TUTORIAL
22 Turbo Cinnamon
A quick and easy way to speed up
Cinnamon if you’re using a slightly older or
low-powered system is to turn off the desktop
effects. These are also found in the Cinnamon
18
Settings under the Effects menu.
Cinnamon Gentoo
Cinnamon is actually available in the main
portage tree for Gentoo, and can be found here:
http://packages.gentoo.org/package/gnome-
extra/cinnamon
Make sure to use the latest build, as older ones
are unstable on x86 and x86_64 systems – you
know, the kind you’re most likely using.
20 Cinnamon spaces
By default, there are two workspaces
in Cinnamon, which can be accessed with the
applet, or by using Ctrl+Alt+Left or Right. To add
or remove workspaces, press Ctrl+Alt+Up, and
press the ‘+’ button on the right side, or click X on
the spaces. You can also use this mode to preview
spaces and switch between them with a mouse.
23 Cinnamon spin
More and more distributions are adding
Cinnamon to the repos, and there are some
that come with Cinnamon spins for Cinnamon
by default. Next time you need to reinstall a
system and want to go with Cinnamon, look for
such distros as Cinnarch, Snowlinux and more
in the future.
24 Cinnamon everywhere
Now you’ve got Cinnamon running,
play about with it. While every environment
19 Cinnamon applets
You can add extra features to the panel
21 Cinnamon corner
Like GNOME 3, you can move the
mouse to the top left of the screen and zoom
has its own quirks and can take a little bit of
getting used to, Cinnamon should be familiar
to anyone. Over the past year it’s got better and
with the applets selector. To find this, click on out to preview the workspaces. You can turn better, and we’re looking forward to the next
the up arrow next to the Network Manager, click this function on or off, and move the location in year of updates.
Settings, and go to Applet. From here you can add the Cinnamon Settings. The Cinnamon Settings
buttons to click between workspaces, a shortcut menu is automatically added to the left side of
link to monitor settings, and accessibility. the Cinnamon Menu.
39 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Tutorial Protect your network with Snort
Protect your
network with Snort Advisor
Whether meaning to be mischievous or Michael Reed is a technology
malicious, hackers can wreak havoc on writer and he’s been
hacking away at Linux
your network. Fortunately, Snort makes it for over 15 years. He
specialises in desktop
Snort is an intrusion detection system (IDS). As you get to know Snort, you might consider
It works by monitoring network activity and setting up a testing environment using virtual
raising an alert in the case of suspicious machines. A simple approach would be to use
Snort runs on
single machine,
but can monitor
an entire network
40 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Protect your network with Snort
Use the Snort intrusion detection system to log and block attacks
TUTORIal
07
reasonably quiet, you can generate some network
More detail
activity by pinging the server. Open another
02 Set Up a ‘quiet’ network reported in entries that end with lines ‘ECHO’
environment and ‘ECHO REPLY’. You may have to scroll back in
When first setting up Snort, it helps to have
as little activity on the network as possible.
the terminal to see these entries. Notice that the
entries contain the time that the activity occurred
08 Log packet data
Make a directory called ‘snort_logs’.
Now run ‘snort -d -l ./snort_logs’ and Snort will
Disconnect other computers or even set up a VM and the source and destination of the traffic.
log all recorded traffic into the log directory with
with a bridged adaptor which you can operate
a separate file for each interface. We’ll skip the
upon from the host machine.
verbose flag (-v), as all of the screen output eats
into Snort’s throughput.
41 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Tutorial Protect your network with Snort
10 Initial configuration
Open the config file in a text editor. For
now, make sure that the variable ‘HOME_NET’
type ‘nmap [IP address of Snort machine]’. A file
called ‘alert’ should have appeared in the log
folder. Examine it.
accurately describes your network. For example,
if your computers have IP addresses that begin
at 192.168.0.1, set it to 192.168.0.1/24.
12 Intrusion detection mode either a dedicated Snort machine or a dedicated your network.
First, find the IP address of the machine
running Snort by using ‘ifconfig’ and make a note
42 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Protect your network with Snort
Use the Snort intrusion detection system to log and block attacks
TUTORIal
43 www.linuxuser.co.uk
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The only Linux magazine for open source developers
100% FOSS focused » Features » Tutorials » Sample code
Celebrating
life of Pi
the
An exclusive interview with Pete Lomas and Eben & Liz Upton
Page 46
Wine for
developers RasPi
Get your Windows Foundation
software running special!
under Linux
Page 56
45 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Interview Celebrating the life of Pi
RasPi
1st BIRT
SP HDAY
ECIAL
46 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Celebrating the life of Pi
The Raspberry Pi founders talk about its first year
INTERVIEW
Celebrating the
Life of Pi
We celebrate the first birthday of the Raspberry
Pi with an exclusive interview with its creators
covering its first year on sale and goals for 2013
In a year when Nintendo was supposed to be incredible work on the Raspberry Pi, he and the team say they still cannot believe the
taking the plaudits for its latest console; at remains technical director and ASIC architect innovation which is evident on an almost daily
a time when Apple was expecting punters for Broadcom and, during a mammoth email basis. “Just today I was looking at a post on the
to lap up its latest tablet and phone; during exchange, suddenly had to change plans blog about water droplet photography which
a period when small-form-factor gaming when he was asked to go to Los Angeles on somebody is doing with a Raspberry Pi,” says
was going to be the sole preserve of the urgent business. Liz. “It has been a whole year and pretty much
Sony PlayStation Vita, another machine was Liz also has her work cut out. She is the every day there is something which we just
gathering column inches. Raspberry Pi Foundation’s only full-time worker haven’t considered. The educational stuff is
By the end of 2012, no less than The – and that entails running the large community working brilliantly, but there is also this huge
Independent newspaper was celebrating which has built up around the device, carrying hobbyist maker crowd out there just picking it
this underdog as the standout technology out PR and communications work, looking after up and running with and they are brilliant. They
innovation of the year. And yet it was not one social media, taking photos and getting busy are really, really good people.”
made by a well-known brand, nor one which with a soldering iron when needed. On top of One of the biggest challenges for the team
had design aesthetics appealing to anyone that, she is a professional writer and the sole has been the sheer demand for the device,
but in-the-know geeks, nor a device which had blogger at gastronomydomine.com, which and the major breakthrough came when they
dozens upon dozens of games for it. she has had to effectively abandon due to the realised that they needed to create a licensing
It was the Raspberry Pi, a computer that’s mammoth Pi workload. model for the Pi and have a UK manufacturer
barely larger than a credit card and which Then there is Pete, trustee of the Raspberry produce a high volume of them. The transition
readers of this magazine don’t really need Pi Foundation and designer of the final from a few thousand to tens of thousands went
explaining in any greater detail. This computer hardware that turned into the device so many relatively smoothly in the end thanks to a lot of
has the potential to do so much more than love. But if they are busy, it is for a reason. And hard work by many people, and the complex
any of the aforementioned giants and their Pete just can’t quite believe the ride which has transition has meant they now have a secure
kin, and that is because it is as much about taken place since the first Pi was swallowed up manufacturing base to take them forward.
ideology as it is about mechanics. And it has by those eager to buy it on 29 February 2012. There were some bumps in the road – some
been successful, of that there is no doubt. “I “The pickup from the community has been customers experienced extensive delivery
really do think that this time last year we were tremendous and the amount of innovation that delays – but the biggest promise, which was
starting to get the idea that we weren’t going to has come out of the back of what is a relatively to remain true to its initial price point, has held
sell 10K of them,” Eben Upton, the co-founder simple piece of kit has been absolutely firm and it is something the Pi team remain
of the Raspberry Pi Foundation tells us. “I think fantastic,” he says. “The way that they have committed to.
we were starting to get the idea that we were been able to repurpose it from our original “That was something that, to be honest,
going to sell tens of thousands of units. But I ideas and the way that it just teaches kids scared me to death in the early days, because
don’t think any of us had imagined that it would how to program and do some basic interfacing it was my responsibility to bring it in at the price
come true.” has gone stratospheric. I say that literally too, points we stated,” says Pete. “It has taken us a
Gathering together Eben, wife Liz and because we’ve had Pis in space.”
technical guru Pete Lomas for this interview The large number of projects for which the
was not a simple task. Despite Eben’s Pi has been put to use has been phenomenal
47 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Interview Celebrating the life of Pi
RasPi
1st birt
sp hday
ecial
48 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Celebrating the life of Pi
The Raspberry Pi founders talk about its first year
Interview
49 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Interview Celebrating the life of Pi
RbairsthPdaiy
1st l
specia
CC: Jim Killock
50 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Celebrating the life of Pi
The Raspberry Pi founders talk about its first year
INTERVIEW
Educating teachers
LUD: Is there a need to educate the teachers to
understand the Raspberry Pi if they are to help
Minecraft and the pleased when they said they were going to children get the most out of it?
Raspberry Pi produce a Pi version. The Pi version has this
Liz Upton: Definitely yes and we’ve got some
very rich integration with other programming
One release which has got people very excited stuff in motion at the moment to do things
languages so there is wonderful stuff you
is Minecraft: Pi Edition. Markus Persson about that in the next couple of months.
can write.”
revealed the port at MineCon 2012 and it was We do recognise that for some ICT teachers
Liz continues: “I was talking to a teacher in
said that the Pi Edition is similar to the Pocket this is a little bit intimidating because not
America actually who is using Minecraft with
Edition except that is downgraded to an older everybody has necessarily done any coding
his students. He is going to design stuff inside
version, and with the added ability of using text before. Now we continue to believe that there
the Minecraft world and then exporting both
commands to edit the game world. is actually quite an attractable thing, but it is
things to a 3D printer, which I thought was
“Marcus is like a rock star to a lot of these quite hard sometimes for teachers to come
super cool. Suddenly you are not stuck with the
kids,” says Eben. “So yeah we were really forth and say ‘Look I could do with a little bit
physical now.”
of handholding here, I need some help just to
get started’, so we are working very hard on
does the work, they can even feel it getting just things to play games on – although I [must] that at the moment. And yeah we have got
warm when it is working hard and staying cool admit to have spent most of my Christmas some stuff coming up.
when it is idle. So there is a massive amount of playing games with my nine-year-old on LUD: To what level do you need to teach them?
education that comes from having this bit of various products, including the Pi – but devices
Eben Upton: Teachers and professionals
computer in front of you.” to capture imaginations and allow people then
want to deliver a quality education
Education seems very much to be the focus to say ‘wow, this is fantastic, I wonder if I can
experience to the kids who are in their
for the Foundation over the next 12 months do this and I think I have got a tool in front of me
care and there is that confidence thing.
and the aim is to get through to children who that will allow me to at least try’.” Professional development is very important
do not have a teacher at school and a parent There will not, however, be a major overhaul for giving them confidence. They don’t need
at home with computer knowledge. They are of the platform. There will be a third revision at to be that good: we’re not talking about
looking beyond these shores too. “I very, very some point to the PCB and that will probably training teachers up to be professional
much want to see the educational side of things take the Pi very close to a state where the engineers and then having them teach this
working in other places,” says Liz. “So I have got team are completely happy. But there are no stuff. We are talking about getting people
plans this year to look at the developing world immediate plans for a higher-performance to a point where they are just confident
as well because there are things that we can Pi and efforts will concentrate on subsidising that they can answer the basic questions;
do there, not just with computing education, software development work to try to get more confident they can stay a page ahead.
but with education in general. It is a good tool out of the existing platform.
and giving people access to those tools I think For them, videogame consoles provide a
is very, very important, so for me that is what good analogy. “If you compare a year-one that is probably where we are going over the
it is about.” PlayStation 3 game to a modern PS3 game next year. And also things like putting in the
At the same time, they do not want to lose they are almost unrecognisably different,” says camera in the display board, these things that
the engineering focus, with Pete in particular Eben. “You would imagine they were different we said we would do, bringing in the model A
keen on this area. “My drive is to see some pieces of hardware. So it is kind of this other which we said we’d do. So to some extent we
of these extension boards actually get into model where you put a marker down, you are introducing new hardware, it is already
the mainstream and get kids using them,” he work on optimising the software experience bringing out stuff, it is just kind of fulfilling
explains. “I want them to actually build out from and hardware on that. We want to look at promises that we’ve made.”
the Pi and see what they can control and what taking cost out of the hardware, on adding
they can monitor and what they can measure, incremental features to that piece of hardware
using the Pi as a tool. I mean that is a really rather than a revolution per year. So I guess
exciting area for me because that is the bit that
I love to do.”
For Pete, computing and real life has to
interact. “I just think being able to make
kids enthusiastic about being able to sense
temperatures, pressures, humidity, measure
light, cosmic rays or anything like that, is a
good thing,” he says. “It allows them to interact
with the real world and it brings home what
computers are really about. They are a tool to
allow you to achieve other things. They are not
Tutorial Create a VPN with the Raspberry Pi
Create a
VPN with the
Raspberry Pi
The Raspberry Pi is cheap enough to Advisor
leave on a network you’d like to connect Liam Fraser is the creator
to remotely, so let’s learn how to set it
of the RaspberryPi Tutorials
YouTube series and volunteers as
a Linux server administrator for
up to do just that… the Raspberry Pi Foundation
One possible scenario for wanting a cheap Base Arch Linux system
server that you can leave somewhere is if OpenVPN – the software we will use to create a
you have recently moved away from home secure VPN
and would like to be able to easily access all Netcfg – used to easily manage the multiple
of the devices on the network at home, in a network adapters we’ll need
Resources
secure manner. This will enable you to send Bridge-utils – used to bridge the VPN and
files directly to computers, diagnose problems Ethernet adaptors
and other useful things. You’ll also be leaving a SSH – will provide secure remote access to the
A Raspberry Pi with all necessary powered USB hub connected to the Pi, so that Raspberry Pi and the files on it
peripherals : you can tell someone to plug in their flash drive, A dynamic DNS daemon (No-IP) – software
www.raspberrypi.org
hard drive etc and put files on it for them. This that runs in the background and points a domain
An SD card containing the way, they can simply come and collect it later name to your router’s IP address, meaning that
latest Arch Linux image for the whenever the transfer has finished. you can access your Raspberry Pi from anywhere
Raspberry Pi: We’ll be using Arch Linux as the operating using an easy-to-remember web address.
www.raspberrypi.org/downloads system for our VPN server, since it is lightweight This tutorial assumes that you have flashed
A second computer to be used as and has only the minimum packages required the latest Arch Linux ARM image to an SD card.
a VPN client – we’ll assume you’re using a for a working system. If it’s been a while If you haven’t, the instructions for flashing an
popular Linux distribution that uses since you’ve used Arch Linux, the distro has image can be found at www.linuxuser.co.uk/
Network Manager, like Debian recently moved to a new service management tutorials/how-to-set-up-raspberry-pi/. You’ll
framework called systemd, so it’ll be good to get only need to go up to the step where you write
up to speed on that also. the image to the SD card. You’ll have to adapt
Our VPN server will be made up of the the instructions slightly for using the Arch Linux
following software components: image rather than the Debian one.
52 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Create a VPN with the Raspberry Pi
Configure the Pi as a VPN server that you can access from anywhere
TUTORIal
05
The package manager in Arch Linux is called
Investigate your network and configuring the networks array as follows:
pacman. Use the command ‘pacman -Syu’ to
We highly recommend assigning a NETWORKS=(bridge)
start a full system update. If for some reason
static IP to your server Raspberry Pi rather than Save the changes, exit nano and then run
the update fails, try running ‘pacman -Syu’
being handed one by your router because you’ll the following commands to disable DHCP and
again. Sadly, the Arch Linux ARM servers tend
always know where to find it on the network, enable the Ethernet interface and the bridge
to be quite busy. There may be a lot of packages
which will be useful for accessing it remotely. with a static IP permanently:
to update so it may take a while, especially
You’ll also need a static IP if you want to access systemctl disable dhcpcd@eth0.
because the Pi runs from an SD card.
the Raspberry Pi from the internet. We’ll need service
03
to find out a couple of things about your current systemctl enable netcfg.service
Install the required packages
network setup before setting a static IP. You can You can now restart the Pi for the changes to
Use the command
use the commands ‘ifconfig eth0’ and ‘ip route take effect.
pacman -S noip netcfg bridge-utils
show’ to do this.
07
openvpn Log in with SSH
to install the required packages mentioned at
the start of the article. Answer ‘y’ to any prompts
you may encounter.
06 Set up a static IP Address
Now that we have found out things
about your network, such as your current IP
Once the Pi has booted back up, open a
terminal on your Linux computer and type ‘ssh
root@[IP of your pi]’. Answer yes, to say that you
address, the network mask and so on, we can
want to connect, and type in the root password,
connecting the client to the server’s network. different connections eventually: Ethernet,
This means that the subnet that the server is which is automatically handled by the bridge
on needs to be different from the client subnet. adaptor; a VPN tap adaptor; and a bridge
For example, the subnet at your advisor’s adaptor to combine the two.
08
home is 192.168.1.0/24, and the subnet here Change directory to the /etc/network.d Change the root password
is 172.17.173.0/24. If the subnet here was directory and open a new file called bridge in Since we will probably be exposing an
192.168.1.0/24, then there would be a routing nano (or the text editor of your choice): SSH login to the internet, it would be a very good
conflict because the machine won’t know if cd /etc/network.d idea to change the password to something much
you’re referring to a local address or one on the nano bridge more secure. Type ‘passwd’, then follow the on-
VPN. It’s a good idea to have a non-standard Then fill in the bridge configuration to look screen instructions to change your password.
subnet for this reason. In our case, the client as follows and save the changes (swapping our Your SSH session will stay logged in, but you’ll
subnet is non-standard so it doesn’t matter network values for your own): need to use the new password next time you log
what the server subnet is for now. However, INTERFACE=“br0” in. You may also want to change the contents of
we’re still going to change the server subnet at CONNECTION=“bridge” /etc/hostname to set the hostname to a self-
some point because you may end up needing to DESCRIPTION=“VPN Bridge connection” identifying name, such as ‘vpnserver’ rather
connect from a network such as public Wi-Fi, BRIDGE_INTERFACES=“eth0” than the default ‘alarmpi’. The change won’t take
which may use a standard subnet. If you need to IP=‘static’ place until after a restart.
change your server subnet, we suggest picking a ADDR=‘192.168.1.215’
/24 subnet (subnet mask 255.255.255.0) in one
of the private address ranges:
NETMASK=‘24’
GATEWAY=‘192.168.1.254’
DNS=(‘192.168.1.254’)
09 Set up the public key
infrastructure variables
We’re going to be using a certificate
10.0.0.0 – 10.255.255.255
172.16.0.0 – 172.31.255.255 Once done, save the file using Ctrl+O followed infrastructure to authenticate OpenVPN. This
192.168.0.0 – 192.168.255.255 by Enter, then exit nano using Crl+X. We’ll add is where a certificate and private key (which
You should be able to easily change your the VPN adaptor to the bridge later on.
network configuration on your wireless router’s We now need to configure what profiles
settings page. netcfg should load by editing /etc/conf.d/netcfg
53 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Tutorial Create a VPN with the Raspberry Pi
must be kept a secret) is generated for each We now need to generate the Diffie–Hellman last two values are the start and end ranges of IP
client, and signed by the certificate authority. parameters, needed to allow two users to addresses allocatable to connecting clients.
Only clients with signed certificates are allowed exchange a secret key over an insecure medium Finally, uncomment the lines:
to connect. The key and certificate are used using the Diffie–Hellman key exchange protocol ;user nobody
to encrypt the data sent between the client (this may take a couple of minutes): ;group nobody
and the server. This secure approach means ./build-dh to give OpenVPN the least privileges possible
that additional username and password The final step is to generate a certificate for and then save the changes to the file.
authentication on the client is not necessary. each client that you would like to connect to the
There are a bunch of scripts which make setting
this up easy. Start by copying the scripts to
VPN. In this case, our client is a laptop.
./build-key liam-laptop 12 Configure the tap interface
Open the file /etc/network.d/tap in nano,
add the following lines, and then save the file:
/etc/openvpn with: Simply do what you did during the build-
cp -r /usr/share/openvpn/easy-rsa/ /etc/ key-server script and then you’ll have all the INTERFACE=‘tap0’
openvpn certificates you need. CONNECTION=‘tuntap’
and then change to that directory. MODE=‘tap’
We’re going to be making a template to base
our certificates on. Edit the vars file with nano 11 Configure the OpenVPN server
We’re going to base our configuration
file on the example server configuration file
USER=‘nobody’
GROUP=‘nobody’
We then need to add the tap0 interface to
and change the following lines at the bottom of
the file from something like: using the command ‘cp /usr/share/openvpn/ our bridge, so edit /etc/network.d/bridge and
export KEY_COUNTRY=“US” examples/server.conf /etc/openvpn/server.conf.’ change the bridge interfaces line to look like:
export KEY_PROVINCE=“CA” Open /etc/openvpn/server.conf in nano. BRIDGE_INTERFACES=“eth0 tap0”
export KEY_CITY=“SanFrancisco” Start by changing: Finally, change the networks line in /etc/
export KEY_ORG=“Fort-Funston” ;dev tap conf.d/netcfg to:
export KEY_EMAIL=“me@myhost.mydomain” dev tun NETWORKS=(tap bridge)
export KEY_EMAIL=mail@host.domain to: Notice that the tap network needs to be
export KEY_CN=changeme dev tap0 started first, so that it can be added to the
export KEY_NAME=changeme ;dev tun bridge successfully.
because we are using a network tap adaptor
13
export KEY_OU=changeme Enabling OpenVPN
to which allows us to bridge the networks, rather
than create a tunnel. Now that we have configured OpenVPN,
export KEY_COUNTRY=“UK” we want to enable it permanently. Use the
export KEY_PROVINCE=“” Replace the certificates here with the ones
you created: command ‘systemctl enable openvpn@server’
export KEY_CITY=“Ormskirk” and then reboot the Pi to make sure that
export KEY_ORG=“Home” ca ca.crt
cert server.crt everything starts successfully from a clean boot.
export KEY_EMAIL=“liam@vpn.home.org” Our VPN is now configured, so we’re going to set
export KEY_CN=“liamvpn-ca” key server.key # This file should be
kept secret up dynamic DNS and port forwarding so that we
export KEY_NAME=“liamvpn-ca” can access it from the internet.
export KEY_OU=“None” dh dh1024.pem
Once you have saved the changes, export the In our case, the configuration looked like:
variables with: ca /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa/keys/ca.crt
source ./vars cert /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa/keys/liamvpn.
and then clean any previous configuration with: crt
./clean-all key /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa/keys/liamvpn.
key
54 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Create a VPN with the Raspberry Pi
Configure the Pi as a VPN server that you can access from anywhere
TUTORIAL
‘Create Host’ button. For example, we used that it will be hidden away in the ‘Advanced’ Note that we use chmod to add read
the hostname liam-ludtest with the domain section of your wireless router. You should be permissions because the files need to be
no-ip.org, so we would access that using able to access your router by typing your No-IP readable by all users. We need to do this because
liam-ludtest.no-ip.org. hostname into your web browser. If not, it should the Network Manager GUI doesn’t run as root.
be at the address of your default gateway that
we used earlier on.
On our router, we had to go to Advanced>NAT> 19 Create the VPN connection
Note that you’ll probably want to be on a
different subnet to your server otherwise it’s likely
Port Mapping, and add a mapping (Fig 1). We
then had to add a second mapping for OpenVPN, you’ll run into connectivity issues on the client
using port 1194 specifying UDP rather than TCP because of the aforementioned routing problem.
as the protocol. We worked around this problem while at home
by using a virtual machine that’s connected with
15 Configure No-IP
Run the command
noip2 -C -Y
Ubuntu 12.04 as our example VPN client. There
are simply too many possible combinations to
show them all. There are a couple of options that
Click on the Network icon in the top menu
bar and click on the ‘Edit connections’ option.
You will then be shown a window that has
to be taken through interactive configuration must be used on every client, however: multiple tabs at the top. Go to the VPN tab and
of the No-IP client. We left the update interval • Use a TAP device click ‘add’. Select OpenVPN as the connection
to the default 30 minutes, meaning the client • Use LZO data compression type and then click on ‘Create’. Now fill in the
will check every 30 minutes for an IP address • Do not use the default gateway on the appropriate information.
change. Once done, start the daemon with: remote network (on Ubuntu, this is called
/etc/rc.d/noip start
After a minute or two, your IP address will be
‘Use this connection only for resources on its
network’). This basically means ‘don’t tunnel 20 Advanced settings
We need to set the advanced settings
that we mentioned before:
accessible via your No-IP hostname. However, my internet through this VPN’. If this option is
disabled, then the client’s internet connection • Use a TAP device
it’s likely that trying it from inside your house
wouldn’t work because we haven’t configured • Use LZO data compression
will simply take you to your router’s homepage.
21
our VPN to deal with internet. Route settings
Ubuntu uses Network Manager to configure The final thing we need to set is
its networks, so the instructions we give the option to ‘Use this connection only for
here should be almost identical to any other resources on its network’. To do this, go to the
distribution that uses the same thing. Ubuntu IPv4 Settings tab and click the Routes button.
doesn’t come with the OpenVPN plug-in for Tick the box for the aforementioned option
Network Manager by default, so we’ll need to and then click Okay. Once you have done this,
start by installing it. From a terminal, run: you can Save your connection and close the
Fig 1 NAT port mapping sudo apt-get update Network Connections window.
16
sudo apt-get install network-manager-
NAT port forwarding
openvpn-gnome
It is likely that there are multiple devices
behind your router that all use the same external
IP address. This is because of the shortage of
IPv4 addresses, and also because it is more
18 Copy the required certificates
to the client
We need three files from the Raspberry Pi to be
secure to segregate the internet from your able to connect successfully:
internal home network. NAT (network address The certificate authority certificate
translation) forwards a port from the router’s The client certificate
external IP address to a computer on the LAN The client key
22
(local area network). In this case, we’ll want to We’ll be using SCP to copy the files into the Test your connection
forward any traffic for TCP port 22 that comes /etc/openvpn/keys directory: Click on the Network icon in the menu,
to your router’s external IP address to the IP cd /etc/openvpn hover over the VPN Connections option and
address of your Raspberry Pi. TCP port 22 is sudo mkdir keys then click on the VPN that you just created. You
the port used for SSH. SSH will provide remote cd keys should see a success message and a padlock
access to your Raspberry Pi, and also access sudo scp root@[Pi’s IP address]:/etc/ as part of the Network icon. Open up a terminal
to any files on it via SCP (Secure Copy Protocol). openvpn/easy-rsa/keys/ca.crt . and run ifconfig to check that the tap device has
You’ll also want to forward UDP port 1194, as sudo scp root@[Pi’s IP address]:/etc/ been corrected with an appropriate IP address,
that’s what OpenVPN uses. openvpn/easy-rsa/keys/[client].crt . and that you can ping a device behind the VPN.
The configuration of port forwarding really sudo scp root@[Pi’s IP address]:/etc/
depends on the router that you are using, so openvpn/easy-rsa/keys/[client].key .
you may have to look it up. The chances are sudo chmod +r *
55 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Tutorial Wine for advanced users and developers
56 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Wine for advanced users and developers
Build and run windows apps without using Windows.
TUTORIAL
02 Building Wine
There is a very good chance that
the Wine shipping with your favourite Linux
You’ll need to replace ‘Quantal’ with the name
of the distro you are using. You will also need to
replace ‘kunal’ with the correct username.
git/wine.git
Build and install Wine
We are now all set up to build Wine.
distribution is outdated. That’s why we will build # cd wine*
Wine directly from the source. This will allow us NOTE: The distribution name should be a valid # ./configure
to build Wine to our liking. distribution, else chroot environment will # make
not be created. To find valid and supported # make install
NOTE: We are using Ubuntu 12.10 64-bit for distribution names, look in the directory
this tutorial. If you are using any other 64-bit /usr/share/debootstrap/scripts/. Setting up the X-server
distribution you will need the respective To make the GUI applications work from within
package management command. If you are Install the base system for your chroot the chrooted environment, you will need to set
using Ubuntu 12.10 32-bit or any other 32-bit $ sudo debootstrap --variant=buildd up the X-server:
distribution, skip this – go directly to installing --arch i386 quantal /var/chroot/
build dependencies. http://mirrors.us.kernel.org/ubuntu/ On the system shell
$ xhost +
Creating chroot for Wine: Since Wine depends NOTE: You can replace the mirror with one On the chrooted shell
upon a lot of 32-bit libraries, it is a good idea to of your liking, preferably nearby. A list of # export DISPLAY=:0.0
build it in a chroot environment. A chroot is a way mirrors is located at https://launchpad.net/ You can now test the setup by running the
of isolating applications from the rest of your ubuntu/+archivemirrors. You will need to following command
computer, by putting them in a jail. In this case make sure that the mirror you are selecting # wine notepad
we will set up a chroot with the 32-bit binaries contains the distribution you are chrooting.
and libraries. Now you can use the chrooted environment
Install the chroot packages Set up the Apt sources for all your Wine-related activities.
$ sudo apt-get install dchroot $ sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /
debootstrap var/chroot/etc/apt/
Create a directory which will hold the root of Enter chroot and install the
57 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Tutorial Wine for advanced users and developers
■ Visual Studio
2008 New
Project dialog
58 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Wine for advanced users and developers
Build and run windows apps without using Windows.
TUTORIAL
In this step we will take the default application Copyright 2009-2012 Andr Hentschel ### Global source lists
built by Microsoft Visual Studio and try to Scanning the source directories... C_SRCS =
compile it with Winemaker on Linux. Projectfile found! You might want to $(ludwin32project_C_SRCS)
Creating the Win32 Application: try using it directly. CXX_SRCS =
Open Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. Click File> Fixing the source files... $(ludwin32project_CXX_SRCS)
New>Project… LUDWin32Project.cpp RC_SRCS =
From the New Project dialog box, select Visual LUDWin32Project.rc $(ludwin32project_RC_SRCS)
C++>Win32. Then select Win32 Project. Give LUDWin32Project.h ### Tools
an appropriate Name for the project, Location Resource.h CC = winegcc
and Solution Name. Then click OK. The Win32 stdafx.cpp CXX = wineg++
Application Wizard will open. stdafx.h RC = wrc
Click Next to continue. On the Application targetver.h AR = ar
Settings page, select the Application type as Generating project files... This is not a complete makefile, but the main
a Windows application. Leave the rest of the . options you should take a look at. However, most
settings as is. Click Finish to create the project. The above command fixes the case-related of the options will be filled by Winemaker itself.
The finished project will now open in Visual issues with the source code. ‘-nomfc’ indicates Compile the project by issuing Make
Studio. Solution Explorer will show all the files that we do not want to use the MFC library with # make
created for the project. this project. As you can see in the output above, wineg++ -c -mno-cygwin -I. -o
As you can see, this is a fully featured project it has located a project file (vcproj), but we will LUDWin32Project.o LUDWin32Project.
with multiple header files, source files and skip it for this tutorial as Visual Studio project cpp
resource files. For this tutorial we need to files are not fully compatible with Winemaker. wineg++ -c -mno-cygwin -I. -o
modify the project itself. We would rather focus Winemaker will fix the files and create .bak stdafx.o stdafx.cpp
on porting part of this application. files for the modified files. It will also create the wrc -I. -foLUDWin32Project.res
Let’s run this application to see if everything makefile which we can run against the standard LUDWin32Project.rc
is working perfectly. Click Build>Build Solution GNU Make utility to build the application. wineg++ -mwindows -mno-cygwin -o
to build the project, then click Debug>Start Makefile structure of a Winelib project: ludwin32project LUDWin32Project.o
Without Debugging. Most of the time, the makefile generated with stdafx.o LUDWin32Project.res
Copy the LUDWin32Project directory to the Winemaker will be a good fit for your project. -lodbc32 -lole32 -loleaut32
chrooted folder, ie /var/chroot/. Then perform However, for some advanced and complex -lwinspool -lodbccp32 -luuid
the following steps to create a UNIX makefile applications, you might need to customise the As you can see, the correct compilers are used
project using Winemaker: makefile yourself. The following explains the for respective files. For example, wineg++
cd into main project directory very basic structure of a Winelib project. is used for .cpp files, wrc (Wine Resource
# cd LUDWin32Project/ Makefile generated by Winemaker Compiler) is used for .rc files.
LUDWin32Project/ SRCDIR = . The ‘make’ command will produce
Run Winemaker to fix the source files and SUBDIRS = ludwin32project.exe.so and ludwin32project.exe.
create UNIX makefiles: DLLS = Run the ludwin32project.exe file to start the
# winemaker --lower-uppercase LIBS = ported application.
--nomfc . EXES =
Winemaker 0.8.3
Copyright 2000-2004 Francois Gouget
<fgouget@codeweavers.com> for
ludwin32project
### Common settings 05 Conclusion
Wine is one of the key technologies
which can help you go Windows free. There are
CEXTRA = -mno-cygwin
CodeWeavers CXXEXTRA = -mno-cygwin an enormous number of Windows applications
Copyright 2004 Dimitrie O. Paun that just work on Wine without developer
support – see the full list at appdb.winehq.org.
If your application is not on that list, you can
use Winelib to port your application natively to
Linux. It will have the same performance as any
other native application. Winelib is very easy
to use, especially with a tool like winemaker
which takes care of much of the standard
porting issues by itself. So, if you are a Windows
developer avoiding the Linux platform because
you thought it was too much work, it’s time to
give Wine a try.
59 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Feature Kolab: David and Goliath
Kolab:
David and Goliath
Groupware is a tough domain to break into.
With competition from giants the likes of Lotus
Notes and Exchange, how can an open source
offering, like Kolab, ever hope to compete?
Dr Karl Beecher investigates…
Author Dr Karl Beecher Lotus Notes. Between them, these entrenched Imagine this was your groupware product.
Until recently an academic players can boast hundreds of millions of users You know that users, through desire or
specialising in computer science
and open source, Karl now works around the world and the backing of some of the necessity, often want to keep using their
as a freelance consultant, writer wealthiest technology companies in existence. familiar old systems and will resist change.
and trainer based in Berlin, It’s a tough domain to break into and not one Any proposed alterations to their setup must
Germany. You can check out more
of his stuff at computerfloss.com
you might automatically associate with open therefore cause minimum disruption or risk
source software. being rejected; key features must remain intact
Nevertheless, it’s in this domain that Kolab and the disruptive effects of migration should
has positioned itself. Kolab is just one of a be few. You basically need to entice users away
Groupware is an overused and ill-defined number of collaborative software applications, from the world of Exchange in favour of your
term, so you have to make clear what it is both proprietary and open source, which fight product. It needs to provide the same feature
you’re talking about. It’s often taken to mean to be noticed on a crowded stage. How on set and it had better offer compatibility with
any software that allows users to work together earth can a participant in this market hope to Exchange, or an easy migration path at least.
on common projects over a network. Such distinguish itself, not only from the giants of Many free and open source (FOSS) products
programs usually package together email, Microsoft and IBM, but also from a sizeable are in this very position. A popular strategy that
a shared calendar, task management, an pool of other more similar players? emerges is to retain Outlook as the desktop
address book and document management as Entering the groupware domain can be client (sometimes offering web and phone
a minimum. Just about any organisation that fraught with difficulty if you wish to see any interfaces too), but connected to new back-end
uses a computer these days needs some sort significant usage of your application. In such systems. By building on FOSS technologies,
of groupware on their systems. If you use a a well-established realm, where proprietary and by virtue of its smaller size, a company
computer on the planet Earth, you’re probably technologies have long reigned supreme, how attempting this should be able to offer an
aware of two groupware programs that dominate can users be convinced to leave their current alternative at a cheaper price than a full-blown
the market, namely Microsoft Exchange and applications behind and take up an alternative? Exchange installation. Sounds reasonable, yes?
60 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Kolab: David and Goliath
Can open source groupware take on the big proprietary players?
feature
n Roundcube, with its rich UI, becomes the default web interface in the latest version of Kolab
Kolab’s alternative strategy 2003 (see page 60 boxout ‘Profile: Community their new community website in 2011. You can
As it turns out, customers with tight IT budgets and Company’). Accordingly, FOSS issues better appreciate this approach when you
may go for it, as would smaller clients with were given a high priority from the start. The realise the nature of Kolab’s architecture.
humble requirements and an even humbler CEO of Kolab Systems, Georg Greve, has been “Kolab is not a single monolithic application,”
bank balance. However, groupware users who outspoken on issues of freeness in groupware Adams explains. “When you deploy the Kolab
are more financially flush are apt to stay with and other so-called ‘open source’ alternatives. server, you’re actually deploying several
Exchange, paying a premium for the warm “Often they turn out to be open core,” Greve independent services. The job of the Kolab
feeling of ‘reassurance’. explains, pointing out the disappointing mix code is to make all these work together.” These
“In short,” argues Paul Adams, “this of proprietary and open source. “But there is are programs like OpenLDAP, Postfix, Cyrus
approach is basically a race to the bottom. You another, bigger problem. Outlook is based on and OpenSSL.
can hoover up the smaller customers but the the Windows platform. And while the web clients Hence, Kolab’s developers are not trying
bigger ones will stick with Exchange.” give some level of platform independence even to compete on the terms of the entrenched
Dr Adams is the chief operating officer at for Microsoft Exchange itself, there are many market leader; the Kolab back-end has nothing
Kolab Systems, the professional organisation scenarios where web clients are just not good to do with an Exchange server at all. Instead,
behind the Kolab groupware. He and his enough.” We still live in a world where users Kolab provides its own server, one which
colleagues believe they know how to avoid this insist on the rich client experience. If the rich makes extensive use of open standards and
downward race and achieve real success in the client is Outlook, available only on Windows and can boast of being 100% FOSS. The server
FOSS groupware domain. And it’s not just idle Mac, that poses real problems for users of a free uses IMAP as its underlying protocol (not just
talk – it’s the strategy on which they are driving operating system. for email storage, but other information too,
the development of Kolab. In light of all this, Kolab’s strategy is like tasks, calendar events and contacts) and
Kolab Systems was formed in 2010 to somewhat different from its competitors’. configuration and user details are stored in
provide services around Kolab, as well as Kolab itself is still clearly groupware, but LDAP directories using Kolab’s own, published
leadership of the development community. it’s trying to distinguish itself in different
Prior to this, the software had been ways. I first learned about Kolab’s alternative
commissioned by the German government in approach when I briefly helped them set up
61 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Feature Kolab: David and Goliath
REQUIREMENTS
To get started with the Kolab IMAP, MTA, the web admin and the
server, you will need a “reasonably web client.
recent version of Linux” (CentOS, Kolab ships with a standard
Debian, Fedora and RHEL are all configuration specifically tailored
cited as suitable). At its easiest for smaller, all-on-one-box
level, setting up a Kolab server is as deployments, which are the most
simple as entering ‘apt-get install common. If you want to spread the
kolab’ at the command line, although deployment over many boxes, Kolab’s
this is a meta-package that installs packages do a lot of the work for you,
all components on a single machine. but some post-install configuration
The individual packages are: LDAP, will be required.
62 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Kolab: David and Goliath
Can open source groupware take on the big proprietary players?
FEATURE
FURTHER READING
AND RESOURCES
• www.kolab.org: The community website where
you can get information, help, and the latest
news from the developers.
• www.kolabsys.com: Kolab Systems is the
professional organisation behind the Kolab
groupware offering.
• If you want to get face-to-face (in a virtual
sense) with Kolab’s developers, then you’ll
find them hanging out in various IRC channels.
#kolab and #kontact are sure-fire bets.
• There are lots of community mailing lists. Good
ones for beginners are: kolab-announce@
kolab.org and kolab-users@kolab.org.
• And there’s a presence at all the usual social
media outlets:
• diasp.eu/u/kolab
• identi.ca/kolaborg
• twitter.com/kolaborg
with pride, and that’s security” belonging to the compromised user. Without a
central admin account, the cracker cannot gain
themselves sweeping access to user data.
frustratingly unable to cite specific examples, seems like overkill beside Kolab’s method.
as much as they’d like to brag. It’s on these grounds that Kolab’s developers The future
“We can’t reveal names,” admits Paul claim its suitability for a wide range of users, At the moment, the Kolab community are
Adams. “Large organisations see their choice from small clubs and societies right up to busy with their latest major release. Kolab 3
of groupware as a strategic advantage and so enterprises and governments. has just been launched and brings a raft of
prevent us from advertising them as users.” And speaking of elite users, there’s one other improvements to existing features. Version 3
The best he can do for now is cite certain attribute of Kolab that makes its developers also aims to make Kolab more easily integrated
tricks up Kolab’s sleeve which are essential beam with pride, and that’s security. For big into an existing setup; it will happily work with
for attracting big users. Chief among these business and government, security of data an existing LDAP system rather than its own,
are the flexibility on offer and the scalability is paramount. When they use groupware, should you be migrating.
that results from it. When I worked with the they want it to be as hard as possible for Other changes include the internal data
community, the developers often boasted an attacker to gain unauthorised access to format, switched from Kolab’s own version
how a Kolab sysadmin has lots of options user data. Kolab’s approach makes this very (XML based on iCal and vCard) to xCal and
when it comes to evolving their system. difficult indeed (not surprising when you learn xCard. One of the developers’ other devotions,
Because Kolab is made up of loosely coupled that Kolab’s first major user was the German security, also gets a boost from the improved
parts, components can be spread out over Federal Agency for IT Security). Storing data mobile synchronisation. Users will be able to
several machines. The mailboxes, the storage the standard way – on a server-side database, have different credentials on mobile devices, so
folders, the authentication server etc; these like MySQL – means that the data store has that the main credentials aren’t compromised
could all be deployed on different machines an admin account that can automatically in the event of a device being lost.
and maintained separately. This allows an access all the contents. Therefore, the danger The final release of Kolab 3 was made
organisation to scale their deployment with a always lingers that a cracker compromises available on 15 January and the community
fine level of control, increasing power or space this account and so gains access to all an are now aiming for a six-monthly release cycle.
to individual services. The standard approach organisation’s data. Meanwhile, the race to offer FOSS enterprise
to scaling – purchasing new boxes as demand This danger isn’t present for a Kolab groupware will continue.
increases, installing a separate copy of the installation, because a central database
whole server on each one and then managing administrator simply doesn’t exist (although
incoming requests via load balancing – a MySQL database is necessary for certain
63 www.linuxuser.co.uk
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Review index
Essential kit, software and resources for the open source scene
REVIEWS
Hardware
66 HTC One X+
HTC updates its flagship
smartphone for 2013
68 SolidRun CuBox
Another tiny-PC contender
78 Fedora 18
The Spherical Cow has
finally arrived!
82 Fuduntu 2013.1
A fun and functional desktop
for everyday use
65 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Review HTC One X+
SMARTPHONE
HTC
£462
One X+
HTC moves into 2013 with an update
of its 2012 flagship. Does it fix what
was wrong with the original?
Technical specs
Operating System Android 4.1
Processor Quad-core 1.7GHz
Memory 164GB storage
Dimensions 134.36 x 69.9 x 8.9mm
Weight 135g
Display Size 4.7-inch
Display Resolution 1280 x 720 pixels
Expansion Slot None
It’s one of the best handset to hot-swapping storage. But sadly that’s not to be.
HTC has improved on the battery this time around, providing
screens we’ve seen a 2100mAh battery in place of the 1800mAh cell that was used
in the original. If you’re hoping this has dealt with the poor
66 www.linuxuser.co.uk
HTC One X+
Improved flagship Android smartphone
REVIEW
battery life issue you’re only half right. The more powerful webpages, and for looking at video. It’s almost large enough for
processor must cause a larger drain, because while we found serious catch-up TV.
life to be a bit better than before, it is far from superb. If we It is great to see Android 4.1 being used here, and HTC Sense
spent time gaming and using mobile data during the day, an has been given a slight makeover too. It’s not enough to jar or
early evening trip to the mains power was often in order. present you with any complex or difficult new learning curves,
Physically HTC has retained the HTC One X chassis design but if you are upgrading from a recent HTC handset you might
almost entirely, with only a couple of stylistic alterations. So, notice some subtle changes.
this handset has a polycarbonate shell with a rubberised
finish – and it is a bit too easily scratched for our liking. A
Beats Audio logo on the back indicates that the partnership For the most part HTC has
continues, and five little notches on the back are the clue that done well with its upgrade to what was its flagship
a docking kit can be used with the HTC One X+. handset of 2012. A faster processor and plenty
Incidentally, the chassis does not incorporate a removable of internal storage headline the updates. But the
backplate. The micro-SIM goes into a caddy that sits on the weakness in battery life has not been completely
top edge of the casing at the back. If you’re worried about solved. The trade-off between power and performance
battery life, then you should be warned that you can’t swap in looks set to continue for some time yet.
a spare in desperate times. Sandra Vogel
This is a big handset, and its screen is a generous 4.7 inches More
in size, with 1280x720 pixels of display resolution. It’s one of information
the best handset screens we’ve seen and perfect for reading www.htc.com/uk/
67 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Review SolidRun CuBox
An optical port
on the side of the
CuBox provides
S/PDIF audio output
at up to 192KHz
Extra storage can
be added via USB
2.0 or an eSATA
3.0Gb/s port, as
well as through the
microSD slot
Gigabit Ethernet
makes the CuBox
adept at shuffling The HDMI output on
high-definition video the CuBox is picky
around a network about display types,
preferring standard
16:9 TVs and monitors
MINI PC
SolidRun CuBox£105
One of the smallest fully featured ARM Raspberry Pi, OLinuXino and similar, it’s also provided in a
specially designed casing which hides the components and a
microcomputers on the market, can the large aluminium heatsink that’s bonded to the processor.
The system-on-chip is a Marvell Armada 510. Based on
CuBox justify its top-end price? the ARMv7 instruction set, the chip runs at 800MHz and
includes an integrated Vivante GC600 graphics engine. A
vMeta HD Video Decoder provides extra grunt for 1080p
The CuBox, announced in December 2011, video playback.
Pros Cons has been slow in coming to the UK, but is That does have a knock-on effect on the system, though:
The CuBox offers a General-purpose
remarkable amount performance is finally available through compact computing the CuBox’s 1GB of memory seems generous in a market
of multimedia poor for the price;
performance in an little to excite specialist New IT. Has it been worth the wait? where 512MB is the norm, but a whopping 256MB is reserved
incredibly small developers looking The first thing that strikes you about the CuBox for the GPU and a further 128MB for the vMeta – meaning a
package, with IrDA to play with the
and CEC support ARM architecture is its size: measuring just 55mm on a side and mere 640MB is available to the user. This can, however, be
42mm tall, it’s one of the smallest fully featured tweaked: operating system images are available to turn the
microcomputers around. Its compact footprint comes CuBox into a headless server, disabling the GPU in order to give
courtesy of a split design, which moves some components the user access to the full 1GB of DDR3 memory – extended to
onto a mezzanine board above the main PCB. Unlike the 2GB in the recently launched CuBox Pro.
68 www.linuxuser.co.uk
SolidRun CuBox
Miniature desktop computer
REVIEW
69 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Review Samsung Galaxy Ace 2
smartphone
Samsung
Galaxy
Ace 2 £230
The Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 is a budget
handset with highs and lows to reel you
in, turn you away and reel you in again
Technical specs
Operating System Android 2.3
Processor Dual-core 800MHz
Memory 4GB storage
Dimensions 118.3 x 62.3 x 10.5mm
Weight 118.5g
Display Size 3.8-inch
Display Resolution 800 x 480 pixels
Expansion Slot microSD
Pros Cons It’s tough if you have around £200 burning a hole Samsung has managed a strange feat with the sound
Highly affordable The chassis is a bit in your pocket and you are looking for the ideal output. It’s poor through the back-mounted speaker: loud
and at 3.8”, the chunky, it features
screen is right in Android 2.3 and
SIM-free Android handset. There’s a fair bit of enough but rather too tinny for our tastes. Use the provided
the sweet spot for doesn’t attempt choice hovering around that price and Samsung headphones, though, and it is much, much better with pretty
size and usability to innovate
recently added another option for you to ponder good bass tones.
in the shape of the Samsung Galaxy Ace 2. The camera benefits from an on-board photo editing app,
This is an update of an earlier handset that proved extremely but shooting itself isn’t a great experience. You can’t expect
popular with the pay-as-you-go crowd, and it has to be said more than 5 megapixels from a handset in this price bracket,
that while some of the specifications are noteworthy, others and photos are okay as far as quality goes, but there is a
most certainly are not. It also has to be said that Samsung big issue: there is serious shutter lag here, and you will need
has barely bothered to do anything novel in the design of this a steady hand to take a half-decent photo. Don’t even think
phone, but its solid lines are perfectly good enough. about trying to capture a sharp image of anything that’s
In fact, the Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 looks very, very familiar. moving. If your pet cat is photogenic, you’ll need a proper
A physical Home button beneath the screen. A black chassis camera to capture its antics instead of this phone.
with rounded corners. Samsung’s trademark name and a The highlight of the Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 has to be its
silver sliver of speaker above the screen. All these are very screen. At 3.8 inches it hits the sweet spot between size and
clearly Samsung design elements. usability. Larger than this and phones tend to get a bit too big
While it might be a bit dull and samey, what’s good about for many people to use one-handed. Smaller and it can be
the design is the well-placed buttons and connectors. difficult to do media-rich activities like browsing webpages
Headset on the top edge, micro-USB on the bottom. Volume or watching video. At this size both those activities are nice,
rocker on the left edge, power switch on the right. What’s not and eBook/email reading are easy on the eye. The keyboard
so good is the flimsy backplate that you could snap if you are is perhaps a bit cramped for some hands, but that particular
overenthusiastic when you remove it. size/usability compromise will be a personal matter.
70 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Samsung Galaxy Ace 2
Low-cost Android all-rounder
Review
71 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Review Live distro group test
group test
Live distros
Which portable Linux distro allows you to have a fully functional Linux
system with office suites, IDEs and more, wherever you need it?
Knoppix 7
Knoppix has been around for a long time now, trackers, are available for programming. Every
and the Debian-based distro has gone through major video and music player, creator and editor
a lot of changes over the years to keep it is also included, along with preconfigured Wine
current with not only the changing computing and a decent set of system management tools.
landscape, but differing user requirements. It’s more than a lot of people may be wanting to
USB installs and a change from KDE to LXDE use; however, if you’re planning to install this to a
are just two examples of these developments in USB stick and use it as a mobile system, you can n Installation is handled by different apps
recent years, to deal with the proliferation of large easily add and remove missing or superfluous for different storage
USB sticks and low-power hardware respectively. packages as you see fit. The separate HD and
Knoppix takes a kitchen sink approach to flash disk installers give you different options to
scores
the distro, loading it up with an absolute ton of automatically or manually partition drives, and
Installation
9
software that really bulks out the DVD version of you can choose a persistent memory option at
the live disc to a full 4GB or so – packing it with the end of the flash install to create a way to save A quick and easy
much more software for office use, programming system settings. process that automates
and engineering, according to the official blurb. Speed-wise, Knoppix manages to boot some key processes
For web you have multiple browsers such as incredibly fast thanks to its own custom
Chromium and Iceweasel, torrent clients, bootloader that allows you to add your own
Software
9
mail clients, instant messenger clients, feed specific options at boot time. The so-called
Fantastic selection of
aggregators and more. The full LibreOffice suite is cheat sheet for this is available on the website
default software, and
included in the office software, along with some to get the most out of it, although simply
access to much more
lightweight alternatives and a LyX processor. hitting Return will get you going for any normal
Major IDEs such as Eclipse and IDLE for a number situation. It’s still a great live distro after all these
of languages, as well as web editors and bug years, and that’s no easy accomplishment.
Customisability
8
Boot options give you a lot
of customisation while live,
which carries over to installs
Speed
9
Thanks to using LXDE,
Knoppix boots very quickly
and stays fast while using it
9
Overall
Knoppix was and continues
to be a great live or portable
distro if you have very
specific Linux needs you
cannot always satisfy
More information
knoppix.net
n Knoppix has hundreds of apps pre-installed
72 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Live distro group test
Four of the best live distros battle it out
Review
Slax 7
n The
modified
KDE is fast
yet still
Three years in the making, Slax 7 brings a works just
major overhaul to the previous 6.x line of like KDE
the Slackware-based portable OS. Most
noticeable in the update has been the upgrade
of KDE to a much more recent 4.9, a big leap over
3.5 that was in the last version, and a technical
triumph as the usually bloated KDE has been
wrangled into a fully functional Linux distro that
can come in a tiny 210MB ISO if needed.
This base ISO has very little to it, though –
Firefox and SMPlayer are among the most
exciting applications included by default, and
you’ll need to load up a Google Doc if you want
to do any more word processing than Kate
can handle. If you want to have a bit more
included with Slax, you can add ‘modules’ to
the ISO before you download directly from the
Slax website. Different categories of module
are available, maintained by the community, the software, and the best way to put it onto
and they allow you to add software, office a USB stick or similar is by using something
scores
suites and programming IDEs to expand the like UNetbootin or any other alternative flash
Installation
6
functionality. Before Slax 7 came along, the installer. While Slax does automatically detect
modules for 6 numbered in the thousands and any attached USB storage, like the one it lives on,
No dedicated installer
were kept well up to date, as best as Slax 6 it would be nice to have the tools to replicate it to
program, but putting it onto
would allow. Unfortunately, this number has other USB sticks or hard drives. At the very least,
a USB stick is fairly easy
reduced significantly since 7’s release and has it’s much more common and practical to use live
not recovered yet, with temporary solutions to distros from USB storage.
Software
4
use Calligra Office suite, while Eclipse isn’t even Even using KDE, as Slax is so lightweight in
The base version has very little,
available yet. This will turn around, but it won’t general, it runs at lightning speed. Of course, the
and there’s not much to add to
be for a little while. more you put on the ISO, the slower it will get;
it right now from modules
As a more portable OS, Slax doesn’t really however it doesn’t have anywhere near the bloat
have a way to be installed to a system HDD in of some of the full desktop distros.
Customisability
8
Software on the distro is
highly customisable, when it’s
actually ready
Speed
10
Extremely fast thanks to
a very lightweight image
and modified KDE
6
Overall
We like Slax, but it’s going to
be a few months or even a
year before there’s enough
available software to make
it worthwhile
More information
www.slax.org
n The extra modules section is a bit thin right now
73 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Review Live distro group test
Ubuntu 12.10
Ubuntu was one of the earlier distros to
adopt the use of a live disc, and while it is
primarily used to let you test out some of
the Ubuntu basics, this test environment
gives you access to quite a large selection of
default applications.
The software present on this base Ubuntu
covers you pretty well for a lot of simple tasks:
Firefox for web browsing, Thunderbird for emails,
Rhythmbox for music, a video player, torrent
client and even apparently a disc-burning utility in
Brasero. There are some system tools present as
well, so you can manually set up your computer
before installing it on a regular machine. However,
there aren’t any programming tools or IDEs to
let you get on with some more heavy coding
from the environment. There is the ability to
add some extra software, but it’s limited to only n Installation to all types of storage is quite easy
the packages in the Ubuntu Main repo – while to any device really, and even includes tools to
apparently numbering 10,000, this is a lot less prepare a USB stick for installation. Also, if you scores
than the full 60,000+ of full Ubuntu. put the image onto a USB stick to begin with,
Installation
10
One of the major problems using Ubuntu as you have a portable way to install Ubuntu, and
a live distro is that it’s slow in comparison to UNetbootin will allow you to create some specific It’s Ubuntu, so it has
all the others, and is not well suited for older space on the storage to save files and changes. a fantastic native
or very underpowered machines. While it will So it’s not the absolute worst live distro – in a installer for all devices
certainly run, the user experience will be pretty pinch you can easily get some office work done
terrible and it doesn’t have the benefit of being or even just watch something to pass the time.
Software
6
able to boot into either a 32- or 64-bit kernel However, if you need a serious portable distro and
Usable and extensible, but
like Knoppix can. you need to do some real work on the go on many
otherwise still a fairly basic
Installation-wise though, it’s probably the best. different computers, Ubuntu is probably not the
selection of applications
From the live environment, it allows you to install best distro for the job.
Customisability
4
You can add the odd piece of
software and change the off-
system setting
Speed
3
While fine on modern PCs,
anything where resources are
a premium will be affected
5
Overall
It was worth a look, but
Ubuntu just doesn’t really
cut it as a live distro,
although it wasn’t really
designed to be one
More information
www.ubuntu.com
n Good for office and media, not so good for programming
74 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Live distro group test
Four of the best live distros battle it out
Review
9
We like its quick and simple
installations that can be
done over and over
8
Software
A decent set to start, with a full
library accessible after the fact
Customisability
Activating and deactivating
modules and other
customisations affords you
a lot of control
8
Speed
7
n Simple and with a decent number of applications, Porteus can add more though Very fast in general, although
Based on an older version of Slax, Porteus existing files to the hard drive or a USB stick takes mildly laggy sometimes, but
provides a much more comprehensive ‘base’ a few minutes at most, depending on system only relative to the others
8
than its ancestor, but still comes in a tiny and write speeds, and it allows you to set up
package of around 250MB while including
multiple desktop environments, along with a
bootloaders. If you’ve installed it to a USB stick,
then you’ve basically got a clone of whatever live Overall
handful of extra applications to get you going. media you were using, allowing you to install it Porteus is a great
It handles a lot of functions quite differently from onto further devices and storage in the same way. reimagining of Slax that
Slax as well, making it a little more customisable The one thing we have to say is that Porteus allows you to change and
post-installation. is not presented all that well, and although we tweak stuff after installing,
Mainly, instead of using a system to add gladly make concessions for such a small distro, rather than having to get a
software modules to the ISO, it has its own Slax itself looks a lot more professional – better brand new ISO
package manager for adding and removing than the sort of hacked together live distro it More information
software. The Porteus package manager treats really is. Functionality-wise though, Porteus is www.porteus.org
this in a similar manner, though, referring to the pretty amazing.
packages as modules, and grants access to other
Slackware- and Slax-based distros’ libraries to
download from. Porteus itself has a large number
of programs available in its repos anyway, so this
should only be necessary for the more obscure
packages. The Slax style of adding modules to
the image does still exist to a degree, though,
as you can add specific video drivers to the
image beforehand.
Porteus is very fast. Boot time is minimal,
with a pause taken only to choose a desktop
environment to begin with – LXDE or KDE for the
basic version. LXDE is of course slightly faster,
but the KDE version is definitely much faster n You can
than a lot of other KDE 4 implementations, save select different
Slax 7. Speaking of that, Porteus is perhaps not boot options
as fast overall as Slax, but it beats it by a mile in like choosing
the installation department: merely copying the a desktop
75 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Review Live distro group test
A comprehensive live Out of the gate with a Not suited for a live or A great Slax remix
and portable distro limp, Slax still needs a portable distro if that’s adding functionality
9 6 5 8
for working on system few months to mature what you need, but okay and post-install
maintenance in an emergency customisation
Overall
76 www.linuxuser.co.uk
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distro
Fedora 18
After much delay, the Spherical Cow
makes an entrance. How does the final
version of Fedora 18 measure up? n Installation is easy and looks great
Pros Cons A new Fedora is always a big deal, as the It also starts copying and installing while you finish up
A great installer, Limited software Linux distribution is known for being on with root passwords and such, similar to how the Ubuntu
and it’s also nice selection
to see MATE and due to FOSS
the bleeding edge of free and open source installer works. While there’s not always much to do after the
Cinnamon in the commitment, software and technology, coming with the actual installation starts, it’s a step in the right direction to
standard repos GNOME 3.6 is
horrible to use
best and brightest the extended community streamline the installation process. It also has the standard
has to offer. Fedora 18 may have had a bit of post-reboot user setup that we also saw in Fuduntu this
a bumpy ride to the finish line, but the longer issue, which is good for OEMs and sysadmins, and doesn’t
wait hasn’t hampered the quality of the release at all. Any really slow down the process for desktop users. The actual
quality problems are mainly down to GNOME 3.6, but we’ll installation itself is a little slower than we’d like, but it won’t
get onto that later. keep you waiting for too long.
As we mentioned in our review of the beta, the new installer It’s after all this that you’re put straight into an updated
is a wonderful, minimalist-designed app that allows for GNOME environment – GNOME 3.6. We’ve aired our
quick installations with decent default settings, and a more grievances in previous issues about this latest version
advanced setup if you have some specific requirements. of GNOME, about how it slows down workflow in favour
78 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Fedora 18
Final release of cutting-edge Linux distro
Review
79 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Review Pear Linux 6.1
distro
80 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Pear Linux 6.1
OS X-inspired Ubuntu spin
Review
n At least there’s an alternative to the broken Pear Appstore You’re presented with the
fairly clean, custom Pear
desktop environment
was going well, just like it had on a physical machine,
and it even had the correct Guest Additions installed for
VirtualBox. However, once logged in, a permanent black
bar covered the right quarter of the screen, obscuring
full-screen windows and not letting you click past it.
Virtualising is great for testing out app builds and if you only
have access to a severely handicapped version to test on, it
won’t go well.
It’s disappointing really, as while not everyone is
n There’s a browser choice app similar to Windows hankering for an OS X experience on Linux, it doesn’t mean
there shouldn’t be one for those that do. The interface
in the standard GNOME way, but there’s very little on there is great to use, almost perfectly copying the Mac while
after you first install it. throwing in a few Linux extras that make it overall a bit
At this point you’ll want to start installing packages, and better. Maybe next time we look at it, it will work flawlessly.
there’s a special Pear Appstore (a reskinned Software And we won’t have to use a ‘ripe’ pun again.
Centre) to give you access to the various software. Only, the
Appstore will never load, cycling a loading animation for as
long as we could bear to watch it. Based on our impressions Every time we use Pear, we
on earlier versions of Pear Linux, this is a great-looking want to like it. There’s a lot of great potential for a
software centre that works absolutely fine, grabbing the custom, ‘unique’ interface that goes beyond the OS X
right data from the repos and Ubuntu sources to make it a one it’s trying to imitate. However, each time there’s
different experience from its Linux counterparts. Luckily, always something pretty major that breaks the
the distro comes with Synaptic installed by default, so if experience. One to avoid for the moment, especially
you’re uncomfortable installing all your packages from the the 64-bit version.
command line, you can at least do it graphically. It’s a shame Rob Zwetsloot
though, as this is one of the selling points of Pear Linux. More
Another problem that occurred during testing was when
information
we decided to install it on a virtual machine – everything pearlinux.org
81 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Review Fuduntu 2013.1
n A nice
welcome
when you
start Fuduntu
distro
Fuduntu 2013.1
Designed to fit somewhere between Fedora and Ubuntu, this
fork of Fedora is a fully functional and easy-to-use distribution
Whenever we get a chance to look at the new OEMs or sysadmins, and the Fuduntu version is as good as any
Pros Cons Fuduntu, our first impressions are always other bar the Mandriva-derived distros. The whole process
Great to use, GNOME 2 is still
plenty of apps in great, but it’s about how nice it is to work with. Positioning runs at a fairly normal speed on a modern computer, but is
repos, only Linux starting to show its
distro to support age in the light of
itself as a lightweight, battery-friendly distro, nothing to shout about.
Netflix and Steam MATE’s maturity Fuduntu is one of the few remaining Linux The initial Fuduntu setup comprises Chromium for web
distributions that still uses the venerable browsing, LibreOffice suite for all kinds of office work, and
GNOME 2 desktop environment, enhancing its functionality a small selection of media players. Enough to get yourself
with a dock similar to OS X. It’s quite fast, and comes with a going, then, and the repos are well stocked with programming
decent selection of default apps to let you hit the ground packages and IDEs, among everything else, so it’s quick
running while you further enhance the experience. enough to get down to some serious work if time is short.
Installation of Fuduntu is nice and simple, with some The dock for the GNOME 2 interface has been changed from
advanced options for storage and partitioning, followed by AWN in previous versions to Cairo – apparently AWN is no
setting up users and other system options post-reboot. This longer maintained and there are a few bugs present that are
particular Red Hat/Fedora style of install is always great for not being fixed. The Cairo dock is a nice replacement, works
82 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Fuduntu 2013.1
Latest release of Fedora fork
Review
83 www.linuxuser.co.uk
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85 www.linuxuser.co.uk
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& answers
Your questions
answered
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were answered by…
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86 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Questions & answers
All your technical problems solved
Q/A
Storage RAID
Hi, I’ve done a couple of mdadm arrays and
foolishly assumed I knew what I was doing.
Now I’m stuck. I was trying to build a four-
drive RAID 10 array, but I messed up the
command syntax:
$ mdadm -v --create /dev/md0
--level=raid10 --raid-devices=4 /
dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 /dev/sda3 /dev/
sda4
Notice I was incrementing the number
and not the letter. Well, the array creation
failed and I found my mistake. I then tried to
create the array using the correct syntax:
$ mdadm -v --create /dev/md0
--level=raid10 --raid-devices=4 /
dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/
sdd1
It once again failed to create an array so I
tried to remove what I thought was a broken
array. But the stop command
$ mdadm --stop /dev/md0
■ GnuCash is popular among accountants just gives me an ‘It’s a directory’ error
message. When I try to zero the superblock I
link to that file and run ldd again. Alternatively, program crashes. I will be checking into how to
get an error message saying it couldn’t open
you could just try installing again, this time using resolve this issue since it is critical.
/dev/sdx. I tried deleting partitions but I get a
YUM instead. LibreOffice is in the Fedora repos, Which accounting program would you suggest?
‘Device or resource busy’ message.
though, and is kept fairly up to date, so you
If you guys have any ideas, suggestions
shouldn’t have to download the files separately. Steve Richards
or recommendations I’d greatly appreciate
hearing them.
Money Both GnuCash and KMyMoney are
quite popular among accountants
Joe Barton
management using open source software.
However, we have heard of more
You’re very nearly there, and I’m
Which personal finance program would you people having issues with
sorry to tell you that you’ve
suggest? I’m currently looking at GnuCash KMyMoney than GnuCash in general. Importing
missed a fairly minor step.
or KMyMoney, and I had planned on being the data from Quicken is trickier the more data
You’ve set up the RAID array,
further down-the-road in my testing of both you try to import, and we’ve heard of some people
and now you need to format it
products, but alas it is now getting close to my just giving up and deciding to enter the data
as a disk/partition. To do this, you need to use
self-imposed deadline to make a decision. My from scratch.
the command:
objective is to dump Quicken. You’ll also have to get used to the idea of
$ mkfs.ext3 /dev/md0
To get the data out of Quicken and into either double-entry bookkeeping, and there may be
And once that’s finished, it should be working
GnuCash or KMyMoney, I need to generate a a few more manual entries than you’re used to.
for you. Good luck with mdadm in the future.
QIF, which turns out to be less than satisfactory. Otherwise though, the best way is to get stuck
As an editorial aside, Quicken is very hostile in as soon as possible and figure out if you like
when it comes to sharing (exporting/importing) it or not.
data. In fact, the ability to export/import data
from Quicken seems to have been essentially
deprecated. A major reason for moving to a
Linux-based accounting program. ■ RAID 10
Install again,
So far, I have only accomplished preliminary offers
massaging of imported data. In terms of simple
YUM instead
was able to ascertain that KMyMoney ‘chokes’ one array
when attempting to import securities. The
87 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Contact us @linuxusermag
Questions Become a fan on
Linux User & Developer
& answers
Speak up
I was looking for a low-resource voice-only chat
We hate to be the bearers of bad
news, but it seems like the best
way to fix this is really to go and
software for Linux. From what I saw, Mumble/ upgrade the operating system so
Murmur seems a good choice. The problem is, one you can use the newer, or even up-
of the machines, which will be running the Mumble to-date packages.
client only (not the Murmur server) is old – so old You could use a more creative method, though
that it’s running Ubuntu Intrepid. Due to its remote – using the Launchpad search feature, you can
location, I cannot upgrade that machine right now. search for the dependencies manually and install
So I went back and found an older version the binaries from there. It will be a little tricky, but
Mumble client from Ubuntu Hardy, mumble_1.1.3- definitely a lot easier and faster than getting to
0ubuntu2.1_i386.deb to be exact. Newer versions this remote system, wherever it is.
had too many dependencies that were not met.
This old version had only libqt4-core and libqt4-gui
as unmet dependencies. I then went and got those NFS niggle
older versions of libqt4* from Hardy as well. I have a problem with NFS regarding file
These seemed to install fine, apart from permissions when copying a file that has no read/
libqt4-gui, which asks to remove libqt4-designer. write permissions for a group.
It tries to do this automatically; however, it fails and First, this is how I set up NFS:
quits out. I don’t know what libqt4-designer does • Created accounts for users on the server.
and I am hesitant to remove it as the above message • Each user has in server’s /etc/exports line with
advises, because this is a remote computer I have exported folder and his machine IP as well as
no physical access to. Since many apps may be following parameters: anonuid and anongid to
dependent on Qt I want to be on the cautious side match his uid/gid, rw and all_squash.
■ Write permissions in Linux are
before doing any removal. What should I do? • All users are in one common group, let’s call
difficult to exploit for good reason
it ‘fornfs’.
John Wilkinson • Each user has in his .profile on their machines BUT, if user A gets some file via Skype for
umask set to 002. example, and that file lands on user’s machine
Example of /etc/exports line: with permission 600, and user A then puts that
/mnt/share 192.168.1.10(rw,no_subtree_ file on NFS, other users can’t use that file at all
check,all_squash,anonuid=1001,anong because of the permission.
Search for the id=1004)
Server is Debian Squeeze, clients are
What I am looking for is, if there is some
kind of umask or similar that will force default
dependencies Kubuntu 12.04.1. Exported folder is SEC_
TYPE=”ext2” TYPE=”ext3”
permission on a file being copied to NFS. Which
means a user puts that file on NFS, NFS sees
manually and Now, if user A makes a file, it gets correct
permissions (by correct I mean also rw for group)
that file permission has no read and write for the
group, and corrects it. Like umask sets for a newly
install binaries thanks to umask. He puts that file on NFS and
other users from the ‘fornfs’ group can open it
created file.
I should mention also that you should assume
and edit too. that users are people that do not know/care to
change permissions, they just expect to put files
on NFS and that it should work automatically.
So advising users to chmod files before
putting on a mounted NFS is no-go (nor would
I like that system, although that depends on
user behaviour).
Thank you in advance.
Andrew Nguyen
88 www.linuxuser.co.uk
Questions & answers
All your technical problems solved
Q/A
say in home, you can do some permission score input to control its virtual instruments (not not be the quality you want, you can get some
tweaking. This will result in that any file yet implemented). I’m about to give Ardour a shot, proper samples to try to use in Rosegarden itself.
downloaded to the folder will then inherit the but I’ve been having trouble getting a bead on Otherwise if you want to emulate it, you’ll get
correct permissions. You can do it with: what it can actually do, and am not sufficiently varying results depending on the instrument.
$ chmod g+xs /home/UserA experienced with the program to know if I’m being Hopefully this is enough information to get
Alternatively, you could switch the whole inept or if the program doesn’t support what you going!
system to Samba, although of course that could I want.
take a while to get properly set up depending on Do you know if you can use notation software,
the network. or the MIDI output, to control virtual instruments
on Linux?
Remix with Linux Thanks for any help you can provide.
Ardour right
I’m a composer. I’ve been using the (wonderful!)
program MuseScore to notate music and play
Ryan Everson
now is strictly for
it back with MIDI. This is fine for composition
purposes, but not for releasing music to the
Ardour right now is strictly for
recording and mixing audio – recording and
public, since even good MIDI samples tend to
sound very artificial. More importantly, this
currently it does not have any
software synthesizers. And while a mixing audio – it
program (or perhaps the samples/MIDI back-end)
is unable to articulate things like pitch bending,
few may be added in the next
version of Ardour, it sounds like it won’t be a full does not have
tapering dynamics etc.
I’m aware that ProTools (and others) can use
suite. For the moment, I would suggest trying
out Rosegarden. any software
‘virtual instruments’ to accomplish this, and
even be nearly indistinguishable from actual
Rosegarden is able to do MIDI-controlled
software synthesizers in the form of DSSI, as synthesizers
instruments. Audacity seems unable to use MIDI/ well as LADSPA v2, and while by default they may
89 www.linuxuser.co.uk
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YOUR VIEW
■ Coming to
Android at some
Linux User
point, but in
what form?
Letters
Your opinions about the
magazine, Linux and open source You’re brushing next to a much wider problem
Touch the button all users on any particular platform will want a
than touch for Android ports, and we totally
agree. Even the desktop interfaces you’ve
I recently read the interview you had with Michael touch interface. Given Android is making inroads pointed out still primarily use a mouse and
Meeks from the Document Foundation a while into smart TVs, we can expect those to have high- keyboard, which is why LibreOffice is using it
back, and I had an issue with something he said definition mouse wands, or actual mice attached with them in the first place. While we’re not
re touch-screen interoperability. It’s a completely – not touch. We can expect some Android users sure how much use people will get out of an
different issue to Android platform compatibility will want the standard windowed LO interface. office suite on their TV with a limited remote
– LibreOffice would best be ported to Android and Not all platforms do support mice and physical control, Android phone manufacturers keep
there should also be a project to provide a touch- keyboards, so we shouldn’t presume a UI based trying to break the desktop market by using
screen UI to LO, regardless of platform. on platform. We really need LO to have a touch- docked Android phones – which also use a
Yes, Windows 8 is touch oriented. Ubuntu has friendly UI available on all platforms, but at the mouse and keyboard. Of course with Android,
been moving towards touch friendliness for some same time, keep the standard UI available. though, it is primarily touch, and there are
time. iOS is a touch platform. That is not to suggest Nick Hill space considerations to keep in mind.
THREAD BARE switch overheads. People interested in this specific topic might want to
read Amit Singh’s excellent book Mac OS X Internals.
94 www.linuxuser.co.uk
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LibreOffice, GNU Hurd, Linux security
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