Linux Magazine December 2020

Dear Reader, This month, the Wisconsin state government declined to pay the refundable tax subsidies to Foxconn, the Taiwanese conglomerate that arrived in Wisconsin in 2017 with the promise of a plant that would make LCD TVs and monitors and employ 13,000 people. It seems this “project” never did really get off the ground. The original vision of 13,000 workers soon scaled down to 5,200; then it plummeted still further as no one seemed to have a vision for what these people were going to do. After it became clear that it wouldn’t be profitable to make LCD screens (something neither the company nor the state seriously investigated before announcing the deal), Foxconn searched for other uses of the gigantic space they had already built. Casting about for an endeavor…

KDE neon 5.20.0 KDE neon User Edition 20201013 is the latest stable showcase of the Plasma desktop environment used in the KDE software compilation. It is the companion to the KDE neon Developer’s Edition, which contains the very latest Plasma applications. The User Edition is ideal for those who want to see the latest in Plasma development, but want a degree of stability. KDE neon exists because KDE development is divided into Framework, Plasma, and the Software Compilation (which used to be designated as KDE 4.x).These three areas used to release versions together, but the trouble was that each developed at its own pace. As a result, the version of Plasma released in the Software Compilation can sometimes be several versions behind the very latest one. KDE neon was begun…

THIS MONTH’S NEWS 08 • New Emperor-OS Linux Distro Released • Ubuntu Groovy Gorilla Beta Available 09 • Microsoft Finally Set to Release Edge Browser for Linux • Lenovo Offering an Ubuntu 20.04 Option • More Online 10 • Linux deepin 20 Released • Zorin OS 15.3 Now Available New Emperor-OS Linux Distro Released There’s yet another Linux distribution available for the masses to try. This time around, it’s an operating system focused primarily on developers and those who work with data science. The operating system in question is Emperor-OS (https://emperor-os.com/). Created by Hossein Seilany, the aim of the operating system is to provide the best tools and software for various types of programming. Emperor-OS is a 64 bit-only version of Linux that includes five different desktops, supports numerous programming…

Shared Processes with Hyper-Threading Joel Fernandes wanted to speed up hyper-threading by making it possible for processes on the same CPU that trust each other to share hyper-threads. Hyper-threading is Intel’s proprietary form of hardware-based multithreading. Generally in Linux and other operating systems (OSs), the OS is responsible for switching rapidly between processes, so everything on the system seems to be running at once. Hyper-threading does this at the hardware level, saving time for the OS. But the OS can still interact with Intel’s hyper-threading features, so folks like Joel can try to eke out performance improvements. Joel specifically wanted to improve Peter Zijlstra’s “core-scheduling” patches, which Peter famously hates the way one hates slowly pulling out their own fingernails. He actually did this once. No, not really. However, the…

Security is a problem for any computer that faces the Internet, and the solution can be as big and comprehensive as you want to make it. Firewalls, penetration testing, and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) are all important, but you can do a lot for securing your system before you even start adding these critical security layers. This article highlights some basic security steps that are so easy they are often overlooked. If you are administering a Linux system that you can install from scratch, keep in mind that fewer services on the system means fewer avenues for attack, so one worthy approach is to leave out everything you don’t really need. Many distributors offer specially designed minimal versions for reducing the attack footprint. You can then set up a miniature…

Secure Shell, better known as SSH, is a secure communication protocol used to execute commands on remote servers. SSH works on a client/server architecture. Data transferred through SSH is automatically encrypted using symmetric, asymmetric, and hashing algorithms. At receiving end, the data is automatically decrypted. About 90 percent of system administrators use SSH to access their servers and configure them remotely. Users overwhelmingly prefer SSH over Telnet, an alternative communication protocol that is now considered insecure. SSH makes the data in transit more secure, but if you wish to secure an SSH server, you need to take some additional steps. Following are some measures that will help you protect your SSH server from attack. Public Keys Instead of Passwords The article on “System Hardening” elsewhere in this issue mentioned the…