Linux Magazine January 2021

Dear Reader, Today I’m remembering an episode that happened a few years ago. We are still a proud print publishing company, but, like most publishers, we deliver some of our copies in electronic form through content platforms available for personal computers and mobile devices. One of those platforms at the time was Apple Newsstand, a virtual newsstand for iPhone and iPad devices. The user interface for Apple Newsstand looked just like a magazine shelf at a bookstore, with a picture of a bunch of magazine shelves. Then, if you purchased a magazine, an icon with the cover of the magazine appeared on the virtual magazine shelf. The goal of Apple Newsstand was to be a perfect little replacement of a real neighborhood newsstand – you buy any magazine you want…

Ubuntu 20.10 64-bit Codenamed Groovy Gorilla, Ubuntu 20.10 is the latest release in the popular desktop distribution. A short-term release, it will be supported for nine months until July 2021, with an easy upgrade path to the next release. The next Long Term Support (LTS) release is not scheduled until April 2021. Like all Ubuntu releases, Groovy Gorilla draws many of its packages from the Debian Unstable repository. In keeping with the tradition for short-term releases, it contains no major innovations. However, Groovy Gorilla does include one or two new features that might interest the curious. Chief among these are WiFi sharing through the use of QR codes. In addition, should you like what you see on the DVD, you might try Groovy Gorilla as a desktop on a 4MB…

Dell has completely embraced the Linux community. With one of the finest Linux-based laptops on the market (the XPS Developer Edition), Dell is definitely no stranger to open source and the needs of those who use it. Case in point, many Linux users are quite savvy in the realms of privacy and security. With most modern laptops equipped with webcams and microphones, which can be used (either by accident or via nefarious means) in less-than-desirable ways, it has become crucial for many users to have control over those features. To that end, Dell has offered up code to the Linux kernel for the Dell privacy drivers. What this feature will do is allow users (via keyboard shortcuts) to disable the built-in microphone and/or webcam on supported devices. The applicable shortcuts…

For those who prefer their Linux a bit mintier, but aren’t terribly keen on everything installed via Snap, the developers of Linux Mint have announced they’ll be bringing an official Chromium package to the next release of the distribution (20.1, aka Ulyssa). Unlike some Ubuntu-based distributions, Linux Mint users will be able to install Chromium from the traditional Apt repositories, instead of having to go with the Snap package (which is blocked by default). That installation is as simple as sudo apt-get install chromium -y. This decision wasn’t just made because of Snap. According to the Linux developers, this was about release delays. To that, their official take is, “We noticed significant delays between official releases and the versions available in almost all Linux distributions. For this reason we set…

Most users of Debian-based distributions are familiar with the single line Apt repository format that includes all of the information for a repository. With the new DEB822 format, those single lines are converted to multi-line entries, which allow more flexibility and extensibility over the standard for Debian software repositories. In fact, the single-line format standard is planned for depreciation, so most distributions will eventually convert over. For Pop!_OS users, that time is now. Pop!_OS is the Linux distribution created by System76 as both a developer and general usage desktop operating system. Up until 20.10, Pop!_OS defaulted to the single-line style of repository entries. Now, instead of the/etc/apt/sources.list file, you’ll find those repository entries in/etc/apt/sources.list.d/system.sources. As well, instead of a number of entries, (at least as of the initial release) you’ll…

For any Linux admin who’s been looking to deploy single board computers for various purposes, there’s a new (while at the same time old) player in the Raspberry Pi mix – Ubuntu 20.10. Groovy Gorilla is the first official Ubuntu release to not only be optimized for the Raspberry Pi as a server distro, but as a full-blown desktop as well. To make this even more appealing, Ubuntu 20.10 will include the likes of LXD 4.6 and MicroK8s for the easy deployment of resilient micro clouds, small clusters of servers providing virtual machines, and Kubernetes on demand at the edge. Any Raspberry Pi 4 board with 4GB or 8GB of RAM can be deployed with Ubuntu Desktop or Server. And this isn’t a stripped-down version of the platform; it’s the…